EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Former Bavarian prime minister Edmund Stoiber, currently head of an advisory body aimed at cutting red tape across the EU, lashed out on Monday (22 September) against EU internal market commissioner Charley McCreevy for not responding to his proposals.

"I hope the European Commission, especially commissioner Charlie McCreevy will say yes or no to these proposals, which are not only consultative documents, but proposals to be taken seriously," said Mr Stoiber during a hearing in the European Parliament's legal affairs committee Monday night.

Edmund Stoiber has launched a competition called "Best Idea for Red Tape Reduction Award"

The former Bavarian prime minister was appointed head of high level group in 2007 by European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso, when the EU adopted a goal of cutting 25% of the block's red tape by 2012.

According to the first results of the high level group, the European Union could save up to €7.3 billion a year only by reducing the obligations that EU legislation currently puts on business to provide information.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Hedge funds and private equity should be watched closely, but no new regulation in the field is needed, EU internal market commissioner Charlie McCreevy told MEPs who called for legislation to make the way such funds work more transparent.

"I don't believe it is necessary at this stage to tar hedge funds and private equity with the same brush as we use for the regulated sector. The issues relating to the current turmoil are different," Mr McCreevy told parliamentarians gathered for a plenary session in Brussels on Monday (22 September).

Commissioner McCreevy thinks there is no need to regulate hedge funds and stresses they have "positive effects" too.

He underlined that "several recent market initiatives indicate" that the need to remain vigilant is "understood" by the sector.

"Our role should be to monitor closely these and other developments in the market and be ready to respond if and when necessary," he said.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - A €23 billion legal claim against the Russian state over the break-up of oil company Yukos will test EU-Russia energy relations and Russia's fitness to rejoin the international "political family," the plaintiffs say.

Yukos' main shareholder, GML, has brought forward the legal challenge, arguing that Russia violated a major international energy pact - the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) - by snatching Yukos assets back in 2004.

Yukos oil tanker - does the ECT rule-book apply in Russia?

The ECT is binding on Russia because it signed the charter even if ratification never took place, GML says, with the first hearing in the legal arbitration to take place in The Hague on 17 November.

If GML wins, it may end up enforcing payment by using European courts to grab the foreign assets of Russian state-owned energy company Rosneft.

DW talked with EU Counterterrorism Coordinator Gilles de Kerchove about the successes and pitfalls of Europe's fight against terror, which increasingly involves the Internet.

The European Parliament is debating new plans to combat terrorism, including the creation of new offenses such as recruiting and training terrorists. The discussion is increasingly focused on the growing use of the Internet as a terror tool, and the threat to data-protection standards in the EU.

DW-WORLD: What are the priorities in the EU's fight against terrorism at the moment?

Gilles de Kerchove: The strategy we adopted in 2005 foresees four main pillars: to prevent people from being radicalized; to pursue actors and prosecute them; improve protection of borders; and improve ways member states respond to a major attack.

For me, the priorities are to emphasize prevention and to work on consequence of a major attack.

Gaugazia - a 170,000-strong, Turkish-speaking, semi-autonomous part of Moldova - has formally recognised the independence of Georgian rebel enclaves South Ossetia and Abkhazia, PAP reports. The move comes amid fears Russian action in Georgia could encourage separatism across Europe.

The US government is buying bad debt for $700 billion. Now Washington is asking other countries to jump in and help, too, but the Germans are bowing out. Believing that the rescue package sends the wrong signal, experts from the country's leading economics think tanks argue it's the right call.

Banking center Frankfurt: German financial institutions are in better shape than their American counterparts.

It's not a call for assistance; it's a scream for help. US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is asking other countries to help buy up bad US debt. The US government is putting up $700 billion in taxpayer money in the hopes that the measure might restore stability in the financial system. Some countries are planning to help. But the German government has answered this call quickly and clearly: no.

Economics experts think that's the right response. As they see it, in the long run, those responsible for the crisis -- who have been cashed out with high salaries and bonuses for years -- will not be penalized for billions "but will be let off the hook like everyone else," says Carsten Meier of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW). According to Meier, by injecting capital into the market, the US government is putting everyone who speculated and lost back on their feet and thereby standing in the way of a market cleanup.

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia: A bribery scandal and a coalition-building opposition paved the way for a new government in Slovenia yesterday, as an ex-Yugoslav communist secured the narrowest of poll victories.

The centre-left Social Democrats led by Borut Pahor seized a one-seat victory, defeating Prime Minister Janez Jansa's SDS party with 99.9 per cent of the votes counted, the country's electoral commission said.

Mr Pahor, 44, was poised to become one of the EU's youngest heads of government after his SD party secured 30.5 per cent of the votes, winning 29 of the 90 seats in parliament, against 29.32 per cent of the votes and 28 seats for Mr Jansa's SDS.

Mr Pahor's centre-left allies, Zares and the Liberal Democracy party (LDS) scored 9.4per cent and 5.19 per cent of the vote respectively.

The final official results will be published on September 29 after the votes cast abroad are counted but there was little chance they would alter the final outcome, analysts said.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain on Tuesday urged the creation of system "of fair chances for all and fair rules applied to all" in an address to his Labor Party's annual conference designed to silence rebellious critics seeking his downfall.

"I know what I believe. I know who I am. I know what I want to do in this job," Brown told participants at the conference in Manchester, England, according to Britain's Press Association news agency. "And I know that the way to deal with tough times is to face them down. Stay true to your beliefs."

Referring to feuding within his party, he went on: "The British people would not forgive us if at this time we looked inwards to the affairs of just our party when our duty is to the interests of our country. The people of Britain would never forget if we failed to put them first. And friends, they would be right."

Billing the address as the "speech of his life," The Times of London said Brown's allies in the cabinet were seeking to defuse a rebellion among Labor legislators "by arguing that he should be allowed until next summer to rescue his party."

The centre-right Cabinet of Silvio Berlusconi today approved the deployment of 500 troops for three months to take on the Mafia in Caserta, close to Naples, where six African immigrants were gunned down last week.

The Government, which took office in May, deployed 3,000 troops during the summer to patrol alongside police in Italian cities as part of a crackdown on street crime and illegal immigration.

However the latest move marks the first time Italy has used soldiers to fight the Mafia since the 1990s, after the murder in Palermo of two senior anti-Mafia judges, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, in 1992. That operation, codenamed Sicilian Vespers, lasted for six years.

Roberto Maroni, the Interior Minister, said that the three-month deployment to Caserta could be extended. It showed that the state was responding swiftly to the massacre of the immigrants at Castelvolturno in the Caserta area last Friday, he said, adding: "First we dispatched an extra 400 police, now we have taken the decision to deploy the troops".

German justice minister Brigitte Zypries has said the European Court of Justice must refrain from handing over to the European Commission competences it does not have, such as in criminal law. "It is a political problem the member states need to face," she told the FAZ paper.

A chill out of relations between Russia and Ukraine may lead to a trade war between the two brotherly nations. Russia will obviously suffer losses as a result of a possible war, although Ukraine will have to face much bigger problems at this point.

Ukraine's Investgazeta magazine wrote that Russia may eventually pull out from a free trade agreement with Ukraine. The export of the Ukrainian tube rolling, machine-building and defense industries will face a very serious danger at this point. Hundreds of Ukrainian enterprises will suffer multi-million losses, for the production of many of them will become a lot less competitive on the Russian market. Other companies will fail to redirect their export shipments within a short period of time. To crown it all, many Ukrainian companies will not be able to reach other European markets because of the fact that their products would be noncompetitive there.

Four Ukrainian meat-packing factories were forced to shut down their production in 2006, when Russia introduced an embargo on shipments of Ukraine's meat and milk products in 2006.

Though Germany moved up two spots in corruption rankings to number 14 on the list of 180, Transparency International has urged the government to do more to fight corruption.

Global anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International praised Germany's "increased efforts" to root out corruption sparked by the massive Siemens scandal but pointed out that smaller German firms were slower in their commitment to counter graft.

"The sparks of corruption prevention must spread to the middle class," head of the TI's German chapter Sylvia Schenk said in a statement on Tuesday. "Whoever thinks that morality is separable put his business at risk and sends a ruinous signal to his personnel. The awareness of personal responsibility must increase."

The group urged the German government to take concerted measures to tackle corruption in politics.

Russia's southern republic of Ingushetia is verging on civil war, a human rights group says, accusing officials of state-sponsored terror.

The Moscow Helsinki Group says the federal authorities in the Caucasus republic are engaged in kidnappings, torture and extra-judicial killings.

The authorities say they are fighting a war against terrorism.

Attacks against security forces - often carried out by Islamist militants - have intensified in Ingushetia.

he suicide gunman who murdered nine students at a Finnish college today had been questioned and released by police.

The 22-year-old student, who was only granted a firearms licence last month, was seen just yesterday by officers over a video he posted on the internet, Finland's interior minister Anne Holmlund admitted today.

She said they wanted to talk to him about YouTube postings in which he is seen firing a handgun but he was freed because they had no legal reason to keep him detained.

Polish pensioners will lose around €60 a month off the value of their pay-outs due to inflation when the euro comes to Poland, Law and Justice (PiS) opposition party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski told Dziennik. Warsaw is aiming to join the eurozone in 2011, but PiS wants the move put off by 20 years.

A new poll by the Sentio institute for the Nationen and Klassekampen newspapers in Norway shows 54.4 percent of people don't want to join the EU, while 36.1 percent would support the move. Sentio said anti-EU feeling is on the up in the ruling Labour Party and the opposition Progress Party.

The Belgian government of prime minister Yves Leterme is facing a new crisis and a possible collapse, after the Flemish center-right nationalist party N-VA left the coalition on Sunday (21 September) and announced it would no longer take part in talks on state reforms.

"We are no longer part of this federal coalition government," N-VA party leader Bart de Wewer said, according to the French news agency AFP.

Manneken Pis - the symbol of Brussels

The N-VA is part of the seven-party coalition government which was only formed in March after nine months of stalemate and has barely held together since then.

It is also the smaller ally of a "cartel" formed with the Christian Democrat CD&V party of Mr Leterme, holding the largest bloc of 30 seats in the 150-strong federal parliament.

French President Sarkozy called Tuesday for a summit to tackle the global financial crisis and urged world leaders to draw lessons from capitalist excesses in a speech before the UN General Assembly.

In a hard-hitting speech before the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, Sept 23, French President Nicolas Sarkozy demanded that those responsible for the global financial turbulence be punished and called for a "regulated capitalism."

 

"Today, millions of people across the world fear for their savings, for their apartment, for the funds they have put in banks. It is our duty to give them clear answers," the French president, who chairs the EU's presidency, said. "Who is responsible for this disaster? May those who are responsible be punished and held accountable," he said.

French energy firm EDF is expected to announce a £12.4bn deal to buy British Energy, the firm which operates the UK's eight nuclear power plants.

In addition, Centrica, which owns British Gas, will take 25% of all power generated by British Energy once it is in French hands, the BBC has learnt.

Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly is to step down from government.

Gordon Brown said Ms Kelly, who has four children under 11, wanted to be with them "as they grow up".

The prime minister told the BBC she told him of her plans in May. He said her decision was "nothing to do with politics" and she remained "a fan".

Mr Brown, who sought to reassert his leadership with his big conference speech on Tuesday, denied suggestions further resignations might follow.

I suppose the four new plants will need to use Areva's coming containment vessel production capacity, so I can't say when the new plants come on line.  Given that the UK is the windiest in Europe, i'll bow out of the argument, except to say I believe windpower can get to 5,000 more onshore MWs far faster than EdF can get the first plant operating, and with capacity factors approaching 40%.

Skennah Kowa

We know it's an increasingly common way to start reports on anything other than yet-another-takeover or collapse of a US financial institution, but we have to say it. On a "normal" news day, this story might have warranted a front page headline:

The eurozone has fallen into recession, with industry particularly badly hit by the fall-out from global economic turmoil, according to a closely watched survey by information group Markit Economics, the FT reports on Wednesday.

Private sector output in the 15-country region contracted in September for the fourth consecutive month, according to eurozone purchasing managers' indices. The pace of decline was the fastest since the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US, with manufacturing faring worse than services.

African leaders warned that the financial crisis hitting advanced economies was no reason to slash foreign aid commitments to Africa, which is in danger of falling far short of a series of UN goals.

African leaders warned Monday, Sept. 22, that the financial crisis enveloping advanced economies was no reason to slash foreign aid commitments to the African continent, which is in danger of falling far short of a series of UN goals on reducing poverty.

Their advice came as world leaders promised a renewed effort to pull Africa out of poverty and into the "mainstream of the global economy," after a one-day United Nations conference taking stock of the continent's progress.

"Eradicating poverty, particularly in Africa, is the greatest global challenge facing the world today," read a declaration adopted by the UN General Assembly Monday evening.

More than 40 world leaders took part in the UN conference in New York, which came one day before heads of state begin speeches to mark the annual opening of the General Assembly.

South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel and nine other cabinet members are resigning along with President Thabo Mbeki.

The BBC's Peter Biles says the resignations are a major blow to the ANC government.

Mr Manuel is however ready to serve the new president, his spokesman says. The ANC is divided between supporters of Mr Mbeki and ANC leader Jacob Zuma.

Mr Zuma's supporters had said they wanted the cabinet to stay in place.

On Monday, Mr Zuma had sought to reassure the business community and said there would be no change of economic policy.

Persistently high corruption in low-income countries amounts to an "ongoing humanitarian disaster," global watchdog Transparency International has said.

"In the poorest countries, corruption levels can mean the difference between life and death, when money for hospitals or clean water is in play," said the organization's chairperson, Huguette Labelle.

"The continuing high levels of corruption and poverty plaguing many of the world's societies amount to an ongoing humanitarian disaster and cannot be tolerated," she said in presenting the organization's annual corruption perceptions index in Berlin on Monday, Sept. 22.

The 2008 report lists 180 nations on a scale from zero (highly corrupt) to 10 (highly clean) based on expert assessments and opinion surveys of public sector corruption.

Denmark, New Zealand and Sweden share the highest score at 9.3, followed immediately by Singapore at 9.2. Bringing up the rear is Somalia at 1.0, slightly trailing Iraq and Myanmar at 1.3 and Haiti at 1.4.

Bahrain-based Investcorp launches one-billion-dollar credit fund to acquire real estate loans in US.

 
MANAMA - Bahrain-based Investcorp on Monday announced the launch of a one-billion-dollar credit fund to acquire real estate loans in the United States hit by the sub-prime mortgage crisis.

"Investcorp Real Estate Credit Fund... has been formed to acquire whole loans, mezzanine loans, and commercial mortgage-backed securities collateralised by commercial and residential real estate assets throughout the United States," the asset management firm said in a statement.

A sovereign wealth fund from the Gulf region committed 850 million dollars to the credit fund and Investcorp has committed the rest, it said without identifying the Gulf fund.

The US investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have announced that they will become full-service banks. Some German commentators see it as the end of the age of big gamblers. Others aren't so sure.

 Traffic passes Morgan Stanley headquarters in New York. Behind the calm lies a storm of change. Right when everyone thought the roller-coaster ride of the US financial crisis was over, along came another jarring twist. Since 1933, when the Glass-Steagall Act was passed, US banks have been segregated into investment banks and retail banks. While retail banks plodded along using depositor capital, Wall Street investment banks could take enormous risks -- with enormous payoffs.

And so it was for 75 years until Sunday night's announcement that Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs -- America's last two independent investment banks -- had decided to switch sides and transform themselves into retail banks. In doing so, they have sounded the death knell for the Glass-Steagall structure and -- for now, perhaps -- for a high-risk, high-roller era.

In their new incarnations, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs will offer consumer-banking services and gain permanent access to the discount window of the Federal Reserve. At the same time, they will be subject to the much more stringent regulations of the Fed rather than just those of the Securities and Exchange Commission. In effect, they will need to have more capital on hand relative to the amount they wish to borrow. That means less risk to play with.

Lalit Kishore Chaudhury, the chief executive of Graziano Trasmissioni India, an Italian car parts company, was beaten to death at his company offices in one of the country's largest industrial zones on the outskirts of Delhi on Monday in a violent industrial protest.

A meeting with former employees to resolve a long-running dispute dissolved into a riot in which protesters overpowered security guards and turned on Mr Chaudhury and his staff. About 20 people were injured.

The attack at Graziano's Greater Noida plant was sparked by the company's dismissal of 200 workers in a pay dispute and has raised alarm among foreign companies operating in India. Many have already taken measures to give their personnel greater protection, following the wave of bomb attacks in Delhi this month.

<...>

Farmers, backed by the opposition Trinamool Congress, have laid siege to land intended for the plant that will produce the Nano, billed as the world's cheapest car and a flagship of India's technical advance. Activists have staged often violent protests demanding that the government return 400 acres to farmers who had not accepted compensation for their relocation.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The FBI is investigating four major U.S. financial institutions whose collapse helped trigger a $700 billion bailout plan by the Bush administration, The Associated Press has learned.

Two law enforcement officials said Tuesday the FBI is looking at potential fraud by mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and insurer American International Group Inc. Additionally, a senior law enforcement official said Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. also is under investigation.

The inquiries will focus on the financial institutions and the individuals that ran them, the senior law enforcement official said.

"Latest Japanese food scandal"

Police set to search Mikasa Foods, 20 other sites : National : DAILY YOMIURI ONLINE (The Daily Yomiuri)

Police in Osaka, Fukuoka and Kumamoto prefectures will search Mikasa Foods, an Osaka-based rice-processing and sales firm, and more than 20 other sites Wednesday, in connection with a tainted rice scandal, sources said Tuesday.

Mikasa has come under fire for diverting rice meant for industrial use for human consumption. The police will search the firm and related sites with a view to building a prosecutable case on suspicion of fraud.

Mikasa boosted the price of tainted rice 10-fold by repurchasing rice that had been sold to another firm on paper only, the sources said.

The firm also mislabeled the tainted rice as edible and sold it to a middleman in Fukuoka Prefecture.

<...>

A former employee told The Yomiuri Shimbun that the firm resorted to the deceptive practice because it had to pad its sales for July.

A defiant Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed yesterday to press ahead with Iran's nuclear programme, telling the United Nations that he would not bow to pressure from "bullying countries" controlled by "Zionists murderers".

The Iranian President's vow came as news emerged that Russia had scuppered plans for talks on new sanctions on Iran in retaliation for US calls for sanctions over its military adventure in Georgia.

Britain, the United States, France, Germany, China and Russia had planned to hold talks tomorrow on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on drafting a new resolution on Iran, but American officials admitted that any discussions would be fruitless without Russian participation.

In a rambling speech punctuated by anti-Semitic bluster, an emboldened Mr Ahmadinejad vowed not to bow to "illegal demands" to halt Iran's nuclear activities which he defended as the peaceful pursuit of civilian energy.

They call it Goldmine Sachs. And well they might. Because the Wall Street giant has become the first major investment bank to see its average salary top half a million dollars.

The extraordinary figure is disclosed in the company's latest regulatory filings and comes as a record bonus season draws to a close on both sides of the Atlantic.

It is sure to be used to entice people to join the bank, which expects to boost its number of employees by up to 10 per cent in anticipation of another bumper year for trading and mergers and acquisitions activity.

Last year, Goldman Sachs paid out $11.7bn (£6.7bn) to its 22,425 employees - around 3,000 of whom are in London.

Hank Paulson, the chairman and chief executive, was paid $38m in salary, shares and options - a 21 per cent increase on 2004. An average figure per staff member of $521,000 bursts through a barrier not even breached during the dot-com boom in 1999 and 2000.

This is a 12 per cent increase on the $466,000 average disclosed for 2004. It is twice the level of average pay at rivals Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley.