The Polish government will let Polish President Lech Kaczynski go alone to Friday's (7 November) EU summit, to avoid another fiasco over chairs at the top table. But it will give him a hard to digest pro-euro and pro-Lisbon treaty mandate.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced on Tuesday his decision to stay home, saying he did not want a repeat of the October summit, when a rogue Mr Kaczynski chartered his own plane and gatecrashed the EU meeting, causing protocol havoc and making Poland a figure of fun in European media.

Mr Kaczynski (r) will go to Brussels with an awkward task

The government's negotiating mandate - which Mr Kaczynski is obliged to follow under the Polish constitution - will force the president to put forward Poland's plan to join the euro in 2012 and call on all EU states to ratify the Lisbon treaty, placing him in an awkward position.

The eurosceptic Mr Kaczynski last week said quick euro entry will cause inflation and has himself refused to sign off on Lisbon in support of the Irish No vote in June.

Mr Tusk said the mandate was not drafted out of "spite," but because Polish euro entry and broader EU integration will help keep Poland safe amid the financial crisis.

Russia is to deploy new missiles in a Baltic enclave near Nato member Poland, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev says.

Short-range Iskander missiles in the Kaliningrad region would "neutralise" the planned US anti-missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, he said.

The US says its shield is a defence against missiles from "rogue" nations, but Moscow sees it as a direct threat.

Mr Medvedev also said he wanted to extend Russia's presidential term to six years from the current four.

He did not explain if he wanted to extend his own term, or change the rules for his successor.

There has long been speculation that Mr Medvedev is a stop-gap so that Prime Minister Putin - who served the maximum two consecutive terms - can return to the top job, correspondents say.

Turkey has a lot in its favor, but the country still has much work to do on political and human rights if it wants to join the European Union, the European Commission said.

In its annual report card on membership readiness, the European Commission, the EU's executive body, said Turkey has proven itself to be a reliable international partner and a key energy transit route.

 

But Brussels warned the country must work harder on political and human-rights reforms.

 

"Turkey's geo-strategic position gives the country a vital role in the EU's energy security, particularly diversification of energy sources," the European Commission said. "Closer energy cooperation between the EU (and) Turkey ... is essential."

MOSCOW: Georgian military forces fired more cluster munitions during the August war with Russia than originally thought, and some of these weapons may have malfunctioned, causing civilian casualties when they fell short of targets and hit Georgian villages, according to new research by Human Rights Watch, a New York-based rights group.

Georgia has denied the findings, which Human Rights Watch presented at the Convention on Conventional Weapons held in Geneva on Tuesday.

The group found that both Georgia and Russia extensively used cluster munitions during the war. After Georgia launched a massive artillery bombardment against South Ossetia, a breakaway Georgian enclave, Russian invaded large swaths of Georgian territory.

Though Russia endured the brunt of international outrage for its conduct during and after the war, Georgia's actions in the conflict have come under increasing scrutiny, and the new report adds to a growing body of evidence of Georgian atrocities during the fighting.

The Queen, whose personal fortune is estimated to have fallen £25 million in the credit crunch, has demanded to know why no one saw the financial crisis coming.

During a briefing by academics at the London School of Economics on the turmoil on the international markets the Queen asked: "Why did nobody notice it?"

Professor Luis Garicano, director of research at the London School of Economics' management department, had explained the origins and effects of the credit crisis when she opened the £71 million New Academic Building.

The Queen, who studiously avoids controversy and never gives away her opinions, then described the turbulence on the markets as "awful".

Prof Garicano said: "She was asking me if these things were so large how come everyone missed it." He told the Queen: "At every stage, someone was relying on somebody else and everyone thought they were doing the right thing."

MINSK, Oct 29 (Reuters) - Belarus is ready to liberalise its economic policies as it seeks a $2 billion cushion against the impact of the global financial crisis from the International Monetary Fund, an official said on Wednesday.

The talks with the ex-Soviet state follow a preliminary agreement between the IMF and Ukraine on a $16.5 billion standby loan and a "substantial financing package" with Hungary. Iceland and Serbia are among others who have turned to the Fund.

Belarus' deputy central bank head Vasily Matyushevsky told reporters he was optimistic about the loan as an IMF mission held talks with top Belarussian officials in Minsk.

"Our macro goal is for this credit not to be used at all. In the current situation we don't need this money... But we don't know how deep the global crisis is," he said. "Belarus is asking for the loan, but it is not in crisis."

Germany's trains tend to arrive relatively punctually, but plans to partially privatize the rail service have been postponed for the second time. The government blames global economic instability for the delay.

The partial sale of the state-owned German rail system will eventually go ahead, but for now government officials have delayed the process for an undisclosed period of time. Some senior officials have said the stock flotation could be put off until after general elections in September.

 

The sale of just under 25 percent of Deutsche Bahn Mobility Logistics, a unit operating passenger and freight trains, had initially been set for last week, but it was called off because of the global financial crisis.

UK interest rates slashed to 3%

The Bank of England has cut interest rates in the UK by one-and-a-half percentage points to 3%, its lowest since 1955, in a shock move.

Last month it cut rates from 5% to 4.5% in an emergency move co-ordinated with other central banks.

There had been widespread calls from industry for a major cut as the country begins to face up to the prospect of a deep recession.

It is the most dramatic cut since a two percentage point reduction in 1981.

Barack Obama, who became the 44th president of the US Tuesday, told cheering supporters "change has come to America" and called on Americans to back a spirit of unity to tackle the country's pressing challenges.

In a powerful speech in front of a crowd of an estimated 100,000 people jammed into Chicago's Grant Park on Tuesday, US President-elect Obama said a new dawn of American leadership was at hand and stressed the shared destiny of the United States and the rest of the world.

 

"It's been a long time coming. But tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America," Obama said.

In conversations and e-mail exchanges with SPIEGEL ONLINE, European leaders and thinkers express their wishes for US President-elect Barack Obama. Yes, they want the US to join the Kyoto successor. And, yes, they want to see Guantanamo close. But many also know that theirs is a view from Mars.

Barack Obama in Berlin: "If we're honest with each other, we know that sometimes, on both sides of the Atlantic, we have drifted apart, and forgotten our shared destiny."

Margot Wallström of Sweden is the vice-president of the European Commission, the European Union's executive.

On Tuesday the American people cast their votes electing a new President of the United States. I believe we are entering into a new era of trans-Atlantic relations.

In these times of extreme financial instability, it is more important than ever to strengthen trans-Atlantic relations and work together to solve global problems. Europe and the US share the same goals and values. We both want a peaceful, prosperous and stable world, where democracy is the norm, the rule of law prevails and human rights are respected.

reposted from the former Salon

European leaders said they hoped for a "new deal" for the world after Barack Obama's historic and sweeping election victory which makes him the first African-American to lead the United States.

European leaders on Wednesday hailed Obama's historic victory, saying they hoped the Democrat President-elect would usher in a new order of international cooperation between the EU and the US.

 

European Commission President Jose Manual Barroso said Obama's victory heralded "a time for renewed commitment between Europe and the United States of America," adding that a new trans-Atlantic bond must now be forged.

 

European leaders are hopeful that the US under Obama will once again closely work together with EU allies.

 

"I sincerely hope that with the leadership of President Obama, the United States of America will join forces with Europe to drive this new deal. For the benefit of our societies, for the benefit of the world," Barroso said.

GAZA: From far away, this is how it looks: There is a country out there where tens of millions of white Christians, voting freely, select as their leader a black man of modest origin, the son of a Muslim. There is a place on Earth -- call it America -- where such a thing happens.

Even where the United States is held in special contempt, like here in this benighted Palestinian coastal strip, the "glorious epic of Barack Obama," as the leftist French editor Jean Daniel calls it, makes America -- the idea as much as the actual place -- stand again, perhaps only fleetingly, for limitless possibility.

"It allows us all to dream a little," said Oswaldo Calvo, 58, a Venezuelan political activist in Caracas, in a comment echoed to correspondents of The New York Times on four continents in the days leading up to the election.

Tristram Hunt, a British historian, put it this way: Obama "brings the narrative that everyone wants to return to -- that America is the land of extraordinary opportunity and possibility, where miracles happen."

But wonder is almost overwhelmed by relief. Obama's election offers most non-Americans a sense that the imperial power capable of doing such good and such harm -- a country that, they complain, preached justice but tortured its captives, launched a disastrous war in Iraq, turned its back on the environment and greedily dragged the world into economic chaos -- saw the errors of its ways over the past eight years and shifted course.

European leaders have hailed the triumph of Democrat Barack Obama in the US presidential election.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the victory was "brilliant", while UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown hailed Mr Obama's "vision for the future".

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the result was "historic", while the European Commission president called for "a new deal for a new world".

Moscow said it was expecting a "fresh approach" in US relations with Russia.

European Union expectations of a "new deal" for the world at a time of global economic crisis and hopes for a more Europe-friendly United States are running high after Barack Obama's sweeping election victory.

José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission President, said he hoped the Democrat President-elect would herald a new world order of international cooperation between the EU and US.

"This is a time for a renewed commitment between Europe and the United States of America," he said. "We need to change the current crisis into a new opportunity. We need a new deal for a new world."

EU diplomats and officials are convinced that under President Obama's leadership, next year, the US will be more engaged in multilateral international organisations than under the "unilateral" Presidency of George W. Bush.

"I sincerely hope that with the leadership of President Obama, the United States of America will join forces with Europe to drive this new deal. For the benefit of our societies, for the benefit of the world," Mr Barroso said.

Will President Barack Obama be a modern-day Franklin D Roosevelt, who pulled the US back up over the economic precipice, or will he be a disastrous copy of his predecessor, Herbert Hoover?

In the midst of these historically grim times, and with the US facing its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the question is a haunting one. The ebb and flow of presidential fortunes are often at one with the ebb and flow of the economy, and the 44th holder of the office will be defined by his handling of the present crisis - and probably very quickly.

A crumbling housing market has left millions of Americans facing foreclosure, income inequality is at its greatest in 80 years, and a credit squeeze has pushed homes, student loans and even cars out of the reach of many families. It was all quietly adding up to an economic crisis, even before the bottom fell out of the financial markets in September, laying waste to people's retirement savings and threatening a surge in unemployment that will be apparent in figures out as soon as Friday.

Meanwhile, the Durst Organisation had to squeeze a "1" on the front of its national debt clock, as it ticked over $10trln last month - a stark symbol of what economists have been warning for years, namely that the US has mortgaged its future to overseas lenders who could pull their money out at the slightest whiff of a budget crisis, or simply if they come up with a better idea for their investing their money (say, for instance, China's own growing economy).

As euphoric celebrations continue over the election of the first black US president, some are sounding a note of caution that Barack Obama may not be able to live up to all that is expected of him.

As black French civil rights activists and their friends began celebrating US President-elect Barack Obama's election early Wednesday, Nov. 5, in a private club in Paris, one reveler sounded a sobering, and largely unappreciated, note of caution.

 

"Obama is an American politician, and he will govern like an American president," said Cameroonian journalist Paul Heutching. "Let's not jump to unrealistic conclusions just because he looks like us."

 

As the world celebrates the election of the first African-American US president -- as a symbolic watershed in American society and a repudiation of the policies of his predecessor, George W. Bush -- it seems as if many people, such as France's disenfranchised blacks, regard Obama as a kind of messiah capable of curing all ills.

 

A typically euphoric reaction was that of US television host and media mogul Oprah Winfrey, who told CNN television, "It feels like there is a shift in consciousness... It feels like something really big and bold has happened."

 

Most international newspapers seemed happily surprised by Barack Obama's victory. The election was a lesson in democracy, one Paris commentator wrote while others said disappointment may be on the road ahead.

Milan's Corriere della Sera writes: "Barack Obama, who was praised as the new Kennedy at the beginning of his campaign, instead crossed the finish line wearing the jersey of the 'black Roosevelt' -- the man who can save America from utter breakdown with a New Deal. (...) He even won over the financial markets, which is surprising, since the Democrats' new front man wants to give more power to labor unions and rein in free trade.

 

"But in fact, in the 1930s it took Roosevelt's policies a long time to create jobs, and it turned out to be a cure-all for the markets. Unsettled by the financial crisis, Americans are anxious for security. The country wants to see projects in the works, and it needs vision. This is what Obama gave the American voters early on, while John McCain continued to change his script throughout the campaign."

WECH BAGHTU, Afghanistan - The Afghan president congratulated Barack Obama and called on him Wednesday to halt civilian casualties as villagers said U.S. warplanes bombed a wedding party, killing 37 people , most of them children.

President Hamid Karzai said airstrikes cannot win the fight against terrorism.

"Our demand is that there will be no civilian casualties in Afghanistan. We cannot win the fight against terrorism with airstrikes," Karzai said. "This is my first demand of the new president of the United States , to put an end to civilian casualties."

Karzai spoke about the deaths at a news conference held to congratulate Obama on his election victory.

Obama has talked about the issue of civilian deaths in the past. In remarks in August that drew criticism from Republicans, he said: "We've got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there."

President-elect Barack Obama is preparing to make his first political appointments as part of plans to move swiftly with his transition to power in January.

Reports said that Rahm Emanuel, 48, a Democratic congressman from Mr Obama's home town Chicago, had been offered the key post of White House chief of staff.

Nicknamed "Rahmbo" for his sharp elbows and uncompromising style, the choice of Mr Emanuel indicated Mr Obama wanted a bad cop to balance his good cop routine.

He reportedly told Tony Blair before his first meeting with Mr Clinton, during the Monica Lewinsky scandal: "This is important, don't f*** it up."

A skilled ballet dancer as a teenager, the father of three volunteered for the Israeli Defence Force in the first Gulf War and later joined the Clinton administration as an adviser.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

That rather sad, muffled noise you hear behind the whoops and cheers of Democrat America is not the sound of defeated neocons mourning the passing of trickle-down economics; it is the sound of sobbing in the Élysée Palace. For Carla Bruni, reigning queen of First Ladies, the game is finally up. Cindy McCain would have been a push-over; even Sarah Palin she could have coped with, sexy specs or otherwise. But in Michelle Obama, Ms Bruni has truly met her match. This is a First Lady like none before.

As part of his duties, the black man will have to spend four to eight years cleaning up the messes other people left behind. The job comes with such intense scrutiny and so certain a guarantee of failure that only one other person even bothered applying for it. Said scholar and activist Mark L. Denton, "It just goes to show you that, in this country, a black man still can't catch a break."

The Onion, of course.

Afghan officials confirmed there had been "many casualties" in the attack in the southern province of Kandahar as the US military announced it had launched an investigation into the incident.

Villagers in Wech Baghtu said 37 people had died, including 23 children and 10 women after planes flattened houses shortly after US troops had fought Taliban insurgents nearby on Monday afternoon.

A US military statement said it had sent investigators to the site and added: "If innocent people were killed in this operation, we apologise and express our condolences to the families and the people of Afghanistan."

California has voted to ban gay marriages only months after the practice was legalised, in a move which left thousands of homosexual couples stranded in a legal limbo.

The proposal to limit marriage to members of the opposite sex was approved by 52.1 percent of voters, compared with 47.9 percent who voted against, with 95 per cent of votes counted.

The referendum, known as Proposition 8, called for the California constitution to be amended by adding the phrase that: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognised in California."

The plan, for which groups voted at the same time as for the president, was viewed by Conservatives as the people's way of overturning the state Supreme Court's ruling in May that legalised gay marriage.

----------------
Leo W. Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers, raised these explosive questions in a stinging letter sent to Paulson this week. The union did what any private investor would do. Its finance experts vetted the terms of the bailout investment and calculated the real value of what Treasury bought with the public's money. In the case of Goldman Sachs, the analysis could conveniently rely on a comparable sale twenty days earlier. Billionaire Warren Buffett invested $5 billion in Goldman Sachs and bought the same types of securities--preferred stock and warrants to purchase common stock in the future. Only Buffett's preferred shares pay a 10 percent dividend, while the public gets only 5 percent. Dollar for dollar, Buffett "received at least seven and perhaps up to 14 times more warrants than Treasury did and his warrants have more favorable terms," Gerard pointed out.

"I am sure that someone at Treasury saw the terms of Buffett's investment," the union president wrote. "In fact, my suspicion is that you studied it pretty closely and knew exactly what you were doing. The 50-50 deal--50 percent invested and 50 percent as a gift--is quite consistent with the Republican version of spread-the-wealth-around philosophy."
----------------------
"The analysis is based on the assumption that Warren Buffett is an intelligent third party investor who paid no more for his investment than he had to," Bloom's report explained. "It also assumes that Gold Sachs' job is to protect its existing shareholders so that it extracted from Mr. Buffett the most that it could.... Further, it is assumed that Henry Paulson is likewise an intelligent man and that if he paid any more than Mr. Buffett--if he paid $1 for something for which Mr. Buffett would have paid 50 cents--that the difference is a gift from the taxpayers of the United States to the shareholders of Goldman Sachs."

The implications are staggering. Leo Gerard told Paulson: "If the result of our analysis is applied to the deals that you made at the other eight institutions--which on average most would view as being less well positioned than Goldman and therefore requiring an even greater rate of return--you paid a$125 billion for securities for which a disinterested party would have paid $62.5 billion. That means you gifted the other $62.5 billion to the shareholders of these nine institutions."

If the same rule of thumb is applied to Paulson's grand $700 billion bailout fund, Gerard said this will constitute a gift of $350 billion from the American taxpayers "to reward the institutions that have driven our nation and it now appears the whole world into its most serious economic crisis in 75 years."

A conscious swindle--or just staggering incompetence?
 

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.

Although Ted Stevens holds a small lead in Alaska and is the favorite to retain his seat, the outcome is not as inevitable as it might appear to be. Stevens currently holds a lead of 3,353 votes, or about 1.5 percent of the votes tallied so far. But, there are quite a large number of ballots yet to count. According to Roll Call, these include "at least 40,000 absentee ballot, 9,000 early voting ballots, and an undetermined number of questionable ballots".

Indeed, it seems possible that the number of "questionable" ballots could be quite high. So far, about 220 thousand votes have been processed in Alaska. This compares with 313 thousand votes cast in 2004. After adding back in the roughly 50,000 absentee and early ballots that Roll Call accounts for, that would get us to 270 thousand ballots, or about a 14 percent drop from 2004. It seems unlikely that turnout would drop by 14 percent in Alaska given the presence of both a high-profile senate race and Sarah Palin at the top of the ticket.

But even if Begich were to make up ground and win a narrow victory, this would seem to represent a catastrophic failure of polling, as three polls conducted following the guilty verdict in Stevens' corruption trial had Begich leading by margins of 7, 8 and 22 points, respectively.

The emerging conventional wisdom is that there was some sort of a Bradley Effect in this contest -- voters told pollsters that they weren't about to vote for that rascal Ted Stevens, when in fact they were perfectly happy to. Convicted felons are the new black, it would seem.

The problem with this theory is that the polling failures in Alaska weren't unique to Stevens. They also applied to the presidential race, as well as Alaska's at-large House seat. In each case, the Republican outperformed his pre-election polling by margins ranging from 12 to 14 points:

Alaska has had a spotlight shined on it by McCain's catastrophic (for him) choice of Gov. Dingbat as running mate,--and it aint pretty.

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.

Here is a hilarious bit of news: mbl.is reports that someone came into a store yesterday and paid for goods with a forged 10,000 krona banknote. Yet instead of the banknote featuring an image of some VIP statesman [or YT's father] this one featured disgraced Central Bank governor Davíð Oddsson.

Compounding the embarrassment factor for the hapless cashier is the fact that a] Iceland has never issued a 10,000 banknote [ISK 5,000 is currently the highest denomination, although I predict this will change as soon it will probably be worth somewhere around 5 US cents] and b] not only did he not notice anything amiss, but he actually gave back change in the amount of ISK 7,000...

That rather sad, muffled noise you hear behind the whoops and cheers of Democrat America is not the sound of defeated neocons mourning the passing of trickle-down economics; it is the sound of sobbing in the Élysée Palace. For Carla Bruni, reigning queen of First Ladies, the game is finally up. Cindy McCain would have been a push-over; even Sarah Palin she could have coped with, sexy specs or otherwise. But in Michelle Obama, Ms Bruni has truly met her match. This is a First Lady like none before.

In truth, from the moment Michelle Obama stepped on to that podium at the Democrat convention what seems like, ooh, about three million years ago, we all secretly knew which way this race was going. Sure, he had big, sticky-out ears; sure, all those luvvies made that embarrassing YouTube song about him; but if Michelle thought that he was OK -- if she chose him -- then he just had to be a good man.

Everything about this woman speaks to the modern, post-feminist woman: she is manifestly clever, independently minded, attractive in a normal, accessible way (and not in a scary, plastic-fantastic Cindy way). Her demeanour is a reassuring mixture of sassy and self-deprecating; her easy, confident dress sense neither too sexy nor too self-conscious. Most of all, however, she appears to be the personification of sanity, a woman who, while clearly supportive of her husband's quest for world domination, is nevertheless not afraid to point out when he is danger of drinking too much of his own Kool-Aid.

Highlights of the IEA report

In a flagship report due to be published next week by the International Energy Agency, the developed world's energy watchdog doubles its forecast the price for oil will reach by 2030 and predicts the era of cheap oil is over. Below are the report's highlights.

(...)

"Modern renewable technologies grow most rapidly, overtaking gas to become the second-largest source of electricity, behind coal, soon after 2010."

Not sure how they get this number, but it's a stunning turnabout for the IEA, whose earlier predictions had wind power installations between now and 2030 at a yearly rythm half of the actually happening rythm last year.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

BBC NEWS | The Reporters | Justin Webb

I have been talking to Francis Fukuyama - he of "end of history" fame - about whether or not America is really morphing into Europe...

...head explodes.

Michael Crichton, the million-selling author who made scientific research terrifying and irresistible in such thrillers as "Jurassic Park,""Timeline" and "The Andromeda Strain," has died of cancer, his family said. Crichton died Tuesday in Los Angeles at age 66 after privately battling cancer.

He had also lectured Aliens Cause Global Warming.