MyParl.eu, the project meant to bridge the gap between Parliamentarians of the EU-27, at the national and European level, is dead. Senior officials of the Commission and Parliament confirmed that the plugged has been pulled. Apparently, it was the Parliament that lost faith and requested to pull the plug three weeks ago. It seems that the Conference of Presidents met about the matter late last month.

The project of about 5 million Euro was run by Euractiv and Mostra Communications. The motives for the termination of the project are unclear, but initial reactions to the termination cite the bad press. Whether or not a project like this should have gotten the green light in the first place has been heavily commented upon in the press and blogosphere.

Controversial blog England Expects first announced the death of MyParl.eu last Thursday: "The madness that is Myparl (myparl.eu), the facebook for MEPs is dead. I am informed that a letter has been sent by the European Commission to Mostra Communications cancelling the contract. Let there be great rejoicing. Indeed and step forward Jon Worth, Tim Worstall, Bruno Waterfield and others who have succesfully embarressed the colleagues into cancelling it."

Romania is open to investing in the Gazprom pipeline South Stream, not just the EU Nabucco project, designed to reduce energy dependency on Russia, Romanian minister of economy Varujan Vosganian said on Thursday, contrary to the president's statements.

A Gazprom delegation is expected in Bucharest next week, just a month ahead of general elections.

Russian gas is currently imported and at a price of €418 per thousand cubic meters, is almost double the price a year ago

"Romania is ready to support any EU project, both Nabucco and South Stream," the liberal minister, whose party is at odds with the country's conservative President Traian Basescu, said, newswires report.

Only a day before, Mr Basescu renewed his calls on the European Commission and EU member states to "accelerate Nabucco," in order to decrease the EU's energy dependency on Russia.

The divergent remarks come a few days after Romanian gas officials went to Moscow, with Russian newspaper Kommersant claiming Gazprom is considering re-routing South Stream through Romania

For while there can be no doubt that many Poles are going, they are not taking everything with them. A little Polish attitude, for one thing, will endure.

"Culture is a thing that always stays behind," says Joerg Tittel from the Polish Cultural Institute. "Polish culture means hard work. Also, family and personal relationships are very important. It's a far less cynical society than here. We [Poles] are importing old-school notions that history has proven work rather well."

Indeed, one can argue that Poles have brought with them something far more important than just a way with the towel-rail: a no-nonsense ethic that mines a deep nostalgia in Britain for an age of hard-working, Hovis-delivering simplicity. In an age of financial products so complex that even the bankers don't understand them, that outlook is sure to grow more popular still.

"The Polish influx was like importing our parents' generation into today's UK," says Paul Statham, professor of sociology at Bristol University. "It has been about values - a mass arrival of people with traditional values that have been eroded here."

Allied with "a Catholic way of viewing the world, with family and community values at its centre", Prof Statham argues that Poles have effected a "basic cultural trend".

"Simple things like being treated politely in bars and restaurants had all but disappeared before Poles arrived in large numbers to work here. Now that has changed and will remain changed. Britain is changing itself."

So farewell, fair Poles. Thank you for the economy (while we still had one) and the healthcare, and the farmwork. But most of all, thank you for a reminder of the good old days.

thanks for reminding us what human relations felt like before we contracted.... (timpani rolls).... the dreaded....ANGLO disease....

"Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting." - Leibniz .

HAVANA, Cuba (AFP): Cuba and the European Union formally restored ties Thursday, signing a cooperation agreement that put an end to five years of chilly relations, officials said.

"Maroni should do exactly what I did when I was minister for Internal Affairs. In the first place, he should just leave the high school students alone, because, just think what would happen if a youngster were to be killed or seriously injured... Leave them be (the university students - Ed). Pull the Police forces off the streets and out of the University, then send in some "agents provocateurs" to infiltrate the movement, people that are up for anything and leave the demonstrators for about ten days or so to ravage the shops, set fire to vehicles and lay waste to the cities. Then, having gained the support of the public, the sound of the ambulance sirens must drown out the sirens of the Police and Carabinieri vehicles. This is because the forces of law and order should not show any pity whatsoever and should send the lot of them to hospital. Don't arrest them, after all, the judges would immediately allow them back onto the streets. Rather, you must beat them and also beat up those lecturers that are spurring the students on. The lecturers above all. I'm not saying the elderly ones, certainly, but the little girl teachers yes... this is the recipe for democracy: put out the flames before the fire takes over ".
Interview with Francesco Cossiga. Honorary President of the Italian Republic and senator for life.

Cossiga has finally confessed. This must be noted. At the end of the day, you have to admire his sincerity, because not even Totò Riina ever risked this much. All he did was say what the majority of Italians already knew: Italy is not a true democracy. Perhaps it never was. How many lies have they told us ever since the days of Piazza Fontana? Regarding the events surrounding the G8 meeting in Genoa? Who was it then that set the timer running for the Government sponsored massacres?
Cossiga has given us a masterful lesson in applying the strategy of tension. Now however, after those statements, he should be kicked out of the Senate and his nomination as honorary president of the Italian Republic should be withdrawn. I am keen to see whether or not any member of Parliament or Senator will bother to propose such action to Parliament.
If Cossiga retains his position, it will be shameful for the country and an insult to the professors and their students. He should not be beaten because he too is an elderly lecturer. He should simply be taken off to a private retirement home. I would suggest villa Wanda in Arezzo so that he doesn't feel too much alone. There, together with Licio Gelli, he will be able to re-live the old days and talk about Gladio, Moro and the secret services...

oops moment...

"Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting." - Leibniz .

Das Angasen ist sein Hobby, das Gasgeben war schon das Hobby seiner Vorfahren, alle tun es, er kann es besser, hier wird auf Tradition gehalten, weil einen sonst nichts hält. Das Land ist schön, aber was kann einen hier halten? Die Menschen im schönen Land würden nur zu gern mit ihrem Erlöser auf- und davongehen, aber das Entscheidende ist ja, daß er sie erlöst, wo sie sich bereits befinden, und von allen andren nichts wissen wollen und nichts wissen müssen, es sei denn, sie machten Urlaub, einmal im Jahr, bei andren, die aber Freunde sind. Sonst würde man sie nicht besuchen.

European Union governments gave formal approval Friday to a potentially costly system of capping greenhouse gases from any airline flying into or out of the trade bloc -- just as the airline industry reported new evidence of the impact of a worsening economy. <...>

European justice ministers meeting in Luxembourg approved the greenhouse gas measures, which oblige airlines, regardless of nationality, that land or take off from an airport in the European Union to join the emissions trading system starting on Jan. 1, 2012.

The system, created in 2005, already includes heavy industries like cement makers and electricity generators in Europe. <...>

The airline industry says its gases represent a small fraction of greenhouse gas emissions and that the European measures will be ineffective without a global agreement. Environmentalists say the effect of vapor and emissions from jet engines at altitude could magnify their effect on the climate.

It has come to this. Does anyone remember Nicolas Sarkozy of a year ago? Back then he was being feted by the anglospheric media as a French Thatcher, a neoliberal wind of change shaking a battery of outdated perceptions to its heart and mixing a few other metaphors whilst they were at it. We blogged a certain amount about how vacuous so much of this was; France, after all, did indeed go through a fearfully tough industrial restructuring in the 1980s, apparently entirely unnoticed by the media establishment. Its economic problems simply are not those of Britain in the early 1980s; anyway, a lot of people are now busy amending the level of confidence they have that those solutions were appropriate at all. (This London Review of Books article is required reading.)

Without the original radical-right dream, which had little enough substance to begin with, the Sarko presidency basically returned to its default settings and ran on under automatic control. Now, however, the banking crisis has given him a new dose of authority, much as it has to Gordon Brown; but nobody is talking about making everyone work more hours, or facing down the trade unions, now. Instead, Sarko has found his inner Gaullist; perhaps it was never so far away. Here's the German newspaper whose website is slightly better organised these days; the factoid is that the prez wants to set up a state investment fund to buy into "strategic" industries, as part of a broader reflation strategy for which he intends to bring forward a lot of capital expenditure projects and cut taxes on business.

The rest is interesting, though I disagree with some of it.

the prez wants to set up a state investment fund to buy into "strategic" industries, as part of a broader reflation strategy for which he intends to bring forward a lot of capital expenditure projects and cut taxes on business.

The crash of 1929, like the current global economic crisis, came after a prolonged period of economic growth.

October 24, 1929, known as Black Thursday, marked the first day of the crash with panic selling ensuing on the Dow Jones. This was triggered by predictions of an impending market crash, leading to a record 13m shares being traded.

Later that day, five banks gathered about $20m (£13m) together to buy stock and restore confidence in the market as the Dow closed at 299.47, with the rally continuing into the next day.

However, by Monday, termed "Black Monday", panic selling resumed as the Dow dropped nearly 40 points (about 13pc) to close at 260.64.

Oct. 24 (Bloomberg) -- The pound tumbled below $1.53 in its biggest drop in at least 37 years after a report showed the U.K. economy contracted more than forecast in the third quarter, bringing the nation to the brink of a recession.

The 5.9 percent intraday decline surpassed that of Black Wednesday in September 1992, when the U.K. was driven out of Europe's Exchange Rate Mechanism. Gross domestic product shrank in the three months through September by more than twice as much as analysts predicted, a report showed today, putting the economy on course for its first recession since 1991. The FTSE 100 index slumped as much as 9.1 percent and the yield on the 10-year gilt headed for its biggest weekly decline in almost nine years.

``This is once-in-a-lifetime stuff, we're all sat under our desks with tin hats on,'' said Neil Mellor, a currency strategist in London at Bank of New York Mellon Corp. ``The U.K. is in the first step toward a recession and the dollar's bid because of repatriation flows.''

The U.K. currency fell to $1.5269, the lowest level since August 2002, and traded 2.8 percent lower at $1.5875 at 4:59 p.m. in London, from $1.6230 yesterday. Against the euro, the pound weakened to a record 81.96 pence, dropping for a fifth day, before trading at 79.93 pence, from 79.69 pence.

Oct. 24 (Bloomberg) -- The Treasury began purchasing stakes in a number of regional U.S. banks, as the government stepped up its efforts to halt the freeze of credit to businesses and households.

PNC Financial Services Group Inc. said today it is using Treasury funds to acquire National City Corp. for about $5.2 billion in stock. The Treasury will buy $7.7 billion in preferred shares in PNC, the bank said. The capital injection is the first in phase two of a $250 billion program for financial companies, a person familiar with the matter said. An initial $125 billion was allocated to nine of the largest U.S. banks.

Regional lenders, already suffering from the housing slump, are now getting hit by rising loan delinquencies as the economic downturn deepens, with unemployment at a five-year high. The 19-member Standard & Poor's 500 Banks Index has lost half its value in the past year. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson earlier this week said some consolidation of banks may benefit the economy.

Oct. 24 (Bloomberg) -- The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries cut oil production targets for the first time in almost two years as the group battles to slow a collapse in prices.

OPEC decided to lower supply by 1.5 million barrels a day from November, oil ministers said today at the end of a meeting at the group's Vienna's headquarters. The reduction will be from the existing quota for 11 members of 28.8 million barrels a day.

``Demand is significantly less than what is being supplied, that is the reason the cut was taken,'' Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said after the meeting. Crude oil has tumbled 56 percent from a July 11 record of $147.27 a barrel as the financial market crisis spreads, job cuts increase and fuel consumption slows. Prices fell as much as 7.7 percent today.

``OPEC has offered the market all the ammunition they had,'' said Robert Laughlin, senior broker at MF Global Ltd. in London. ``With the bearish economic outlook and manufacturing in freefall this accord is not good enough'' to revive prices, he said.

OPEC President and Algerian Oil Minister Chakib Khelil said at a news conference that the cut will be ``100 percent effective'' in stabilizing prices.

BEIJING (AFP) -- European and Asian leaders pledged at a summit here Friday to comprehensively and quickly reform the global financial system, as they vowed united action in tackling the unprecedented economic challenges.

The more than 40 leaders spent the first day of the Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM) in talks on how to end the worst financial turmoil since the Great Depression of the 1930s, as stock markets around the world once again tumbled.

"Leaders pledged to undertake effective and comprehensive reform of the international monetary and financial systems," said a statement posted by host China on the ASEM website's home page at the end of the day's meetings.

"They agreed to take quickly appropriate initiatives in this respect, in consultation with all stakeholders and the relevant international financial institutions."

While no specifics were given, the leaders said supervision and regulation of all those involved in the financial system needed to be stepped up.

The US Treasury has drafted in a former banker from Credit Suisse, one of the banks advising the UK Government on its banking bailout efforts, to help run its own troubled asset relief program, rather than continuing its trend of recruiting Goldman Sachs alumni.

James Lambright, chairman and president of Export-Import Bank since July 2005, will become interim chief investment officer for Tarp. He previously worked for Credit Suisse, whose talent pool has been favored by the UK government for its bailout program for financial firms.

The Treasury said Lambright will serve until a permanent replacement is found.

In the meantime, he will offer counsel to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and interim assistant secretary for the Office of Financial Stability Neel Kashkari as they begin to deploy Tarp.

Oct. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Banks getting $125 billion from U.S. taxpayers to unlock the credit crunch are saying they'd rather hoard the money than use it for loans, the head of the largest independent mortgage company said.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is injecting capital into institutions including Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc. on the expectation they would step up lending and investing to prevent the economic slowdown from getting worse. That isn't happening, said Lee Farkas, chairman of Ocala, Florida-based Taylor, Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp.

Many large banks have told Farkas the U.S. rescue isn't boosting their interest in offering or expanding credit lines to lenders such as his, even for borrowing secured by ``low-risk, highly liquid loans,'' he said.

``By their own admission, they're taking the money and they don't want to put it to work,'' he said in an interview during the Mortgage Bankers Association's conference in San Francisco. ``Every single one you talk to, from the biggest to medium biggest, is saying the same thing, they want to de-lever.''

H/t to ARGeezer.

When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind

L.A. Land: latimes.com  --Peter Viles
Leo Nordine's advice: Rent now, buy in 2010

Advice from L.A.'s "king of foreclosures," Hermosa Beach real estate agent Leo Nordine: Now is the time to rent and save your money. The time to buy is 2010.

....Nordine, a favorite of this blog for some time, is an unusual figure in L.A.'s real estate world: a soft-spoken, low-key contrarian -- and big wave surfer -- who works in his bare feet, prefers to sell mainly foreclosed houses, and is wildly successful.  Don't let the Zen/surfing vibe fool you; his secret is his work ethic. He has sold 3,500 bank-owned houses over the last two decades....

"Try to find another Realtor who has been telling everybody not to buy. ... For someone out there who's renting, I'd recommend saving as much money as possible. Pay down all your debts as much as possible. And seriously look at buying around 2010."

All of these economists talk as if the US has unlimited capacity to issue debt. Somewhere, sometime during the Obama presidency - probably next year but certainly out of the blue - will come a crisis of confidence in the US itself: in its debt and its currency. Nations are progressively hunkering down to defend themselves, and at some point both Japan and China will need their dwindling reserves for their own purposes, not for holding on to Treasuries. Worse, they will probably see that the US left to itself will continue to issue trillions more in debt, making what they already own worth much less. The result is the same thing; the US will no longer have the option of unlimited financing, and it will have to start looking toUS taxpayers to foot the bill. Good luck on that.

Obama can play the important role of national pastor while people are hurting, redirecting what resources the US does have to helping people in distress. But to raise the money even for remedial help, he will need a major transformation in his thinking, starting with something he has never mentioned doing: taking on the military. Numerian October 24, 2008 - 12:07pm

Japan: The Rising Yen and the Falling Markets | Stratfor

Summary

Equity markets fell worldwide Oct. 24, for two reasons having to do with the Japanese yen. First, the recent jump in the yen's value has spooked "carry traders" who are now unwinding their positions in a massive sell-off of assets. Second, it has also spooked Japanese investors, who have been driven to dump their overseas assets. The long-term outlook for Japan's economy is grim.

<...>

In the longer term, most of the pain will be felt in Japan. Westerners will be less likely to purchase Japanese exports not simply because they are spooked, but because the rising yen is making those exports much less attractive. Japan faces the probability of a protracted and deep recession from which it cannot recover until Western demand for Japanese goods revives. Remember, the Japanese government is already chronically in debt to the tune of roughly 175 percent of Japan's gross domestic product, and already is engaged in deep deficit spending. There is thus no more room for the government to create a domestic stimulus, even before one considers that the average Japanese citizen is deeply shell-shocked.

The following graph is the yen to euro exchange rate for the past three months:

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

The European Union has officially renewed ties with Cuba after a five-year freeze in relations and announced it will deliver millions of euros in aid to the Communist-led island.

Development commissioner Louis Michel and Cuban foreign minister Felipe Perez Roque signed a joint declaration in Havana on Thursday (23 October) that restores bilateral co-operation between the EU and Cuba and recognises the country's political independence and the principle of non-intervention in its domestic affairs.

VILLA RICA, Colombia, Oct 24 (IPS) - Colombian President Álvaro Uribe admitted that the security forces opened fire on indigenous protesters in the southwestern province of Cauca, but denies that they were responsible for the deaths of three demonstrators, said Daniel Piñacué, a leader of the Nasa community.

Piñacué, head of the governing council of Calderas, an indigenous reservation in the mountains of Cauca, and a prominent member of the powerful Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC), was interviewed by IPS in the small town of Villa Rica.

The CRIC organised the "minga" (a traditional indigenous meeting for the collective good), the name given to the march that set out from the La María Indian reservation, declared a "territory of peace and co-existence" in the midst of Colombia's civil war.

The 35,000 indigenous marchers, who belong to a number of different ethnic groups and come from 20 of Colombia's 32 provinces (known as departments), expect to reach the city of Cali, the capital of the southwestern province of Valle del Cauca, on Saturday.

Piñacué, one of the leading spokespersons for the indigenous protest, told the media that the security forces had used live ammunition against the demonstrators, before the U.S. cable news network CNN broadcast a video this week taped by participants in the march that showed a uniformed man wearing a mask shooting in the direction of the protesters.

On Wednesday, Uribe acknowledged that the police had fired at the demonstrators.

But previously, the rightwing president had publicly called for Piñacué's arrest.

Analysis by Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Oct 22 (IPS) - The final draft of the U.S.-Iraq Status of Forces agreement on the U.S. military presence represents an even more crushing defeat for the policy of the George W. Bush administration than previously thought, the final text reveals.

The final draft, dated Oct. 13, not only imposes unambiguous deadlines for withdrawal of U.S. combat troops by 2011 but makes it extremely unlikely that a U.S. non-combat presence will be allowed to remain in Iraq for training and support purposes beyond the 2011 deadline for withdrawal of all U.S. combat forces.

Furthermore, Shiite opposition to the pact as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty makes the prospects for passage of even this agreement by the Iraqi parliament doubtful. Pro-government Shiite parties, the top Shiite clerical body in the country, and a powerful movement led by nationalist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr that recently mobilised hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in protest against the pact, are all calling for its defeat.

At an Iraqi cabinet meeting Tuesday, ministers raised objections to the final draft, and a government spokesman said that the agreement would not submit it to the parliament in its current form. But Secretary of Defence Robert Gates told three news agencies Tuesday that the door was "pretty far closed" on further negotiations.

In the absence of an agreement approved by the Iraqi parliament, U.S. troops in Iraq will probably be confined to their bases once the United Nations mandate expires Dec. 31.

The clearest sign of the dramatically reduced U.S. negotiating power in the final draft is the willingness of the United States to give up extraterritorial jurisdiction over U.S. contractors and their employees and over U.S. troops in the case of "major and intentional crimes" that occur outside bases and while off duty. The United States has never allowed a foreign country to have jurisdiction over its troops in any previous status of forces agreement.

WASHINGTON, USA: China was officially inducted as a member of the Inter American Development Bank (IDB) on Monday and committed US$350 million for public and private sector projects in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Speaking at a video conference to journalists around the world, IDB's President, Alberto Luis Moreno, said that the money would be divided into four loan schemes.

"China is now this region's second biggest trading partner after the United States," Moreno said, adding that the loan would help to "bolster some of our programmes in the public and private sectors at a time when the world economy is under duress".

Of that money, $125 million will go to the IDB'S funds for special operations to provide soft loans to Bolivia, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras and Nicaragua; $75 million will go to multiple IDB grant funds to strengthen the institutional capacity of member states including municipal governments and private sector institutions; $75 million will be allocated to the Inter American Investment Corporation which lends to small and mid-sized business; and $75 million will be placed in the bank's multilateral investment fund.

And then what? The societies of the world will be faced with the task of rebuilding systems of fruitful activity, i.e., real economies based on productive behavior rather than the smoke-and-mirrors of Frankenstein-finance con games. In fact, excuse me while I switch metaphors again, because the Frankenstein story -- the New Prometheus -- is yet another apt narrative to inform us what we have done. We have "played" with financial fire and brought to life a monster now bent on killing us. One question that this metaphor-narrative raises is: when will the angry peasant mob storm the castle with their flaming brands and cries for blood from the makers of this monster? Rather soon, I think. Perhaps, in some countries (maybe the USA, if we're lucky), this will take the more orderly form of systematic prosecutions, bringing to justice persons who perpetrated swindles involving the alphabet soup of investment "products" that have gone bad in so many accounts (and ruined so many individuals, institutions, and governments). I think it has already begun with the inquisitors summoning the shifty Dick Fuld of Lehman Brothers -- but there are hundreds of other characters like him out there, who scored untold millions of dollars in activities that were simply grand swindles. I wouldn't be surprised if, eventually, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson found himself in the dock to answer how come, when he ran Goldman Sachs, there was a special unit in the company dedicated to short-selling the very mortgage-backed securities that another unit in the company was so busy pawning off to every pension fund on God's green earth.

German scientists took an expedition to a remote region of the Brazilian Amazon on the border with French Guiana to see if they could set up a Nazi outpost in the Amazon.

The book, The Guyana Project: A German Adventure on the Amazon, says the Nazis believed they were destined to colonise and settle in parts of the world much like the pioneers of America's west.

On an island on a tributary of the Jari River, author Jens Gluessing found a 9ft-high wooden cross etched with swastikas.

The inscription says: "Joseph Greiner died here on 2.1.1936, a death from fever in the service of German Research Work."

Mr Gluessing discovered photographs of the expedition by exploring German and Brazilian archives.

He found that Greiner was one of three sent by the SS to explore the region bordering French Guyana with a view to populating it on behalf of the Reich.

Applicants are being invited for the illustrious position, once held by Sir Isaac Newton, which will be vacated on October 1, 2009.

But Prof Hawking will continue his work as usual at Cambridge University as Emeritus Lucasian Professor at the university, an honorary title.

A spokeswoman explained it was University policy for professors to "pass the baton" in the year they reach the age of 67.

She said Prof Hawking's diary is already booked up to 2012.

"The post is retiring but Hawking isn't," the spokeswoman said. "Nothing will change. It is merely a formality."

Prof Hawking, 66, will have held the position of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics for 30 years at the time of his retirement.

At the height of last year's confounding blizzard of cat photos, in which the Internet was blanketed in photos of cats talking like little hackers, a simple cartoon put things in perspective. It was of two men of two men - stick figures, in fact - surrounded by cats with strange little placards on them...

It might have been more wry than uproarious, but it crystallized the absurdity of the moment. Last year, the imperative on the Internet was that cats needed captioning. Don't ask why; it's just what the Web was buzzing about. Maybe we could have ignored the silliness if the Internet was discrete from the real world, but it isn't. In fact, the lines between the two are blurring more and more each day.

And for this, we can thank - or blame - one Randall Munroe, a 24-year old former National Aeronautics and Space Administration engineer, and his creation, the comic strip xkcd.

For many fans, players and coaches across the country, hockey isn't just a game. It's a religion. The game-day rituals, intense camaraderie of fans and cultural presence of the sport have elevated it to sacred status.

Now, the University of Montreal is taking that holy association to another level with the launch of a new course specifically devoted to examining the link between hockey and religion.

Like religion, hockey binds people together and can "affirm that we are Canadian and we can be proud to be Canadian," said Olivier Bauer, a theology professor at the University of Montreal who will teach the course, beginning in January.

While the parallels between sport and religion have been well-documented in other countries, Prof. Bauer said, there has been a void when it comes to looking at the significance of hockey within Canada.

Scientists have developed a way to erase specific memories in mice while leaving others intact and not damaging the brain.

By manipulating levels of an important protein in the brain, certain memories can be selectively deleted, researchers led by neurobiologist Joe Tsien of the Medical College of Georgia reported in the journal Neuron.

While some experts have suggested there could be value in erasing certain memories in people such as wartime traumas, Tsien doubted this could be done as it was in mice. Tsien also questioned the wisdom of wiping out a person's memories.

"All memories, including the painful emotional memories, have their purposes. We learn great lessons from those memories or experiences so we can avoid making the same kinds of mistakes again, and help us to adapt down the road," Tsien said in a telephone interview on Thursday.

The ailing Hubble Space Telescope could be snapping pictures of the heavens again as early as Saturday after engineers fixed one of the problems that has largely shut down the instrument for the last three weeks...

Scientists took the first step Thursday, powering up an instrument that packages and delivers data from the telescope, orbiting 350 miles above Earth, to the ground.

Last week when they did that, two glitches occurred that caused NASA to suspend the recovery operation.

One was a software problem that led to an automatic shutdown. The other was an electrical short in the power tray. Goddard engineers have since reconfigured the software.