The continued division of Germany's government between Berlin and Bonn has long been a contentious issue. But now lawmakers seem to have started a process that could lead to a complete move of government to Berlin.

The parliament's budget committee this week called for a review of the current situation, which essentially splits government between Berlin and the former West German capital, Bonn.

 

Committee members have also asked the government to submit an annual report on the costs of keeping to seats of government. The report will also have to include information on whether the Berlin-Bonn divide prevents more effective government.

 

"The slope from Bonn to Berlin has become even more slippery," Petra Merkel, a Social Democratic member of the committee from Berlin, told Berliner Zeitung.

First cut in the tax for 34 years leads Government's measures to stimulate spending. At a cost of £13bn, says Treasury, it could save the high street

VAT will be reduced from 17.5 per cent as early as this week as Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling gamble £18bn on a Christmas tax-cutting plan to rescue Britain from recession.

In a pre-Budget report (PBR) tomorrow loaded with huge political significance for the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, VAT will be cut - for the first time in 34 years - within days, in time for the first big Christmas shopping weekend.

The cut will be at least 2 per cent, possibly to 15 per cent, where it will remain for a "holiday" of one-and-a-half to two years, bringing some relief for millions of families as the economic downturn worsens.

This would take £10 off the average Christmas present bill of £384 and bring welcome respite to the beleaguered high street, where stores have been forced to bring forward the season's sales to get people spending.

Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, is to arm police with 10,000 Taser stun guns in an escalation of the government's fight against violent crime.

Smith will unveil plans tomorrow that will enable all 30,000 front-line response officers to be trained in firing the electric guns at knife-wielding thugs and other violent suspects.

Smith said yesterday that £8m will be made available to all 43 police forces in England and Wales to buy the new 50,000-volt weapons.

She said their use will be extended from small units of dedicated firearms officers to up to 30,000 police response officers across the country.

Civil war loomed among France's feuding Socialists after a party leadership ballot ended yesterday in a virtual dead heat between the two female contenders amid accusations of cheating and calls for a rerun.

Martine Aubry, the 58-year-old mayor of Lille, declared victory by a margin of only 42 votes that was immediately contested by Ségolène Royal, her bitter rival, who demanded another ballot.

The official results gave Aubry, a former minister, 50.02% of the 134,784 votes cast by party members, compared with 49.98% for the 55-year-old Royal, the party's presidential candidate last year.

Royal's supporters complained of "irregularities", vowing to challenge the result. "We contest these results," said Julien Dray, an MP and Royal backer. "There are things that don't add up. The only possible solution is another vote."

Thousands of Icelanders demonstrated in Reykjavik on Saturday demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Geir Haarde and Central Bank Governor David Oddsson for failing to stop a financial meltdown in the country.

It was the latest in a series of protests in the capital since the financial meltdown that crippled the island's economy.

Hordur Torfason, a well-known troubadour in Iceland and the main organiser of the protests, said the protests would continue until the government stepped down.

"They don't have our trust and they are no longer legitimate," Torfason said as the crowds gathered in the drizzle before the Althing, the Icelandic parliament.

A separate group of 200-300 people gathered in front of the city's main police station demanding the release of a young protester being held there, Icelandic media reported.

A judge in Kosovo has ordered a 30-day detention for three suspected German intelligence agents arrested in connection with a bomb attack on a local EU office. A German expert government intrigues might be to blame.

Lawyers of the men said prosecutors were trying to link their clients to "acts of terrorism," punishable with up to 20 years in prison.

 

"Three German citizens, suspected for the explosion... have to stay one month in detention" the Daily Express reported Sunday, Nov. 23, according to the AFP news agency.

 

The Kosovar paper added that the Germans were "suspected of conducting a criminal act of terrorism."

 

Attorney Adem Ademi told the German dpa news agency in Pristina that "some documents" identifying the suspects as agents of Germany's Federal Intelligence Agency (BND) "were found and presented as evidence," but he expressed doubts about the documents' authenticity.

 

European automakers shouldn't count on special treatment from the EU, Industry Commissioner Verheugen said. But one German state has demanded climate protection rules be watered down to protect carmakers -- and jobs.

The European Union's planned support package for the 27-member bloc's industrial sector would not provide automakers with special subsidies, Guenther Verheugen, the bloc's industry commissioner, said in an interview on Sunday, Nov. 23.

 

"We have a single industrial policy in Europe and it has clearly left behind the use of subsidies," he told German broadcaster NDR. "And there won't be a reoccurrence of the subsidy mentality of the 80s."

 

Verheugen added that the only industry rescue package considered by the EU was one involving the expansion of credit lines provided by the European Investment Bank. Such new loans would help carmakers adopt climate-friendly technology and produce cleaner cars.

The EU will give 1 billion euros to poor farmers in non-member countries over the next three years. While member states agreed on the matter in principle, there was some disagreement on where to get the money.

EU budget ministers, meeting in Brussels, reached the deal late Friday, Nov. 21, according to diplomats cited by German news agency DPA. The money will be released in three phases up to 2010 with an installment of 270 million euros ($337.4 million) due this year.

 

"There's agreement -- and Germany supports this -- to make available this money for food production in the poorest countries," said German Deputy Finance Minister Joerg Asmussen.

 

A poll has shed light on which candidate the public believes should be nominated this week as the new cabinet representative of the rightwing Swiss People's Party.

The party will pick a successor to outgoing Defence Minister Samuel Schmid on November 27 from among nominations made by party sections. Cabinet elections follow on December 10.

According to a joint poll published Sunday by the Matin Dimanche and SonntagsBlick newspapers, Zurich parliamentarian Rita Fuhrer was the overall preferred candidate, backed by 15.9 per cent of respondents.

She was marginally - 1.4 per cent - ahead of party figurehead Christoph Blocher, who is also in the running.

The poll found that more than two-thirds of 1,055 respondents did not want the former justice minister to be re-elected to cabinet.

Drug laws, pensions and planning permission are on the agenda for Swiss voters in the next exercise of direct democracy on November 30.

A poll conducted by the gfs.berne polling and research institute on behalf of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, swissinfo's parent company, and published on Wednesday shows that voters may well play safe.

Proposals to change the existing state of affairs as well as moves to introduce new laws both seem doomed to fail when they come to a nationwide vote.

Voters appear set to approve the new narcotics law passed by parliament earlier this year, which includes legalised prescription of heroin for severely dependent addicts. The law enjoys the support of 63 per cent of those questioned, the same proportion as in a previous poll in October.

The rightwing People's Party called a referendum to overturn parliament's decision, but only 21 per cent of respondents said they would follow its appeal. All the other major parties support the new law.

While a sizeable majority is in favour of legalising heroin prescriptions, a vote on a proposal to decriminalise cannabis looks as if it will be much tighter

Communists in St Petersburg have called on the region's governor to award a medal to a Russian who claims he shot down Senator John McCain's military jet in Vietnam

They have hailed as a hero Yury Trushyochkin, 70, a former Soviet officer who claimed last week to have fired the missile which brought down Mr McCain's plane as it flew over a bridge near Hanoi in 1967.

Mr Trushyochkin served in a mixed Soviet-North Vietnamese missile unit during the Vietnam war, which was guarding the bridge near a power plant under attack from a 20-strong strike force whose pilots included Mr McCain. The Soviet-made missile blew off a part of one wing of Mr McCain's plane and he ejected upside down moments before it crashed - suffering injuries which have plagued him ever since.

"This sincere Cold War hero is now living in St Petersburg and thinks he simply did his duty," the St Petersburg Communist group declared. "But in reality he defended the USSR and Russia, helping to guard socialism in Vietnam and teach a lesson to the future Number One enemy of Russia."

In an interview last week Mr Trushyochkin told a tabloid newspaper that he had been responsible for firing the missile, and had glimpsed Mr McCain soon after he was pulled from the lake in which he landed. "His hands were covered in blood and he was in a state of shock," he said.

Barroso sees improved competitiveness

Co-ordinated national stimulus programmes and accelerated spending of regional aid funds are the central elements of a European Union economic recovery plan to be unveiled on Wednesday by EU policymakers.

José Manuel Barroso, European Commission president, will set out the case that the EU can kill two birds with one stone by adopting expansionary fiscal policies that not only pull Europe out of its recession but also improve its long-term competitiveness.

"Spending to beat the recession must be smart spending," Mr Barroso told a conference in Lisbon on Friday. "We must invest in those areas that are critical to our future competitiveness - essential infrastructures, research and innovation, clean technologies to support the transition to the low-carbon economy, energy efficiency, and education and training."

According to some German officials, the Commission will propose that EU governments approve a fiscal stimulus package worth about €130bn ($164bn, £110bn), or 1 per cent of the 27-nation bloc's gross domestic product.

Obama's speech was on the same lines. It's good in both cases.

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

Austria will continue to be governed by a grand coalition of its two major parties after those groups agreed to share power at a meeting Sunday.

That means Werner Faymann, 48, of the SPOe Social Democrats will take over as Austria's chancellor. His party will rule together with the OeVP conservative Austrian People's Party.

  

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift:  Werner Faymann is expected to become chancellor

Austrians went to the polls Sept. 28. But with no clear winner in that election, the parties have been negotiating about power sharing the whole time.

WARSAW: Poland may delay its euro adoption planned for 2012 if the financial turmoil continues beyond spring 2009, Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski was quoted as saying on Saturday.

"We can join the ERM-2 corridor in the spring of next year at the earliest. I hope the current turbulences on the currency markets will be over by then," Rostowski told Polska daily in an interview.

Asked what would happen if the crisis goes on after this date -- when Poland is set to enter the ERM-2 according to the government's euro roadmap -- Rostowski said: "Then we will delay our accession. Our goal remains 2012 for adoption of the euro but this is not ideology."

In order to adopt the common currency the Polish government must also change the constitution, which requires the support of the main opposition, the euro-sceptic Law and Justice.

It has been a hard year for the biggest Swiss bank, UBS. After losing millions in the US sub-prime mortgage market, it has had to beg the Swiss government for help. As Imogen Foulkes reports, its reputation in Switzerland may never recover.

Swiss shareholders are angry that the value of their shares has plummeted

In Zurich, UBS head office sits astride Paradeplatz - Parade Square to you and me.

But in recent months, the Swiss have renamed it Piratenplatz - or Pirate Square - to signify what they believe is the daylight robbery that has taken place over the last 12 months. Not of their biggest bank, but by it.

When the news began to trickle out that UBS was in big trouble because of its exposure to sub-prime mortgages, there was first surprise, then concern, and then finally, as the multi-billion pound extent of the losses became clear, fury.

I remember going to an emergency shareholders meeting earlier this year.

Lord Mandelson says he is concerned about the "alarming" treatment of small businesses by some bank managers.

The business secretary welcomed Royal Bank of Scotland's announcement that it would freeze overdraft charges for small firms until the end of next year.

But he said there was concern some banks were summarily changing the terms of loans to small firms.

And he said he was drawing up a code of conduct and a monitoring panel to regulate their behaviour.

The business secretary told BBC One's Andrew Marr show he hoped other banks would follow RBS's example but he said he was hearing worrying reports about the actions of some local bank managers.

Investors rush to quit buy-out funds

Investors in buy-out funds are so concerned private equity returns will slump in the years ahead that they are selling their commitments for as little as 30 per cent of their original value.

Eighteen months ago, if such stakes were available at all, they generally traded at a premium.

The collapse in valuations reflects growing concerns that many private equity-owned companies will implode as the economic contraction intensifies. Some of the largest deals, struck at the height of the private equity boom that ended in the spring of 2007, now look to be disastrous for the equity holders.

Workers are losing factory jobs at the fastest rate in decades. Automakers--having failed to anticipate today's sales slump--are lobbying politicians for bailouts. The stock market is a crash heap, home prices are down by 35 percent or more in many cities and toxic assets have begun to weigh heavily on banks. America in 2008? Try China, where the global economic downturn now looks certain to end the country's 30-year growth boom, posing the greatest leadership challenge to Beijing since pro-democracy demonstrations threatened one-party communist rule back in 1989.

That's not the conventional take on China--yet. But with most industrialized countries now in recession and countries the world over hoping against hope that the planet's most buoyant major economy might somehow dampen the global downturn, it's a forecast that increasingly rings true.

This article answers a question I asked in a comment yesterday:

As for the second paragraph, as Pettis must surely know already, China is following the Keynesian prescription exactly.  I don't quite understand why Pettis does not acknowledge that China is already doing what he recommends it should do, or at least the first half of his recommendation:

China needs to resolve this problem by expanding fiscally, not by stimulating exports.

in the following paragraph:

Why Beijing Is In A Risky Place | Print Article | Newsweek.com

The doubts about China's stimulus plan arise in part because it's all broad strokes with no fine print. Conceptually, however, it seems intended to split the difference between promoting consumption at home, and export sales. It includes commitments to fund rural infrastructure, boost social spending on health and education, and mount an "economic housing" scheme for migrant workers in major cities--all of which, if implemented, would raise household spending over time. But it also contains perks for heavy industry, value-added tax cuts for the export sector and lending provisions that will channel bank funding to state enterprises engaged in road and rail construction and away from private companies.

We Found the W.M.D. | NYTimes.com - Op-Ed Columnist - Thomas Friedman

So, I have a confession and a suggestion. The confession: I go into restaurants these days, look around at the tables often still crowded with young people, and I have this urge to go from table to table and say: "You don't know me, but I have to tell you that you shouldn't be here. You should be saving your money. You should be home eating tuna fish. This financial crisis is so far from over. We are just at the end of the beginning. Please, wrap up that steak in a doggy bag and go home." <...>

This is the real "Code Red." As one banker remarked to me: "We finally found the W.M.D." They were buried in our own backyard -- subprime mortgages and all the derivatives attached to them. <...>

"A great judgment has to be made now as to just how big and bad the situation is," says Jeffrey Garten, the Yale School of Management professor of international finance. "This is a crucial judgment. Do we think that a couple of hundred billion more and couple of bad quarters will take care of this problem, or do we think that despite everything that we have done so far -- despite the $700 billion fund to rescue banks, the lowering of interest rates and the way the Fed has stepped in directly to shore up certain markets -- the bottom is nowhere in sight and we are staring at a deep hole that the entire world could fall into?" <...>

"The biggest mistake Obama could make," added Garten, "is thinking this problem is smaller than it is. On the other hand, there is far less danger in overestimating what will be necessary to solve it."

Conventional wisdom says it's good for a new president to start at the bottom. The only way to go is up. That's true -- unless the bottom falls out before he starts.

Told you so...
Funny it took the markets three more weeks than I to realize this...

Michael Klawitter, a strategist at Dresdner Kleinwort, said the cost of insuring Irish sovereign debt through credit default swaps (CDS) has surged to 133 basis points. "The markets have begun to see a risk to the solvency of the Irish government. They are questioning whether it has the financial muscle to back up the guarantees," he said.
[...]
Ireland is vulnerable because financial services make up 9.8pc of GDP, including its 'Canary Dwarf' enclave of hedge funds. The liabilities of its lenders are twice Irish GDP. Britain, Switzerland, Belgium, Austria and Luxembourg are in the same boat.
[...]
Ulster Bank gave warning that Ireland's economy will contract by 4pc next year. As a member of the eurozone, Ireland cannot devalue or slash interest rates to cushion the downturn. Nor can it resort to a fiscal boost since the budget deficit is nearing 8pc of GDP.

LONDON (AP) _ Britain's foreign policy chief said Friday that Iran continues to pose the most serious threat to the world, warning that Tehran's suspected pursuit of nuclear weapons risks an arms race across the Middle East.

David Miliband said in a speech that the standoff over Iran's nuclear program -- which Tehran insists is aimed at developing a civilian energy program but which Western leaders say is an effort to make nuclear weapons -- must be quickly resolved.

"In the next year, the most pressing threat to global order ... comes from the actions of Iran," said Miliband, Britain's foreign secretary. "Its refusal to address the international community's concerns about its pursuit of nuclear enrichment threatens to spark a nuclear arms race throughout the Middle East."

Miliband said that if Iran persists, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and others could be forced to consider whether they also need nuclear weapons to defend their interests. Israel is widely considered to have nuclear arms but has a "no tell" policy on the issue.

Venezuelans are voting in elections to choose new state governors and more than 300 mayors across the country.

The polls are being seen as a critical test for President Hugo Chavez, whose allies won in all but two of the country's 23 states in 2004.

Such a margin of victory is unlikely this time, correspondents say.

Last year Mr Chavez suffered his first electoral defeat in almost 10 years, losing a referendum that would have let presidents seek indefinite re-election.

The first sign of friction in the Obama camp as Mrs Clinton demands - and gets - a purge of her critics before accepting Secretary of State role

Before Hillary Clinton has been formally offered the job as Secretary of State, a purge of Barack Obama's top foreign policy team has begun.

The advisers who helped trash the former First Lady's foreign policy credentials on the campaign trail are being brutally shunted aside, as the price of her accepting the job of being the public face of America to the world. In negotiations with Mr Obama this week before agreeing to take the job, she demanded and received assurances that she alone should appoint staff to the State Department. She also got assurances that she will have direct access to the President and will not have to go through his foreign policy advisers on the National Security Council, which is where many of her critics in the Obama team are expected to end up.

The first victims of Mrs Clinton's anticipated appointment will be those who defended Mr Obama's flanks on the campaign trail. By mocking Mrs Clinton's claims to have landed under sniper fire in Bosnia or pouring scorn on her much-ballyhooed claim to have visited 80 countries as First Lady they successfully deflected the damaging charge that he is a lightweight on international issues.

Five years after his last visit, our correspondent finds the Taliban back in charge of their spiritual home - and girls attacked with acid simply for attending school

There is a little girl in the Meir Wais hospital with livid scars and dead skin across her face, an obscene map of brown and pink tissue. Then there is another girl, a beautiful child, Khorea Horay, grimacing in pain, her leg amputated, her life destroyed after her foot was torn to pieces. In another ward, two girls lie on their backs, a tent above their limbs. One has lost an arm, another - a 16-year-old - a leg.

Then there is the grim young man with the beard, also in the darkest pain, who looks at me with suspicion and puzzlement. He has a bullet wound in the abdomen, a great incision sutured up after the doctors found it infected. Two other young men, also bearded, cowled in brown "patu" shawls, sit beside this suffering warrior. They, too, stare at me as if I am a visitor from Mars. Perhaps that's what I am in Kandahar. Better to be a Martian than a Westerner in a city which in all but name has fallen to the Taliban.

The black turbans are everywhere. So are the blue burkhas which we Westerners confidently - stupidly - believed would vanish from Afghan society. But the Taliban insist they were not responsible for throwing acid in the face of the little girl in the second-floor ward at Meir Wais hospital. You know what she is thinking. You know what her parents are thinking. Who will marry this girl now, with her patchwork face of pain? Four men on a motorcycle threw acid at her and 13 of her friends on their way to school. Four were brought here, two dispatched immediately to the eye department. The Taliban deny any involvement. But they would, wouldn't they?

ISLAMABAD: A redrawn map of South Asia has been making the rounds among Pakistani elites. It shows their country truncated, reduced to an elongated sliver of land with the big bulk of India to the east, and an enlarged Afghanistan to the west.

That the map was first circulated as a theoretical exercise in some U.S. neoconservative circles matters little here. It has fueled a belief among Pakistanis, including members of the armed forces, that what the United States really wants is the breakup of Pakistan, the only Muslim country with nuclear arms.

"One of the biggest fears of the Pakistani military planners is the collaboration between India and Afghanistan to destroy Pakistan," said a senior Pakistani government official involved in strategic planning who insisted on anonymity in accordance with diplomatic rules. "Some people feel the United States is colluding in this."

That notion may strike Americans as strange coming from an ally of 50 years. But as the incoming Obama administration tries to coax greater cooperation from Pakistan in the fight against militancy, it can hardly be ignored.

GENEVA: Greece, Turkey and Belarus have all violated an international treaty by not destroying land mine stockpiles, and 15 other countries, including Britain, will miss their 2009 clearance targets, a coalition of monitors said Friday.

The coalition, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, said that more than 5,400 people were killed or maimed last year by antipersonnel mines, cluster munitions and other ordnance that can lie dormant for decades before exploding.

In its 1,155-page Landmine Monitor Report, the coalition of nongovernmental groups said that while trade in land mines was now "virtually nonexistent," many countries were moving too slowly to get rid of the crippling weapons.

Denmark, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Peru, Britain and Venezuela, which are among those seeking more time to clear their mined areas, should all have finished by now, said the ICBL, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997.

"Sir, you have done India proud." That was how the anchorman of a television channel in Delhi addressed the Indian navy chief, Admiral Sureesh Mehta, on the victorious sea battle by warship INS Tabar with would-be hijackers as dusk was falling on Tuesday evening in the Gulf of Aden.

Those words would have made Sir Francis Drake, the 16th-century British navigator and slaver-politician of the Elizabethan era, truly envious. Sir Francis had bigger claims to fame in a life cut short by dysentery while attacking San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1595.

Unsurprisingly, the patriotic Indian media dutifully expressed its gratitude and confidence once again in the armed forces. The armed forces, too, gained an opportunity to look away from a raging controversy over alleged involvement of servicemen in terrorist activities by Hindu fundamentalists. The Indian navy has seen "action" after a long interlude of 37 years since the Bangladesh war.

A carefully worded navy statement suggested that pirates attacked the Tabar and the latter "retaliated in self-defense" and opened fire on the mother vessel. The pirates "made good" their "escape into darkness" while the Indian warship sunk a pirate boat. The incident received wide international attention. But it also raises some questions.

* States and companies target developing nations

* Small farmers at risk from industrial-scale deals

Rich governments and corporations are triggering alarm for the poor as they buy up the rights to millions of hectares of agricultural land in developing countries in an effort to secure their own long-term food supplies.

The head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, Jacques Diouf, has warned that the controversial rise in land deals could create a form of "neo-colonialism", with poor states producing food for the rich at the expense of their own hungry people.

Rising food prices have already set off a second "scramble for Africa". This week, the South Korean firm Daewoo Logistics announced plans to buy a 99-year lease on a million hectares in Madagascar. Its aim is to grow 5m tonnes of corn a year by 2023, and produce palm oil from a further lease of 120,000 hectares (296,000 acres), relying on a largely South African workforce. Production would be mainly earmarked for South Korea, which wants to lessen dependence on imports.

"These deals can be purely commercial ventures on one level, but sitting behind it is often a food security imperative backed by a government," said Carl Atkin, a consultant at Bidwells Agribusiness, a Cambridge firm helping to arrange some of the big international land deals.

CHINA is expected to add a melamine test to its quality inspection of tableware after an industry expert warned that substandard tableware made with melamine may pose a health risk.

The Ministry of Health and the General Administration of Quality Inspection, Supervision and Quarantine are paying close attention after Dong Jinshi, deputy director of the Beijing-based International Food-Packaging Association, said that tableware made with melamine plastics could pose a threat.

The health ministry is expected to revise the country's standards for tableware production, and the General Administration of Quality Inspection will begin spot checks in the market, Shanghai Evening News reported.

China has never capped the amount of melamine that can be used to make tableware. In Europe, only 30 milligrams per kilogram of melamine are permitted in tableware, the newspaper said. ...

Lorenzo Amato was rushed to hospital by his father, who feared he was suffering a stroke or brain trauma as the teenager would not respond to his surroundings.

At first doctors at Lecce hospital, Southern Italy, thought Lorenzo Amato was suffering from a severe brain disorder.

The teenager couldn't speak and didn't seem to understand anything going on around him.

Doctors diagnosed the condition after discovering that Amato had just finished a marathon session on his new PlayStation.

Local politician Antonio Buccoliero, who spoke to the doctors, said: "They eventually managed to take care of him once they understood that this was a strange kind of mental detachment connected to his PlayStation."

Footage of a large meteor streaking across western Canada has been broadcast on Canadian television.

The video filmed from a local police car on patrol, showed a small light turning into a massive fireball as it fell from the sky and appeared to hit the Earth in the distance.

Portugal's electric car deal leads way

Portugal is to become the first European country to be supplied with electric cars by Renault and Nissan after signing an agreement to create a national network for zero-emission vehicles within three years.

The plan highlights Portugal's commitment to invest in clean energy, despite concern that the global financial crisis is deterring governments from implementing ambitious European Union plans to fight global warming.

Under the agreement, finalised with the Franco-Japanese carmaking alliance over the weekend, 320 vehicle charging locations will be operational across Portugal by 2010, growing to 1,300 by the end of 2011.

Companies and motorists who buy electric cars will be exempt from road and other automobile taxes and individuals will qualify for income tax benefits of up to €800 ($1001, £673), said José Sócrates, prime minister.

The government will also require 20 per cent of public sector vehicle purchases to be zero-emission.

Even though I don't comment a lot, reading these threads gives me more international and European news than trawling through several conventional news sites. Thank you.

And I particularly appreciate the births of notables marked each day. Makes me think about what they achieved and whether I know enough about them.

The reason the US and Japanese companies have different total costs for their American workers?  The US companies have been employing American workers for almost a hundred years.  They have a lot of retirees.  Most of the Japanese auto plants in the US are less than 20 years old.  They have almost no retirees, so their costs are only for active workers.  

So, why is this pernicious falsehood about inflated wages bouncing around the public discourse on the auto industry?  Several reasons.

First, it demonizes unions and their members as greedy and not interested in the long-term health and profitability of the corporations with which they sign contracts.  It also ignores the fact that in 2007 the UAW signed a landmark contract in which they assumed future responsibility for healthcare for their members employed by the Big Three.  The auto companies paid in to a fund, which will be administered by the UAW.  Over the long haul, this is expected to radically decrease the auto companies' legacy costs (although the best way to help company and union is to pass national health care).  

Making false claims inflating the earnings of unionized workers is also part of the Republicans' long-held practice of class warfare.  It's intended to gin up envy and disgust at people making a good hourly wage.  Few people would be unsympathetic to an auto worker for making $58,000 per year.  But more would feel unsympathetic if they thought that same auto worker made $73 per hour, which over the course of a year is over $150,000.  

Finally, harping on imaginary and inflated wages for workers is a way to distract from one of the big problems with the US auto companies (and most US corporations in any sector): executive compensation.  For instance, in 2007 General Motors CEO Rick Waggoner made close to $20 million in total compensation.  

Are you surprised that conservatives are playing with math to come up with the false figure of $73 per hour for UAW members working at the Big Three, while saying nothing about a Big Three CEO making $9,500.00 per hour?

Me neither.  

... there's more mythology than history in the idea that Lincoln showed exceptional political skill in offering cabinet positions to the men he had beaten in the race for the 1860 Republican nomination.

For one thing, there was nothing new in what Lincoln did. By tradition, presidents-elect reserved a cabinet position, often secretary of state, for the leading rival in their party. John Quincy Adams inaugurated the practice by appointing one of his presidential rivals, Henry Clay, to that post. It was a controversial move in 1824; enemies of Adams denounced the appointment as a corrupt bargain.

By the 1850s, the practice had become a tradition. In that decade, Presidents Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan installed in their cabinets men who had been major rivals for their party's nomination. <...>

... The most momentous decision of Lincoln's presidency was whether to issue an Emancipation Proclamation. But Lincoln made the decision pretty much on his own, and he presented it to his cabinet as a fait accompli.

There is little doubt that Abraham Lincoln was a great president. But not much of what made him great can be discerned in his appointment of a contentious, envious and often dysfunctional collection of prima donnas to his cabinet.

... this country's harsh code of public morals has slowly thawed, especially in Jidda, by far the kingdom's most cosmopolitan city. A decade ago the cane-wielding religious police terrorized women who were not dressed according to their standards. Young men with long hair were sometimes bundled off to police stations to have their heads shaved, or worse.

Today, there is a growing rock scene with dozens of bands, some of them even selling tickets to their performances. Hip-hop is also popular. The religious police -- strictly speaking, the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice -- have largely retreated from the streets of Jidda and are somewhat less aggressive even in the kingdom's desert heartland.

The change has been especially noticeable since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when the Saudis confronted the effects of extremism both outside and inside the kingdom. More than 60 percent of Saudi Arabia's population is under 25, and many of the young are pressing for greater freedoms.

"The upcoming generation is different from the one before," said Dina, the Accolade's 21-year-old guitarist and founder. "Everything is changing. Maybe in 10 years it's going to be O.K. to have a band with live performances." ...

It's 50 years since the Fellini film that defined an era. Peter Popham reports

For Philip Larkin the annus mirabilis was 1963 when "sexual intercourse began". But Rome was a couple of jumps ahead, and this month Italy is celebrating the start of the "Dolce Vita" years which began, all agree, 50 years ago this month, in November 1958, with an impromptu striptease in a Roman trattoria.

La Dolce Vita, "The Sweet Life", was the title of one of Federico Fellini's most seductive films and naturally grew to encompass the liberated era that inspired it.

Suddenly everything became possible, to the shock of many at the time. In 1958 Olghina di Robilant was a penniless young Venetian countess struggling to make a living in the Italian capital, and that November her rich friend Peter Howard Vanderbilt agreed to cheer her up by bankrolling a birthday party for Olga - her 24th.

Now 74, she remembers Rome as safe, cheap, innocent and puritanical. "There were no crowds, no pushing, no corruption, no unsavoury ambition. The paparazzi, for example, took photos with the agreement of the stars." She threw her party in Rugantino, a trattoria in Trastevere, and one of the guests was the commissar of the local police station.

Beautiful women adorn the Italian government of Silvio Berlusconi. But wiretaps on his telephones reveal that experience and merit weren't the qualifications he was looking for

Silvio Berlusconi, the 72-year-old Italian prime minister, is no stranger to scandal. Having survived 17 criminal trials without conviction, he has inured the Italian public to feelings of shock or indignation. Last January, the prosecutor's office in Naples indicted Berlusconi and issued a report containing extracts of over 1,000 wiretapped conversations depicting Italy's state TV network, RAI, as a casting couch that Berlusconi used to grant favours to aspiring actresses -- he called them "le fanciulle mie" (my girls) -- and to try to bring down the government. The report had no impact. In the spring elections, Berlusconi returned triumphantly to power after less than two years in opposition.

But in early summer, when Naples prosecutors indicated there were hundreds of other wiretaps, of a personal nature, which they requested be destroyed, Italy's political-journalistic gossip mill began churning. Forget abuse of power and possible criminal wrongdoing -- bring on the sex! Press reports speculated that the tapes contained raunchy comments involving Berlusconi and three female members of his government. Rumours about the prime minister's shenanigans are often coloured by political allegiance: critics favour stories about a doddering septuagenarian addicted to penis pumps and mysterious injections; supporters paint him as a tireless Don Juan, capable of satisfying two or three women at once.

The few, the proud, the destructive

Reading this article about the downfall of Citigroup -- a downfall clearly many years in the making -- I suddenly remembered an article just a bit over a year ago: The Richest of the Rich, Proud of a New Gilded Age.

The tributes to Sanford I. Weill line the walls of the carpeted hallway that leads to his skyscraper office, with its panoramic view of Central Park. A dozen framed magazine covers, their colors as vivid as an Andy Warhol painting, are the most arresting. Each heralds Mr. Weill's genius in assembling Citigroup into the most powerful financial institution since the House of Morgan a century ago.

I also found myself thinking about the Kaplan-Rauh paper finding that Wall Street was largely responsible for the surge in very high incomes, which was widely taken as evidence that the new rich were really earning their money (though to be fair Tyler Cowen didn't say that.)

Time for some reevaluation, don't you think?