EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - With energy and climate change set to dominate the EU agenda in the coming years, the European Commission is to create a new energy directorate-general from 1 November 2009 at the latest.

The decision - an initiative by commission president Jose Manuel Barroso - will see senior EU official Claude Chene chair a "task force" to make detailed proposals for the scope and structure of the new "DG" by 1 May 2009.

The new directorate is expected to be around 400 to 500-man strong and have its own communication, external relations and personnel units.

Energy is currently handled in the hybrid "energy and transport" directorate-general, which serves both energy commissioner Andris Piebalgs and transport commissioner Antonio Tajani, despite the pair's priorities drifting apart.

The European Commission has 41 DGs, some of which serve individual commissioners, while others handle internal business such as publications or IT.

The powerful administrative units have a big influence on commission policy, with industry commissioner Gunther Verheugen and internal market commissioner Charlie McCreevy in the past complaining their own officials were working against them.

No special structure is foreseen for "climate change" however, commission spokesman Johannes Laitenberger said, while unveiling the energy move on Wednesday (4 December).

Lord Mandelson has denied telling the head of the European Commission the UK was ready to join the euro.

Jose Manuel Barroso sparked feverish speculation after saying he had spoken to UK politicians about the idea.

But Lord Mandelson who worked with Mr Barroso for four years rejected claims the EC President was referring to him.

The business secretary said he still favoured eventual UK entry but could not remember speaking to Mr Barroso about it recently.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I haven't had a discussion in my memory, with Mr Barroso about this.

"I think I might have exchanged words when I first went to the Commission in 2004 but not since, no.

"My view is that the government is right to maintain a long-term policy objective of taking Britain into the euro, but it's not for now."

Croatia's prime minister has ordered an inquiry following arrests of several opposition activists who made plans via the social networking website Facebook.

"This is not about this or that government or party, but about freedom," Croatian PM Ivo Sanader said.

Police in Zagreb questioned a Facebook activist who had put up posters ahead of an anti-government protest planned for Friday, Croatian TV reported.

Last week a man who had set up an anti-Sanader forum was held in Dubrovnik.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - EU countries should take better care of people who arrive seeking asylum, the European Commission said on Wednesday (3 December), unveiling a series of proposals aiming at making the current EU asylum rules better.

In order to put asylum seekers "at the heart of a humane and fair procedure," the EU needs to ensure "higher standards of protection," EU justice commissioner Jacques Barrot said when presenting the package.

The plan includes amendments to European legislation that sets minimal standards at the point of arrival of asylum seekers on EU soil. It also seeks to change rules defining which member state should deal with an asylum seeker's demands, and an alteration of a regulation covering the transfer of data about asylum seekers.

Brussels plans aim to make sure that detention of asylum seekers is used "only in exceptional cases" and to avoid arbitrary detention; to improve conditions for vulnerable persons - such as victims of torture, the aged or disabled people; and to make access to member states' labour markets easier for asylum seekers.

"Personally, this is certainly the most important week of my life after the war in Georgia", says Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb (Nat. Coalition Party) in his office at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
     Nevertheless, Stubb appears quite calm, even though, in his capacity as foreign minister of the country that holds the Chairmanship of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, he has the responsibility of hosting the meeting of the OSCE Ministerial Council which begins at the Helsinki Fair Centre on Thursday.
     
The main goal for Stubb and for Finland is to iron out a political declaration at the conclusion of the meeting.
     However, he admits that he is somewhat doubtful about the possible success of such a move; to pass, such a declaration would require consensus among all of the countries.
     "It is enough for one of the 56 member states of the OSCE to demand something that another country cannot accept. That is why this is something of a game of chance", Stubb told Helsingin Sanomat on Tuesday.
     Reaching unanimity is tricky, considering the complexity of the main themes of the meeting: the crisis in the Caucasus and the future of European security arrangements.

Europe's biggest onshore wind farm plugged itself into the grid today to provide enough electricity for up to a million people in northern Portugal.

A total of 120 windmills are dotted across the highlands of the Upper Minho region of Portugal as one of western Europe's poorer nations continues to forge its reputation as a renewables champion.

"Europe's largest onshore wind farm is now fully operational," a spokeswoman for France's EDF Energies Nouvelles, which co-owns the farm, announced this morning.

The two megawatt turbines on each windmill deliver electricity to a single connection point with the electricity grid and should supply around 1% of Portugal's total energy needs.

How should NATO approach Russia? Contrary to Germany, the Baltic countries and Poland want to enlarge the alliance to include Georgia and Ukraine. With NATO foreign ministers meeting this week, the alliance has hardly ever been so at odds...

At the NATO summit in Bucharest eight months ago, the "old" and "new" Europe clashed loudly over the question as to whether NATO should make a binding commitment to membership for Georgia and Ukraine, and over the alliance's relationship with Russia.

Germany, among others, was harshly criticized for the role it played in Bucharest. Berlin was accused of being "naïve," and "overly trusting," when it came to Russia, and of placating the Russians by rejecting the bids of Ukraine and Georgia to become part of NATO...

Now, four months later, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier speaks of a foreign policy marked by "less partisanship," as he sips grapefruit juice and munches cookies in front of a bust of former German Chancellor Willy Brandt. In Bucharest, says Steinmeier, there were some "rude objections," noting that it would be absurd to imply that he or the German government are "naïve or ignorant" in their interactions with Russia. "I am and remain firmly convinced that it would be wrong to isolate Russia," he says...

An "unnecessary domestic European conflict" was created, says Steinmeier, noting that newer NATO and European Union member states have contributed to this conflict by prematurely assigning all of the blame for the Georgia conflict to Russia.

European Union leaders meet this week in Poland to discuss fighting climate change. But as the EU seeks to slash greenhouse gas emissions, Polish coal miners are worried -- and defiant.

Coal provides 94 percent of Poland's energy and some 117,000 jobs, a fact that's come into focus as the country prepares to host global talks on a new climate-saving pact.

"Everyone wants to live in healthy air," said Waclaw Czerkawski, deputy head of Poland's Trade Union of Miners. "But you have to find some kind of balance, and you can't do that at the expense of the economy, industry and jobs."

Poland's government agrees. Together with other ex-communist EU nations and Italy, it has threatened to block plans to cut the bloc's carbon dioxide pollution to 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy's initial proposal would boost domestic electricity prices by up to 90 percent, the Poles complain.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission on Wednesday (3 December) underlined that the "Eastern Partnership" policy is not a prelude to further enlargement, while warning Russia to respect its "soft power" ambitions in the east.

"At this stage, we are not in a position to offer prospects of accession," commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said. "We can take the process a long way, up to the status of association, an association relationship is the furthest we can go without starting a process leading to accession."

The EU's "soft power" is transforming post-Soviet countries, Mr Barroso said

The Eastern Partnership initiative aims to sign "Association Agreements" with Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia in the coming years, pulling the six countries closer to the EU via free trade and visa free deals, as well as regular meetings at foreign minister level.

The upcoming Czech EU presidency is to launch the policy at a "27+6" summit next spring, with the EU executive creating a new Eastern Partnership unit in its external relations department, to be led by veteran commission official Janos Herman.

Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg is to be stripped of his executive power to veto laws passed by parliament after threatening to block a Bill to allow euthanasia in the tiny state.

The hereditary sovereign, 53, who is the last Grand Duke in the world, caused a constitutional crisis when he gave notice that he objected to Luxembourg following its neighbours Belgium and the Netherlands in permitting euthanasia before a second-reading vote in the Chamber of Deputies next week.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the Prime Minister, also opposed the Bill but decided that the Grand Duke had overstepped the mark in threatening to deny the will of parliament.

Mr Juncker will propose a change to the constitution to downgrade the role of the Grand Duke to promulgating laws with his signature rather than approving them, giving him a purely ceremonial duty in line with the other European constitutional monarchies.

Well the veil has been lifted yesterday: the organization at the source of this buzz campaign published the sequel, this time on regular paid=for 4x3 billboards"

Reduce the greenhouse gases emissions in Europe by 30%? Yes, you must!

Greenpeace declared, as reported on Rue89:
Sarkobama s'appelait en fait... Greenpeace | Rue89

"This buzz campaign was aimed at attracting the public's attention and make as much noise as possible about an essential event: the imminent adoption by the EU of a "Climate/Energy" package, while the UN conference on climate change is in full swing in Poznan (Poland)."

Sense of crisis keeps life sweet for Sarkozy
By Dominique Moisi

For political as well as business leaders the worst of times can also be the best of times. This has been particularly true lately for Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president. It should come as no surprise given his unique combination of energy and pragmatism.

(...)

A view frequently heard in relation to Mr Sarkozy is: "I may not like him personally but I am glad he is there as my president and as president of Europe. If Ségolène Royal were in his place in France and Czech president Vaclav Klaus in Europe (which will be the case as of January) we would have been in an even bigger mess. At least there is a pilot in the plane."

(...)

The fact that the French European Union presidency coincided with the crisis in Georgia and "Black September" in the financial world provided Mr Sarkozy with a golden opportunity.

He was everywhere, impressing his fellow citizens with his energy and pragmatism, transforming himself in the process from a remarkable politician into a respectable statesman. He was the good lawyer acting as the fixer with Russia in the Caucasus; the pragmatic leader quick to grasp the gravity of the financial crisis and to seize on the urgent measures devised by Mr Brown, the UK prime minister; the creative thinker pushing for a rejuvenated international system that would integrate the new leaders of the world in the Group of 20 summit in Washington.

The French, be they for or against their president, can give only a positive assessment of this new Sarkozy; someone is in charge whom they trust more than anyone else

Gah.

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

The Treasury Department is "perilously close to a breach of faith" with Congress over its handling of the financial industry bailout, and lawmakers need to take a closer look at how the department is accounting for its spending, a key architect of the plan said Wednesday.

House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank , D-Mass., blasted Treasury on Wednesday following the release a day earlier of a report saying the government has no effective way to verify that money spent as part of the $700 billion rescue will increase lending.

"The bad news was confirmation by the [Government Accountability Office] in its first report about the program that Treasury has no way to measure whether taxpayer funds invested in banks are being used in accordance with the purpose of the law -- to increase lending," Frank said. "The much worse news is Treasury's response that it does not even have the intention of doing so."

President-elect Barack Obama also expressed concern about the GAO report on Wednesday, saying, "We're seeing some areas where we can be doing better in making sure this money is not going to CEO compensation, that it's protecting taxpayers, that it's effective in shoring up financial markets."

CHICAGO (Reuters) - President-elect Barack Obama said on Wednesday struggling automakers have put forward a "more serious" restructuring proposal to Congress but withheld judgment on the plans until hearings are held.

At a news conference, Obama named rival-turned-supporter Bill Richardson as his secretary of commerce, calling the New Mexico governor a perfect ambassador for U.S. business interests in the midst of deep global economic turmoil.

Obama, who takes over from President George W. Bush on January 20, said Congress was right to demand a more detailed restructuring plan before deciding on a financial bailout for General Motors, Ford Motor and Chrysler LLC.

"It appears, based on reports that we've seen, that this time the executives from these automakers are putting forward a more serious set of plans," Obama said.

US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is mulling whether to ask Congress for the next part of a controversial 700-billion-dollar financial bailout package, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

The request for 350 billion dollars comes against a background of criticism over how the funds have been managed so far, the paper wrote.

It noted that a congressional watchdog issued a critical report on Tuesday that said the Treasury's rescue program lacked transparency and needed stricter internal controls.

If Paulson were to request the next installment, he likely would do so next week, the paper said on its website. And if market conditions deteriorate further, he would do so despite disagreements with lawmakers about how to use the funds.

While Paulson favors directing the bailout money to financial institutions, Democrats in Congress want the package spread wider to help the ailing auto industry and homeowners facing foreclosure.

Will he, won't he, will he, won't he, will he spend the TARP?

When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind

The world has run out of willing and creditworthy private borrowers. The spectacular collapse of the western financial system is a symptom of this big fact. In the short run, governments will replace private sectors as borrowers. But that cannot last for ever. In the long run, the global economy will have to rebalance. If the surplus countries do not expand domestic demand relative to potential output, the open world economy may even break down. As in the 1930s, this is now a real danger.

To understand this, one must understand how the world economy has worked over the past decade. A central role has been played by the emergence of gigantic savings surpluses around the world. In 2008, according to forecasts from the International Monetary Fund, the aggregate excess of savings over investment in surplus countries will be just over $2,000bn (see chart).

The (formerly) advanced industrial countries are all in or headed for the liquidity trap `lite'.  This is the situation where the short-term risk-free nominal interest rate cannot fall any further.  A `heavy' or `deep' liquidity trap occurs when nominal risk-free rates at all maturities are at their lower bound(s).

A liquidity trap `lite' may occur even when short-term rates are above zero.  It will certainly occur when the short-term nominal interest rate falls to zero.  Unless the monetary authorities are willing and able to tax currency holdings, the zero nominal interest rate rate on bank notes sets a floor for all short-term nominal interest rates.  I have not seen too many central bankers perusing the works of Silvio Gesell, so for the time being, I will treat a zero short risk-free nominal interest rate as the effective floor for the risk-free nominal interest rate.

If zero is the floor, there is no reason not to go there immediately.  The recession in the US, the UK, the Eurozone, Japan and the rest of Europe is, with probability verging on certainty, going to be so deep and so prolonged, that the zero lower bound will be reached even by the most anal-retentive gradualist central bank before the middle of 2009.  So why not get it over with in December 2008 and possibly do some good in the mean time?

UnitedHealth Will Now Sell You Insurance for Insurance

The health insurance mess has come to this: UnitedHealth will now sell you insurance that guarantees your future ability to buy health insurance, even if you get sick, the New York Times reports.
Robert Collins, president of UnitedHealth's individual insurance unit, is the first customer for the product called UnitedHealth Continuity. It costs him $50 a month. For "a very modest premium," he told the Times, Continuity protects a person's future insurability.

Then again, your future insurability may change for the better, if the Obama administration follows through on plans for health reform and broader health coverage. "As an individual, you're betting against health reform," by buying this product, Peter Lee, of the Pacific Business Group on Health, told the Times.

There are limits to the insurance hedge, even if you do want to place your bet with it. Sick people won't generally be eligible for Continuity, the Times writes. And after passing the medical hurdle, you're looking at plunking down about 20% percent of the current premium on the individual policy you'd like to have down the road.

Finally, Continuity is available now in 25 of 40 states where UnitedHealth sells individual plans. The company is working on getting approval for it in the other states where it does business.

Help!  Head won't stop spinning!


Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Two year payment holiday for loss of job or significant fall in income

Homeowners struggling to pay their mortgages were given a reprieve by Gordon Brown yesterday when he unveiled a plan to let people affected by the economic downturn take a two-year mortgage interest payment holiday.

The intervention was aimed at removing the prospect of an increase in home repossessions before a general election and to give people breathing space if they lose their jobs or take a big cut in their income. It is also designed to show that Labour would help middle Britain through the recession.

Brown's surprise move came amid reports that without the government's intervention, repossessions were set to increase to 75,000 next year, hitting levels last seen in 1991, the worst year of the previous recession.

Eight banks and building societies, covering 70% of the mortgage market, have agreed to allow families struggling with mortgage payments the right to defer all, or part, of their interest payments for two years. The government will underwrite the scheme.

Timothy Geithner, President-elect Barack Obama's choice for U.S. Treasury Secretary, is seeking to push Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair out of office.

Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, has argued Bair isn't a team player and is too focused on protecting her agency rather than the financial system as a whole, according to two congressional officials and a person familiar with his thinking. Bair has battled with Geithner and fellow regulators over aid to Citigroup Inc. and other emergency actions, making her enemies in the Bush administration.

"The idea of having an independent actor on the stage with you who might not be singing the same tune can make you nervous," said Wayne Abernathy, a former Treasury official who is now executive vice president with the American Bankers Association in Washington. "They recognize that she's a very independent person."

It isn't clear that Obama would ask Bair to step down. Such a move would be fraught with political risk for the new administration, especially on Capitol Hill, where Bair's campaign to rework mortgages for struggling homeowners has won respect from top lawmakers, including Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd and Barney Frank, his counterpart in the House.

Bwahahahahaha ...

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

CAPE TOWN, Dec 3 (IPS) - The African National Congress (ANC) directive to increase the number of women on South Africa's ruling party's election lists to 50 percent (up from 30 percent) might actually weaken the role of women in local government.

"The ANC took the 50 percent decision at its Polokwane general meeting at the end of 2007. This does address the issue of gender equity, but it can also disempower women," Clive Keegan, director of the South African Local Government Research Centre told IPS.

"If women are placed on a list simply to fulfil a quota, there is a risk that the names of candidates without the necessary skills will be brought forward by men with their own agenda. This means that some of these women will be easily manipulated and susceptible to corruption. It could especially be problematic in the poor areas where being a councillor is a ticket out of poverty and where there is a huge skills shortage."

According to a recent survey by the South African Local Government Association (SALGA) one in three municipal councilors cannot read or write and more have no idea of how financial structures word. 32 percent of these councilors need basic adult education and training.

"Without these skills they may never fully develop their abilities and optimally contribute to council activities -- especially when affairs of council are driven by agendas, reports submitted and minutes," SALGA stated in its report.

Dec. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Pakistan must act to help catch the perpetrators of last week's terrorist attacks in Mumbai that bore the hallmarks of an al-Qaeda-style operation, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said.

"I have said that Pakistan needs to act with resolve and urgency, cooperate fully and transparently," Rice told reporters in New Delhi today. "That message has been delivered and will be delivered to Pakistan." Later, she said the U.S. is especially concerned about the killing of its citizens in the assault, and would work closely with India on catching the perpetrators.

Rice, who met Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee, is using the U.S.'s newly elevated relationship with India to press its leaders to show restraint amid indications that Pakistani militants carried out the terrorist attacks. She arrived today in New Delhi at the request of President George W. Bush after terrorists killed at least 195 people, including six Americans, last week in Mumbai, India's financial capital. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said terrorists couldn't destroy Indian unity.

Electricite De France has found a formidable competitor. The French energy giant is offering $4.5 billion for 50.0% of Constellation Energy's nuclear energy assets, even though billionaire Warren Buffett has already bid for the unit. Sadly for EDF, it's probably going to lose that battle.

"Strategically it makes sense, but I don't believe [EDF's] move will succeed. It's not just a matter of price," said WestLB analyst Peter Wirtz. EDF's offer values Constellation shares at $52.0 each, a massive, 96.0% premium on the offer from MidAmerican, a unit of Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (nyse: BRK - news - people ). The French utility announced Wednesday that it had sent a letter to the board of Constellation Energy, proposing a joint venture for its nuclear generation and operation business. EDF, which owns 9.5% of Constellation Energy and is its largest shareholder, said it believed the Buffett offer "significantly undervalues Constellation and its future opportunities."

"We had some great folks in. Obviously, you want to peak on the last day, and we had John McCain and Mike Huckabee and Governor Romney and Rudy Giuliani," Chambliss told FOX News. 

But he said Palin, who showed up for rallies in Georgia on Monday, had the most impact. 

"Sarah Palin came in on the last day, did a fly-around and, man, she was dynamite. We packed the houses everywhere we went. And it really did allow us to peak and get our base fired up," Chambliss said. 

"I mean, I can't overstate the impact she had down here," he continued. "When she walks in a room, folks just explode. And they really did pack the house everywhere we went. She's a dynamic lady, a great administrator, and I think she's got a great future in the Republican Party." 

Chambliss' victory prevents Democrats from building a 60-seat filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. The only unresolved Senate race is in Minnesota, where a recount is underway to determine whether Republican Sen. Norm Coleman or Democratic challenger Al Franken will take the seat.

Op-Ed Columnist - Calling All Pakistanis - NYTimes.com

After all, if 10 young Indians from a splinter wing of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party traveled by boat to Pakistan, shot up two hotels in Karachi and the central train station, killed at least 173 people, and then, for good measure, murdered the imam and his wife at a Saudi-financed mosque while they were cradling their 2-year-old son -- purely because they were Sunni Muslims -- where would we be today? The entire Muslim world would be aflame and in the streets.

[...]

Sure, better intelligence is important. And, yes, better SWAT teams are critical to defeating the perpetrators quickly before they can do much damage. But at the end of the day, terrorists often are just acting on what they sense the majority really wants but doesn't dare do or say. That is why the most powerful deterrent to their behavior is when the community as a whole says: "No more. What you have done in murdering defenseless men, women and children has brought shame on us and on you."

Why should Pakistanis do that? Because you can't have a healthy society that tolerates in any way its own sons going into a modern city, anywhere, and just murdering everyone in sight -- including some 40 other Muslims -- in a suicide-murder operation, without even bothering to leave a note. Because the act was their note, and destroying just to destroy was their goal. If you do that with enemies abroad, you will do that with enemies at home and destroy your own society in the process.

Obama Gives Political Ambassadors Their Pink Slips | 44 | washingtonpost.com

The incoming Obama administration has notified all politically-appointed ambassadors that they must vacate their posts as of Jan. 20, the day President-elect Barack Obama takes the oath of office, a State Department official said.

The clean slate will open up prime opportunities for the president-elect to reward political supporters with posts in London, Paris, Tokyo and the like. The notice to diplomatic posts was issued this week.

Gieb diene Schönheit immer hin
ohne Rechnen und Reden
Du schweigst. Sie sagt für dich: Ich bin.
Und kommt in tausenfachem Sinn,
kommt endlich über jeden.

::

Let your beauty manifest itself
without talking and calculation.
You are silent. It says for you: I am.
And comes in meaning thousandfold,
comes at long last over everyone.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

In late 1998, while Washington was in the throes of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Rahm Emanuel, a departing senior political aide to President Bill Clinton, ventured out to an elegant restaurant in Dupont Circle for something of a job interview.

John Simpson, who ran the Chicago office of the investment banking boutique Wasserstein Perella & Company, had flown to Washington to meet with Emanuel at the behest of Simpson's boss, Bruce Wasserstein, a major Democratic donor and renowned Wall Street dealmaker who had gotten to know Emanuel.

"I had this idea that this could work and that it had upside," said Wasserstein, now chairman and chief executive of Lazard, the investment bank. "It worked out better than I could have hoped."

And better than Emanuel could have imagined as well. Over the course of a three-hour-plus dinner, Simpson and Emanuel discussed how they might work together. Shortly afterward, Emanuel accepted an offer, nudging him down what has by now become a well-trodden gilded path out of politics and into the lucrative world of business.

Emanuel, who was chosen last month to become President-elect Barack Obama's White House chief of staff, went on to make more than $18 million in just two-and-a-half years, turning many of his contacts in his substantial political Rolodex into paying clients and directing his negotiating prowess and trademark intensity to mergers and acquisitions. He also benefited from the opportune sale of Wasserstein Perella to a German bank, helping him to an unusually large payout, just two years before he was elected to a House seat from Illinois.

OSLO -- In a last-minute change, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan agreed on Wednesday to join some 90 other nations signing a treaty banning the use of the cluster munitions that have devastated his country in recent years.

The decision appeared to reflect Mr. Karzai's growing independence from the Bush administration, which has opposed the treaty and, according to a senior Afghan official who spoke on the condition of anonymity following diplomatic protocol, had urged Mr. Karzai not to sign it.

"Until this morning, Afghanistan was not going to be a signatory," said Jawed Ludin, Afghanistan's ambassador to the Scandinavian countries and the leader of its delegation here. He said the president's change of heart came as a result of pressure by human rights organizations and cluster-bomb victims, including Soraj Ghulam Habib, a 17-year-old from the city of Herat who lost both legs when he accidentally stepped on an explosive cluster remnant seven years ago.

KIGALI, Rwanda -- There is a general rule in Africa, if not across the world: Behind any rebellion with legs is usually a meddling neighbor. And whether the rebellion in eastern Congo explodes into another full-fledged war, and drags a large chunk of central Africa with it, seems likely to depend on the involvement of Rwanda, Congo's tiny but disproportionately mighty neighbor.

There is a long and bloody history here, and this time around the evidence seems to be growing that Rwanda is meddling again in Congo's troubles; at a minimum, the interference is on the part of many Rwandans. As before, Rwanda's stake in Congo is a complex mix of strategic interest, business opportunity and the real fears of a nation that has heroically rebuilt itself after near obliteration by ethnic hatred.

The signs are ever-more obvious, if not yet entirely open. Several demobilized Rwandan soldiers, speaking in hushed tones in Kigali, Rwanda's tightly controlled capital, described a systematic effort by Rwanda's government-run demobilization commission to send hundreds if not thousands of fighters to the rebel front lines.

Former rebel soldiers in Congo said that they had seen Rwandan officers plucking off the Rwandan flags from the shoulders of their fatigues after they had arrived and that Rwandan officers served as the backbone of the rebel army. Congolese wildlife rangers in the gorilla park on the thickly forested Rwanda-Congo border said countless heavily armed men routinely crossed over from Rwanda into Congo.

A Rwandan government administrator said a military hospital in Kigali was treating many Rwandan soldiers who were recently wounded while fighting in Congo, but the administrator said he could be jailed for talking about it.

TEHRAN, Dec. 3 -- Gasoline? It's 36 cents a gallon. Laundry detergent? Fifty cents for a standard-size box. Milk? About 20 cents a quart. These prices are so low because Iran's government spends half its national budget to subsidize many of life's necessities. Not for long.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has launched a sweeping economic restructuring plan that would end many of these subsidies within a couple of months. To blunt the blow of gasoline prices quadrupling and similar increases for other goods, he also proposes to give as much as $70 a month to poor Iranians.

Ahmadinejad, a populist leader with a working-class background who came to power three years ago, is staking his political future on his ambitious plan, which threatens to alienate Iranians who have benefited from the subsidies. Known abroad for incendiary rhetoric and his defense of Iran's nuclear program, Ahmadinejad's domestic political standing relies more on his largely unfulfilled promises to use Iran's oil wealth to improve the lives of poor people.

Some aspects of the plan, such as a sales tax, have provoked unrest, forcing Ahmadinejad to slow its implementation. The president had said he would present a bill on subsidies to parliament on Wednesday, but the introduction of the legislation was postponed without explanation.

Many members of Iran's urban middle class fear that the plan will ruin them. "If the subsidies are stopped, my family will be pushed into poverty. What the president plans to pay us in return will be far too little," said Payman Vatandoust, a technical manager at a battery factory in Tehran who like many highly educated Iranians did not support Ahmadinejad in 2005.

Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) -- More Americans are collecting jobless benefits than at any time in the last 26 years, a sign the labor market is weakening as the recession worsens.

A larger-than-anticipated 4.09 million fired workers received government unemployment checks in the week ended Nov. 22, the most since December 1982, the Labor Department said today in Washington. Initial jobless claims declined by 21,000 to 509,000 in the week that ended Nov. 29, which included the Thanksgiving Day holiday.

If you were being paid big, undisclosed bucks by companies directly affected by the issues you commented on as a media personality, would that constitute a conflict of interest? Conventional wisdom says: Of course! But two men recently exposed by the New York Times for being in exactly that situation say: Well, not really.

The supremely well-reported cover story of Sunday's Times was an in-depth report on retired General Barry McCaffrey. McCaffrey is an NBC military analyst touted by the network as an independent expert, a characterization the Times calls into question by revealing his tangled web of undisclosed business ties to defense contractors. The story describes McCaffrey as a member of "an exclusive club" that "has quietly flourished at the intersection of network news and wartime commerce." They operate in a "deeply opaque world, a place of privileged access to senior government officials, where war commentary can fit hand in glove with undisclosed commercial interests and network executives are sometimes oblivious to possible conflicts of interest."

Another story, published in late November, put Dr. Frederick Goodwin, host of the public radio health show The Infinite Mind, under the microscope. Here's an example of Goodwin's questionable ethical judgments, from the Times' story:

... In a program broadcast on Sept. 20, 2005, he warned that children with bipolar disorder who were left untreated could suffer brain damage, a controversial view.

"But as we'll be hearing today," Dr. Goodwin told his audience, "modern treatments--mood stabilizers in particular--have been proven both safe and effective in bipolar children."

That same day, GlaxoSmithKline paid Dr. Goodwin $2,500 to give a promotional lecture for its mood stabilizer drug, Lamictal, at the Ritz Carlton Golf Resort in Naples, Fla. In all, GlaxoSmithKline paid him more than $329,000 that year for promoting Lamictal, records given to Congressional investigators show.

POZNAN, Poland (Reuters) - Soot is darkening ice in the Arctic and speeding a melt that could make the ocean around the North Pole ice-free in summer well before 2050, experts said on Tuesday.

The experts said the fight against warming in the Arctic should be re-directed to focus more on cutting the industrial pollution from soot, ozone and methane in Europe, North America and Russia to try to prevent the ice disappearing.

Soot or black carbon darkens the ice and makes it soak up more heat, accelerating a melt compared to reflective snow and ice. Methane comes sources including oil and gas and agriculture while ozone is formed from industrial pollutants.

"Reductions in these pollutants would have a greater impact" in the next two decades than curbing emissions of the main greenhouse gas -- carbon dioxide -- according to scientists on the sidelines of 187-nation U.N. climate talks in Poland.

The Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world and ice shrank to a record low in 2007, leading to worries that it could pass a point of no return.

"The Arctic sea ice may already have passed a 'tipping point'," said Pam Pearson, an Arctic pollution expert at the Climate Policy Center who presented the findings. "An ice-free summer Arctic is now possible well before 2050."

Venice was under water again on Tuesday after suffering its worst flooding in 22 years, as a new tide soaked the Renaissance city up to about thigh level.

On Monday the "acqua alta" (high water) reached 1.56 metres (five feet, two inches), the highest level since 1986, before beginning to recede.

Lower parts of the tourist mecca, including the world-famous St Mark's Square, remained under water at midday on Tuesday after reaching a high of 1.02 metres, according to the ANSA news agency.

The city is expected to return to normal in the early evening, its tide monitoring centre said.

More than 130,000 inflatable breasts have been lost at sea en route to Australia.

Men's magazine 'Ralph' was planning to include the boobs as a free gift with its January issue.

The cargo is worth about $200,000, which is another blow for publisher ACP's parent company PBL, which is already in $4.3bn of debt.

A spokeswoman for 'Ralph' said the container left docks in Beijing two weeks ago but turned up empty in Sydney this week.

"Unless Somali pirates have stolen them, it's difficult to explain where they are," editor Santi Pintado said.

Somalis: Do we look distracted?

STERKSEL, the Netherlands: The cows and pigs dotting these flat green plains in the southern Netherlands create a bucolic landscape. But looked at through the lens of greenhouse gas accounting, they are living smokestacks, spewing methane emissions into the air.

That is why a group of farmers-turned-environmentalists here at a smelly but impeccably clean research farm have a new take on making a silk purse from a sow's ear: They cook manure from their 3,000 pigs to capture the methane trapped within it, and then use the gas to make electricity for the local power grid.

Rising in the fields of the environmentally conscious Netherlands, the Sterksel project is a rare example of fledgling efforts to mitigate the heavy emissions from livestock. But much more needs to be done, scientists say, as more and more people are eating more meat around the world.

What to do about farm emissions is one of the main issues being discussed this week and next, as the environment ministers from 187 nations gather in Poznan, Poland, for talks on a new treaty to combat global warming. In releasing its latest figure on emissions last month, United Nations climate officials cited agriculture and transportation as the two sectors that remained most "problematic."

Archaeologists have discovered a lost city carved into the Andes Mountains by the mysterious Chachapoya tribe.

The settlement covers some 12 acres and is perched on a mountainside in the remote Jamalca district of Utcubamba province in the northern jungles of Peru's Amazon.

The buildings found on the Pachallama peak are in remarkably good condition, estimated to be over 1,000 years old and comprised of the traditional round stone houses built by the Chachapoya, the 'Cloud Forest People'.

The area is completely overgrown with the jungle now covering much of the settlement but explorers found the walls of the buildings and rock paintings on a cliff face.

The remote nature of the site appears to have protected the site from looters as archaeologists found ceramics and undisturbed burial sites.

I'm thinking google widget, here some bit of code that would keep tabs on ET (or any SCOOP engine ?) from the google dashboard home page. And may be someone would actually like doing more good work for ET... unless I'm the only selfish google widget user around.

Personally, I could use two features in a widget, may be in two tabs:

• watch "recent comments" page a bit like the rss reader widget, with bodies popping up when clicking on listed titles
  
• check "replies (trees) to my comments", in a tree view (meaning, (new) reply titles are clustered by least-common-ancestor-owner's-comment)

If you plot the cost of raising a child from the ages of 1 to 18, is there a typical pattern that that graph would look like?

I am sure it varies per country, perhaps per sex, and also depends on whether the child is first-born (later children can inherit toys and clothes), whether the kid goes to private school, and so on.  But if there is a fairly typical baseline pattern, I would be curious to know what that might look like.

I would have posted this in the OT, but I have to go to bed now!

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.