The camorra group presumed responsible for the murder spree are linked to the Bidognetti clan recently disseminated by arrests, heavy prison sentences and supergrassos. It is rumoured that the head of the clan had become a state witness thus provoking not only a war of succession but a policy of burnt earth around anyone who goes state witness through the massacre of their family members.

The political referents of the Bidognetti clan have recently been outed in a series (second article) of scoops by l'Espresso weekly. According to the scoops prominent Campania political figures in Berlusconi's entourage had key roles in the garbage racket for nearly two decades. They are the same individuals who "cleaned" up Naples.

Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper said it stands by its account of a NATO report that described Taliban forces as better-armed than French soldiers targeted in a deadly ambush last month.

Both NATO and the French military have denied the substance and the existence of any such report, saying the newspaper was referring to a leaked e-mail by an officer who gave a partial account of the incident.

But the Toronto daily said the article was well-sourced and based on a confidential report, not an e-mail.

"The Globe and Mail obtained the report from a trusted source, and checked its authenticity with other sources," Philippe Devos, assistant foreign editor at the Toronto daily, told AFP in an e-mail.

Marked "NATO/ISAF SECRET," the report bears the four pointed blue star symbol for NATO and the green emblem of the International Security Assistance Force, the newspaper said.

The paper on Saturday quoted the report on the deadly August 18 ambush as saying the paratroopers had run out of ammunition after only 90 minutes and had one radio that was quickly knocked out, leaving them unable to call for air support.

Ten French soldiers were killed in the assault. The mountain ambush east of Kabul was the deadliest ground attack on international troops since they were sent to Afghanistan in 2001 to oust the hardline Taliban regime.

PARIS: One month after ten French soldiers died in a Taliban ambush in Afghanistan, the government announced Monday that it would reinforce its presence there, sending more troops and better equipment despite the outpouring of anguish over the deaths.

There have been several reports - in the media and from leftist opposition politicians - that French troops were poorly equipped for their deployment in the rugged mountains east of Kabul. But Prime Minister François Fillon said during a debate in Parliament on the Afghan deployment that the government was more determined than ever to stay.

"The president of the republic and government have learned the lesson from this murderous ambush," Fillon said in the National Assembly. "We have decided to strengthen our military means.

"Not acting would leave the Afghans at the mercy of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, would re-expose us to the risk of terrorism and would leave our allies to fight for us alone."

But all his latest salvage efforts for his country's stricken flag carrier have been blocked by the intransigence of a relatively small group of hardcore unions interested above all in protecting their power and privileges.

Mr. Bell does a good job of translating into English Berlusconi's position which has been accepted by the general public thanks to a perfectly tuned media machine.

Alitalia was already on the point of being salvaged by Air France under far better conditions than those offered by Berlusconi's "Italian" group of bigwig crony impresarios with outrageous conflicts of interest.

The "small group of hardcore unions" amounts to the CGIL, the largest representative union in Italy together with the small unions that represent specific categories. In the words of Epifani, head of the CGIL, you don't negotiate with a pistol pointed at your temple- nor at the last minute. Mr. Berlusconi evidently takes his queues from watching Don Vito Corleone who managed business relations by "making offers that can't be refused."

For a breakdown of union representation see the following article (in Italian). When the tally is made that "small group of hardcore unions" happens to represent the majority of Alitalia workers. Mr. Bell's assertion

Most of Alitalia's unions finally accepted, albeit reluctantly, to a restructuring involving some 3,000 job cuts to allow the rescue to take off.

By following the Thatcher example and calling the unions' bluff, he would burst the abscess of 30 years of irresponsible and damaging Italian labour relations. That could turn out to be a far more valuable long-term legacy than saving the national flag carrier.

Alitalia pilots are paid less and have less "privileges" than their European colleagues. Further they did offer to reduce these so-called "privileges" such as being bussed to the airport.

Pilots effectively do have power- and responsibilities. They fly aircrafts.

Alitalia may likely be grounded on Thursday. Berlusconi's cronies will walk off with the choice slices. The Italians that pay taxes will pick up Alitalia's debts and gleefully continue to vote for their saviour who, as we all know, is sacrificing himself for the superior good of the motherland.

These unions, ........, have little public support - not unlike Britain's old National Union of Mineworkers when Margaret Thatcher decided to take them on.

We might quiestion the tactics of the miner's leadership and the bullyboy behaviour that unnecessarily reduced public sympathy, but to say they had little support is to indulge in historical revisionism of Winston Smith proportions

keep to the Fen Causeway

Germany said on Monday it sees no need to create a US-style financial sector bailout of its own as Chancellor Merkel renewed calls for tighter regulation of the financial sector.

Germany has no plans to join in the massive US bailout operation for financial institutions that have run into difficulties with risky mortgage debt, officials said Monday, Sept 22.

The six Group of Seven economic powers aside from the United States do not plan any measures comparable to a US package to support the banking sector, German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck said on Monday.

Ulrich Wilhelm, a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, too said the government saw no need for such an undertaking in Germany.

The UK and Germany believe that a new international system regulating the financial sector must be constructed to prevent a repeat of global banking crisis in the future.

Peter Steinbrueck, Germany's Social-Democrat finance minister, raised on Sunday (21 September) the idea of "an international authority that will make the traffic rules for financial markets," while speaking to German radio, Reuters reports.

One government alone cannot deal with the consequences of globalisation

Meanwhile, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is to outline proposals for just such a body, run under the authority of the International Monetary fund, in a speech to the Labour Party conference on Monday, as well as domestic plans to crack down on "irresponsible" bonuses handed out in the City, London's financial quarter.

"I think what people haven't appreciated is we've now got global financial systems but we've only got national regulators to cover them," Mr Brown told the BBC ahead of the speech, adding that he had been trying to convince his international counterparts for years of the need for "a global system of financial regulation."

British and European banks could be excluded from Washington's $700 billion (£382 billion) bailout amid a backlash over the financial burden on the US taxpayer.

While Hank Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary, wants to allow foreign banks to benefit from the scheme, some Democrats in Washington and others on Wall Street are angry that taxpayer funds may be used to prop up overseas businesses.

Uncertainty for banks such as UBS, the Swiss financial group, Deutsche Bank, the biggest bank in Germany, and HSBC comes two days after Mr Paulson and President Bush urged lawmakers in Washington to push through the largest financial intervention package since the Great Depression to avoid the meltdown of America's banking system.

As Mr Paulson held meetings with Republicans and Democrats over the weekend to persuade them to nod through the package, dissent broke out over the terms. Chris Dodd, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, acknowledged yesterday that the crisis demanded quick action, but made it clear that Democrats would not rubber-stamp the Administration's proposal. It is believed that bankers from Deutsche Bank and UBS approached America's central bank and other Washington agencies at the weekend to seek assurances they would be included in the bailout.

On the other end of the line, Deputy Chief of Mission John Koenig said that he was surprised by the ambassador's statements. He underscored that the US position remains unchanged: Washington will issue no comment on the private pipeline deal. Koenig suggested that the article may have been insufficiently screened in Washington -- a PR mishap, so to speak.

The two experienced diplomats agreed to avoid a "public scuffle." However, von Fritsch made one condition: Nothing like the Wood article must be allowed to happen again.

Huh.

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

Or is that unfair gouging of poor struggling companies that will once more erode Europe's attractiveness for investment?

This is soooo confusing.

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

The gunman, Pekka-Eric Auvinen, posted a video on YouTube as a preview of his attack, pledging to "eliminate" those he saw as "unfit".

Ms Holmlund said police questioned the man about the YouTube video, which showed him shooting at a firing range.

On the video, the gunman says "you die next" before firing three times at the camera.

Ms Holmlund said: "Police were aware of this and spoke to him on Monday, September 22. However, the police officer on duty decided there was no need to terminate his gun licence."

sneak the poison in with the 'good stuff', so peoples' confidence is artificially boosted, while they and their children (mostly the latter) are slowly killed.

Peace is not the absence of war -- peace is the absence of fear. Ursula Franklin

So will china allow this go on for a week and then stamp on it.

After all, the govt doesn't want anything to interfere with the global image of china as the thrusting new superpower. Pictures of grieving parents accusing Party bosses of corruption doesn't look good. And seeing as it's the system itself that is rotten and makes this stuff inevitable, there's not gonna be any change.

keep to the Fen Causeway

As the government weighs how to bail out the financial sector, the engineers of the plan face a dilemma.

The higher the prices the government pays for troubled mortgage securities held by banks, the more the rescue will bolster those banks and sustain the lending that is vital to the broader economy. But higher prices would also mean a worse deal for taxpayers.

In other words, the more effective the plan, the more expensive it will ultimately be.

Under both the Bush administration's proposal and many of the variations finding favor among Democrats, the government would buy up to $700 billion in shaky assets now on the books of financial companies. As the government does so, it will be forced to grapple with the same question that has vexed the brightest minds on Wall Street for more than a year: What are the darn things worth?

The very reason for the financial crisis of the last 14 months is that no one knows for sure. Wall Street created securities so complex that their value can swing wildly depending on what happens to the overall housing market. For example, a particular type of mortgage-backed security might offer a giant payout if home prices only drop another 10 percent, but be worthless if they drop another 15 percent.

WASHINGTON -- The United States, having expanded its proposed rescue of the financial sector to include foreign banks, has not yet found any other country willing to join the landmark bailout.

The Treasury Department still hopes to marshal a worldwide effort to cleanse the balance sheets of banks. But Europe and Japan have signaled that they are not ready to mount a rescue of the kind being debated here.

Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. continues to solicit support from foreign governments. His department plans to prod them by giving preference to banks from countries that show a willingness to help the American effort, a senior administration official said Monday.

"We expect other countries to do their part, but we're not insisting their programs be exactly like ours," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We're certainly not prepared to put ourselves in a position where there's a free-rider problem."

Given that the mortgage collapse began here and that most of the distressed debt is held by American banks, specialists said it was not clear that the United States had much leverage in forcing others to take part.

"There's a view in Europe that this is a U.S.-made problem, and that it should be solved in the U.S.," said Charles H. Dallara, the managing director of the Institute for International Finance, a group of 340 global banks.

The dollar buckled, stocks tumbled and the price of oil jumped on Monday as the $700bn (£376bn) US government bail-out plan for the financial sector made slow progress in Washington and once-mighty Wall Street names turned to Japan to safeguard their future.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve threw open the doors to investment in the US banking industry by private equity firms, sovereign wealth funds and corporate investors - in the hope that this would direct much-needed capital to US banks.

After the roar, the whimper?

When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind

But credit default swaps -- complex derivatives originally designed to protect banks from deadbeat borrowers -- are adding to the turmoil.

"This was supposedly a way to hedge risk," says Ellen Brown, the author of the book "Web of Debt."

"I'm sure their predictive models were right as far as the risk of the things they were insuring against. But what they didn't factor in was the risk that the sellers of this protection wouldn't pay ... That's what we're seeing now."

Brown is hardly alone in her criticism of the derivatives. Five years ago, billionaire investor Warren Buffett called them a "time bomb" and "financial weapons of mass destruction" and directed the insurance arm of his Berkshire Hathaway Inc (BRKa.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) to exit the business.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Threatened by a "financial tsunami," the world must consider building a financial order no longer dependent on the United States, a leading Chinese state newspaper said on Wednesday.

The commentary in the overseas edition of the People's Daily said the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc (LEH.P: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) "may augur an even larger impending global 'financial tsunami'."

The People's Daily is the official newspaper of China's ruling Communist Party, and the overseas edition is a smaller circulation offshoot of the main paper.

Its pronouncements do not necessarily directly reflect leadership views, but this commentary by a professor at Shanghai's Tongji University suggested considerable official alarm at the strains buckling world financial markets.

China's central bank earlier this week cut its lending rate for the first time in six years, a move analysts said was aimed at bolstering the economy and the battered stock market.

"The eruption of the U.S. sub-prime crisis has exposed massive loopholes in the United States' financial oversight and supervision," writes the commentator, Shi Jianxun.

"The world urgently needs to create a diversified currency and financial system and fair and just financial order that is not dependent on the United States."

Tried to find this on the People's Daily but couldn't.

When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind