The leaders of the Greek and Turkish parts of Cyprus will begin reunification talks on Wednesday. While many doubt they will be successful, some say it's the island's best chance in a generation.

Leaders from Cyprus' Turkish and Greek sides are meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 3, to try and iron out a decade's long dispute. Observers are hoping that Greek Cypriot Demetris Christofias, the president of Cyprus, and Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat will be able to settle a feud which has long defied international efforts and threatens to undermine Turkey's European Union aspirations.

 

A diplomat close to the negotiations, speaking on conditions of anonymity, told Reuters news agency that this is the best chance Cyprus has had in a generation.

 

"Both leaders are genuinely committed for a deal, and that is what was lacking before," he said.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The leader of the Irish No campaign, Daclan Ganley, has renewed calls for an EU-wide referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, as Irish media reported parts of the pact may be ratified by the Irish parliament instead.

"I can tell you as a citizen having read the Treaty and campaigned on it, it is undemocratic and unacceptable to the majority of my country. Nor do I believe it is acceptable to the majority of the citizens in other countries", Mr Ganley said at a public debate in the European Parliament on Tuesday (2 September).

The only chance for a Lisbon Treaty revival would be to hold a pan-European referendum, says Declan Ganley

In the view of Mr Ganley - who dislikes being labelled as "anti-European" - the Lisbon Treaty has no future, but if it were to be revived, the only option would be to hold a pan-European referendum.

Recognizing the need for a new treaty that responds to the current international situation, Ganley said that the only viable formula would be a text "that is short, readable and that everyone gets to vote on."

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - EU enlargement, particularly to the Western Balkan countries, is set to feature high on the agenda of the bloc's two presidencies in 2009, with Croatia seen as likely to conclude its EU membership talks next year, said the Czech Republic and Sweden - the next two member states to hold the EU's six-month rotating chairmanship after France.

Croatia hopes to become the EU's 28th member by 2011 at the latest.

The Balkans seem to have been somehow "forgotten in the light of the current [Georgia] crisis," Czech deputy prime minister Alexandr Vondra, whose country will assume the EU's presidency in the first half of 2009, said at a press conference in Brussels on Tuesday (2 September).

"We expect to move talks to the final stage with at least Croatia [during the Czech EU presidency]," he added.

EU-Croatia accession talks were launched in 2005. The country is hoping to finalise them next year and become the EU's 28th member by 2011 at the latest.

NATO should show Russia it would defend the Baltic states - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - in the event of attack, the US has said, as Russia's recent invasion of Georgia continues to send ripples through European security arrangements.

"They are feeling a little rattled by seeing Russia use military force to invade a sovereign, small neighbouring country. We need to send signals to shore them up a little bit," US ambassador to NATO, Kurt Volker, told the Financial Times in an interview on Tuesday (2 September).

Latvia and Estonia have large ethnic-Russian minorities

The "signals" could come in the form of military "planning and exercising" and "not in a provocative way," he explained.

"We will have to make sure ... that the Article 5 commitment is realisable not just as a political matter but as a military matter too," Mr Volker added. "NATO being credible is what's important."

France and Britain have seen the biggest cut in 2008 growth forecast by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the Paris-based think-tank linking the 30 richest countries in the world, published on Tuesday (2 September).

Europe's two largest economies - Germany and France - will barely grow at all this year, according to OECD experts, with Germany's prediction for 2008 average growth down from 1.9 percent to 1.5 percent and France's down from 1.8 percent to 1.0 percent.

The UK economy is facing it's worst state in 60 years, according to the country's chancellor

Britain's GDP for this year is expected to be 1.2 percent rather than the 1.8 percent predicted earlier, while the Italian economy is facing the poorest performance, with average 2008 growth predicted to be 0.1 percent, down from 0.5 percent.

The OECD suspects that all 15 member states of the euro area will avoid a technical recession - regarded as two consequent quarters of contraction - although altogether, the eurozone will only grow by 1.3 percent, not 1.7 percent as said earlier.

Serbia wants EU candidacy status next year, but needs to hand over more war criminals to the UN tribunal first, the bloc said. Other differences between Brussels and Belgrade run from trade to Kosovo.

Belgrade stressed the need to ratify a trade agreement with the EU, but disagrees with EU on Kosovo.

 

Serbia could get EU candidate status in 2009, said European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso at a Brussels news briefing on Wednesday, Sept. 3, with Serbian President Boris Tadic in attendance.

 

"It would be possible to give candidate status to Serbia, but this is not a commitment," Barroso said. "It depends on conditions being fulfilled."

This week's EU summit declaration on Georgia was kept markedly short when it came to energy. But the two sentences contain an important message for European leaders on diversifying energy suppliers.

Section 9 of the EU summit declaration on Georgia was a mere two sentences. The first said, "Recent events illustrate the need for Europe to intensify its efforts with regard to the security of energy supplies."

 

The Council of Ministers and the European Commission should examine ways to diversify energy sources and supply routes, it added.

 

EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs told journalists on Tuesday, Sept. 2, that the summit's decision will strengthen and accelerate the policy we have launched. Piebalgs said he plans to present his revised strategy for Europe's energy policy by early November.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Parliament has called on the EU's executive to introduce measures to support the roll-out of a Europe-wide filling-station network for hydrogen-powered cars and develop common standards for the vehicles across all member states.

MEPs almost unanimously adopted a report on Wednesday (3 September) drafted by members of the centre-right European Peoples' Party grouping in the parliament on hydrogen-powered vehicles.

Hydrogen-powered cars are not zero-emission vehicles at all, warn green groups.

The legislative report was adopted with 644 votes in favour, two against and 11 abstentions.

MEPs believe a key support measure would be the development of common EU standards for the experimental transport concept.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has threatened to dissolve parliament and call elections after the collapse of the country's ruling coalition.

Mr Yushchenko's supporters walked out in protest following new laws trimming the president's powers.

The laws were introduced by the pro-Russian opposition and backed by Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko's party.

Former allies, the prime minister and president are now at odds despite sharing pro-Western political goals.

President Nicolas Sarkozy's key electoral promise to allow the French to "work more to earn more" has hit a major snag: most have no desire to put in extra hours to raise their wages, a poll has found.

With the economy floundering and the French consistently complaining that falling purchasing power is their main worry, only a quarter are prepared to work more to raise their standard of living.

Almost six out of ten have no desire to increase their working hours, according to a CSA poll published in the Le Parisien newspaper.

Some 13 per cent would like to work less, even if that means seeing living standards drop.

The figures were published as new legislation diluting the 35-hour working week comes into force this month.

Companies can now negotiate with unions or directly with employees wishing to work longer hours - up to 48 per week. In theory, workers receive 25 per cent more for overtime, but the polls suggests that not many intend to take it.

TBILISI, Georgia: Just weeks after Georgia's military collapsed in panic in the face of the Russian Army, its leaders hope to rebuild and train its armed forces as if another war with Russia is almost inevitable.

Georgia is already drawing up lists of options, including restoring the military to its prewar strength or making it a much larger force with more modern equipment, like air-defense systems, modern antiarmor rockets and night-vision devices.

Officials at the Pentagon, State Department and White House confirmed that the Bush administration was examining what would be required to rebuild Georgia's military, but stressed that no decisions had been made. The choices each pose difficult foreign policy questions.

Georgia's decision to attack Russian and South Ossetian forces raises questions about the wisdom of further United States investment in the Georgian military, which in any case would further alienate Russia. Not doing so could lead to charges of abandoning Georgia in the face of Russian threats.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands: The Netherlands needs a massive new building program to strengthen the low-lying country's water defenses against the anticipated effects of global warming for the next 190 years, an important panel advised Wednesday.

The plan by the Delta Commission includes more than €100 billion, or $144 billion, in new spending through the year 2100 to take measures such as broadening coastal dunes and strengthening sea and river dikes. It is expected to be the central reference point for policymakers for decades to come.

"We're not trying to scare people, because there's still time to act," said the panel chairman Cees Veerman, handing the report to Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende in a nationally televised news conference. Balkenende promised to immediately begin drafting its recommendations into law.

"Whatever social or economic hardship this country faces, water runs through it," he said.

Women are losing the battle for gender equality in Britain's workplaces after years of progress, a report shows today.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission's annual study, which looks at the number of women given top positions in business, politics and the public sector, found women's representation had fallen in almost half the industries surveyed. It is the biggest backward step for workplace gender equality in the five years the study has been carried out.

Nicola Brewer, chief executive of the commission, said the report exposed the "clear trend" that gender equality in Britain's workplaces across the board had either hit the buffers or was in reverse. She described the findings as a "powerful symptom of a wider failure" to challenge the long-held assumption that child care was a woman's responsibility.

The commission's assessment found that the proportion of women holding key positions in British life had fallen in 12 out of the 25 categories surveyed in 2006. In politics, fewer women now hold positions of power in Parliament, the Cabinet and in the UK's regional assemblies. It would take two centuries, or another 40 elections, for women to reach parity with men on the benches of the House of Commons, the report says.

BERLIN: As a signal to Russia that NATO will not be intimidated, its ambassadors will travel to Georgia this month. They want to see the aftermath of a war in which Russian troops last month occupied parts of Georgia, gained control of the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and then recognized them as independent states. The envoys also want to assess whether Georgia is ready to be offered, in December, a road map to join the alliance.

Russia is furious with NATO's refusal to back down from its commitment to admit - one day - Georgia and Ukraine into the U.S.-led military alliance, a pledge made during its summit meeting last April in Bucharest and repeated since Russia rolled into Georgia after the Georgians attacked South Ossetia. Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, told students of Moscow's diplomatic academy Monday that "there is a feeling that NATO again needs front-line states to justify its existence."

NATO diplomats dismiss such charges. Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, NATO's secretary general, has repeatedly said that democratic countries flanking Russia should be an asset, not a threat, to the Kremlin. But Russia does not trust NATO. In Moscow's view, NATO, and the EU, have become more anti-Russian since the former Communist countries of Eastern Europe and the Baltic states joined both organizations. It also sees the alliance as encroaching on regions Russia considers within its sphere of influence.

But inside NATO, despite the show of unity over the Russia-Georgia crisis, there is no consensus as to whether the alliance should expand deep into the Caucasus, or admit Ukraine, birthplace of Russian Orthodoxy. Indeed, Georgia is just the latest challenge to the alliance's identity: since the end of the Cold War, NATO has been trying to reinvent itself.

The CIA on Wednesday denied White was working for the U.S. intelligence agency.

"While we do not as a rule confirm or deny employment with the agency, in this case, any suggestion that Michael Lee White is a CIA officer is wrong," said Marie Harf, a CIA spokeswoman.

AP via Google: Source: Madrid crash probe focuses on wing flaps

The pilots of a Spanair SA plane that crashed last month in Madrid, killing 154 people, failed to extend wing flaps that are needed to give the aircraft enough lift for takeoff, according to a person familiar with the investigation.

...

Flaps are moveable panels on the trailing edge of a plane's wings and provide extra lift during takeoff. The Spanair pilots should have received a warning -- a loud horn in the cockpit -- alerting them that the flaps were not extended before takeoff.

The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the investigation, reported on its Web site Wednesday that investigators have focused on the theory that an electrical problem prevented the horn from sounding.

US Vice-President Dick Cheney has said the US wants to work with Azerbaijan on additional routes for exporting the region's oil reserves to the West.

He also pledged support for US allies in the former Soviet Union.

A BBC correspondent says the US sees the states as key allies in protecting access to the region's energy supplies.

Mr Cheney - who will also visit Georgia and Ukraine - spoke as US officials revealed President Bush was to announce a $1bn (£0.5bn) aid package to Georgia.

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan: Two helicopters carrying NATO forces landed in a Pakistani village in South Waziristan near the border with Afghanistan early Wednesday morning and the soldiers opened fire on villagers, killing seven people, according to a spokesman for the Pakistani military.

The account by the spokesman, Major General Athar Abbas, broadcast on Pakistani television Wednesday evening, described what appeared to be the first commando attack by NATO forces against the Taliban inside Pakistan.

Pakistan has lodged a "strong protest" with the U.S. government and reserved the right of "self defense and retaliation," the general said. Local residents said most of the dead were women and children but this could not be immediately confirmed.

The administration of President George W. Bush has accused Pakistan in recent months of not doing enough to curb attacks by the Taliban, who maintain bases inside the Pakistani tribal region and cross the border to attack American and coalition soldiers in Afghanistan.

Russia is not easy to deal with but the Bush administration has not dealt with Russia at all sensibly.

It is perfectly obvious that Russia has launched a preemptive strike against Georgian membership of NATO, which America was promoting. America's bluff has been called. I think the problem is so often that American officials are overly academic. They have concepts and projects they want to implement, like spreading "democracy and the rule of law". But their mindset cannot fully engage with what is happening on the ground, or accept that the Russian point of view is not the same as theirs, but still has to be taken seriously because Russia is Georgia's neighbour. Because people believed Georgia ought to become an American military bastion, they forgot that Georgia as an American bastion is not a terribly practical idea, given the power and the thinking of the current regime in Moscow. As George Kennan said, Americans in foreign policy can sometimes be "moralistic in the demands placed on others, and self-righteous in the degree of rectitude they impute to themselves". After all, what made Georgia interesting to the United States as a place to implant "American values" was its importance as an energy transit country! The American policy that might have served Georgia better would have been to find a way to ensure that liberalising Georgia could be achieved without antagonising Russia. Instead, the Americans made Georgia more of a thorn in Russia's side through the prospect of NATO membership when they did not have any real will to protect Georgia in the event of a Russian attack. The western media often fails to appreciate that Russia is genuinely frightened by NATO expansion so close to its own borders, particularly if this involves the stationing of nuclear weapons.

In the end, the only way this problem is going to be solved is by bilateral negotiations between Moscow and Washington. If you are not prepared to go to war, and the USA is not, then you have to negotiate. And there is no point in threatening Russia with a loss of respect around the world because the EU, China and the United States are going to continue to do business with Russia whatever happens to Georgia. My worry is that Washington does not really know how to do this kind of diplomacy. There has been a combination of reproaches, inaction and empty threats, when what is required from Washington is some tough negotiating that will safeguard the independence of the former Soviet satellites and at the same time, normalise Russia's relations with them.

Rabbis: Light rail train 'a disaster for Judaism'

Ultra-Orthodox Rabbinical Transportation Committee strongly opposes new form of transportation in Jerusalem, saying it constitutes `a huge step backwards on a worldly, spiritual level alike'

No manufacturing. No new ideas. What's our economy based on?

More than 75 years ago, confidence in the market economy got a rude shock as the world sank into the Great Depression. Adam Smith had said that the market led the economy, as if by an invisible hand, to economic efficiency and societal wellbeing. It was hard to believe that Smith was right when one in four Americans was out of a job. Some economists held true to their faith in self-regulating markets; they said, just be patient, in the long run the market's restorative forces will take hold, and we will recover. But Keynes's retort ruled the day: In the long run, we are all dead. We could not wait. Today, even conservatives believe that government should intervene to maintain the economy at or near full employment.

...

In short, the problem with the U.S. economy is not that we have allocated too many resources to the "soft" areas and too few to the "hard." It is not necessarily that we have allocated too many resources to the financial sector and rewarded it too generously--though a strong argument could be put forward to that effect. It is that too little effort was devoted to managing real risks that are important--enabling ordinary Americans to stay in their homes in the face of economic vicissitudes--and that too much effort went into creating financial products that enhanced risk. Too much energy has been spent trying to make an easy buck; too much effort has been devoted to increasing profits and not enough to increasing real wealth, whether that wealth comes from manufacturing or new ideas. We have learned a painful lesson, both in the 1930s and today: The invisible hand often seems invisible because it's not there. At best, it's more than a little palsied. At worst, the pursuit of self-interest--corporate greed--can lead to the kind of predicament confronting the country today.

Naked Capitalism [blog]: CFTC Investigating Whether Big Traders Lied About Oil Inventories (September 4, 2008)

Wow, what happened? The CFTC went from being a lapdog to developing teeth. A little late, now that oil prices are on a forced march downward, but the commission could have backed off as oil became less of a front-burner issue. (Of course, your cynical blogger wonders if there was a risk that this story might get to the media, completely undercutting its credibility). Note that the drift of the investigation is that inventories may have been underreported, which would lead to higher prices.

No names yet, but this looks to be a serious investigation. Admittedly, this is consistent the with the thrust the CFTC said it would take earlier, looking into tankers and storage, but it looks like they are proceeding in a thorough, disciplined manner.

I have a buddy who was the DA in a pretty rough and tumble town (Bridgeport, CT). He said that the FBI wasn't composed of the brightest bulbs, but they often got their man because they were relentless. People in the private sector like to look down on regulators, but many are very able, and like the FBI, they can be dogged as well.

Sondhi Limthongkul says he is fighting to save Thai democracy from what he calls the corrupt politicians who have abused it to remain in power.

But analysts say that the agenda pushed by Sondhi -- and his comrades who have occupied Bangkok's seat of government for a week -- would severely set back the country's fragile political system.

The 61-year-old media mogul and protest leader for the People's Alliance For Democracy wants to abandon the Thailand's popularly elected Parliament for one in which a majority of members would be appointed.

Three families which lost seven of their members in the August 20 crash that killed 154 people at Madrid airport are suing Boeing and McDonnell Douglas for damages, their legal representative said Thursday.

...

The legal complaint lodged in Illinois in the United States was based on electrical and handbook errors detected in analyses of 15 planes in the MD-80 series that had crashed, said Manuel von Ribbeck of the US firm Ribbeck Law.

Three MD-80 planes had crashed over the past 11 months, von Ribbeck said. The accidents occurred in Phuket in Thailand, Isparta in Turkey, and Madrid.

The increasing popularity of supermarket sold pre-packed salad could lead to a rise in food poisoning, scientists warned today.

Researchers have discovered how salmonella and E.coli germs - more commonly associated with chicken and bovine products - can spread to salad and vegetable leaves.

A salmonella outbreak in the UK last year was traced back to imported basil while an E.coli outbreak in America in 2006 was linked back to pre-packed baby spinach.

Professor Gadi Frankel, from Imperial College, said consumers needed to be aware of the risk of contaminated salad to avoid potential food poisoning.

"In their efforts to eat healthily, people are eating more salad products, choosing to buy organic brands and preferring the ease of 'pre-washed' bagged salads from supermarkets, than ever before," he said.

An Italian parish has been ordered by a court to pay €59,000 in damages to a woman who claimed that the loud pealing of bells at the church next to her home had caused her "moral and physical harm" for 23 years.

The woman, a retired teacher at Lavagna near Genoa named under Italian privacy laws only as Flora L, began her campaign against the Madonna del Carmine parish in 1985. Five years ago, she resorted to legal action, taking Father Stefano Queirolo, the parish priest, to court.

Judge Pasquale Grasso, ruling in the woman's favour, ordered the parish not only to stop ringing the bells at at Madonna del Carmine, but also to lower the level of the bells at the Church of Santo Stefano, a hundred metres away.

Not all residents of Lavagna agreed with the ruling, however. Mauro Armanino, head of tourism on the local council, said: "The sound of bells has marked the rhythm of life for generations, for believers and non believers alike."

More heat waves, far less snow: Using a new more precise climate model, the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology has calculated the impact of global warming on weather patterns in Germany stretching up to the year 2100.

For "Remo," Germany is nothing more than an array of boxes, each of them 10 by 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) in area and 100 meters (328 feet) tall. But these are no ordinary boxes. Brimming with data, they are designed to forecast changes to Germany's climate between now and the year 2100. This makes "Remo," a climate model developed by the Hamburg-based Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M), more than 20 times more precise, from a spatial standpoint, than the global models used by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

A more precise calculation of the consequences of climate change does not exist anywhere in the world. It is intended to serve as a basis for political planning, as well as to enable disaster relief agencies, farmers, vintners, power plant operators and the tourism industry to adjust to the new environment in a timely way.

To complete the calculations, commissioned by the German Federal Environment Agency, the MPI-M researchers assumed only a gradual decline in worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases from cars, power plants and factories. At the intersections of the grid made up of virtual cubes, the MPI-M's mainframe computer has calculated various weather variables, such as temperature, humidity and wind speed.

The ice shelves in Canada's High Arctic have lost a colossal area this year, scientists report.

The floating tongues of ice attached to Ellesmere Island, which have lasted for thousands of years, have seen almost a quarter of their cover break away.

One of them, the 50 sq km (20 sq miles) Markham shelf, has completely broken off to become floating sea-ice.

Researchers say warm air temperatures and reduced sea-ice conditions in the region have assisted the break-up.

A skateboarder filmed breaking the speed limit is being hunted by police in Germany.

A man was filmed riding a skateboard down a steep stretch of south German motorway at 100 km an hour (62mph), well above the speed limit of 80km an hour.

Police believe the man, who raced down the Ulm-Stuttgart motorway for two miles before he stopped and fled, to be a professional stuntman.

A video of the mystery skateboarder was broadcast on German television networks and showed a helmeted figure wearing a red and white protective suit building up speed by holding onto the back of a motorcycle before letting go and free-wheeling.

Goeppingen police spokesman Uli Stoeckle, said: "We are particularly concerned about copycats who may imitate the stunt, putting their lives at risk.

PARIS: Justice Minister Rachida Dati of France, one of the stars of President Nicolas Sarkozy's cabinet, announced Wednesday that she was pregnant but declined to identify the father.

The daughter of North African immigrants, Dati, 42-year-old and divorced, has become the public face of Sarkozy's drive to add diversity to French politics.

Since taking office last year, she has appeared almost as often in the glossy magazines as in the serious political press, prompting criticism that she was seeking celebrity status rather than concentrating on her job.

On Wednesday, she confirmed rumors that she was pregnant after the weekly magazine VSD splashed her on the front page saying she was expecting a child.