EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Romania's parliament will have to change its attitude towards corruption if the country is to succeed in cleaning up its judicial system, Romanian justice minister Catalin Predoiu has said.

Speaking to EUobserver, Mr Predoiu, in the post for just under a year, said that judicial reform and fighting high level corruption is "mainly in the hand of the magistrates and of the parliament."

The newly elected Romanian parliament needs to lift the immunity of some of its members in corruption cases.  Although it has been a member of the EU for two years, Romania remains under extra supervision by Brussels in the justice and home affairs area and has often been criticised by the European Commission for failing to sufficiently tackle corruption issues.

"We are expected to implement a number of important reforms in a period of financial difficulties. The time pressure is another challenge," said Mr Predoiu, alluding to the fact that EU commission was entering the last months of its term.

More than 30 people have been detained in Turkey in a widening inquiry into an alleged coup plot.

Those arrested reportedly included three retired generals and a former police chief.

Some 86 people are already accused of an ultra-nationalist plot to stoke unrest that would provoke the army to launch a coup.

Critics say the ruling AK Party is simply arresting some of its most prominent secular opponents.

President Nicolas Sarkozy has announced major changes to the French judiciary, bringing it closer to the system used in the English-speaking world.

President Sarkozy said he wanted to abolish investigating magistrates, who currently act as independent judges - a system brought in by Napoleon.

The changes would allow state prosecutors and the police to take the lead in investigations instead.

Critics say the move would leave the system open to political interference.

At present the investigating magistrate plays a powerful and independent role in certain cases, overseeing investigations by police and prosecutors, examining the evidence, and deciding if a case should go to trial.

Jan. 7 (Bloomberg) -- In East Berlin's communist-era apartments, warm air used to seep through drafty walls. Heaters had to run overtime, taxing power plants and increasing greenhouse-gas emissions blamed for global warming.

No more. A 2 billion-euro ($2.7 billion) urban-renovation program paid for foam insulation, cutting energy use almost in half, said Karin Lompscher, Berlin's environment chief. The urban fund, also notable for turning human waste into biofuel, has helped the German capital trim emissions of climate-changing carbon dioxide 20 percent since 1990, according to city data.

Berlin cut CO2 emissions 20% since 1990, and:

Berlin's building codes were changed to encourage residents to fix up homes and live closer together in the inner city. New trams and bicycle paths were added. Those measures led to a 2.6 percent reduction from 1998 to 2004 in trips by automobiles, one of the largest sources of CO2 emissions.

Perhaps us geezers (Der Greis ist Heiss!) shouldn't be so cynical.

Skennah Kowa

A group of climate change protesters who brought Stansted airport to a standstill after occupying a taxiway in December were sentenced yesterday, as it emerged that they and others who joined them face the threat of being sued for more than £2m in damages.

Most of the 22 campaigners, who are members of the group Plane Stupid, were ordered to do between 50 and 90 hours community service after admitting aggravated trespass. The incident closed the airport in Essex for five hours.

Each of the protesters must pay compensation of £60 to cover £3,000 worth of damage to the perimeter fence, which they cut through in the early hours of 8 December, and orders made for court costs totalled £570.

The district judge, John Perkins, said he accepted that the defendants wanted to put forward honestly-held beliefs that concerned them greatly, but their protest, which had involved chaining themselves to metal fencing near the runway, had caused substantial disruption to the airlines, airport and travelling public. This meant it deserved harsher punishment than a conditional discharge.

The European Union's €200bn fiscal stimulus plan to conquer recession may harm the ability of some governments in the 27-nation bloc to refinance their debts, the Czech Republic's finance minister warned on Thursday.

Miroslav Kalousek, whose country took over the EU's rotating presidency on January 1, said EU governments were divided between advocates of extra deficit spending to overcome the recession and others that insisted on fiscal discipline.

Some of the hardest-hit countries, such as Ireland, Spain and the UK, are willing to let their deficits rise substantially, while others such as Belgium, Germany and Poland are emphasising the need to keep public finances under firm control.

Mr Kalousek, whose government is aligned with Germany in this debate, said: "There is no way of concealing the risks. There are risks attached to the expansion policy by means of which some countries want to tackle the crisis."

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday warned the US and the banking industry not to try to thwart European efforts to tighten regulation of global finance later this year.

The French and German leaders issued a blunt warning to the incoming administration of Barack Obama that Europe would set the agenda for the G20 summit of leading and emerging economies in London in April.

"In the 21st century there is no longer only one country that says what we should do and think," Mr Sarkozy told a conference in Paris on capitalism and ethics. "We do not accept the status quo, we won't accept immobility, we will not accept any return to a single way of thought," he added.

Ms Merkel told the conference that she would "react very strongly" if the financial community tried to block government efforts to tighten regulation.

The German chancellor made clear her desire that the new world financial order born out of the economic crisis should look like Germany's cherished "social market"

Ms Merkel also proposed the creation of "economic council" at the United Nations, akin to the security council. "We need new rules for the markets, but that will not be enough," she explained.

She called for the UN to draw up a "charter for reasonable long-term development" which could act as a yardstick for government policies.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Despite the carnage wrought by Israel on the civilian population of the Gaza Strip, the Jewish state's ambassador to the European Union, Ran Curiel, has said that the conflict should not have any effect on the planned upgrade of relations between Israel and the EU.

"I don't expect any change to the process of upgrading relations," he told a group of journalists in Brussels. "The positions of Israel and the EU are actually converging."

Israeli flag: it was announced in June last year to take relations between the two sides to a higher level

In June last year, the EU-Israel Association Council - the body headed by foreign ministers that conducts the bilateral relations between Israel and EU - announced an upgrade in relations between the two parties.

Accelerated negotiations were subsequently launched on the specific nature of the upgrade in three areas; increased diplomatic co-operation; participation in European plans and agencies; and possible Israeli integration into the European single market.

"We have done this [the assault on Gaza] reluctantly and without a choice," he said. "Our citizens are daily exposed to a sort of game of Russian roulette from the Hamas rockets. I don't know of any country that could allow its citizens to be subjected to such imminent danger without reacting."

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - European Union member states authorised the export of €200 million in arms exports to Israel in 2007, the latest figures from Brussels disclose, with France far and away the Jewish state's biggest European weapons supplier.

According to the EU's 2008 report on arms export licences, published in December for the 2007 calendar year and consolidating the accounts that member states must annually submit, 18 member states authorised a total of 1,018 such licences to Israel worth €199,409,348.

Machine guns: the EU sold €200 million of weapons to Israel in 2007

France, Germany and Romania were the top three exporters. France issued export licences worth €126 million, Germany authorised €28 million and Romania €17 million, the EUobserver can reveal.

In response to calls from opposition politicians that the UK government halt its arms exports to Israel and push all other EU member states to do the same, a British foreign office spokesperson said: "We do not approve any defence related exports if we judge that there is a risk that they will be used for external aggression or internal repression.

Incoming US President Barack Obama has said he will tackle the conflict in the Gaza Strip but only after taking office on Jan. 20. But many in the world think he should say now what he intends to do in the Middle East.

With pressure mounting on Obama to break his silence on the Gaza conflict, the President-Elect did issue a statement on Wednesday, January 7, if only to say concrete policies would be forthcoming.

 

"I am doing everything that we have to do to make sure that the day that I take office we are prepared to engage immediately in trying to deal with the situation there," Obama said at a news conference. "Not only the short-term situation but building a process whereby we can achieve a more lasting peace in the region."

 

When pressed by reporters, Obama repeated his justification that he was unable to do more before being officially sworn in.

GAZA (Reuters) - Hundreds of embattled Palestinians ventured outside to shop for food on Wednesday during a three-hour Gaza truce, a first step toward an Egyptian-proposed ceasefire under discussion by Israel and Hamas.

"Food and milk -- what else can we hope for in three hours," said Ahmed Abu Kamel, a father of six who lives near the city of Gaza. "We want it all to end."

Violence resumed in the area soon after the 1 p.m.-4 p.m. truce expired, and Palestinians returned to the precarious safety of their home after stocking up on food and visiting family and friends.

Israel said it would cease attacks in the Gaza Strip during those hours every day to ease the flow of aid to the Hamas-run territory's 1.5 million residents.

NEW DELHI/ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - India said on Wednesday it would keep all options open to dismantle "terror outfits" after the Mumbai attacks and Pakistan finally confirmed the lone surviving gunman was Pakistani.

Pakistan's Prime Minister dismissed his national security adviser shortly afterwards. India had been saying for weeks that Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, who was captured after the November attacks, was from Pakistan.

The prime minister's office said Mehmood Ali Durrani had been sacked "for his irresponsible behavior for not taking the prime minister and other stakeholders into confidence, and a lack of coordination on matters of national security."

Indian officials have shown increasing frustration at what they see as Pakistan's unwillingness to fully investigate the attacks in November by 10 gunmen that killed 179 people.

Barack Obama has asked the CNN medical correspondent Dr Sanjay Gupta to join his fledgling administration as the US surgeon general, according to reports.

According to washingtonpost.com, the 39-year-old doctor is "the Obama team's first choice" to become America's most senior public health official.

Although Gupta has not commented on the matter, the Post claims that he wants the job and is undergoing final vetting. CNN has confirmed Gupta has been approached by the president-elect's transition team.

ohn Atta Mills has been sworn in as Ghana's new president following a cliff-hanger election victory.

Mr Atta Mills, 64, took his oath of allegiance in front of thousands of people in Independence Square for the inauguration in the capital, Accra.

The National Democratic Congress (NDC) candidate beat the ruling party's Nana Akufo-Addo in a hotly contested poll by a margin of less than 0.5% of votes.

President John Kufuor has stood down after serving the maximum two terms.

He is the second elected head of state in Ghana's history to hand over to an opposition politician.

The sharp slowdown in the US economy will push the federal budget deficit to more than $1 trillion, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says.

The deficit of $1.186 trillion for the fiscal year ending on 30 September would be the largest on record.

The projected deficit does not include the extra $800bn spending being planned by US President-elect Barack Obama.

But it highlights the deep economic difficulties facing Mr Obama when he is inaugurated on 20 January.

The CBO says that the slowing economy will lead to the US budget deficit more than doubling from last year's figure of $455bn.

There's been a lot of griping recently from the Right about how there are no web-native news outlets on the right, or that they aren't seen as having a lot of credibility or that the people who write for them get no respect. And then you read that Pajamas Media, the right-leaning blog outfit started a few years back with a crazy amount of VC money just hired Joe the Plumber to be their new war correspondent in Israel.

The affected blogs include American Liberalism Project, BeThink, Blue Hampshire, Blue Jersey, Blue Mass. Group, Minnesota Progressive Project, My Left Wing, Never In Our Names, Pam's House Blend, RadicalRuss, Swing State Project and West Michigan Rising and other mostly state-focused political blogs of note.

"I wish I could see a bright side to this," blogger Pam Spaulding, founder, editor and publisher of Pam's House Blend, told PageOneQ. "It's incredible that years of hard work can be destroyed in a flash, but we're in the digital age and there are people motivated to silence voices through malicious acts. I'm hopeful that data will be recovered..."

WASHINGTON -- President-elect Barack Obama said Wednesday that overhauling Social Security and Medicare would be "a central part" of his administration's efforts to contain federal spending, signaling for the first time that he would wade into the thorny politics of entitlement programs.

As the Congressional Budget Office projected a record $1.2 trillion budget deficit for this year even before the costs of the nearly $800 billion economic stimulus package being taken up by the House and the Senate, Mr. Obama stepped up his effort to reassure lawmakers and the financial markets that he plans a vigorous effort to keep the government's finances from deteriorating further.

HONG KONG -- China has bought more than $1 trillion of American debt, but as the global downturn has intensified, Beijing is starting to keep more of its money at home, a move that could have painful effects for American borrowers.

The declining Chinese appetite for United States debt, apparent in a series of hints from Chinese policy makers over the last two weeks, with official statistics due for release in the next few days, comes at an inconvenient time.

On Tuesday, President-elect Barack Obama predicted the possibility of trillion-dollar deficits "for years to come," even after an $800 billion stimulus package. Normally, China would be the most avid taker of the debt required to pay for those deficits, mainly short-term Treasuries, which are government i.o.u.'s.

In the last five years, China has spent as much as one-seventh of its entire economic output buying foreign debt, mostly American. In September, it surpassed Japan as the largest overseas holder of Treasuries.

But now Beijing is seeking to pay for its own $600 billion stimulus -- just as tax revenue is falling sharply as the Chinese economy slows. Regulators have ordered banks to lend more money to small and medium-size enterprises, many of which are struggling with lower exports, and to local governments to build new roads and other projects.