One person has been killed and six are missing after an Airbus A320 aircraft crashed during a test flight after maintenance work, officials have said.

The plane went into the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of France near Perpignan with seven people on board.

One body has been recovered and search aircraft and ships are looking for the missing people.

Member states of the European space agency (Esa) have agreed a 10bn-euro budget at their meeting in The Hague.

The figure, which covers the next three to five years, represents a substantial increase in funding.

Ministers said the investment in space would help European industry pull through the current economic downturn.

The new money will help build new Earth observation satellites, maintain Esa's participation in the space station, and fund probes to the planets.

"The decisions of this ministerial conference are very important just in the middle of an economic crisis," said Peter Hintze, the minister who led the German delegation.

"Because money paid for high technology is good money for the European economy; and I think it will help us to leave the economic crisis [behind] and to gain new economic strength," he told BBC News.

Conservative immigration spokesman Damian Green, was arrested earlier in connection with an investigation into a series of leaks from the Home Office.

He was held on suspicion of "conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office," the Metropolitan Police said.

He has not been charged but is still being questioned by police. The Tories say he denies any wrongdoing.

It is believed to be connected to the arrest of a man suspected of being a Home Office whistleblower.

Arresting a politician for passing on leaked information in the public interest is very dubious indeed, and it makes you wonder what the hell the police were thinking.

Under the Commission proposal, as of 2013 all rights to CO2 emissions in the energy sector will have to be sold at special auctions. According to a recent report from Société Générale bank, prices of CO2 emission rights will reach 80 euros per ton in 2013, or four times the current price. The bank's calculations differ considerably from estimates by the Commission, which believes that fears of impending sharp price increases are exaggerated. Commission spokesperson Barbara Helfferich says Brussels estimates prices of the mandatory emission permits will only rise a little above 30 euros.

The Polish government challenges the Commission data which it regards as unreliable. According to Mikołaj Dowgielewicz, head of the Office of the Committee for European Integration, several reports have shown that if passed in its present shape, the new legislation will have a disastrous effect on electricity prices. Thus the Polish government is seeking to make some of the regulations less restrictive.

"We do not want to obstruct the energy-climate package, but to help design it responsibly," Tusk said, adding that the new EU member states have joined forces in an attempt to require the EU to prevent uncontrollable price fluctuations in CO2 emission rights before the package is adopted. The new member states also want the EU to take into consideration the specific economic conditions of individual countries, especially those economies, such as Poland's, that heavily rely on coal. "We shall not pursue the spurious hope that a single country, especially in our group of countries which are poorer than the richest member states, might be able to negotiate a package that could satisfy us all," Tusk said.

"It is rumoured and whispered that something like Libertas.cz is being established under certain aegis of the president, people around him, and the CEP (the Centre for Economy and Politics think tank that Klaus established in 1998)," MEP Jan Zahradil (ODS) told the server, but he did not elaborate.

The Czech foreign minister says he has apologized to France after a magazine published the transcript of an alleged conversation between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek.

Unfortunately, the the entire alleged transcript is available only in the printed version of the magazine.

Moscow also noticed european anti-americanism and decided to drive a wedge between transatlantic alliance. It is absolutely unacceptable for me to be the prime minister of a cabinet which compliantly shuts up and opens the door for the Russian imperialism.  I do not want to repeat the mistake of refusing the Marshall Plan, which confirmed the right of Russia to decide on our behalf.
On the contrary, I want instead of Russian nuclear missiles in Brdy* soldiers from a country which freed us from that slavery to be stationed there. That's the best guarantee that our sad history won't be repeated. Russians know very well, that the defense system is not and from it's nature can not even be targeted at them. Russi admitted themselves that if placed in other countries than Czech republic and Poland they would not mind it that much. That's clear example of imperial ressentiment of geopolitical connotation, it's sphere of influence. Our entry to NATO and the European Union is - and not only ours but of other countries as well - is a symbol of post-Tehran development in this part of Europe. Warsaw treaty is thing of the past and Russia must respect that.

*Brdy - the site of the XBR.

BRUSSELS, Belgium: Switzerland will join the European Union's passport-free travel zone next month under an agreement reached Thursday.

Switzerland is not a member of the 27-nation bloc, but is almost surrounded by EU states.

The EU's 27 interior ministers said Switzerland had met the necessary security standards to join the borderless zone, which already includes 24 European countries.

Swiss authorities will drop identity checks at land borders on Dec. 12 and will lift controls at airports as of March 29 next year, said French Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie, who chaired Thursday's talks.

EU Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Jacques Barrot said Swiss membership in the so-called Schengen zone could be suspended next year if a Swiss referendum planned for February overturns an earlier decision to allow EU citizens in the landlocked country to live and work freely.

The EU has agreed to permanently re-settle up to 10,000 Iraqi refugees currently living in camps in Syria and Jordan into Europe, German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told journalists in Brussels on Thursday.

Germany will take in a quarter of the number, drawn from the most vulnerable parts of the refugee population, he said after a meeting with European Union counterparts in Brussels.

  

At the meeting, ministers debated a report from a group of EU experts who visited refugee camps in Syria and Jordan in early November, with an eye to assessing the refugees' needs.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission on Thursday (27 November) laid out its thinking on how to allow European consumers to file collective complaints across the EU if their rights are breached.

The consultation document, or Green Paper, on "Collective consumer redress" comes in a response to the observation that if several consumers are harmed by the same trader, it would be much easier for them to file a complaint together - but there are not always sufficient mechanisms in that respect, according to the commission.

"There are black holes in our redress system that is leaving consumers with nowhere to go," commissioner Kuneva said.

"There are too many cases where the same problem is affecting many consumers, often scattered across several countries. Now the time has come to do something about it," EU consumer affairs commissioner Meglena Kuneva told journalists in Brussels.

Studies carried by the commission have found that when individual consumers try to lodge a complaint, they face several barriers, including high costs and complex and lengthy procedures.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - As nuclear energy makes something of a comeback ready for the low-carbon age, the European Commission is dusting off its earlier failed plans to strengthen the safety of nuclear power plants operational in the EU territory.

On Wednesday (26 November), EU energy commissioner Andris Piebalgs kicked off a lengthy legislative process aimed at setting "basic obligations and general principles for the safety of nuclear installations, while enhancing the role of national regulatory bodies."

The EU as a whole is the largest nuclear electricity generator in the world

According to Mr Piebalgs, legislation covering all member states is necessary in order to give legal certainty across the EU, as currently standardisation of safety requirements in the bloc have been "limited".

Under the proposed rules, the 1994 Convention on Nuclear Safety and the 2006 International Atomic Energy Agency Safety Fundamentals - which are currently both applied only in a voluntary fashion - would form the main pillar of EU-wide rules.

A left government has officially taken power in Slovenia

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Monday that the attacks in Mumbai which killed more than 100 people were probably plotted by a group based in a neighbouring country.

The Indian government often blames Pakistan or sometimes Bangladesh for supporting or harbouring militant groups which have launched attacks on Indian soil.

* A little known group calling itself the Deccan Mujahideen has claimed responsibility for the blasts.

On the surface, it could be presenting itself as an offshoot of the Indian Mujahideen group, domestic Muslim militants blamed for a series of bomb blasts on cities this year and last.

But the sophisticated and well-coordinated nature of the attack suggests the group received training either from a military group or a well established Islamist organisation like al Qaeda.

* The use of heavily armed "fedayeen" or suicide attackers bears the hallmarks of Pakistan-based militant groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba or Jaish-e-Mohammed, blamed for a 2001 attack on India's parliament.

Both groups made their name fighting Indian rule in disputed Kashmir, and were closely linked in the past to the Pakistani military's Inter Services Intelligence agency, the ISI.

It is hard to imagine Pakistan's government supporting such an attack, but militants, possibly backed by rogue elements in the ISI, might want to undermine the India-Pakistan peace process and Pakistan's civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari.

But experts have agreed that they appeared to combine local grievances and international inspiration.

A previously unknown group calling itself Deccan Mujahideen has claimed responsibility for the co-ordinated attacks on hotels, a busy train station and a cinema.

Some analysts said those who carried out the attacks appeared to be an offshoot or followers of al-Qaeda, the jihadist movement founded by Osama bin Laden.

They argued that the choice of civilian targets and witness accounts that gunmen were looking for US and British nationals suggested they wanted to grab international attention.

Other experts cautioned against linking the terrorists to al-Qaeda, pointing out they did not use the suicide tactics that are the movement's hallmark.

Several agreed that the shootings may have been aimed at disrupting ongoing elections in the disputed region of Kashmir and the upcoming Indian general election.

One analyst suggested the radical Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) group could be behind the attacks on Mumbai.

MOSCOW, November 27 (RIA Novosti) - The terrorist groups who attacked the Indian city of Mumbai are closely linked to al-Qaeda, a high-ranking Russian secret service source said Thursday.

"Russian secret services have information suggesting that the groups that attacked Mumbai had had contact with al-Qaeda," the source said. "In particular, the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba. This group's militants undergo special training in al-Qaeda camps on the border between Pakistan and India."

The source also said that the Indian authorities had earlier considered the group an ordinary "criminal" gang.

He also said that Russian secret services had not so far received any request to assist their Indian colleagues in the investigation into the attacks.

COLMES: And why the timing? Why do you think -- at this particular time, Thanksgiving in the United States, certain time of the day, 10:00 at night, their time. Is there anything to that?

John BOLTON: I don't think it has any association with us. My guess is it's just the timing of this particular operation, but as you say, there's much that we don't know about this for the moment and probably won't until the hostage situation is cleared up and perhaps some of these terrorists are apprehended and can be questioned.

COLMES: What do you think -- what does it take to put together this kind of operation? It seemed very highly coordinates, sophisticated, and probably in the planning stages for quite sometime.

John BOLTON: Well, you know, many in India believe that a lot of the terrorist attacks that we've seen across the country really have been financed, organized, directed by extremists in the Pakistani government, particularly the Inner Services Intelligence director or ISI.

The main flashpoint between Pakistan and India over the years has been Kashmir, where a lot of these terrorist attacks have occurred. Obviously, it's premature to conclude anything about where this group may have been supported, but this is the kind of suspicion that can lead to an increase in tensions right there on the subcontinent very quickly if this is not cleared up.

KABUL, Nov. 27 -- Four Afghan nationals were killed and 17 injured in a suicide car bomb attack near the U.S. Embassy in the Afghan capital of Kabul Thursday morning, U.S. state department officials said. This Story

• Four Killed in Blast Near U.S. Embassy in Kabul
• Afghan Leader Demands Plan For Foreign Forces' Departure

The attack occurred around 8:30 a.m. when a man driving a Toyota Corolla detonated a load of explosives about 200 yards from the U.S. Embassy. Witnesses said a line of what looked like U.S. military vehicles had just passed by, an may have been the intended target of the attack. Witnesses and Afghan police said the military convoy, however, was well out of range of the blast and no American soldiers were injured.

The powerful explosion, in busy rush hour traffic in the heart of Kabul, damaged cars and blew out the windows of several apartments in a nearby high-rise building.

There were no visible signs of damage to the heavily fortified embassy compound. The U.S. State Department said no coalition forces were injured or killed in the attack, and all embassy personnel had been accounted for and were unharmed.

Commandos are fighting to clear the last gunmen from two luxury hotels in Mumbai, more than 24 hours after a series of attacks across the city.

The Taj Mahal hotel was nearly free of gunmen, officials said, but operations continued at the Oberoi-Trident hotel.

At a third stand-off, at a Jewish centre, seven hostages were freed, a security official said.

Indian PM Manmohan Singh vowed to track down the attackers, who have killed at least 119 people and injured 300.

Gunmen targeted at least seven sites in Mumbai late on Wednesday, opening fire indiscriminately on crowds at a major railway station, the two hotels, the Jewish centre and a cafe frequented by foreigners.

The attacks are the worst in the city since 260 people were killed in a series of bombings.

The Iraqi parliament has voted to accept a deal on the future presence of US troops in the country.

The decision, praised by US President George Bush, means US troops will leave Iraqi streets by mid-2009 and will quit Iraq entirely by the end of 2011.

The agreement is the result of a year of negotiations with the US, with the Iraqis requesting several changes.

Some groups fiercely opposed the pact in parliament and at mass rallies, demanding that US troops leave earlier.

Iraq's Presidential Council must still ratify the deal but its approval is expected.

Iraq's government has hailed the parliamentary session as the prelude to the return of full sovereignty to the country.

The Iraqi parliament has voted to accept a deal on the future presence of US troops in the country.

The decision, praised by US President George Bush, means US troops will leave Iraqi streets by mid-2009 and will quit Iraq entirely by the end of 2011.

-snip-

After last-minute negotiations that had delayed the vote for a day, MPs passed it on one significant condition: that a referendum is held on the pact in the middle of next year.

If that fails to endorse the withdrawal plan, US troops may have to leave earlier, possibly by the middle of 2010, our correspondent says.

It's interesting that the compromise was to keep US troops that long.

No mention of the permanent bases.

The Thai Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat has said he will take action to end anti-government protests in Bangkok's two main airports.

In a TV address, Mr Somchai said the police would be assisted by some military units in halting the protests.

Emergency rule has been declared around the two airports.

Thousands of passengers have been left stranded by the protest action, just the latest stand-off in a long-running political struggle gripping Thailand.

Protesters from the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) occupied a government complex in the capital for months.

At the start of this week said they were embarking on the "final battle" of their campaign to unseat the government, and they have vowed to resist attempts to disable their airport protests.

It will be interesting to see how committed the police and military will be to a violent suppression of the protests.  So far, they have been less than enthusiastic.

LA GUAIRA, Venezuela (Reuters) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev toured a Russian warship visiting Venezuela's Caribbean on Thursday, a boost for President Hugo Chavez's mission to weaken U.S. influence in Latin America.

Medvedev boarded Russia's anti-submarine destroyer, Admiral Chabanenko, along with Chavez, who has hailed a growing friendship with Moscow, that includes nuclear cooperation, as a sign of fading U.S. influence in the region.

"Not so long ago, Russia's strategic bombers visited Venezuela. Now warships are here," Medvedev said while showing Chavez the ship's weaponry. The warships, including Russia's nuclear-powered battle cruiser, Peter the Great, will carry out joint exercises with Venezuela's small navy this week.

"Such actions and our coordination are one of the factors of the regional and global stability," Medvedev said.

Chavez signed a deal while on the ship to buy two Russian Ilyushin II-96 300 jets, a model sometimes used for travel by Russian presidents.

"I'm overwhelmed with emotion," said the former soldier and vocal critic of the U.S. "empire." Chavez insists the naval exercises are not meant to provoke the United States. His foreign policy is based on strengthening regional powers.

"Our mission is a mission of peace, you are leading us to the balanced multi-polar world," he told Medvedev.

ITAJAI, Brazil - Flood victims waded through waist-deep water into mud-filled houses Thursday in a devastated part of southern Brazil where neighbors set up patrols to keep looters away and lined up by the thousands for government food handouts.

As waters from torrential rains receded after causing at least 99 deaths, returning residents hurled soaked furniture and damaged electronic goods into the streets of this coastal city at the mouth of the swollen Itajai-Acu River.

Hunger and thirst were so widespread in the city of 170,000 that police were ordered to let residents take food and water from stores because they were "driven by despair to steal," said state public safety spokesman Joao Carlos Santos.

- snip -

Like many in Itajai, the 19-year-old furniture repairman saw his house flooded. After taking refuge for days with relatives who had a home on high ground, de Carvalho returned to his neighborhood to help form a civilian looting watch.

"We're all guarding our houses, because there are a lot of robberies," Carvalho said. "They're breaking in and taking whatever they can grab."

Twenty-three people were arrested for looting and breaking into homes, but police only targeted suspects who took alcohol, plasma TVs and other nonfood items, Santos said.

Local newspapers on Thursday published photos of men up to their waists in debris-filled water gathering goods floating outside flooded supermarkets.

SAN'A, Yemen - Yemeni security troops opened fire on Thursday on thousands of protesters calling for a boycott of April parliamentary elections and wounded about two dozen demonstrators, the organizers of the rally said.

An Interior Ministry official said the troops fired into the air to disperse the "illegal" demonstration in the capital San'a, but he refused to comment on any injuries. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

The Yemeni Socialist Party said it had called the protest with several other opposition groups because they believe the balloting next April will not be fair, mostly because a 9-member electoral body overseeing the vote is all-appointed by the country's president and its members are closely linked to the ruling party.

- snip -

Yemen is an impoverished country in the south of the Arabian Peninsula, with strong tribal rules and lawless areas. It's also the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh has been in power since 1978, ruling North Yemen and then continuing in power after North and South Yemen united in 1990. In the 1999 elections, Saleh won overwhelmingly amid opposition boycotts, claims of vote-rigging and clashes at polling booths that left several dead.

The Socialists are Yemen's second biggest party and ruled southern Yemen before the unification. The country's opposition bloc has 60 members in the 301-seat parliament.

Mr. Yang said he had been wrongly accused of stealing a bicycle and been beaten by the Shanghai police in October 2007; the police have acknowledged that they questioned him about riding an unlicensed bicycle but denied beating him. Mr. Yang wrote to the Shanghai police and demanded compensation for psychological damage. He eventually called his assault at the police station a revenge attack.

To many Chinese, he became a symbol of the little guy standing up against police harassment and government injustice. During his two trials, supporters gathered in crowds outside the courthouse in Shanghai. Some wore T-shirts with Mr. Yang's image; some called him a hero.

Outside of Shanghai, some Chinese newspapers published sympathetic portraits of Mr. Yang.

... A British Navy ship then approached the trawler, but the pirates "brought out our crew and used them as human shields," Mr. Wicharn said. The warship backed away, he said. "They said they couldn't do anything because they feared for the safety of the crew."

But about 7 p.m., with darkness closing in, the Indian warship Tabar, which had been escorting Indian merchant ships in the gulf, approached and demanded that the trawler stop to be investigated.

It was not clear on Wednesday whether the Indian Navy had received any of the alerts about the hijacking. <...>

He added, "We're looking for some kind of responsibility now from India, something." He said Foreign Ministry officials and diplomats from both countries were discussing the matter. "The Indians claim we were a pirate ship," Mr. Wicharn said. "They say they have pictures, and we've asked them to show them. Maybe there's some misunderstanding."

A court inside Myanmar's notorious Insein prison sentenced a comedian who has criticized the government's cyclone response to 14 more years Thursday, bringing his total prison term to 59 years, his lawyer said.

Comedian and activist Zarganar was given a 45-year prison sentence last week after he was convicted on charges related to interviews he gave to foreign media outlets.

In the interviews, he said the government was too slow in responding to a May cyclone that killed more than 84,000 people.

Myanmar's military, which has held power since 1962, tolerates no dissent. It frequently arrests artists and entertainers regarded as opposing the regime.

Aafia Siddiqui was once considered a brilliant scientist. Then the US government called her the new face of al-Qaida -- a Pakistani woman who ranked among America's top terrorism suspects. Now the MIT-educated mother of three is in custody, claiming her long disappearance was a wrongful abduction by the CIA.

On July 17, 2008, men coming from evening prayers at the Bazazi Mosque in Ghazni, a provincial capital south of Kabul, paused when they saw a woman outside the building. They formed a circle around the stranger, who was wearing a blue burqa. She was cowering on the ground, with two small bags at her side, holding the hand of a boy of about 12. One of the men, fearing that this peculiar woman could be carrying a bomb under her burqa, called the police.

 A short time later, more than 11,000 kilometers (6,800 miles) away, a telephone rang at the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Intelligence (FBI) in Washington. Someone crossed the name Aafia Siddiqui from a list of suspects and wrote the word "arrested."

After two weeks Aafia Siddiqui was flown from the US Air Force's Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan to New York. She was now wearing a tracksuit, had two bullet entry wounds in her abdomen and weighed around 40 kilograms (90 lbs.). Siddiqui is 1.63 meters (5'4") tall.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has arrived in Cuba to revive ties with the former Soviet Union's Cold War ally on the last leg of his tour to boost Russia's reach in Latin America.

Mr Medvedev was due to meet Cuban president Raul Castro and visit a new Russian-Orthodox cathedral in Havana on the last stop in a four-nation trip that included Peru, Brazil and Venezuela.

It was unclear whether Mr Medvedev, on the first visit by a Russian leader to Cuba since 2000, would also meet ailing former president Fidel Castro, 82.

Mr Medvedev's Latin America tour primarily sought to boost trade, despite the global economic downturn, but was also seen as a rebuff to US moves to install missile defence facilities in former Communist-ruled parts of Europe.

The Russian leader arrived from Venezuela, where he signed a string of accords, including a nuclear energy deal, with left-wing president Hugo Chavez.

Mikhail Gorbachev has urged President-elect Barack Obama to 'muster his courage' and bring change to the US once he reaches the White House.

Mr Gorbachev, the former Russian president who led the country out of the Soviet era, said that "America needs its own perestroika" (or restructuring) to rebuild its reputation around the world.

Some Russians call Mr Obama "the American Gorbachev" because of his promises to bring change to his country.

Mr Gorbachev, 77, said of the US election: "The entire world felt that America wanted change and was expecting change.

Increasing levels of nitrogen deposition associated with industry and agriculture can drive soils toward a toxic level of acidification, reducing plant growth and polluting surface waters, according to a new study published online in Nature Geoscience.

The study, conducted in the Tatra Mountains of Slovakia by the University of Colorado, University of Montana, Slovak Academy of Sciences, and the U.S. Geological Survey, shows what can happen when nitrogen deposition in any part of the world increases to certain levels-levels similar to those projected to occur in parts of Europe by 2050, according to some global change models.

On the basis of these results, the authors warn that the high levels of nitrogen deposited in Europe and North America over the past half century already may have left many soils susceptible to this new stage of acidification. The results of this further acidification, wrote the authors, are highly reduced soil fertility and leaching of acids and toxic metals into surface waters.

A Dutch court is hearing the case of a Dutch couple's alleged illegal adoption of a baby over the internet from a couple in Belgium.

The court in Zwolle is considering who should have custody of the baby, reportedly sold for thousands of euros.

The case was brought by the Dutch Child Protection Council, which says the Dutch couple violated adoption rules.

It says the baby should be placed in the care of a "neutral foster family" - with no ties to either of the couples.

Kees Dijkman, a spokesman for the council, told BBC News that the Dutch couple had "stolen a child's identity" by breaking the international rules of adoption. He said that could be very damaging to the baby in the future.

Run by the Mexican military and open only to graduating cadets and select guests, the Museo de los Enervantes presents the drug war in all its ugliness and complexity. There is a room devoted to the ancient roots of drug use in Mesoamerica, like the use of hallucinogenic peyote and mushrooms by the Maya and Aztecs, and displays that show all the military does to try to stem the tide, uprooting marijuana plants and uncovering hidden caches of cocaine and heroin.

"You eradicate in one place and you continue on, and when you go back they're growing it again," said Maj. Mario Ayala López, who insisted that his face not be shown in any photographs, an atypical request for a museum curator but a reality in present-day Mexico, where the drug violence knows no bounds.

On the other hand, my building still has mosquitoes, somehow.  I think there must be a giant mosquito pond beneath the building or something.

In terms of establishing the pirate brand, you discuss cruelty as a means of achieving that notoriety.
That's exactly right. Again, if we think of piracy as a business, as I think we should, their reputation was just as important as it is for any other business. So in order to institutionalize the brand name that they wanted to cultivate, what they needed to do was first work diligently in creating it. The way that they did that was through ruthlessly adhering to this idea of torturing people if they didn't comply with them once they had boarded their ship. We normally think about pirates as sort of blood-lusting, that they want to slash somebody to pieces. [It's probably more likely that] a pirate, just like a normal person, would probably rather not have killed someone, but pirates knew that if that person resisted them and they didn't do something about it, their reputation and thus their brand name would be impaired. So you can imagine a pirate rather reluctantly engaging in this behavior as a way of preserving that reputation. <...>

One thing that I thought was interesting is the fact that some of these pirate ships had institutionalized a form of worker's compensation.
They did, and I talk about that in-depth in a different paper I wrote. But that's exactly what they had. And one of the things that's marvelous about the system is, first of all, its earliness. That was not a common thing in the 17th- and 18th-century world. Merchant sailors, for example, didn't have access to something similar through the state until after pirates had already adopted this. But in any event it was a highly detailed scheme, so if you lost your right arm it would be worth x number of pieces of eight, and if you lost your left leg it would be worth y number of pieces of eight in compensation. So it was quite a developed system.

In this paper you focus primarily on the "golden age" of piracy. But what do you make of piracy today, especially with the Somali pirates in the news of late?
... it's still nowhere near as elaborate or as interesting. The constitutions that 18th-century pirates had ... created a true system of social governance on the pirate ship. Seventeenth- and 18th-century pirates were pioneers, in a certain way, of constitutional democracy. They had checks and balances aboard their ship, they had an early form of quasi-judicial review, and they were democratic, which was virtually unheard of in the Western world at that time. The reason modern pirates don't have that, I think, is because 18th-century pirates spent lots and lots of time together at sea. It could be months on end. And they lived and worked and operated apart from legitimate society for long periods of time, which meant that the pirate ship was a kind of floating society. And that society, like any other one, required rules in order for it to be functional.

If you look at modern pirates, they tend to spend very little time together on their ships. Modern pirate expeditions tend to be in-and-out operations. And since they aren't really together in the same way that 18th-century pirate crews were, they don't really constitute floating societies. Therefore they don't face the same kinds of social problems, at least to the same extent, that the 18th-century pirates did, and so that's why they don't have elaborate rules. No society, no rules.

They still seem to be turning a pretty nice profit.
Oh, absolutely. They seem to be doing well. I don't think that they're inferior predators. It's just that they're not as interesting predators.

Spain has launched an 11bn euro (£9.2bn) plan aimed at boosting the economy and creating 300,000 jobs.

The plan, which represents 1.1% of the Spain's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), is part of the European Union's 200bn euro stimulus announced on Wednesday.

The money will be mainly invested in infrastructure and public works, Spain's prime minister Jorge Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said.

Spain's unemployment reached 11.3% in September - an EU record.

Construction crisis

The Spanish government said it would invest 0.8bn euros in the ailing car industry, which has been through a severe downturn and seen sales plummet 54.6% since the beginning of the year.

MADRID.- The Vice President of the Spanish Government, María Teresa Fernández de la Vega, during the inauguration of the International Forum on Economy & Open Society......, said the current crisis has made evident that "the invisible hand of the market needs the very visible hand of the state to guarantee and save economic stability and social justice".
...
In a strong speech against neoconservative currents and thought, the Vice President pointed out that the economic situation "is only another watershed in the collapse of a way to see the world, of understanding and practicing politics, of conceiving human relations, economic reality and life in society."
...
These ideas "have shown their real face in these months:  failure in the economic area, conflict in the international arena and tension in the social sphere"...

The foreign press doesn´t write about her because her name is too long, but she wastes no words in grasping the situation and responding clearly.

Our knowledge has surpassed our wisdom. --Charu Saxena.

The global financial crisis creates new losers each day. So far, though, the EU is looking like a winner. For many countries along the continent's northern edge, euro-skepticism is a luxury they can no longer afford.

Will 2008 be remembered as the year that killed the euro-skeptics? It certainly didn't begin that way.

Back in June, the people of Ireland stunned the world by voting down the Treaty of Lisbon, bringing the project of ever-closer European integration to a screeching halt. The failure of the Irish vote -- the only popular referendum on the treaty anywhere in Europe -- seemed to ratify the verdict delivered by French and Dutch voters in 2005 as they torpedoed the European Constitution: no more power for Brussels.

Will anything be left standing after the financial crisis? The EU and its currency are among the few winners. Then, in August, the EU got another jolt when war broke out between Russia and Georgia. As conflict raged in the Caucasus, European officials struggled to come up with a unified response, underscoring tensions between member-states. The old-guard, led by France and Germany, sought to balance their affection for the newly-democratic Georgia with their dependence on Russian natural gas imports. At the same time, newer member states like Poland, for whom the experience of Russian intimidation was all too familiar, clamored for solidarity with Georgia. The EU looked weak and riven by internal conflict.

These days, though, such bickering seems like ancient history. Between summer's turbulence and today's reality, the New York investment bank Lehman Brothers failed in mid-September, sending the world into a financial tailspin from which it might take years to recover. But instead of sounding the death knell for what was an already flailing EU, the financial crisis has had the effect of breathing new life into a bloc that just a couple months ago looked deflated and defeated.