BUDAPEST, Jan 11 (IPS) - The introduction of some of the most wide-ranging austerity measures in the recent history of Central-Eastern Europe is forcing Hungarians to endure a period of hardships, but an opposition-initiated referendum and the resistance of the middle classes are endangering the socialist government's plans.

Some say the reforms are unavoidable, many completely oppose them, while others have suggested the government should have opted for a more gradual approach.

"Whether we like it or not we have become a part of the capitalist system, and more than carrying out reforms, Hungary is streamlining its system and subsystems to EU standards," sociologist Janos Ladanyi told IPS.

Hungary's socialist-liberal governing coalition, led by contested Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, wants a complete overhaul of the state administration and particularly of the health and education sectors.

The right-wing opposition, led by former prime minister Viktor Orban's Fidesz (Hungarian Civic Alliance) claims that what the government calls reforms is nothing but tax collection to retrieve what the socialists spent irresponsibly over the past six years.

ER... DoDo?

The size of the British economy has slipped below that of France for the first time since 1999 thanks to the slide in the value of the pound.

Sterling's rapid fall to 11-year lows against European currencies has also pushed Britain into sixth place in the world.

The US, Japan, Germany, China and France all had larger economies than the UK in the third quarter of 2007 - and in 2006.

The figures represented a "political economic cataclysm" for Britain, said Martin Weale, the director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, who noted that the UK government often boasted of Britain's being the fourth largest economy, and then the fifth largest when China overtook the UK in 2005.

The UK's demotion to sixth place will put pressure on the government's reputation for economic competence, particularly as it is Britain's ancient rival, France, that is moving ahead.

Tony Blair launched his campaign to become the first fully-fledged President of the European Union yesterday by describing the notion of left- and right-wing politics as redundant.

With France preparing to oversee the appointment process, Blair set out his vision of modern European democracy at a meeting of the French governing conservative party by also claiming that EU countries could achieve far more by working together than acting in isolation.

'Europe is not a question of left or right, but a question of the future or the past, of strength or weakness,' said the former British Prime Minister, speaking in French.

Even Nicolas Sarkozy's supporters are starting to tire of his all-too-public romance with model-turned-singer Carla Bruni

Smooching their way through a five-course lunch yesterday at an exclusive Paris restaurant, President Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni made it clear that they care nothing for what anyone thinks, including their gooseberry guest of honour, Tony Blair. The former PM was invited to the five-star Hotel Bristol after addressing a rally of Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement party. But all eyes were on the 40-year-old Bruni, who every now and again lifted her sunglasses to lean in and nuzzle the presidential cheek. Sarkozy reciprocated with kisses and cuddles, oblivious of any uncomfortable fidgeting from those around them.

Yesterday's social gathering, which included Justice Minister Rachida Dati and former Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, was the latest display of a love that began just two months ago but is already prompting talk of weddings and babies.

It was last November when, alone beneath the chandeliers in the quiet elegance of his official residence, the newly divorced President was bored. 'He called me,' says Jacques Séguéla. 'He said: "Invite me to dinner with your gang. I can't face any more evenings alone at the Elysée Palace." Nicolas was very low.'

Controversial plans announced by Germany's conservatives to crack down on youth crime are beginning to have a detrimental effect on Chancellor Angela Merkel's party, according to opinion polls and Merkel herself.

Two surveys showed that support for the conservatives had dipped, just two weeks before elections take place in the states of Hessen and Lower Saxony, widely regarded as tests of Merkel's popularity before a federal election in 2009.

The Infratest-dimap and Forsa surveys both showed Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian allies, the Christian Social Union (CSU), dropping single points. Infratest stated that the conservatives were down one point at 39 percent while backing for their Social Democrat (SPD) rivals was up two points at 30 percent.

Forsa also showed a one point decrease in popularity, putting the conservatives on a standing of 37 percent compared to a one-point gain for the SPD, whose support had been dwindling for months.

Some observers claimed that the dip was an initial reaction to the plans put forward by Hessen Premier Roland Koch and that it was unlikely to have a long-term effect of the campaigns of Koch and fellow CDU incumbent Christian Wulff in Lower Saxony. Others said that the surveys signalled a potential defeat in each state election for the conservatives.

Merkel admits coalition is badly split

Meanwhile Chancellor Merkel admitted in an interview with the Die Welt newspaper published on Saturday that Germany's ruling coalition was split over proposals by her party to crack down on juvenile offenders.

YESSS!!!! The significance is not in the gains/losses reported, of course (one would think the journamalists had never heard of MoE), but in the fact that the juvenile-offender scaremongering is not gaining traction. This kind of bashing-type issue (always linked to some extent with xenophobia (some might prefer the term racism)) has been a major electioneering weapon in the arsenal of CDU/CSU in general and Hesse's Roland Koch in particular. And if it's not working...

Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine - Patti Smith

US national intelligence chief Mike McConnell has said the interrogation technique of water-boarding "would be torture" if he was subjected to it.

Mr McConnell said it would also be torture if water-boarding, which involves simulated drowning, resulted in water entering a detainee's lungs.

He told the New Yorker there would be a "huge penalty" for anyone using it if it was ever determined to be torture.

The US attorney-general has declined to rule on whether the method is torture.

LIMA, Jan 12 (IPS) - The intelligence services of Peru and Argentina kept Washington informed in real time about a 1980 joint clandestine operation in which four alleged members of Argentina's Montoneros guerrilla movement were "disappeared," according to documents declassified in the United States.

The incident forms part of the case opened in December by Italian Judge Luisianna Figliola, who issued arrest warrants for those responsible for this and other actions carried out in the framework of Operation Condor, a coordinated plan among the military governments that ruled Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay in the 1970s and 1980s, aimed at tracking down, capturing, torturing and eliminating left-wing opponents.

Townsend B. Friedman, political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires, revealed in a secret Aug. 19, 1980 memo to Claus Ruser, the ambassador's number two man, details about the operation involving the supposed Montoneros in Lima, and the fatal outcome.

In that memo, which has now been declassified thanks to the efforts of the National Security Archive, an independent Washington-based non-governmental research institute, Friedman told his superior that an Argentine intelligence official had provided them with details of the Lima operation on Jun. 16, 1980.

WASHINGTON, Jan 11 (IPS) - At a recent forum held here by the progressive Economic Policy Institute, labour and human rights activists criticised what they consider a lack of adequate protections for workers contained in the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a unilateral U.S. trade deal aimed at increasing commerce between the United States and Sub-Saharan African countries.

Passed by the U.S. Congress in 2000, AGOA allows certain goods from Sub-Saharan African countries -- notably petroleum products and apparel -- to enter the United States duty-free and largely without any quota restrictions. It also encourages the growth of the textile industry in Least Developed Countries (LDCs) by extending duty-free market access to apparel made using foreign sources of fibre, largely from Asia.

The agreement currently affects trade relations with 39 countries and has led to a large increase in trade between the United States and Africa. According to the office of the U.S. Trade Representative, in 1999 U.S. imports from Africa amounted to roughly 13.7 billion dollars. In 2006, the last year for which data is available, that number rose to 59.2 billion dollars.

But labour rights activists say the increase in trade and jobs brought by AGOA has not led to a corresponding improvement in conditions for workers. They argue many labourers work up to 16 hours a day for nothing more than the bare minimum legal wage, which they say falls well short of covering the cost of food, shelter and transportation.

China has moved more people out of poverty than any other country in recent decades, but the persistence of destitution in places like southern Henan Province fits with the findings of a recent World Bank study that suggests that there are still 300 million poor in China -- three times as many as the bank previously estimated.

Poverty is most severe in China's geographic and social margins, whether the mountainous areas or deserts that ring the country, or areas dominated by ethnic minorities, who for cultural and historic reasons have benefited far less than others from the country's long economic rise.

But it also persists in places like Henan, where population densities are among the greatest in China, and the new wealth of the booming coast beckons, almost mockingly, a mere province away.

<...>

Other experts say Henan and other heavily populated parts of the Chinese heartland are often excluded from the financial support that goes to the coastal areas, and what antipoverty measures there are have little effect. Typically, residents of those areas say, money intended for them is appropriated by corrupt local officials, who pocket it or divert it to business investments.

Paradoxically, they say, they are overlooked precisely because of their proximity to the major economic centers of the east, forced to fend for themselves on the theory that they can make do with income sent home by migrant laborers and other forms of trickle-down wealth.

"Previous poverty alleviation policy focused more on western China, places like Gansu, Qinghai or Guizhou, which were poorer," said Wang Xiaolu, deputy director of the National Economic Research Institute, a Beijing nongovernmental organization. "Besides, the situation in the border regions is more complicated, because if things go wrong there, it becomes more than a poverty problem. That's why policy leaned toward them."

<...>

Many more people in this part of Henan subsist between the official poverty line and the $1 a day standard long used by the World Bank. The World Bank's estimate of the number of poor people in China was tripled to 300 million from 100 million last month, after a new survey of prices altered the picture of what a dollar can buy. The new standard was set according to what economists call purchasing power parity. By the new calculations, estimates of the overall size of the Chinese economy also shrank by 40 percent.

Toys and DVD players reaching European shelves on a 'new silk route' by rail -- that's the goal for six train companies already testing a 'fast freight' line between Beijing and Hamburg.

"China is the workhouse of the world -- the potential is enormous," said Luc Aliadiere, chief executive of the Paris-based International Union of Railways (UIC).

A test-run lugging 100 containers of toys, electrical goods and industrial products left Beijing on Wednesday, overseen by Chinese Transport Minister Liu Zhijun and German railways Deutsche Bahn (DB) President Hartmut Mehdorn.

The convoy is due to reach the port city of Hamburg, 10,000 kilometres (6,200 miles) away "in under 20 days," half the time it would take by traditional shipping lanes, according to DB.

Citigroup is putting the final touches to its second big capital-raising effort in as many months, seeking up to $14bn from Chinese, Kuwaiti and public market investors.

Under the proposal being discussed, the bulk of the money - roughly $9bn - would be most likely to come from China, people familiar with the negotiations say. The Kuwait Investment Authority would contribute about $1bn, while $2bn to $4bn would be raised through a public placement of shares.

The formula is still being adjusted and there could be last-minute changes, the people involved say. It is also possible other investors will participate.

The deal underscores the depth of the problems faced by banks that suffered heavy losses in the US subprime mortgage crisis. It would follow an injection of $7.5bn into Citigroup by the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority in late November.

"The second round is going very well, because Citi is seen as US Inc," says the regional head of a US investment bank in the Middle East. Citi de­c­lined to comment.

Hundreds of people marched through China's financial hub of Shanghai on Saturday protesting a planned extension of the city's magnetic levitation train, or "maglev", worried it would emit radiation and sicken them.

Police initially detained dozens of people, bundling them into waiting cars, vans and buses, as protesters gathered in front of city hall shouting "We don't want the maglev" and carrying placards reading: "No to maglev -- bad for health."

"We are afraid how the radiation will affect us. Why does the government not listen to our concerns?" said a protester surnamed Guan, adding the extension would pass within 100 meters (328 ft.) of her house.

As police cordoned off the city government in People's Square, once home to a race track in Shanghai's colonial heyday, demonstrators took off down the fashionable Nanjing Road shopping area.

The protest was the largest the cosmopolitan and wealthy city has seen since thousands took to the streets in sometimes violent anti-Japanese demonstrations in 2005.

"I'm marching against the proposed line as it's too close to town. It's going to be noisy and emit pollution," said another protester, who would only give his family name, Liu. <...>

"Yes, it's an illegal protest. But we've been pushed into a corner," said another protester.

<...>

China has the only commercial maglev in operation in the world, developed and built by the government and a German consortium including industrial giant Siemens.

Launched in 2003, the maglev floats on a magnetic cushion over a distance of 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) between an outlying part of Shanghai's financial district in Pudong and the international airport.

The government wants to extend the train to downtown Shanghai, and then possibly to the nearby tourist city of Hangzhou.

Buddhism is booming--quite a paradox given the Communist Party's official atheism and its troubled relationship with the Dalai Lama. The faith's growing popularity reflects a yearning for meaning among China's yuppies, who increasingly are attracted to Buddhism's rejection of materialism and emphasis on the transitory nature of life. "They have a BMW and a house in the countryside," says Lawrence Brahm, an American who runs three boutique hotels, including one in Tibet. "And they're bored. They're realizing there's more to life than collecting toys." Buddhism's trendiness has spawned a surge in faith-related business: Flights to the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, are booked solid, monasteries are building guesthouses, and Web sites offering free downloadable mantras are proliferating. <...>

... the government is comfortable with Buddhism. "Buddhists seldom mess with politics," says Chan Koon Chung, a writer and Buddhist in Beijing. "So it's more palatable to the government." In a recent speech President Hu Jintao even suggested that religion, including Buddhism, could help to ease tensions between the haves and the have-nots. <...>

Some traditionalists fret that Buddhism is becoming too trendy. Exhibit A: pop diva Faye Wong, a convert whose videos sometimes feature Buddhist images. And some monasteries focus as much on attracting tourists as practicing the faith. "Commercialization," says professor Xuan, "is one of the most dangerous trends of Chinese Buddhism." Still, for stressed-out yuppies, Buddhism is a respite from the rat race. "Society brings so many headaches," says Nikki Xi, a convert who works for a Web ad agency. "I'm more relaxed. [Buddhism] makes the whole work process smoother."

As leaders in Washington turn their attention to efforts to avert a looming downturn, many economists suggest that it may already be too late to change the course of the economy over the first half of the year, if not longer.

With a wave of negative signs gathering force, economists, policy makers and investors are debating just how much the economy could be damaged in 2008. Huge and complex, the American economy has in recent years been aided by a global web of finance so elaborate that no one seems capable of fully comprehending it. That makes it all but impossible to predict how much the economy can be expected to fall before it stabilizes.

The answer could be a defining factor in the outcome of the fiercely contested presidential election. Not long ago, the race centered on the war in Iraq.

But now, as candidates fan out across the country, visiting places as varied as the factory towns of Michigan and streets lined with unsold condominiums in Las Vegas, voters are increasingly demanding that they focus on the best way to keep the economy from slipping off the tracks.

[...]

But the forces menacing the economy, like the unraveling of the real estate market and high oil prices, are too entrenched to be swiftly dispatched by government largess or cheaper credit, some economists say.

LONDON, UK, January 11, 2008 (ENS) - Many more bird species are threatened with extinction than previously feared, according to analyses of satellite images that reveal for the first time the extent of deforestation occurring on the island of New Britain, Papua New Guinea. The island is a stronghold for a number of birds found nowhere else on Earth.

An eighth of lowland forest on the island disappeared between 1989 and 2000, driven by a rapid and uncontrolled expansion in global demand for palm oil.

"The findings show that New Britain's endemic birds are being driven to extinction by our thirst for palm oil, which is widely used in foodstuffs and industry [biofuels (afew note)]," said Stuart Butchart, BirdLife International's Global Species Program coordinator.

"After wiping out the lowland forests of Malaysia and Indonesia, companies are now moving eastwards, to New Guinea and Melanesia, where they now threaten a whole new suite of species," he said.

The starting point for appreciating that there is a distinctive part of our psychology for morality is seeing how moral judgments differ from other kinds of opinions we have on how people ought to behave. Moralization is a psychological state that can be turned on and off like a switch, and when it is on, a distinctive mind-set commandeers our thinking. This is the mind-set that makes us deem actions immoral ("killing is wrong"), rather than merely disagreeable ("I hate brussels sprouts"), unfashionable ("bell-bottoms are out") or imprudent ("don't scratch mosquito bites").

The first hallmark of moralization is that the rules it invokes are felt to be universal. <...>

The other hallmark is that people feel that those who commit immoral acts deserve to be punished.

<...>

When anthropologists like Richard Shweder and Alan Fiske survey moral concerns across the globe, they find that a few themes keep popping up from amid the diversity. People everywhere, at least in some circumstances and with certain other folks in mind, think it's bad to harm others and good to help them. They have a sense of fairness: that one should reciprocate favors, reward benefactors and punish cheaters. They value loyalty to a group, sharing and solidarity among its members and conformity to its norms. They believe that it is right to defer to legitimate authorities and to respect people with high status. And they exalt purity, cleanliness and sanctity while loathing defilement, contamination and carnality.

The exact number of themes depends on whether you're a lumper or a splitter, but Haidt counts five -- harm, fairness, community (or group loyalty), authority and purity -- and suggests that they are the primary colors of our moral sense. Not only do they keep reappearing in cross-cultural surveys, but each one tugs on the moral intuitions of people in our own culture. Haidt asks us to consider how much money someone would have to pay us to do hypothetical acts like the following...

<...>

All this brings us to a theory of how the moral sense can be universal and variable at the same time. The five moral spheres are universal, a legacy of evolution. But how they are ranked in importance, and which is brought in to moralize which area of social life -- sex, government, commerce, religion, diet and so on -- depends on the culture. Many of the flabbergasting practices in faraway places become more intelligible when you recognize that the same moralizing impulse that Western elites channel toward violations of harm and fairness (our moral obsessions) is channeled elsewhere to violations in the other spheres. Think of the Japanese fear of nonconformity (community), the holy ablutions and dietary restrictions of Hindus and Orthodox Jews (purity), the outrage at insulting the Prophet among Muslims (authority). In the West, we believe that in business and government, fairness should trump community and try to root out nepotism and cronyism. In other parts of the world this is incomprehensible -- what heartless creep would favor a perfect stranger over his own brother?

The ranking and placement of moral spheres also divides the cultures of liberals and conservatives in the United States. Many bones of contention, like homosexuality, atheism and one-parent families from the right, or racial imbalances, sweatshops and executive pay from the left, reflect different weightings of the spheres. In a large Web survey, Haidt found that liberals put a lopsided moral weight on harm and fairness while playing down group loyalty, authority and purity. Conservatives instead place a moderately high weight on all five. It's not surprising that each side thinks it is driven by lofty ethical values and that the other side is base and unprincipled.

Rather than ponder moral questions like, "Why can't we all get along?" Dr. [Scott E.] Page [a professor of complex systems, political science and economics at the University of Michigan and author of The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools and Societies] asks practical ones like, "How can we all be more productive together?" The answer, he suggests, is in messy, creative organizations and environments with individuals from vastly different backgrounds and life experiences.

Q. In your book you posit that organizations made up of different types of people are more productive than homogenous ones. Why do you say that?

A. ... The problems we face in the world are very complicated. Any one of us can get stuck. If we're in an organization where everyone thinks in the same way, everyone will get stuck in the same place.

But if we have people with diverse tools, they'll get stuck in different places. One person can do their best, and then someone else can come in and improve on it. There's a lot of empirical data to show that diverse cities are more productive, diverse boards of directors make better decisions, the most innovative companies are diverse.

Breakthroughs in science increasingly come from teams of bright, diverse people. That's why interdisciplinary work is the biggest trend in scientific research.

<...>

Q. How do you know you're right about diversity?

A. ... What the model showed was that diverse groups of problem solvers outperformed the groups of the best individuals at solving problems. The reason: the diverse groups got stuck less often than the smart individuals, who tended to think similarly.

The other thing we did was to show in mathematical terms how when making predictions, a group's errors depend in equal parts on the ability of its members to predict and their diversity. This second theorem can be expressed as an equation: collective accuracy = average accuracy + diversity.

A new book puts Cécilia Sarkozy's side of the collapse of her marriage to France's head of state. John Lichfield introduces the first extracts to be published in Britain Published: 13 January 2008

The private lives of French presidents used to be a matter for secrecy, speculation and gossip. The private life of President Nicolas Sarkozy has become a daily public soap opera.

The President was described last week, by the woman who lived with him for 18 years, as a "sauteur" (a vulgar word for philanderer). She also described him as "stingy".

Earlier, the right-wing President had confirmed that he plans to marry Carla Bruni, a left-wing pop singer, whom he met two months ago: a woman who boasts that she does not believe in monogamy. Yet last week it was also claimed that, since meeting Ms Bruni, he had been nursing an affection for the actress Eva Green.

All of this in a country that has been taught to believe, or at least to say, that the private lives of politicians should remain private. All of this after a presidential campaign in which M Sarkozy appealed stridently for a return to "traditional" values.

Cécilia Sarkozy, 50, made the attacks on her husband to a friend, who she knew was writing a book about her. Later she changed her mind, and tried to block publication of the book. On Friday, a French court agreed to allow publication. Extracts are published here in English for the first time.

So Valeriya wants to show them how it's done. With 100m sales and Putin as a fan, she may have a chance By Jonathan Owen Published: 13 January 2008

With record sales of 100 million and countless awards for her music, she is probably the best-selling star never to have topped the British charts. But now Valeriya - Russia's answer to Madonna, who counts President Vladimir Putin among her army of fans - plans to change all that by trying to conquer London this week.

She brings with her an extraordinary soap-opera life story that, if filmed, would have critics pointing out that reality is not like that. But hers is. Born the daughter of two classical musicians, she achieved fame at the age of 23 with victory at international song contests. That set her on a fast track to becoming one of Russia's leading pop stars, and three years later she was voted Person of the Year by the country's journalists.

More awards and many more hits followed, and then in 2001, at the height of her renown, she broke with her manager Alexander Shulgin (who was also her husband and father of her three children), announced she was leaving showbusiness, and returned to her native Atkarsk in the country's south-west. Allegations that Shulgin was abusive speedily surfaced. "My ex-husband was a tyrant, a real tyrant," she said, "and I had a very messy divorce. It was a very hard time for me and for my kids."

A fraudster walked into a branch of Barclays Bank posing as its chairman Marcus Agius and managed to walk out with £10,000.

The conman is believed to have found Mr Agius' details online and persuaded call centre staff into issuing a Barclaycard in his name.

"It was down to human error, procedures were not followed fully and we have learned from it," Barclaycard said.

It added that like any other customer, Mr Agius had been fully refunded.

But it's worth it for the run up to the last joke "I don't know what eternity is like, but I've seen Rush Hour 3 so I feel I've been there"

keep to the Fen Causeway