Thousands of far-right nationalists gathered in the Serbian capital Tuesday for a rally to protest the arrest and likely extradition of Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader.

The far-right Radical Party bused in supporters from across Serbia and Bosnia to show solidarity with Mr. Karadzic, a man charged with engineering Europe's worst massacre since World War II but who is celebrated by his supporters as a hero.

"Karadzic is a hero because he defended Serb lives during the terrible wars of the 1990s," said Elena Pavovski, 24, a supporter of the far-right Radical Party. "Everyone knows that the war crimes tribunal in The Hague was designed to try Serbs while the war criminals who killed Serbs are set free."

More than 3,000 riot police were deployed in Belgrade as anti-government protesters wearing T-shirts embossed with Mr. Karadzic's image waved Serbian flags and sang patriotic songs next to a banner on Republic Square threatening Serbia's pro-Western President Boris Tadic.

"Tadic Prepare To Be Eliminated", the banner said.

'Maintenance Is Lufthansa's Achilles Heel': Strike Takes Hold at German Airline - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News

This week's strike against Germany's national airline was almost invisible when it began Monday. But a day-and-a-half into the dispute, Lufthansa is beginning to feel the effects. Though passengers will be only marginally affected on Tuesday, the financial costs to the airline could be high.

The think tank disease is creeping into European MSM:

Ver.di's tough line is a bid to assert its influence and regain members, said Hagen Lesch of the Cologne Institute for Economic Research (IW), a German economic think tank.

...but they at least asked a union rep, too. However, you find a different spin on the German frontpage of SPIEGEL:

A fire on Monday devoured a historic seaside pier that stretched nearly a quarter of a mile into the sea and was an iconic destination for English holidaymakers for more than a century.

The pier, the Grand at Weston-super-Mare in western England -- Britain's "pier of the year" in 2001 -- was already on its second life, having been destroyed by fire in 1930. It reopened in 1933.

The pier, one of the town's chief tourist attractions, was a celebrated part of English seaside tradition of promenades, amusement rides and fish and chips.

"It is a tragedy," said Nigel Heath a spokesman for the pier company. "It epitomized the English seaside resort."

No one was injured in the fire, the authorities said. According to the British media, suspicion for the cause of the blaze centered on a deep fat-fryer in kitchens at the sea end of the pier, although the police said their investigations were ongoing. A local fire officer, Kevin Pearson told the Daily Mail newspaper, "We believe the fire to have started in a kitchen area and it could have been a chip pan."

If Barack Obama accomplished one thing in Berlin, it was to make it painfully obvious just how uninspiring German politicians are.

I better refrain from commenting...

*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.

Russia has reached second place in the world in terms of the level of safety of its nuclear power industry, the prime minister said on Tuesday.

"There have been no radiation incidents at Russian nuclear power plants in recent years. The number of emergency shutdowns and stoppages is decreasing," Vladimir Putin said at a conference on the nuclear industry development.

He said Russia's nuclear sector was behind only Japan, and had surpassed the United States, Britain, Germany and France - countries with highly developed nuclear power industries.

There have been no radiation incidents... that you know about.

Blank British passports stolen from a security van would be worth £2.5m on the black market, police said today.

The Foreign Office admitted a serious breach of security when a van carrying the new passports destined for British embassies overseas was hijacked a short distance from the factory that made them.

A spokeswoman said 24 parcels containing passports and vignettes - the blank stickers for visa stamps - had been stolen from a van en route from the factory in Oldham to RAF Northolt near London.

Keith Vaz, chairman of the Commons home affairs committee, demanded an urgent inquiry into the incident, while security experts warned the passport chip security was vulnerable to a cloning attack.

The van was stolen when the driver stopped to buy a newspaper, police said. An offender attacked a second delivery man in the van, before driving a short distance away, parking the van and making off with the passports.

David Milliband, Foreign Secretary and the man most likely to succeed Gordon brown sets out his vision in the Guardian. I'd like to be able to quote from it, but it is just a stream of vacuous phrases entirely devoid of specific meaning. Blair himself would be so proud if he could make a speech so completely free of content.

He seems to be talking of change and vision, but also boasts that every-neo-con-thing done in the last 10 years was wise, just and needs to be built upon rather than reversed or mended. this is change in the McCain sense of being exactly the same as before, only more so, than in an Obama or even an Edwards sense of taking on vested interests and working in the interests of the people.

Take this...

Every member of the Labour party carries with them a simple guiding mission on the membership card: to put power, wealth and opportunity in the hands of the many, not the few. When debating public service reform, tax policies or constitutional changes, we apply those values to the latest challenges.

.................
The economic challenge is new. People want protection from a downturn made in Wall Street. The country needs to prepare for an upturn when new service industries -- insurance, education, care, creative industries -- are growing at home but also among the new Chinese and Indian middle classes.

It's not even worth becoming frustrated by such drivel, it's such laugh out loud bollocks that you know you can never take him seriously again. I await the derisive demolitions in the newspapers over the next couple of days.

keep to the Fen Causeway

An strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.4 shook large parts of Southern California, shaking a wide swath from Ventura County to San Diego.

The quake shook downtown L.A. buildings and was felt as far east as Palm Springs.

It was centered near Chino Hills, about 30 miles east of Los Angeles, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The magnitude of the quake was originally set at 5.8. But Caltech officials downgraded it to 5.4 and said they doubted the temblor caused major structural damage.

Kate Hutton, a staff seismologist at Caltech, said 11 aftershocks were recorded at various places, with 3.8 being the largest and the only one felt.

Marathon talks in Geneva aimed at liberalising global trade have collapsed, the head of the World Trade Organisation has said.

Pascal Lamy confirmed the failure, which officials have blamed on China, India and the US failing to agree on import rules.

EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said the result was "a burial".

Less than two weeks before the Olympics, Beijing's skies are so murky and polluted that the authorities are considering emergency measures during the Games beyond the traffic restrictions and factory shutdowns that, so far, have failed to clear the air, state media reported on Monday.

For the past five days, Beijing has been a soupy caldron of humid, gray skies. Local pollution ratings have exceeded the national standard for acceptable air since last Thursday, despite a temporary air pollution control plan that began on July 20.

Under that plan, officials have used odd-even license plate restrictions -- limiting motorists to driving on alternate days, depending on whether the last number on their license plate is odd or even -- to reduce daily traffic by two million vehicles, or more than half the city's total. Production at some factories has also been curtailed in Beijing and outlying areas.

But on Monday, China's official English-language newspaper, China Daily, ran a front-page story under a boldfaced headline: "Emergency green plan for Games." The article warned that officials might force far more vehicles off city streets -- possibly 90 percent of the city's total -- and temporarily close more factories.

Washington is set to electronically collect data on all European visitors who currently enjoy visa-free travel to the United States. An online registration system, first kicking-in on a voluntary basis, will ask for a number of personal data, including on health.

The Electronic System of Travel Authorisation (ESTA) - presented by US Department of Homeland Security representative Jackie Bednarz on Monday (28 July) - is designed to track high-risk passengers and will be officially launched on 1 August.

The procedure will become mandatory only on 12 January 2009, with all passengers from visa vaiwer programme countries - including children - required to receive an authorisation to travel before they board a US-bound airplane or vessel.

On top of 15 EU states - Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the UK - the obligation will also apply to Andorra, Australia, Brunei, Iceland, Japan, Liechtenstein, Monaco, New Zealand, Norway, San Marino, Singapore and Switzerland.

Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens (R) was charged with seven counts of making false statements on his financial disclosure forms in an indictment unsealed in federal court in the District this afternoon.

The indictment accuses Stevens, former chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, of concealing payments of more than $250,000 in goods and services he allegedly received from an oil company. The items include home improvements, autos and household items.

The Alaska oil firm, Veco, and its one-time leader Bill Allen, asked for help in return. Allen and another former Veco official pleaded guilty in May 2007 in connection with their role in the bribery of Alaskan public officials. Prosecutors said that in some but not all instances Stevens or his aides allegedly provided the help requested by Allen and Veco.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush on Monday praised Pakistan's commitment to fighting extremists along its deteriorating border with Afghanistan, only hours after an American missile strike destroyed what American and Pakistani officials described as a militant outpost in the region, killing at least six fighters.

President Bush called Pakistan `a strong ally' at a White House meeting on Monday with Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani.

Mr. Bush, meeting with Pakistan's prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, at the White House, sought to minimize growing concerns that Pakistan's willingness to fight extremists was waning, allowing the Taliban and Al Qaeda to regroup inside Pakistan and plan new attacks there and beyond.

Senior American officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice just three days ago, publicly scolded Pakistan for not doing more to root out safe havens like the one bombed on Monday in Azam Warsak, a village in South Waziristan near the Afghan border.

Turkish fighter jets have bombed a Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) base in northern Iraq, destroying it and killing an unspecified number of fighters, the Turkish military said.

The air raid was the first targeting Kurdish separatist fighters since a deadly bomb attack in Istanbul at the weekend, which Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister, blamed on the PKK.

In a statement the army said the "intensive" bombing targeted a large cave in the Qandil mountains along the Iraqi-Iranian border, where up to 40 PKK fighters were taking refuge.

A no-holds-barred, all-American gold rush for natural gas is under way in this forgotten corner of the South, and De Soto Parish, with its fat check from a large energy company this month, is only the latest and largest beneficiary. The county leaders and everyone around them, for mile after mile, over to Texas and up to Arkansas, in the down-at-the-heels city of Shreveport and in its struggling neighbors, suddenly find themselves sitting on what could prove to be the largest natural gas deposit in the continental United States.

Already, several dozen people who own parcels of land over the field are becoming instant millionaires as energy companies pay big money for the mineral rights to the gas, which like other energy sources is worth far more than it was last year. Jalopies are being traded in for Cadillacs, plans for swimming pools are being hatched in rusty trailers, and the old courthouse here is packed to the rafters day after day with oil company "landmen" (and women), whose job it is to frantically search the record books for the owners of the mineral rights to land that has become like gold.

In the space of months, the price of such rights on an acre has shot up to $30,000 from a few hundred dollars and is still climbing. Some very modest people, in a place where the Tough Steak Meat Market sits near the Triple J Motors car lot and the courthouse square is half boarded up, are becoming very wealthy, very quickly.

Nothing like cashing in on fossil fuels to buy a gas guzzler.

Chinese farmers' income in the first half of 2008 rose 10.3 percent in real terms from a year ago, state media said Sunday, signalling some success for policies to improve life in the countryside.

By contrast, people in the cities saw a more modest 6.3 percent rise in incomes after deducting inflation, the Xinhua news agency reported, citing the National Bureau of Statistics.

However, despite the faster income growth in the countryside the disparity between rural and urban areas remains huge.

The average farmer in China made 2,528 yuan (370 dollars) in the first six months of 2008, compared with 8,065 yuan for the average urban dweller, according to Xinhua.

Angry, late, tired passengers make computers crash | Industries | Industrials, Materials & Utilities | Reuters

Scores of Chinese air passengers smashed computers and desks and clashed with police Tuesday after a night stranded at an airport without accommodation, state media said.

More than 170 passengers were due to leave Kunming, capital of southwestern Yunnan province, on three flights operated by China Southern Airlines late Monday, but the flights were cancelled due to bad weather, Xinhua news agency said. <...>

The passengers clashed with airport police Tuesday morning, smashing computers and desks, Xinhua said, blaming the melee on China Southern staff's "inappropriate working attitude."

This past January, at the start of the snow storms that crippled China over the Chinese New Year holiday season, my plane in Shanghai had to wait on the tarmac as they tried to repair the de-icing machine on a wing.

After about five hours, the German businessman sitting next to me kept mumbling, "Unmöglich, unmöglich.  If this were Europe, there would already be a riot in the plane."

But I don't think he could have imagined what a real passenger riot would have looked like in China!  (The Reuters story might also explain in part why not a single person on the staff -- after we were finally told to get off the plane -- was brave enough to make an announcement to the crowd of bewildered and seething passengers, which of course made them just more and more frustrated and angry.)

Although Chinese customer service is continually improvements, there is clearly a long way to go.

Cynicism is intellectual treason.

Critical food shortages and growing demand for bio-fuels and hydro-electricity due to high fossil fuel prices rank among the greatest threats today to the preservation of precious wetlands worldwide as farmers and developers look for new areas for agriculture, energy crop plantations and hydro dams.

However, resisting pressures to convert wetlands is vital to avoid destroying ecosystems that provide a suite of services essential to humanity, including safe, steady local water supplies, preserving biodiversity and the large-scale capture and storage of climate warming greenhouse gases, according 700 leading world experts concluding a week-long meeting in Cuiaba, Brazil.

The experts issued the Cuiaba Declaration (appended) July 25, the final day of the 8th INTECOL International Wetlands Conference, convened on the northern edge of the world's largest tropical wetland, the Pantanal.

Wetlands include marshes, tidal marshes, peat bogs, swamps, river deltas, mangroves, tundra, lagoons and river floodplains. Among other services, they trap and store carbon in submerged organic matter, sustain biodiversity, and produce renewable natural resources, such as fish, natural pasture, timber, and wildlife.

Slimy boss David Brent and his beleaguered staff are set to move to Russia after Channel One signed a deal with BBC Worldwide to make a local version of hit comedy-drama "The Office."

BBC Worldwide announced Thursday that Channel One would produce 24 episodes of the show with its affiliated production company Krasny Kvadrat, or Red Square. The original show was only 12 episodes long, plus two Christmas specials, so Channel One has the right to develop new story lines.

The statement did not say how much the deal was worth, and a Channel One spokeswoman said no one was available to comment Friday. The channel is currently airing the U.S. version of "The Office" in a late-night slot.

(...)

The Russian producers will have to adjust certain episodes. The famous scene where Gareth finds his stapler encased in Jell-O may have to be adjusted, since the gelatin treat is not a popular dessert in Russia. But office culture has already been the subject of popular sitcoms, including a Russian version of the U.S. show "Ugly Betty."

The original series' co-writer and star, Ricky Gervais, called the Russian deal "very exciting and very flattering" in his blog. "With a 150 million population, I'm looking forward to some good ratings," Gervais wrote, adding that he may visit Russia in December for the premiere of his new film, "Ghost Town."

Television critic Irina Petrovskaya said she had never watched "The Office," but she called the deal a sign that Channel One was looking "to attract a young audience."

NEW YORK (AP) _ The creators of a Scrabble knockoff responsible for countless hours at the online hangout Facebook suspended their word game Tuesday after being hit with a lawsuit, disappointing fans who logged on expecting to make their next moves.

(...)

Facebook users who tried to access Scrabulous on Tuesday were simply told the game was disabled "until further notice," and many Facebook users updated their one-line status messages on the site to mourn the suspension.

Laura Chefer, an Atlanta Facebook user who logs on about 20 times a day to check on Scrabulous, said she had no sympathy for Hasbro despite its rights to the game.

"I was definitely shocked and annoyed," she said. "These two guys went to all the trouble to make this interface, and now the big company is suing them, and we're no longer able to play."

The game continues to work at the developers' Web site, Scrabulous.com, but users must sign up and start games afresh.

A tiny tree-shrew that lives on alcoholic nectar could - pound for pound - drink the average human under the table, scientists have discovered.

(...)

Chemicals in the hair samples showed that on any given night, a tree-shrew had a 36% chance of being drunk by human standards.
The shrew's resistance to intoxication suggests its body must have an effective mechanism for breaking down alcohol.

This should not come as too much of a surprise: scientists believe the animals - which are distant relatives of humans - have had 55 million years of evolution to adapt to their boozy lifestyle.

The researchers used radio tags to track the creatures on their crawls and recorded video of their feeding sessions.

Humans may even preserve a relic of the shrews' love of alcohol that has lasted through millions of years of evolution.

In their PNAS paper, the scientists wrote that the pen-tailed tree-shrew is "a living model for extinct mammals, representing the stock from all extinct and living tree-shrews and primates radiated".

They added: "Therefore, we hypothesise that moderate to high alcohol intake was present early on in the evolution of these closely related lineages."

A mayor's hopes of ending her town's ban on the 1979 Monty Python film Life of Brian are being opposed by the local vicar, who says it pokes fun at Jesus.

Sue Jones-Davies, who played Brian's girlfriend in the movie, was amazed when she became mayor of Aberystwyth that it was still barred from cinemas.

But Reverend Canon Stuart Bell said Christians he spoke to in Ceredigion were still against it being shown.

The mayor declined to respond, but will still press for the ban to be lifted.

Rising fuel prices are to cost Wales Air Ambulance an extra £75,000 a year, it has emerged.

The charity said the cost of fuelling its fleet of three helicopters was increasing by 30% to £325,000 per year.

But officials said emergency flights would not be restricted as a result of the hike in fuel prices.

Meanwhile, the charity is to upgrade its helicopters next year, which are based in Caernarfon, Swansea and Welshpool, Powys.

The air ambulances have to be replaced under Civil Aviation Authority regulations.

On the credibility of climate predictions / De la credibilite des previsions climatiques

Geographically distributed predictions of future climate, obtained through climate models, are widely used in hydrology and many other disciplines, typically without assessing their reliability. Here we compare the output of various models to temperature and precipitation observations from eight stations with long (over 100 years) records from around the globe. The results show that models perform poorly, even at a climatic (30-year) scale. Thus local model projections cannot be credible, whereas a common argument that models can perform better at larger spatial scales is unsupported.

Bold mine. Hattip: Climate Audit

Let's get to it, folks!

Which also means that I'll be off-line. Yet, my cyber-ghost may post a diary tomorrow!

*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.

Picture by Mona Brooks. Lots more from NN at that link.

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

Seriously, I think the only US soldiers who've ever been punished for war crimes are Lt calley and Private England. Everything else is; "Who cares ? They're only wogs/towelheads/gooks"

keep to the Fen Causeway