EU ministers have dismissed the idea of building a robust shield to protect the union's energy market from foreign buyers such as Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom.

According to an agreement reached on Friday (10 October), each EU member state will remain free to decide whether to allow foreign bidders entering their market. However, in doing so, they should take into account the union's energy security, while also consulting the European Commission.

The result is a victory for Germany, which imports 40 percent of its gas from Russia

The result is a victory for Germany, which imports 40 percent of its gas from Russia. Berlin secured enough support among ministers to alter a European Commission-sponsored safeguard, known as the "Gazprom clause."

The EU's executive body suggested last year that foreign bidders would be prevented from expanding in the 27-nation energy market without limit.

The Czech Republic will likely adopt the euro later that expected as a result of the ongoing financial turbulence, the chief of the country's central bank has warned.

Czech National Bank governor Zdenek Tuma, speaking during a debate on domestic television station CT24 on Sunday (12 October), said: "I think we will need a time out to wait for financial markets to calm down."

The financial turmoil has kicked Czech adoption of the euro into the long grass

"I believe the current problems on financial markets should pass in a few months," he added, according to Agence France Presse, "and we may reopen the issue next year."

Prague's initial 2010 target date for adoption of the European single currency replacing the Czech koruna has been dropped, with the governing centre-right administration declining to set a new date since it was elected at the start of 2007.

An opposition conservative party is ahead after Sunday's (12 October) parliamentary election in Lithuania, exit polls have shown, but high results for two populist groups pave the way for tricky coalition talks ahead.

The opposition center-right Homeland Union Party was leading with almost 18 percent of the votes, while two populist parties - Order and Justice of Lithuania's impeached former president Rolandas Paksas (13 percent), and the Labour party (10 percent) led by Russian-born millionaire Viktor Uspaskich - got a combined 23 percent in the elections, the Associated Press reports quoting exit polls.

The Ignalina nuclear plant is set to close by the end of next year

"We are ready to take responsibility and expect the president's offer to start forming a new cabinet," Homeland Union Party's leader Andrius Kubilius said after the announcement of the first results.

The Social Democrats of Prime Minister Gediminas Kirkilas - in power since 2001 - received some 12 percent, but the surprise came from the National Revival Party of reality TV presenter Arunas Valinskas, which got some 15 percent of the votes.

Brave businessmen who refuse to pay protection money to the Mafia have been made an offer they can't refuse - no taxes.

The mayor of a Sicilian town has offered victims of extortion rackets exemption from council levies if they help the police.

The Mob is estimated to make more than £20bn a year in rackets by forcing businesses and individuals to hand over cash in exchange for protection. The system is known in Italy as "pizzo."

Those who refuse to pay face threats, physical attacks and even murder.

Police trying to combat the system have traditionally had their inquiries blocked by a wall of silence as victims refuse to cooperate for fear of reprisals.

But now Giuseppe Nicosia, mayor of Ragusa, has announced that victims of pizzo who talk to the police will be immune from local council taxes.

He said: "It is something that was debated in the council chamber and when it was put to the vote was passed unanimously by all the members.

A day before Iceland begins negotiations for an emergency multibillion loan from Russia, a senior minister and longstanding Europhobe has said the country must consider joining the European Union to save its economy.

Up to now, there has been a sizeable lobby in Iceland against joining the EU because of worries about the effects on its fishing industry.

Fisheries Minister Einar Gudfinnsson told Icelandic radio on Monday: "It's no secret, I've been against membership. However, the current turmoil means we have to look at every option."

A European Commission spokeswoman told Reuters news agency that she was not aware of Gudfinnsson's comments but said the EU's standard position remained that Iceland is a European country and thus entitled to apply for EU membership.

"Negotiation with Iceland, theoretically speaking, could go fast because as a member of the European Economic Area, it has already adopted many EU laws," a commission official said.

A travel ban on Belarussian government officials, including on President Alexander Lukashenko, has been lifted for six months, EU foreign ministers have said.

"We have suspended the travel bans for six months except for those involved in the disappearance of political prisoners," one diplomat said after the meeting on Monday, Oct. 13 in Luxembourg.

The easing of visa restrictions on Belarussian officials followed the release of the last three political prisoners by the government there, and its non-recognition of the independence of Georgia's two breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which many in the West saw as an effort by Minsk to appear more open to the EU.

A block on the assets of Belarussian officials in Europe would, however, remain in place, diplomats said.

The EU also said it would lift standing sanctions, including visa bans, on central Asian state Uzbekistan after observing progress on human rights there.

European Union foreign ministers were due to discuss re-starting cooperation talks with Russia amid disagreement over whether Moscow had fully complied with a peace deal in Georgia.

Ministers arriving at their meeting in Luxembourg Monday, Oct. 13, indicated that reaching consensus on the strategic Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) talks would be difficult.

"We have to take it fairly slowly," said Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb. "I do not expect a decision (on the PCA) to be taken today."

Stubb chairs the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which has a military monitoring operation in Georgia.

Last Thursday, OSCE monitors said Moscow had pulled its forces out of the buffer zones adjacent to the separatist enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, one day ahead of the expiry of an Oct. 10 deadline brokered by the EU and agreed by Russia and Georgia.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Uzbekistan has jailed a prominent journalist on the eve of an EU decision on sanctions, with Human Rights Watch (HRW) saying that EU states will undermine foreign policy credibility if they let Tashkent off the hook.

Solizhon Abdurakhmanov - a reporter who wrote for the New York Times and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty - received a 10-year sentence on marijuana and opium-dealing charges on Friday (10 October), two days before EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday debate scrapping a visa-ban list for the Central Asian country.

Samarkand in Uzbekistan - how should the EU deal with an intransigent dictatorship?

"This [the Abdurakhmanov sentence] is just another example of the Uzbek government mocking the EU's rights demands," HRW campaigner Veronika Szente Goldston told EUobserver.

Ms Szente Goldston believes that Uzbekistan should act as a test-case for EU sanctions policy because of the country's "clear-cut" failure to meet the criteria for dropping restrictions as spelled out in the EU's own legal acts.

The German Bundeswehr has been deployed in Afghanistan since December 2001. The government in Berlin now reports the military mission has cost taxpayers close to €3 billion, far eclipsing the €830 million in development aid provided to Kabul.

 German Bundeswehr soldiers take position at a shooting range in Kunduz, Afghanistan. Germany's army, the Bundeswehr, has been participating in the ISAF stabilization force in Afghanistan since December 2001 at a total cost to the country's taxpayers of near €3 billion. The Finance Ministry in Berlin released those figures last week at the request of Gesine Lötzsch, a Left Party member of the federal parliament.

According to the ministry, the government had spent €2.4 billion ($3.27 billion) through the end of 2007 for "deployment related additional expenditures" to the federal budget. The budget calls for a further €388 million in spending for the ISAF mission in 2008. Actual expenditures for this year, however, will be considerably higher because the budget only includes expenditures through the end of the current deployment mandate, which ends on Oct. 13.

Gordon Brown called an end to the days of overblown City salaries today as he pumped £37 billion of taxpayers' money into the partial nationalisation of three of the country's biggest banks.

Under the emergency refinancing, the three banks participating in the scheme - Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), HBOS and Lloyds TSB - have agreed to scrap boardroom bonuses for the current year and tie future rewards to performance. Nor will they pay out any dividends until the Government's interest in preference shares has been fully repaid.

"Our action is driven by our values," the Prime Minister said today. "For this Government, and I believe the whole country, the guiding idea is fair reward for hard work, effort and enterprise, not incentives for irresponsibility or excessive risk-taking for which the rest of us have paid."

Gordon Brown tonight abandoned his parliamentary battle to allow police to detain terror suspects without charge for up to 42 days, after the Lords overwhelmingly rejected the proposal by 191 votes. In an emergency statement to MPs tonight, Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, said that the counter-terrorism bill would continue its journey through parliament without the 42 day measure.

But in a face saving gesture, the government will publish a bill containing the 42 day plan; this bill will be held in reserve to be introduced should there be a terrorist emergency. Ministers said they had decided to follow this course because the introduction of the counter-terrorism bill would have been delayed by a year if the government had embarked on a lengthy battle with the Lords.

Just over 1,000 people between the ages of 15 and 79 were interviewed by Taloustutkimus. Those least tolerant of gays were over the age of 50 while greatest acceptance was in the age group from 25 to 34. Acceptance was also depended on the respondent's level of education.

Jim Mather will travel to Norway and Russia this week to forge new links in energy and tourism and boost the Scottish economy.

Mr Mather will visit Stavanger and Oslo to enhance collaboration in energy research and development. He will visit a range of energy companies and meet the Norwegian Secretary of State for Energy to gather support for new grid connections, offshore renewable energy and carbon capture and storage.

Mr Mather will then travel to Moscow to encourage more Russians to holiday in Scotland.

(...)

I guess there is more to his Russian visit than tourism...

Estimates of the cost to the German taxpayer of rescuing banks still varied wildly, with high-end guesses coming in at 400 billion euros. The government said it would announce details of the bailout on Monday.

The highest estimate of 400 billion euros ($550 billion) was made by Otto Fricke of the opposition free-market liberal FDP who chairs the Bundestag budget committee, in an interview with a Cologne newspaper, the Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger on Monday, Oct. 13.

 

Members of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) were tighter in their estimates. They said that if the government's cash injections were lost and all the guarantees were called, the bill would total 250 billion euros.

 

That is roughly the same as Germany's entire annual budget this year of 283.2 billion euros.

Western financial leaders assure an anxious world that all bank deposits will be guaranteed and any necessary steps will be taken, however unorthodox.

 The IMF and G-7 declare they are working to prevent further chaos in the markets and Lehman-style failures. Now the great confidence game begins. In high-powered forums that accompanied the G-7 and International Monetary Fund in Washington this past weekend, Western financial leaders sought to assure panicky bankers and money managers in no uncertain terms that all of the measures needed to halt a worldwide meltdown are in motion.

While short on the details many market analysts had hoped for, the broad brushstrokes of forceful, coordinated action by Western governments were unveiled: No more Lehman Brothers-like failures of major financial institutions will be allowed. All bank deposits will be guaranteed. The banking systems of the G-7 nations will be flooded with almost unlimited liquidity. And if all that fails, any other tool -- regardless of how economically unorthodox -- will be used if needed. The British government's widely anticipated move to take majority control of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group and HBOS is expected to be the first of many such actions across Europe. Fifteen European Union countries that use the euro as currency met in Paris this weekend. They pledged to provide guarantees of new bank debt through 2009, authorize the purchase of preferred shares to invest in problematic banks, and provide recapitalization funds where needed.

Banco Santander of Spain is in advanced talks to acquire Sovereign Bancorp for about $2.5 billion, people briefed on the matter said, as another frantic weekend of talks heralded the next wave of banking consolidation.

Santander, which would gain a larger American presence with the deal, will probably pay around $3.81 a share, or where Sovereign's shares closed Friday. Sovereign, a savings and loan, has been hobbled by bad mortgages during the housing slump.

As banks brace to report a new wave of losses in the third quarter, they are finding it very hard to raise money from private investors. Even stronger institutions, like Bank of America, have struggled to raise new funds.

Treasury Department officials are weighing plans to make direct investments in banks to help them weather the current storm. But weaker ones have already begun reaching out to potential acquirers. The National City Corporation, for example, put itself up for sale last week, people briefed on the situation said.

MOSCOW: The stock market here has swooned so often in recent weeks that regulators have repeatedly shut it down, as if Russia, which aspires to be a financial powerhouse, has become just another bumbling backwater. The oligarchs, those Kremlin-connected magnates who once dazzled the world with their riches, are reeling. And Vladimir Putin is facing a threat to his legacy of bringing growth, stability and a renewed swagger to this nation.

The global financial crisis has not spared Russia, wiping out roughly a trillion dollars in wealth and forcing the government to adopt a broad rescue plan to shore up banks. At stake is the country's robust economy over much of the last decade, which has for the first time given many Russians a taste of comforts long enjoyed in the West.

For now, the damage has been largely limited to the Russian elite. While Russia's stock market has plummeted by about two-thirds since May, more than those in the United States and Western Europe, the country has not yet developed a broad investor class, and most people have not squirreled away their savings in the market.

"We cannot have a healthy economy and sustainable growth unless we have a solid financial sector," said French President Nicolas Sarkozy on late Sunday (12 October), after the hastily arranged summit of the 15-strong euro area.

Leaders of 15-strong eurozone hope their coordinated action will calm the markets

The crisis talks aiming to adapt the bloc's financial markets to better cope with the worst financial crisis since the 1930s led to an agreement on a plan similar to that of Britain's rescue scenario.

"I believe that there is common ground now about what needs to be done," UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown told journalists in Paris after he explained the details of the British approach hours ahead of the eurozone session. The UK remains outside the eurozone.

Under the agreed package, 15 countries plus Slovakia - set to join the euro in January - committed to provide capital for banks striving for funds because of frozen money markets and to help or directly subscribe to debt-raising by banks for up to five years.

European stock markets soared on Monday as Germany, France and other euro zone countries presented their rescue plans to guarantee bank debt and inject capital into the financial sector. But some analysts warn the stock market volatility may not be over.

 Like other European leaders, Germany's Angela Merkel is having to dig deep into her treasury coffers to make up to €500 billion available for her country's financial crisis rescue plan.

Stock markets across Europe soared on Monday as a wave of relief washed over trading floors following Sunday's pledges by European leaders to commit government funds in massive bailout packages.

The German government unveiled a €500 billion ($679 billion) rescue plan to shore up the banking system after Sunday's emergency summit of euro zones nations at which leaders agreed to guarantee new bank debt and inject capital to unfreeze money markets and restore confidence in the financial system.

SPIEGEL spoke with German President Horst Köhler, 65, about the causes of the international banking crisis, the need to reform the financial sector and efforts to introduce effective rules of conduct for the global economy.

German President Horst Köhler, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, blames "collective blindness" and a get-rich-quick mentality for the financial crisis. SPIEGEL: Mr. President, do you own certificates?

Köhler: No, I have never bought them.

SPIEGEL: Are you a shareholder?

Köhler: Not even that.

SPIEGEL: But you do have a savings account?

Köhler: No, but I have something similar: fixed deposits.

SPIEGEL: Have you also recently started putting money under your mattress?

Köhler: Why in the world should I put money under my mattress?

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund, said Oct. 13 that in the current global financial crisis, those governments that could afford it should consider stimulus plans for their economies.

Strauss-Kahn told the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington that "action in the financial markets is essential, but it is not sufficient.

"We also need to deploy all of the instruments of modern macroeconomic policy to limit the damage to the real economy," he said.

"For the advanced economies, this means using fiscal policy when they can. The most obvious use of fiscal policy is precisely to ease pressures where they are greatest: in the financial and housing sectors.

Europe's developing eastern nations have revealed their vulnerability to the finance crisis, with Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic all brought down to earth by market shocks.

Budapest was offered financial help by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Monday, a move which followed the downscaling of the country's deficit targets and growth forecast.

The country of some 10 million was hit hard by the crisis due to its heavy reliance on foreign financing and a high public deficit, which is estimated at 3.8 percent of GDP for 2008, dropping from 9.2 percent of GDP in 2006.

Hungary's currency, the forint, plunged to two-year lows against the euro on Friday, losing about 10 percent of its value in a day before recovering slightly Monday.

Cash-strapped couples whose socialising has been curbed by the credit crunch could fuel a baby boom as they seek entertainment at home, industry figures say.

Sales of maternity clothes and baby equipment have soared, along with those of pregnancy tests and sex toys.

It comes as home-delivery pizza company Domino's reported a 20 per cent sales rise in the first half of this year, while a report from financial services firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers predicted meals out and trips to the pub would be the first luxuries to go in a recession.

Mothercare said its sales have gone up by more than 20 per cent, while baby clothing firm Mamas And Papas has reported a 46 per cent increase in maternity dress sales.

Chemists around the country have reportedly seen a rise in sales of pregnancy test kits while online company sextoys.co.uk reported a 27 per cent increase in sales.

Germany and France put mountains of cash on the table today as they led continental Europe in an offensive to rebuild trust in banks with state guarantees worth over €1trillion (£780 million).

Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Sarkozy, chiefs of the two big euro-zone economies, also joined Gordon Brown in calling for a deep reform of the global financial system after the dust settles from the autumn earthquake.

"When calm returns, those who have sinned will be punished," Mr Sarkozy said.

The amazing feature of today's crash is how many Wall Street firms actually believed that the game of musical financial chairs could go on before they had to stop dancing and indeed, escape from the room. I remember one day back in the 1970s when I warned Frank Zarb of Lazard Freres about the likelihood of Third World debt defaults, and suggested that the firm should do an ability-to-pay analysis. "We don't have to do any such thing," he replied. "We have the schedule of what they owe right here in this IMF report." It was a thick printout of the scheduled debt service for an African country that soon became insolvent. But Wall Street's mentality was that of Herbert Hoover on the eve of the Great Depression: A debt is a debt, and that is that. The response is to blame the victim, as if the irresponsibility lies with debtors rather than creditors.

....

Instead of requiring creditors to absorb losses on the excess of debts over what can be paid, the debts are being kept in place, not scaled back to what the economy can pay. The government is to make creditors and computerized derivatives speculators whole - and will act as collecting agent for the overhead of bad debts the economy has run up.

Today we can see the debt-fueled bubble of asset-price inflation that Alan Greenspan trumpeted as real wealth creation for what it really is - credit creation to bid up real estate, stock market and packaged-debt prices. Tangible capital formation has been left out of account, as if postindustrial economies no longer need it.

WASHINGTON -- The Treasury Department, in its boldest move yet, is expected to announce a plan on Tuesday to invest up to $250 billion in banks, according to officials. The United States is also expected to guarantee new debt issued by banks for three years -- a measure meant to encourage the banks to resume lending to one another and to customers, officials said.

And the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation will offer an unlimited guarantee on bank deposits in accounts that do not bear interest -- typically those of businesses -- bringing the United States in line with several European countries, which have adopted such blanket guarantees.

The Dow Jones industrial average gained 936 points, or 11 percent, the largest single-day gain in the American stock market since the 1930s. The surge stretched around the globe: in Paris and Frankfurt, stocks had their biggest one-day gains ever, responding to news of similar multibillion-dollar rescue packages by the French and German governments.

Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. outlined the plan to nine of the nation's leading bankers at an afternoon meeting, officials said. He essentially told the participants that they would have to accept government investment for the good of the American financial system.

]...]

"The Europeans not only provided a blueprint, but forced our hand," said Kenneth S. Rogoff, a professor of economics at Harvard and an adviser to John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate. "We're trying to prevent wholesale carnage in the financial system."

* How do you define optimism? A banker who irons five shirts on a Sunday.

• "It's worse than a divorce. I've lost half my net worth and I still have a wife."

• What's the difference between an investment banker and a large pizza? The pizza can feed a family of four.

• An elderly lady receives an email from the son of a deceased African general, asking to transfer millions of pounds into her account for a 20 per cent cut. All the son needs is her sort code and account number. She emails back the details. A couple of minutes later she receives an email back from the general's son: "icesave? What is this, some sort of scam?"

• Why didn't the little boy get any pocket money? 'Cos his mum's gone to Iceland.

• If you had purchased $1,000 of Nortel stock a year ago, it would now be worth $49.
  

With Enron, you would have $16.50 left of the original $1,000.
With WorldCom, you would have less than $5 left.
if you had bought $1,000 of Delta Airlines stock you'd have $49 left.
With United Airlines, you would have nothing left.
But, if you had purchased $1,000 worth of beer one year ago, drank it and then turned in the cans for recycling, you would have $214. The best current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle. it is called the 401-Keg Plan.

British combat forces are no longer needed to maintain security in southern Iraq and should leave the country, Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, has told The Times.

In an exclusive interview in Baghdad, Mr al-Maliki also criticised a secret deal made last year by Britain with the al-Mahdi Army, Iraq's largest Shia militia. He said that Basra had been left at the mercy of militiamen who "cut the throats of women and children" after the British withdrawal from the city.

The Iraqi leader emphasised, however, that the "page had been turned" and he looked forward to a friendly, productive relationship with London. "The Iraqi arena is open for British companies and British friendship, for economic exchange and positive cooperation in science and education."

It is pure guesswork whether last night's European measures will create stability or trigger a further rout in financial markets when they open this morning. But two things are fairly clear about this surprisingly strong and cohesive package. First, while short-term stock market reactions are unpredictable, there can be reasonable confidence about the package's economic impact -- it will avert a catastrophic economic collapse or long-term depression. Secondly, the ability of European governments to launch their own financial rescue without waiting for US leadership represents a fundamental shift in global economic relations.

Let me begin with this second point. Since the creation of the Bretton Woods monetary system in 1944 every global financial initiative of any significance has been devised, led and co-ordinated by the US Government. This US leadership did not mean that America always got its way in financial affairs -- nor that US co-ordination always succeeded, as exemplified by the breakdown of Bretton Woods in 1971. But it did mean that international financial initiatives were never attempted until ideas and the leadership came from Washington. The sole exception to this rule in the past 30 years was the creation of the euro; but this was viewed in Washington as an intra-European affair with limited global consequences.

The present global banking crisis has been a very different matter, since it originates in the US itself. Even a few weeks ago a solution without US leadership would have been inconceivable. In the past few days, however, the failure of the Bush Administration to follow through in any concrete way on the $700 billion "Paulson package" that it rammed so painfully through the Congress, has focused attention on Washington's vacuum of leadership and ideas. Aghast at the dithering incompetence of the US in handling this crisis, European politicians have realised that Henry Paulson, the supposedly brilliant US Treasury Secretary, was an emperor with no clothes. Instead of waiting for US leadership, they had to take responsibility for Europe's problems. In trying to do this, they have found an unlikely intellectual guide and champion: the British Treasury and Gordon Brown.

Eight years of Bush administration leadership has severely damaged the reputation of the United States abroad. The incoming president will inherit this deficit as well as a host of other foreign policy crises. To gain back trust, he will have to address nonproliferation and climate change.

Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima: "It didn't take the actual experience of Armageddon to spur the international regulation of national arsenals."

The president of the United States inaugurated on January 20, 2009 will inherit the most complex, difficult and dangerous array of foreign policy challenges ever facing a newcomer to the Oval Office: wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a rising Iran, a Pakistan that has lost control of its own borders, a languishing Arab-Israel peace process, a Syria covertly cooperating with North Korea on a nuclear weapons program -- and that is just in one region of the world. In dealing with those and other problems, the United States, under its next president, will need all the help in can get from other nations. Therefore the incoming chief executive will have to move quickly to improve -- and indeed repair -- America's image in the world.

Polls taken in recent years show a precipitous decline in respect for and trust in the United States. Those two essential ingredients for leadership of the international community have been severely damaged during the administration of George W. Bush. During his first term, President Bush withdrew from, nullified, "unsigned" or backed away from a range of agreements, including the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which was originally signed by Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev and was observed by the five presidents who followed Nixon.

Senior members of the Republican party are in open mutiny against John McCain's presidential campaign, after a disastrous period which has seen Barack Obama solidify his lead in the opinion polls.

And as disputes raged within the McCain camp yesterday, Democrats took another symbolic step towards healing the party after their bitter primary battles, as Bill and Hillary Clinton made their first joint appearance in support of Mr Obama.

From inside and outside his inner circle, Mr McCain is being told to settle on a coherent economic message and to tone down attacks on his rival which have sometimes whipped up a mob-like atmosphere at Republican rallies.

TEHRAN: A strike in Iran's traditional bazaars has expanded despite an order by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to suspend a new sales tax that ignited the protest more than a week ago.

The main entrance to the Grand Bazaar in Tehran was closed Sunday, as major traders like carpet and textile merchants joined the jewelers, who had started the strike in Tehran. The strike continued in the traditional bazaars in several other large cities, including Isfahan, where it erupted first on Oct. 4.

In the latest sign of discontent with Ahmadinejad's economic policies, the merchants went on strike to protest being included in the country's first value-added tax, a 3 percent levy on all products except basic commodities like dairy products and bread.

In an effort to persuade the traders to end their strike, Ahmadinejad said last week that the new tax law would be suspended for two months. But the newspaper Sarmayeh reported Sunday that the traders had demanded that the law be permanently revoked.

* BP, Shell and Exxon in meeting with minister

* Unprecedented 40bn barrels up for grabs

The biggest ever sale of oil assets will take place today, when the Iraqi government puts 40bn barrels of recoverable reserves up for offer in London.

BP, Shell and ExxonMobil are all expected to attend a meeting at the Park Lane Hotel in Mayfair with the Iraqi oil minister, Hussein al-Shahristani.

Access is being given to eight fields, representing about 40% of the Middle Eastern nation's reserves, at a time when the country remains under occupation by US and British forces.

Two smaller agreements have already been signed with Shell and the China National Petroleum Corporation, but today's sale will ignite arguments over whether the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was a "war for oil" that is now to be consummated by western multinationals seizing control of strategic Iraqi reserves.

Bellum Gallium

Manes Julii Caesaris paucis diebus aderant -- "O, most bloody sight!" -- cum Ioannes McCainus, mavericus et veteranus captivusque Belli Francoindosinini, et Sara Palina, barracuda borealis, qui sneerare amant Baracum Obamam causa oratorii, pillorant ut demagogi veri, Africanum-Americanum senatorem Terrae Lincolni, ad Republicanas rallias.

Rabidi subcanes candidati, pretendant "no orator as Brutis is," ut "stir men's blood" et disturbant mentes populi ad "a sudden flood of mutiny," ut Wilhelmus Shakespearus scripsit.

Cum Quirites Americani ad rallias Republicanas audiunt nomen Baraci Husseini Obamae, clamant "Mortem!" "Amator terroris!" "Socialiste!" "Bomba Obamam!" "Obama est Arabus!" "Caput excidi!" tempus sit rabble-rouseribus desistere "Smear Talk Express," ut Stephanus Colbertus dixit. Obama demonatus est tamquam Musulmanus-Manchurianus candidatus -- civis "collo-cerviciliaris" ad ralliam Floridianam Palinae exhabet mascum Obamae ut Luciferis.

GURGAON, India -- With her flowing, hot-pink Indian suit, jangly silver bangles and perky voice, Bhumika Chaturvedi, 24, doesn't fit the stereotype of a thuggish, heard-it-all-before debt collector. But lately, she has had no problem making American debtors cry.

For the past three years, Chaturvedi has been a top collection agent at her call center, phoning hundreds of Americans a day and politely asking them to pay up. As the U.S. financial crisis plunges Americans into debt, her business is one of the fastest-growing sectors in Indian outsourcing. It is also one of the few sectors of outsourcing in India that is still hiring aggressively.

[...]

"My mortgage payments are just too high, honey. I just can't make the payment this month," a weeping woman with a Southern accent recently told her in response to a call for a $200 credit card payment. "I'm sure y'all heard about the credit crunch and gas prices. I'm flat broke."

"Ma'am, I am here to help you," Chaturvedi calmly said. "Ma'am, maybe you could make a small payment, $100 or $50, anything that you can."

[...]

Few places in India absorb and imitate American culture as much as call centers, where ambitious young Indians with fake American accents and American noms de phone spend hours calling people in Indiana or Maine to help navigate software glitches, plan vacations or sell products. The subculture of call centers tends to foster a cult of America, an over-the-top fantasy where hopes and dreams are easily accomplished by people who live in a brand-name wonderland of high-paying jobs, big houses and luxury getaways.

But collection agents at this call center outside New Delhi are starting to see the flip side of that vision: a country hobbled by debt and filled with people scared of losing their jobs, their houses and their cars.

"Lately, 25-year-old Americans are telling me that they are declaring themselves bankrupt," said Chaturvedi, raising her eyebrows in shock. "These days the situation is so emotional, so fragile. We have to have so much empathy and patience."

JERUSALEM -- The main partners in Israel's departing government, the Kadima Party of Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and the Labor Party of Defense Minister Ehud Barak, signed a draft coalition agreement on Monday, moving Ms. Livni an important step closer to forming a new government, representatives of the parties said. Skip to next paragraph Pool photo by Uriel Sinai

Israel's foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, of the Kadima Party, during a weekly meeting of the cabinet last month in Jerusalem. Related Times Topics: Israel

Assuming that Mr. Barak and Ms. Livni sign off on the entire agreement -- which they have not yet done -- her principal remaining task will be to bring on board the ultra-Orthodox party Shas to reach a majority in Parliament.

The most significant part of the draft accord between Kadima and Labor grants Mr. Barak official status as the cabinet's second in command, especially regarding Israel's negotiations with the Palestinians and Syria.

"No issue will be decided in the cabinet without the coordination and agreement of Barak," one of his associates said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not his spokesman. "It amounts to almost, but not quite, a veto power."

BROOKLINE, N.H. -- Melanie Levesque grabbed the campaign signs from her Mercedes S.U.V. and plunged into the white crowd at the fairgrounds here. The cows were lowing, the cider presses churning and Mrs. Levesque, a black state legislator, was hunting for votes and a place in history.

Blacks account for less than 1 percent of the population in this small suburban district near the Massachusetts border. But none of that seemed to matter to the people here at an annual fall festival this month.

A group of snowy-haired retirees promptly invited Mrs. Levesque to a potluck dinner. Art Fenske, a 91-year-old former paratrooper who served in World War II, presented her with a T-shirt that proclaimed, "Don't ever give up."

And next month, Mrs. Levesque is expected to win re-election to her seat in the New Hampshire House of Representatives, where she represents one of the whitest districts in one of the whitest states in the nation. She is part of a new generation of black elected officials who are wooing white voters and winning local elections in predominantly white districts across the country.

Political analysts say such electoral gains are quietly changing the political landscape, increasing the number of black lawmakers adept at crossing color lines as well as the ranks of white voters who are familiar, and increasingly comfortable, with black political leadership.

Maybe Bradley really was yesterday...

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

John McCain's two big economic ideas are a freeze on Federal Spending, and a reverse robinhood plan to pay off the rich, and then stuff the poor. It's a pair of proposals so awful as to be nominees for the Smoot-Hawley award for fastest ways to tank the economy. Unfortunately Barack Obama's plans are cut from the same Hooverist mind set. John McCain, out of touch, flailing, erratic, and corrupt, is running on Racism, Rage and Resource Rape.

Barack Obama is running on egoism and a demented Reaganite belief that the problem is that Americans are overtaxed. Here is a run down of the lastest joke of an economic plan from the man who is almost sure to be the next President of the United States, and who is already running hard to be the next Worst. President. Ever. His backing of the bail out bill was not an accident: he really is an economic idiot.

In keeping with my chosen role as Devil's Advocate in the canonization of Barak "Audacity" Obama, I recommend to you a thoughtful article by Sterling Newberry over at The Agonist.
McHoover vs. O'Hoover

Grabbing what you can, as John Ruskin said, isn't any less wicked when you grab it with the power of your brains than with the power of your fists.

A country that refuses to properly educate its young people or to maintain its physical plant is one that has clearly lost its way. Add in the myriad problems associated with unnecessary warfare and a clueless central government that wastes taxpayer dollars by the trillions, and you've got a society in danger of becoming completely unhinged.

This is about more than the election of a president in a few weeks. The American people have to decide what kind of country they want.

After plundering a Berlin office, a robber making his getaway was forced to call the fire department when he got stuck in the elevator.

 An office elevator foiled a would-be thief in Berlin on Saturday. A robber almost pulled off a successful heist in an office building in central Berlin early Saturday morning. But on his way out of the building, he was captured -- by the elevator.

The 27-year-old man broke into an office building in Berlin's Mitte district and gathered up four laptop computers, according to police. But his getaway did not quite go as planned.

Turkey's central bank has been criticised by secularists for choosing a previously obscure Ottoman writer as the first woman to adorn the country's bank notes.

Critics say the choice of Fatma Aliye, believed to be Turkey's first female novelist, represents a surrender to religious conservative forces and a snub to others who fought for women's rights.

Aliye, who died in 1936 and was the daughter of a senior Ottoman bureaucrat and historian, is among several historical figures who will appear on the notes from January. The notes are being minted to mark the inauguration of a fresh currency to replace the existing New Turkish Lira.

A central bank-appointed committee also chose a mathematician, a composer, an architect and a 13th-century Sufi mystic in a departure from the established practice of notes carrying political figures.

The world's governments will fail to meet their agreed target of curbing biodiversity loss by 2010, according to experts questioned by BBC News.

Nearly 200 countries signed up to the target in 2002.

Ten leading conservationists asked here at the World Conservation Congress were unanimous that the goal cannot be met.

All the global indicators of progress are heading in the wrong direction, and few governments have even translated the target into national legislation.

Not all the experts questioned would go on the record, and some said there was a reluctance to embarrass governments over their failures on the matter.

nice shears.....shiny....won't hurt....

"Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do." Jim Hightower

LA Times:  At least 1 dead, more than 10,000 acres burned in 2 San Fernando fires

With treacherous Santa Ana winds as their bellows, twin wildfires raced through populated canyons, forests and brushlands on the northern fringes of the San Fernando Valley, claiming at least one life and 49 structures, and prompting authorities to suggest a hair-raising, worst-case scenario -- that one of the blazes, which began near Porter Ranch, could burn all the way to the Pacific Ocean about 15 miles away.

"This fire has the potential to move from where it is now . . . perhaps as far as Pacific Coast Highway," Los Angeles County Fire Chief Michael Freeman said Monday afternoon as he assessed what he called "a design for disaster." Freeman said winds of up to 60 mph were expected to push the fire down through canyons at least through this morning.

More than 800 city, county and state firefighters battled the two blazes, which shut down major portions of the 210 and 118 freeways and filled the horizon with a thick curtain of smoke, white at the edges but fading from red to black near the core. The scene took on an apocalyptic cast as traffic ground to a standstill and blasts of wind sent shudders through cars and buildings, bending trees, snapping limbs and sending trash cans clattering on empty, smoke-darkened blocks.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, warning residents that the fickle winds made the fires especially dangerous and unpredictable.

In the meantime, the Marek is about 3 miles away, but the winds seem to be pushing it in the opposite direction, so  we're fine, although the kitties have been oddly subdued - I think they can smell the smoke.

Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding. -Hobbes

ScienceDaily (Oct. 13, 2008) -- Thirty-five percent of the world's birds, 52 percent of amphibians and 71 percent of warm-water reef-building corals are likely to be particularly susceptible to climate change, the first results of an IUCN study have revealed.>

The report identified more than 90 biological traits which are believed to make species most susceptible to climate change. It found that 3,438 of the world's 9,856 bird species have at least one out of 11 traits that could make them susceptible to climate change.

Albatross, penguin, petrel and shearwater families are all likely to be susceptible to climate change, while heron and egret families, and osprey, kite, hawk and eagle families are among those least likely to be susceptible to climate change.

Carla Bruni, the wife of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, has told how she visited a former Red Brigades militant, Marina Petrella, in hospital.

The news emerged after Mr Sarkozy blocked Petrella's extradition to Italy on humanitarian grounds.

Ms Bruni said the threat to Petrella's health had become "intolerable".

The former left-wing militant has been receiving treatment in the psychiatric ward of a Paris hospital, and has reportedly been suicidal.

Petrella, 54, was sentenced to life in absentia by a Rome court in 1992 for murder and kidnapping.

The House of Lords has just been introduced to its newest member: Baron Mandelson of Foy in the county of Herefordshire and Hartlepool in the county of Durham. Just Lord Mandelson to you and me, thank you.

Every since he turned up in Downing Street in that red sweater, he has been seeking to head off accusations of grandeur. For instance, see how the geographical designation in his title recalls a humble period in his life, before he started spending time on eames chairs and yachts.