Italian police have arrested a man over the killing of six African immigrants near Naples last week.

Investigators say they believe the killings, which sparked a riot by local immigrants, were the work of the local mafia, known as the Camorra.

They believe the arrested man was part of a gang that allegedly fired on the immigrants. His family say he had nothing to do with the attack.

Police are still looking for two other people in connection with the killings.

Francois Fillon, France's prime minister, has said Paris will strengthen its mission in Afghanistan with more helicopters, drones, intelligence-gathering equipment and about 100 extra troops.

He made the announcement during a debate in the lower house of the French parliament in which members voted to keep French troops stationed in Afghanistan despite an attack there last month in which 10 soldiers were killed.

The parliament, which is dominated by the party of Nicolas Sarkozy, France's president, voted 343 to 210 in favour of continuing the Nato mission which involves 2,600 French troops.

The vote is the first under a constitutional amendment approved in July that requires politicians to vote on any foreign military operation lasting more than four months.

Airlines and coalmines may not be quite the same thing, yet this week could turn out to be Silvio Berlusconi's Thatcher moment.

The Italian rightwing prime minister and media tycoon has been desperately trying to keep Alitalia flying. 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.

These unions, including one representing about 1,000 highly paid pilots, have little public support - not unlike Britain's old National Union of Mineworkers when Margaret Thatcher decided to take them on. The confrontation between the Conservative prime minister of the day and the miners turned into a seminal moment for British labour relations. Mr Berlusconi has the opportunity to do the same in Italy.

The German head of the EU's observer mission in Georgia says his team is due to deploy by 1 October around Russian-held Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Hansjoerg Haber said most of his team would arrive in Georgia this week, Reuters news agency reported.

At least 200 EU observers are expected to monitor a Russian troop withdrawal, though some reports say the EU contingent may total as many as 350.

Russia plans to keep nearly 8,000 troops in Georgia's breakaway regions.

Moscow recognised the two regions as independent following a brief but intense conflict with Georgia last month.

Response to Washington's multibillion-dollar Wall Street bailout has involved a lot of skeptical grumbling in Germany and the UK. German Chancellor Angela Merkel says the Bush administration has mishandled Wall Street, and that its refusal to adopt stricter rules led to the current crisis.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel: "That cannot be allowed in the international sphere." The United States government is campaigning around the world for support for its multibillion-dollar Wall Street rescue package. The reaction has been skeptical at best -- and in Europe the plan has been met with bareknuckled criticism.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has accused the US government of serious failures which she believes contributed to the current credit crisis. In particular she blamed Washington for resisting stricter regulation.

On Monday she also said the crisis could hurt the German economy. "The whole thing is going to set the pace for the economy in the coming months and perhaps years," Merkel said at a meeting of her party, the conservative Christian Democrats.

A US diplomat has denounced the controversial Baltic natural gas pipeline as "a special arrangement between Germany and Russia." His remarks have ruffled feathers in Berlin and highlighted growing US-German tensions over relations with Russia.

 A gas flare in Russia. Michael Wood, 61, is an athletic man. He has an impressively low golf handicap of 12. The former corporate executive has often gone mountain biking with US President George W. Bush, a connection that may have helped him acquire his current position. Wood has been the US ambassador to Sweden for the past two years.

He is not, however, very well versed in the art of diplomacy. At the end of the week before last, the Swedish daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet published an op-ed article by the ambassador that set down some unmistakable ground rules. According to Wood, when the Swedish government evaluates the proposed Baltic natural gas pipeline project over the coming months, it should examine more than just environmental aspects. He wrote that the pipeline represents "a special arrangement between Germany and Russia" that "bypasses the Baltic States and Poland," which are "potential customers." Wood calls for the EU to speak "with a single voice to counteract the power of Russia's energy weapon."

The article alarmed the German government. Rüdiger von Fritsch, head of economic affairs at the German Foreign Ministry, promptly called up the American embassy in Berlin and demanded an explanation. Von Fritsch said the German government was "annoyed" by this highly "unusual" approach.

Russia's invasion of Georgia could be followed by a Kremlin effort to mend ties with the West. But the EU has to pull the Russian elite closer without losing sight of its own values, according to fallen oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovksy.

"It's fashionable to say the 'five day war' and Russia's recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia is a major blow to Russo-European relations and the prospect of liberalisation in Russia. I'm not convinced," Mr Khodorkovksy said in a rare interview in Le Figaro this weekend. "This crisis could push the Kremlin to take steps to improve relations with the West. If those steps don't undermine Russia's geopolitical position."

Moscow: not necessarily on a collision course with the EU

Russia's one-time richest man sent in his statements from a jail cell in Siberia, having spent five years in prison after the break-up of his oil firm, Yukos, over politically-motivated fraud charges.

Mr Khodorkovksy praised France for handling the Georgia crisis with understanding for the "nuances" of Russia's post-imperial problems, urging the EU not to try and dominate Russia but not to lapse into value-free realpolitik either.

BBC NEWS | Business | EU to slash more mobile charges

EU to slash more mobile charges

Using a phone abroad should become even cheaper Proposals to slash the cost of using mobile phones abroad, for text, data and voice calls, could become law next July following a vote in Brussels. The European Parliament is to vote on whether roaming costs for text messages should be capped. The cost of sending a message is expected to eventually fall by 60% from an average of 23 pence to 9 pence. Voice calls would fall from 36 to 27 pence a minute and customers would be able to set limits on data downloads. A reluctant mobile phone industry first had limits on its roaming charges imposed by the EU in September 2007. However, those applied only to voice calls, not those for texting or browsing the internet.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080923/wl_nm/us_france_economy_sarkozy

Hey, Grandma Moses started late!

A gunman opened fire at a catering college in Kauhajoki, Finland, the nation's second school shooting in a year. The attack left several people dead and more were injured, state broadcaster YLE said, citing police.

The gunman later shot himself, YLE said, and is being treated by paramedics, YLE said, citing the police at Kauhajoki. It didn't give details.

``There has been shooting at the Kauhajoki Home Economics and Catering School,'' police sergeant Jussi Muotio said in a phone interview from Kauhajoki, about 330 kilometers from Helsinki. ``There are casualties, but we don't know yet how many.''

Egypt says negotiations are still ongoing to secure the release of 19 people abducted in southern Egypt.

A cabinet spokesman said that an earlier announcement by the foreign minister that they had been freed and were safe and well was premature.

The group includes five Italians, five Germans and a Romanian, along with eight Egyptians.

The government says they were taken across the border into Sudan, and the hostage takers have demanded a ransom.

Almost 13,000 Chinese babies are in hospital after consuming tainted baby milk, and a further 40,000-plus have been treated, in a scandal which yesterday led to the resignation of the head of the country's quality watchdog, according to state media.

The scandal, which began when dozens of babies suffered kidney stones and even kidney failure after drinking a popular brand that contained the chemical melamine, has since spread to more than 20 companies and affected products including fresh milk, yoghurt and ice-cream.

Countries across Asia are checking imported dairy products from China. Brunei, Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong have already banned or recalled a variety of milk products. Taiwan banned all mainland dairy products on Sunday. In Hong Kong Nestlé, the world's largest food company, said it had recalled a UHT pure milk product after a local food watchdog discovered samples containing a tiny amount of the chemical melamine.

On Sept. 22, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Japan's largest bank, said it's considering a multibillion dollar investment for up to 20% of Morgan Stanley. The news comes only a month after MUFG moved to beef up its U.S. presence with a $3.5-billion purchase of the 35% of UnionBanCal that it didn't already own.

Separately, Nomura Holdings, Japan's biggest brokerage, confirmed today it will buy Lehman Brothers' Asia operations--absorbing the 3,000 employees in the Asia-Pacific region but not the trading assets or liabilities--for an undisclosed amount.

A decade ago, it would have been hard to imagine.

<...>

Japanese financial institutions may finally be serious about growing beyond their home market, where the population is aging and the industry's prospects aren't all that promising. One reason they still have the resources is that they escaped the subprime U.S. mortgage implosion with barely a scratch. The 80s debacle had made them cautious, so they had steered clear of the reckless bets that got the U.S. banks in trouble.

In fact, they had seen this coming since at least last January.  Too bad the U.S. government hadn't -- or at least didn't care to do much about it.

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

WASHINGTON -- Senate and House Democratic leaders said on Monday that they had reached an agreement on their conditions for approving a $700 billion rescue plan for the financial system, including more oversight of the program and a requirement that the government do more to help troubled borrowers refinance their mortgages.

But even as Congressional Democrats and the administration began to narrow their differences, Democrats are bracing for a battle over efforts to limit the pay of executives whose firms seek help and over whether to grant bankruptcy judges authority to modify the mortgages of borrowers in danger of foreclosure.

Investors were skeptical. Concerns that the bailout plan may not move smoothly through Congress contributed to the anxiety in the markets that pushed the Dow Jones industrial average down more than 372 points and pushed crude oil up more than $16 a barrel.

A squadron from the Russian Navy's North Sea Fleet sailed for Venezuela on Monday, a Russian Navy spokesman said, in a bid by Russia to bolster military links in Latin America as relations with the United States continue to deteriorate.

The convoy -- including the nuclear-powered guided missile cruiser Peter the Great and the anti-submarine ship Admiral Chabanenko -- left the fleet's base in Severomorsk bound for the Venezuelan coast, where the ships will take part in joint maneuvers with the Venezuelan Navy sometime in November, said Igor Dygalo, a Russian Navy spokesman.

The bailout: A hundred billion here, there, everywhere
10:14 PM, September 22, 2008  LA Times Money & Co. blog

The numbers coming out of Washington in the last few weeks have been so huge, it all begins to sound like Monopoly money.

Too bad it's all real, and mostly coming from taxpayers' pockets -- if not right away, then down the line.

-skip-

Here is a handy tally from Merrill Lynch & Co. economists of the money now committed as part of the financial-system bailout:

--- Treasury commitment to buy mortgage-related assets from banks: $700 billion.

--- Treasury capital commitment to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: up to $200 billion.

--- Expansion of temporary dollar "swap" lines with foreign central banks: $180 billion.

--- Treasury fortifying of the Federal Reserve's balance sheet: $100 billion.

--- Federal Reserve loan to American International Group: $85 billion.

--- Treasury commitment to insure money market mutual funds: $50 billion.

--- Federal Reserve loans to banks via discount window: $33 billion.

--- Federal Reserve loans to securities dealers: $20 billion.

--- Treasury initial planned purchases of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage securities: $10 billion.

NEW YORK -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared Monday that the turmoil on Wall Street was rooted in part in U.S. military intervention abroad and voiced hope that the next American administration would retreat from what he called President Bush's "logic of force."

He also asserted, in an interview with The Times, that Israel was doomed like "an airplane that has lost its engine" and that Western intelligence documents questioning the peaceful purpose of Iran's nuclear program were crude forgeries.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - World leaders and top officials on Monday renewed pledges to help Africa dramatically reduce poverty, but African governments told rich nations they are lagging on previous promises of increased aid.

In a political declaration after a U.N. meeting on Africa's development needs, countries pledged to mobilize resources to end poverty, hunger and underdevelopment.

"We stress that eradicating poverty, particularly in Africa, is the greatest global challenge facing the world today," they said.

The meeting expressed concern that commitments by rich industrialized nations of doubling aid to Africa by 2010 will not be reached, while also welcoming new aid flows from emerging economies and the private sector.

White House presses for swift action by Congress on bailout
As turmoil continues on Wall Street, the Bush administration must accommodate Democratic demands.
By Peter G. Gosselin and Richard Simon, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
September 23, 2008
WASHINGTON -- Rushing to win quick congressional -- and public -- approval for its $700-billion bailout of the tottering financial system, the Bush administration moved toward compromises Monday that would have been inconceivable even a few weeks ago, including new aid for debt- laden homeowners.

But even as negotiators signaled that some version of the bailout bill would almost certainly pass, perhaps this week, the financial markets threatened to pop another rivet.

The Dow Jones industrial average sank 372.25 points, or 3.3%, on Monday after climbing nearly 800 points over two days last week on initial word of the rescue proposal. As many investors shifted money from stocks to commodities as the trading week began, the price of oil, gold and other commodities soared, while the dollar plunged against other major currencies.

Meanwhile, President Bush ratcheted up pressure for a deal.

"The whole world is watching to see if we can act quickly to shore up our markets and prevent damage to . . . businesses, our housing sector and retirement accounts," he said in a statement.

The action now centers on bargaining between Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson and Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

Although the measure must also pass the Senate, the administration has apparently calculated that if it can win House approval, senators will go along. Administration officials are understood to have had only a few conversations with Frank's Senate counterpart, Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.

Frank laid out the price of his support for the government bailout Sunday in a 42-page draft that congressional staffers and administration officials said was now the working document for negotiations.

In a briefing for reporters, Frank said agreement had been reached in several broad areas, among them: creation of an independent oversight board to monitor the Treasury Department's handling of the bailout and a requirement that the department seek to minimize home foreclosures by slicing the interest rate and even the outstanding loan amount of many of the troubled mortgages it buys.

Frank said at the early afternoon briefing that he and Paulson had also agreed to a Democratic proposal for Washington to get rights to buy stock in the companies whose troubled assets the government buys. That would allow taxpayers to benefit from increases in the companies' stock prices. But by the end of the day Frank indicated that an obstacle to agreement on such a provision had developed, though he didn't elaborate.

House Democrats and the Bush administration also remained far apart on several crucial issues.

For example, Frank wants to give the government the power to cap the compensation of executives of the firms helped by the bailout.

"I just think it is inconceivable . . . that the taxpayer should put money at risk because of bad decisions made by people who would then continue to be rewarded without any restriction," Frank said.

Tokyo - He's a veteran politician known for his unruly tongue and gaffes that have alienated everyone from the nation of China to the elderly and the infirm. He's a former Olympic sharpshooter who avows a deep interest in manga comics, one of Japan's most popular cultural exports. He has an affinity for gold necklaces.

Now, Taro Aso is being tapped by the Liberal Democratic Party, which has presided over Japan for most of the past half-century, as the one to restore its badly tarnished reputation at home - and offer reassurance abroad that the world's second-largest economy speaks with a steady voice at a time of global financial turmoil and pressing diplomatic concerns.

Mr. Aso easily walked away with the party's presidency Monday, garnering 351 of the 525 votes cast and trouncing four competitors. All but certain to become Japan's 13th prime minister in 19 years, pending approval by the LDP-controlled lower house of parliament Wednesday, he promises a sharp counterpoint to his lackluster predecessor. He may try to capitalize on that fresh tone - as well as an expected ratings bounce - by quickly calling a general election.

The Pakistani President, Asif Ali Zardari, will plead with President George Bush today to change a policy which is being blamed for one of his country's worst terrorist atrocities.

"We hope the US will change policy because this is what is needed," said Pakistan's ambassador to the UK, Wajid Shamsul Hassan, after 53 people were killed and more than 250 injured in the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad. He argued that the Bush administration's decision to allow cross-border incursions from Afghanistan into Pakistan, including by ground forces on at least one occasion, had been counterproductive "because they are not killing high-value targets, they are killing civilians".

Mr Zardari's talks with President Bush in New York, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, have been scheduled amid heightened security fears in the wake of the bombing.

BAGHDAD -- In Adhamiya, a neighborhood that only a year ago was among the most dangerous in Baghdad, the violence last week seemed almost negligible. A shootout near a checkpoint left two people dead on Sunday. Another man was killed on Monday by a small bomb placed under a car.

[...]

But the deaths quickly drew the attention of the American officers stationed in the neighborhood. Both outbursts involved members of the Awakening Councils, the citizen patrols paid by the United States to fight the insurgency.

And both were seen as a worrisome sign of the tension and infighting that have rippled through the Sunni-dominated Awakening groups in recent weeks, just as the American military plans to transfer control of about half the councils to the Shiite-led government.

[...]

But in Adhamiya and in some other areas of Iraq, the patrols, hailed by many as heroic for making the streets safer, have posed increasing problems. Commanders quarrel and jockey for power and territory. Finger-pointing and threats are common. Some residents complain that the men, not a few of them swaggering street toughs, use their power to intimidate people. Sometimes violence erupts.

... and you know they're gonna say there's no way anyone could have seen this coming.

"Ideas or the lack of them can cause disease." - Kurt Vonnegut

HARARE, Zimbabwe -- Thabo Mbeki's resignation as president of South Africa could hardly have come at a worse time for Zimbabwe, where he had just brokered a power-sharing deal that has now reached a pivotal -- and perilous -- moment, analysts say.

Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of Zimbabwe's opposition and the prime minister-designate, said Monday that the fall of Mr. Mbeki, the region's most influential politician, was a blow to Zimbabwe.

But he also said it was now incumbent on the African leaders who named Mr. Mbeki the mediator for Zimbabwe to ensure that the promise of the deal was fulfilled, despite the uncertainty about whether Mr. Mbeki would continue in the role.

"I think they're aware of their responsibility to complete the negotiations," said Mr. Tsvangirai, who spoke with serious understatement during an interview in the private study of his home here in the capital. The interview was Mr. Tsvangirai's first since Mr. Mbeki was effectively fired by his own party just days after triumphantly concluding the Zimbabwe agreement.

Mr. Tsvangirai, 56, and Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, 84, are at an impasse in the first crucial test of Mr. Mugabe's willingness to relinquish some of the complete control he has exercised during 28 years in power. Mr. Mugabe did not enter negotiations until July, after African election monitors concluded that a June runoff was not free or fair and African leaders insisted on talks. He said at the signing ceremony for the agreement that he was committed to it.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- As diplomatic missions beefed up their security in the aftermath of the Marriott Hotel bombing on Saturday, a senior Afghan diplomat was kidnapped Monday when militants fired on his car in the northwest city of Peshawar.

Five or six gunmen opened fire at the car of the diplomat, Afghanistan's consul general, as it passed through a wealthy neighborhood of Peshawar, according to the Afghan Foreign Ministry.

The driver was killed and the consul, Abdul Khaliq Farahi, was taken away, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Sultan Ahmad Baheen, said. Mr. Farahi, who has served in Peshawar since 2001, was one of several candidates to become Afghanistan's next ambassador to Pakistan.

The kidnapping was yet another indication of the country's rising insecurity, which spread to the capital, Islamabad, with the Marriott bombing. The attack killed 53 people, including the Czech ambassador and two United States defense officials.

The South African government is poised to shift to the left after the ruling African National Congress indicated that its deputy leader, Kgalema Motlanthe, a prominent trade unionist, will become interim president following Thabo Mbeki's forced resignation.

The ANC will not publicly confirm Motlanthe's selection until parliament is formally informed and votes in the new president, for the remaining nine months of Mbeki's term, on Thursday.

But yesterday the ANC leader, Jacob Zuma, hinted that Motlanthe was the choice and party officials did not deny it.

"I am convinced, if given that responsibility, he would be equal to the task," Zuma told reporters.

However, it appeared that Mbeki has not given up the political wrangle with Zuma after a Johannesburg radio station reported that the outgoing president has attached his name to a legal petition seeking to overturn the high court ruling earlier this month that threw out a long-standing corruption case against Zuma and accused Mbeki of misusing the judicial system to keep his rival from power. It was that ruling that prompted the ANC leadership to vote to remove Mbeki.

Motlanthe, who was jailed for 10 years by the apartheid regime, played a leading role in ousting Mbeki and installing Zuma as ANC leader last year.

Members of President George W. Bush's own party are voicing their opposition to his financial rescue plan even as Democratic leaders narrow their differences with the administration.

Congressional leaders said the $700 billion measure is needed to calm market turmoil and they hope to complete talks and pass the measure as soon as this week. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson agreed with Democratic demands that Congress can create an oversight structure, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said.

Accord between Democrats and the Bush administration came as Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, said the proposal is ``neither workable nor comprehensive, despite its enormous price tag.'' Another Republican senator, Jim DeMint of South Carolina, said Paulson's plan ``could make matters worse by socializing an entire sector of the U.S. economy.''

(This is dated 6 hours ago, so it is more current than the stories last night where Frank's bolded claim was denied)

A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith

Saying recent oil discoveries give Brazil new opportunities it can't squander, Lula outlined wide-ranging investment needs including $73 billion for energy projects, $70 billion for housing developing, $58 billion for shipbuilding and $25.8 billion for pulp and paper. He also detailed investments needed for improving infrastructure, building refineries and constructing a high-speed train.

Much of the program seems presents for business ($25.8 billion for pulp and paper!?), but the overall idea seems similar to that of the more hard-left Latin American countries. And note the high-speed railway! So on the US continent, both Argentina and Brazil might precede the US.

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

"The queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. 'Off with his head!' she said without even looking around."

-- "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"

Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama.

Channeling his inner Queen of Hearts, John McCain furiously, and apparently without even looking around at facts, said Chris Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, should be decapitated. This childish reflex provoked the Wall Street Journal to editorialize that "McCain untethered" -- disconnected from knowledge and principle -- had made a "false and deeply unfair" attack on Cox that was "unpresidential" and demonstrated that McCain "doesn't understand what's happening on Wall Street any better than Barack Obama does."

[...]

It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

Myanmar's longest-serving political prisoner, journalist Win Tin, was freed on Tuesday after 19 years in jail and immediately vowed to continue his struggle against 46 years of unbroken military rule.

"I will keep fighting until the emergence of democracy in this country," he told reporters outside a friend's house in the former Burma's main city, Yangon. He was still wearing his light-blue prison clothes.

The ailing 79-year old was arrested in July 1989 and sentenced to jail for giving shelter to a girl thought to have received an illegal abortion.

The first evidence that millions of tons of a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide is being released into the atmosphere from beneath the Arctic seabed has been discovered by scientists.

The Independent has been passed details of preliminary findings suggesting that massive deposits of sub-sea methane are bubbling to the surface as the Arctic region becomes warmer and its ice retreats.

Underground stores of methane are important because scientists believe their sudden release has in the past been responsible for rapid increases in global temperatures, dramatic changes to the climate, and even the mass extinction of species. Scientists aboard a research ship that has sailed the entire length of Russia's northern coast have discovered intense concentrations of methane - sometimes at up to 100 times background levels - over several areas covering thousands of square miles of the Siberian continental shelf.

In the past few days, the researchers have seen areas of sea foaming with gas bubbling up through "methane chimneys" rising from the sea floor. They believe that the sub-sea layer of permafrost, which has acted like a "lid" to prevent the gas from escaping, has melted away to allow methane to rise from underground deposits formed before the last ice age.

They have warned that this is likely to be linked with the rapid warming that the region has experienced in recent years.

Science News Share   Blog   Cite Print   Email   Bookmark Modest Carbon Dioxide Cutbacks May Be Too Little, Too Late For Coral Reefs

ScienceDaily (Sep. 23, 2008) -- How much carbon dioxide is too much? According to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) greenhouse gases in the atmosphere need to be stabilized at levels low enough to "prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system."

But scientists have come to realize that an even more acute danger than climate change is lurking in the world's oceans--one that is likely to be triggered by CO2 levels that are modest by climate standards.

Ocean acidification could devastate coral reefs and other marine ecosystems even if atmospheric carbon dioxide stabilizes at 450 ppm, a level well below that of many climate change forecasts, report chemical oceanographers Long Cao and Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

[...]

Atmospheric CO2 absorbed by the oceans' surface water produces carbonic acid, the same acid that gives soft drinks their fizz, making certain carbonate minerals dissolve more readily in seawater. This is especially true for aragonite, the mineral used by corals and many other marine organisms to grow their skeletons. For corals to be able to build reefs, which requires rapid growth and strong skeletons, the surrounding water needs to be highly supersaturated with aragonite.

"Before the industrial revolution, over 98% of warm water coral reefs were surrounded by open ocean waters at least 3.5 times supersaturated with aragonite" says Cao. "But even if atmospheric CO2 stabilizes at the current level of 380 ppm, fewer than half of existing coral reef will remain in such an environment. If the levels stabilize at 450 ppm, fewer than 10% of reefs would be in waters with the kind of chemistry that has sustained coral reefs in the past."

For the ecologically productive cold waters near the poles, the prospects are equally grim, says Cao. "At atmospheric CO2 levels as low as 450 ppm, large parts of the Southern Ocean, the Arctic Ocean, and the North Pacific would experience a rise in acidity that would violate US Environmental Protection Agency water quality standards." Under those conditions the shells of many marine organisms would dissolve, including those at the base of the food chain.

THINGS have been going well in recent weeks for Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president. Seeing him on the telephone to Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, while on holiday last month in the south of France, a friend called out from the other side of the swimming pool: "You are the master of the world."

Sarkozy, 53, who has sometimes been compared to Napoleon, may well believe it. From Kabul to Tbilisi, the pint-sized leader has a dog in each fight. He even struck out last week at Somali pirates who had taken a French couple hostage in the Gulf of Aden and stayed up all night to receive a blow-by-blow account of the daring rescue mission.

There is nothing like a vindictive former wife. however, for puncturing presidential pomp. The sudden reappearance on stage of Cécilia, who left Sarkozy for another man, was an unwelcome surprise for the French leader just when he thought that his troubled ex had been written out of the drama.

Cécilia, 50, was divorced from the president last October to marry Richard Attias, a Moroccan-born events organiser, but does not seem to have overcome the bitterness that prompted her, shortly after the separation, to accuse the hyperactive "Sarko" of being a karaoke-obsessed egotist incapable of true love.