The European Commission President, Jose Manuel Barroso, is preparing to undergo a grilling by MEPs in a first question and answer session in Strasbourg.

The hour-long Q&A session will be based on Prime Minister's Questions in the British House of Commons.

Representatives of the parliament's main groupings will each have the chance to ask any question they want.

MEPs are hoping it will liven up the parliament's proceedings and add a touch of spontaneity.

Poland is keen for the EU's new diplomatic corps to be a unique type of institution, to take half its staff from national capitals and to gobble up parts of the European Commission's development department.

The proposals - obtained by EUobserver - were put forward in a two page-long paper dated 5 October and are currently doing the rounds in Brussels together with competing ideas from other member states.

The Polish paper calls for the European External Action Service (EEAS) to be "a sui generis institution similar to an executive agency" instead of a normal EU institution such as the EU parliament or the commission itself.

Say you are a frequent flier and you check in faster than most people. A network of advanced cameras at the airport can measure your speed and alert the control room. The system knows terrorists tend to be nervous and almost never stop for coffee. This makes a speedy traveller a suspicious traveller.

You may also want to think twice about using the airport bathroom more than once. There is a good chance you will be picked out for an extensive security check.

These are some of the things being studied by an EU-funded project for detecting suspicious behaviour, Adabts (Automatic Detection of Abnormal Behaviour and Threats in Crowded Spaces.)

Putting security cameras to use

"We monitor all deviant behaviour," says Maarten Hogervorst of TNO Defence and Security, an independent Dutch research institute. The Adabts project, in which TNO is a partner, is only one among hundreds of security projects under the umbrella of the EU research programme Security. The programme has a budget of 1.4 billion euros until 2013.

Nick Griffin has claimed the British National Party is widely supported by rank-and-file soldiers after a group of former generals warned that the Armed Forces were in danger of being hijacked by the far right.

The BNP leader rejected their criticism of his party - suggesting they were "in the pockets" of the Tories - and insisted his views were being misrepresented.

Ex-military leaders wrote to The Times voicing anger at the BNP's tactic of using images of Winston Churchill and wartime insignia during recent European election campaigns.

The letter, signed by former heads of the Army General Sir Mike Jackson and General Sir Richard Richard Dannatt among others, said far-right groups were "fundamentally at odds" with the values of the British military.

"We call on all those who seek to hijack the good name of Britain's military for their own advantage to cease and desist," they said. "The values of these extremists -- many of whom are essentially racist -- are fundamentally at odds with the values of the modern British military, such as tolerance and fairness."

General Jackson specifically attacked the BNP for using the Army's image. He said: "The BNP is claiming that it has a better relationship with the Armed Forces than other political parties. How dare they use the image of the Army, in particular, to promote their policies. These people are beyond the pale."

BELGRADE, October 20 (RIA Novosti) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev reiterated on Tuesday that Moscow was looking to reset relations with the U.S. and other Western partners, including NATO.

Medvedev arrived in Serbia on Tuesday for the first visit to the country by a Russian head of state since Vladimir Putin's trip in 2001.

"Russia is ready to harmonize relations with the United States and other Western partners, including constructive cooperation with NATO in resolving common tasks," Medvedev, the first foreign leader to address Serbia's parliament, said.

Commenting on Belgrade's European Union ambitions, Medvedev said Moscow had never been against EU expansion.

"We have already established a strategic partnership with the European Union. It is designed to be a pillar of the new Europe. We are not and cannot be against the accession to the EU of new members, including southeast European countries," the Russian leader said.

French prosecutors have demanded an 18-month suspended sentence for former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin in his smear trial, but no jail time.

Mr de Villepin stands accused of plotting to hurt President Nicolas Sarkozy's chances of winning the 2007 presidential election, which he denies.

He had faced a maximum of five years in jail if convicted of the most serious charges in the high-profile trial.

The Swedish presidency claimed today to have secured a "broad political agreement" on the structure and powers of a high-level body to monitor risks to EU financial stability.

Anders Borg, the Swedish finance minister, said that "substantial progress" had been made in finalising the details of the new body, to be called the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB). He said that ministers had taken "a very important step" and that the presidency hoped full agreement could be reached in December, as part of a broader package of financial reforms.

Borg said that the presidency had been mandated to begin negotiations with the European Parliament on the ESRB. MEPs have co-legislative powers over most the legislation to create the new body.

The text includes an amendment demanded by the UK that makes it clear that final agreement on the board has not been reached. Sweden had wanted to describe the agreement on the ESRB as a "general approach", a legislative term implying discussions between member states have been finalised. This was successfully opposed by the UK.

Diplomats said this was because the UK believes that being able to re-open discussions on elements of the ESRB will give it greater leverage in negotiations on the supervisory authorities.

Austria and Luxembourg accused of blocking agreements as a way to avoid having to share tax information.

The European Commission has criticised Austria and Luxembourg for blocking adoption of an anti-fraud agreement with Liechtenstein, as well as the start of negotiations on similar agreements with Andorra, Monaco, San Marino and Switzerland. It said they were blocking the agreements as a way to avoid having to share tax information themselves.

László Kovács, the European commissioner for taxation, said that the Liechtenstein agreement should not be "held hostage to other issues". He said the actions of Austria and Luxembourg were hampering progress in cracking down on global tax fraud, an issue he said was "high on the political agenda of the EU".

Mircea Geoana: he has no majority, I ended his suffering / Lucian Croitoru: I am a solution not a puppet - Politics - HotNews.ro

Social Democrats, Liberals and Hungarian Democrats informed the nominated PM Lucian Croitoru that he does not have Parliamentary majority to form the government and added that he should not dive into the political game. Croitoru declared that the talk was interactive and he transmitted that he is a solution, not a puppet.

PSD leader Mircea Geoana declared after the meeting that he made it very clear to Croitoru that he does not have a Parliamentary majority. He underlined that his coalition continue to sustain Klaus Johannis. Geoana warned Croitoru that if he does not give up his position, his professional career and credibility is at risk.

The three parties urge the President to withdraw the initial proposal because Croitoru will not have a majority and asked Croitoru to stay away from the political game.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Press freedom in several European countries has eroded dramatically in the past year, particularly in Slovakia, Italy and Bulgaria, according to an annual index released on Tuesday (20 October) by NGO Reporters Without Borders.

Slovakia registered the biggest fall among EU member states, dropping by 37 places compared to 2008, as a result of "government meddling in media activities" and the adoption of a law imposing an automatic right of response in the press.

The index ranks 175 countries in the world on a scale from 0 to 115.50, with 0 being the best grade - shared by Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Ireland, Estonia and Norway - and 115.50 being the worst, as registered in Eritrea.

It is based on questionnaires with 40 criteria, including violence against journalists, imprisonment, physical attacks, censorship, confiscation of newspaper print runs, searches and harassment. The index also takes into account the degree of impunity enjoyed by those responsible for press freedom violations.

Paris' chief prosecutor demanded the court hand down an 18-month suspended sentence plus a 45,000-euro fine to former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin for his alleged role in the Clearstream affair.

Former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin was a chief accomplice in the Clearstream affair "through his silence, and therefore in condoning the actions of [former EADS chief] Jean-Louis Gregorin", prosecutor Jean-Claude Marin said in summing up the Paris trial on Tuesday.
  Marin went on to demand the Paris court to hand down an 18-month suspended sentence plus a 45,000 euro fine to former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin for his alleged role in the Clearstream affair.

He also recommended sentences for former head of EADS Jean-Louis Gergorin and IT expert Imad Lahoud in the case. He called for two years in prison including 6 months suspended for Lahoud, and 3 years including 18 months suspended for Gergorin.

George Papandreou, the new Greek Prime Minister, has visited Cyprus looking to address the intransigent problem of the Mediterranean island directly. But all he had to offer Turkey was guarded support for EU membership. 

Barely a fortnight into his tenure as prime minister, Papandreou has made clear his willingness to engage in his country's perennial conflict with Turkey over Cyprus. Having visited Istanbul earlier this month, he held talks with President Demetris Christofias, the Greek Cypriot leader, in Nicosia on Monday, hoping to forge a common front on the island's reunification and Turkey's EU bid.

In a marked departure from his predecessor's passivity on the issue, Papandreou, who is also his country's foreign minister, declared that Cyprus would be Greece's foreign policy priority under his leadership.

The EU is funding ambitious programmes to monitor human behaviour in the fight against crime and terrorism. Some people are afraid this will turn us all into suspects.

Say you are a frequent flier and you check in faster than most people. A network of advanced cameras at the airport can measure your speed and alert the control room. The system knows terrorists tend to be nervous and almost never stop for coffee. This makes a speedy traveller a suspicious traveller.

You may also want to think twice about using the airport bathroom more than once. There is a good chance you will be picked out for an extensive security check.

These are some of the things being studied by an EU-funded project for detecting suspicious behaviour, Adabts (Automatic Detection of Abnormal Behaviour and Threats in Crowded Spaces.)

BERLIN -- Poland, smarting after President Obama announced last month that he would scrap Bush-era plans to deploy an antiballistic missile system in Eastern Europe, will accept an offer to host parts of a new, more mobile missile defense system, Polish officials said Tuesday.

The plan for so-called SM-3 missiles, first proposed in Washington last month, will be spelled out in more detail on Wednesday when Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. holds talks with leaders in Warsaw.

"The elements of this new missile defense system will be based in Poland," said Mariusz Handzlik, the chief foreign policy adviser to the Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, whom Mr. Biden is to meet Wednesday.

"This is very important for Poland, for NATO and the U.S. Above all, this is about the long-term strategic cooperation between the U.S. and Poland," Mr. Handzlik said in a telephone interview.

The European Commission is planning a "paradigm shift" in its approach to the derivatives market, moving towards strict regulation of a sector which has been blamed for worsening the financial and economic crises, according to a draft document seen by EurActiv.

"The Commission believes that a paradigm shift must take place away from the traditional view that derivatives are financial instruments for professional use, for which light-handed regulation was thought sufficient," reads a draft communicationword  on derivatives to be published this week.

According to the document, future regulation in the sector must lead "towards an approach where legislation allows markets to price risks properly". A number of legislative measures will be proposed in the course of 2010, it adds.

The investigation into public bank BayernLB highlights the problems the German justice system faces in tackling the shortcomings that led to the financial crisis. Investigators are overwhelmed, and managers and supervisors have formed a wall of silence.

It was shortly after 8.30 a.m. last Wednesday when the employees of Bayerische Landesbank (BayernLB), a publicly-owned German regional bank, received an unexpected visit. Many had just poured their first cup of coffee when about 50 police officers and prosecutors marched into the bank's legal department, where they presented a search warrant issued by the Munich district court. Then they proceeded to the executive suite on the sixth floor, where CEO Michael Kemmer has his office.

At the same time, authorities were searching offices and private residences in Austria, Luxembourg and at Ammersee Lake near Munich, where Kemmer's predecessor Werner Schmidt has been living since he was forced to resign.

Government borrowing has leapt to new highs, with economists predicting that the Chancellor will have to raise his projections for public debt in the forthcoming Pre-Budget Report.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that national debt is now equivalent to 59% of the UK's gross domestic product after borrowing grew by £14.8bn in September, compared with £8.7bn for the same month a year ago.

Total net public borrowing now stands at a record £824.8bn, up from £695.2bn (48.4% of GDP) a year earlier.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The rising cost of oil could damage the world economy just as it begins to rebound, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said on Tuesday.

Wide swings in oil prices are difficult for industries to manage and the U.S. government is concerned about another price spike, Chu said.

"Even $80 is making me nervous," he told the Reuters Washington Summit.

Oil prices hit record levels above $147 a barrel last year, before crashing as a global recession cut energy demand. Crude prices are one again climbing.

Chu said a sharp upswing in oil prices could hinder a global economic recovery. He pointed out that last year's oil price spike was a "disaster" for the world economy.

"We've repeatedly said what the world wants and needs is stable prices," Chu said. "They have been inching up recently and it's a little bit concerning."

European Union governments have agreed to begin winding down their extra programs to boost the economy in 2011, assuming the economy continues to recover next year. 

The agreement, announced during a meeting of EU finance ministers in Luxembourg on Tuesday, comes amid signs of a slight economic recovery in Europe.

EU ministers said in a statement that they are encouraged by "signs of early recovery." Yet they have no plans to pull back on stimulus spending before 2011, as the current economic recovery "remains fragile."

"Substantial fiscal consolidation is required in order to halt and eventually reverse the increase in debt and restore sound fiscal positions," the statement said.

EU governments have spent billions of euros on public spending to prop up their economies during the financial crisis. The spending has pushed up budget deficits across Europe, with nearly all countries exceeding the EU's budget deficit limit of 3 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Reforming UK banking through regulation is not enough and a fundamental rethink of how banks are structured is needed, the Bank of England governor has said.

Some banks may have to split their core business from riskier practices, so they do not get too big to be allowed to fail, Mervyn King added.

In a new study for the Cato Institute, Randal O'Toole, a free-market economist, finds himself in presumably rare agreement with the Nobel economist and liberal Times columnist Paul Krugman.

In a 2005 column, Krugman wrote that heavily regulated areas of the country -- he called these the "Zoned Zone" -- were "prone to housing bubbles" because "a combination of high population density and land-use restrictions -- hence `zoned' -- makes it hard to build new houses."

And indeed, O'Toole finds, Krugman's early diagnosis of the bubble has been borne out: In heavily regulated places like California and Florida, scarcity inflated housing prices, which have since tanked, while prices in less regulated Texas and Georgia "haven't significantly declined."

California's attorney general, Jerry Brown, said Tuesday that he was suing State Street, the large Boston-based bank, accusing it of committing "unconscionable fraud" against the state's two largest employee pension funds, Calpers and Calstrs. Mr. Brown said he was seeing to recover more than $200 million in overcharges and penalties.

Mr. Brown said that State Street overcharged the pension funds by adding a secret and substantial mark-up to the price of interbank foreign currency trades, totaling $56.6 million over eight years. The interbank rate is the price at which major banks buy and sell foreign currency.

"Over a period of eight years, State Street bankers committed unconscionable fraud by misappropriating millions of dollars that rightfully belonged to California's public pension funds," Mr. Brown said in a statement. "This is just the latest example of how clever financial traders violate laws and rip off the public trust."

State Street rejected Mr. Brown's assertions. "We categorically deny any allegations of wrongdoing and will defend ourselves against any litigation," a bank spokeswoman, Carolyn Cichon, said in an e-mail statement.

Mr. Brown contended that although the bank was contractually obligated to charge the interbank rate to the pension funds at the precise time of the trade, State Street consistently charged at or near the highest rate of the day, even if the interbank rate was lower at the time of trade.

WASHINGTON -- As the housing market collapsed in late 2007, Moody's Investors Service, whose investment ratings were widely trusted, responded by purging analysts and executives who warned of trouble and promoting those who helped Wall Street plunge the country into its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

A McClatchy investigation has found that Moody's punished executives who questioned why the company was risking its reputation by putting its profits ahead of providing trustworthy ratings for investment offerings.

....

"The story at Moody's doesn't start in 2007; it starts in 2000," said Mark Froeba, a Harvard-educated lawyer and senior vice president who joined Moody's structured finance group in 1997....Moody's was spun off from Dun & Bradstreet in 2000, and the first company shares began trading on Oct. 31 that year at $12.57. Executives set out to erase a conservative corporate culture. (Trick or Treat!)

....

"This was a systematic and aggressive strategy to replace a culture that was very conservative, an accuracy-and-quality oriented (culture), a getting-the-rating-right kind of culture, with a culture that was supposed to be 'business-friendly,' but was consistently less likely to assign a rating that was tougher than our competitors," Froeba said.

After Froeba and others raised concerns that the methodology Moody's was using to rate investment offerings allowed the firm's profit interests to trump honest ratings, he and nine other outspoken critics in his group were "downsized" in December 2007.

Guess the "free market" doesn't always do things better.  Who knew? But what about Standard and Poor's and Fitch?  A long and informative article.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

The headlines that ran side by side on the front page of Saturday's New York Times summed up, inadvertently, the terrible fix that we've allowed our country to fall into.The lead headline, in the upper right-hand corner, said: "U.S. Deficit Rises to $1.4 Trillion; Biggest Since '45."

The headline next to it said: "Bailout Helps Revive Banks, And Bonuses."

We've spent the last few decades shoveling money at the rich like there was no tomorrow. We abandoned the poor, put an economic stranglehold on the middle class and all but bankrupted the federal government -- while giving the banks and megacorporations and the rest of the swells at the top of the economic pyramid just about everything they've wanted.

And we still don't seem to have learned the proper lessons. We've allowed so many people to fall into the terrible abyss of unemployment that no one -- not the Obama administration, not the labor unions and most certainly no one in the Republican Party -- has a clue about how to put them back to work.

Meanwhile, Wall Street is living it up. I'm amazed at how passive the population has remained in the face of this sustained outrage.

Op-Ed Columnist - Safety Nets for the Rich - NYTimes.com

Enough! Goldman Sachs is thriving while the combined rates of unemployment and underemployment are creeping toward a mind-boggling 20 percent. Two-thirds of all the income gains from the years 2002 to 2007 -- two-thirds! -- went to the top 1 percent of Americans.

We cannot continue transferring the nation's wealth to those at the apex of the economic pyramid -- which is what we have been doing for the past three decades or so -- while hoping that someday, maybe, the benefits of that transfer will trickle down in the form of steady employment and improved living standards for the many millions of families struggling to make it from day to day.

That money is never going to trickle down. It's a fairy tale. We're crazy to continue believing it.

What you should draw from this is the following:

1. The Great Moderation is revealed as an illusion once we reach the zero bound, where interest rates are near zero.  At this point the asset-price reflation can no longer rely on interest rates alone, but must also use increasingly heavy-handed tactics to get the economy going.  This is where we now are.
2. Terminal Debt is fast approaching. Steve Keen believes we are at a Terminal Debt stage, where no more debt can possibly be accumulated to revive growth.  However, I have presented you with evidence that this is not necessarily the case (see posts here and here). Nevertheless, it is fast approaching.
3. The central bank is damned if it does and damned if it doesn't. This was the takeaway of the Scylla and Charybdis post: All roads lead to a W-style Japanese depression or a deflationary bust because deflation is secular (Terminal Debt) while inflation is cyclical (asset prices). An inflationary scenario will invite a policy response which kills the recovery.
4. This is good for government bonds but not for risky assets.  Longer-term, this is a good environment for government bonds. They are the risk-free asset in an environment of secular deflation. Shares are not a good investment in this situation despite huge rallies.  Remember, we saw huge bear market rallies after 1929 and again in Japan after 1990.

I believe we are in the reflationary period of a longer-term depression right now. As a result, there is substantial downside risk for the economy going forward. Like Munchau, I don't have any magic bullet solution to this dilemma - although I do have a number of ideas.  Feel free to chime in with your thoughts on the way forward.

The US government had been increasing the pressure by the day. On Tuesday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai gave in and announced he would submit to a run-off election against challenger Abdullah Abdullah. Renewed election fraud could mean a loss of face for the US -- and compromise the West as guarantors of democracy.

The waiting for the official election results in Afghanistan has come to an end. On Tuesday, the Election Commission in Afghanistan decided against President Hamid Karzai -- thus joining the United Nations-supported Electoral Complaints Commission, which had found that around one-third of the votes cast in the country's August presidential elections were invalid. Karzai will now face a run-off election against his challenger Abdullah Abdullah on Nov. 7.

Karzai conceded defeat and said that he accepted the decision of the Election Commission, reversing weeks of refusal to submit to a run-off despite numerous indications of election fraud. The initial results had Karzai winning an absolute majority of 54 percent against 28 percent for Abdullah, who spent years as Afghanistan's foreign minister. Now, though, it has become clear that Karzai's share of the vote was below 50 percent.

At least six people were killed and 12 wounded in two bomb blasts at the International Islamic university in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad on Tuesday. The near-simultaneous bomb blasts went off in both the male and female campuses. Eyewitnesses say that there was a lot of smoke and noise as paramedics rushed to the scene to take care of the wounded.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday called on Palestinian President to renew peace negotiations with Israel and bring an end to the years of conflict.

In his address to the gala opening of the Presidential Conference, Netanyahu urged the Palestinian leader to tell his people: "The time has come to end this conflict; tell them that the time has come for two nations to live side-by-side in peace and security."

"I believe that peace with the Palestinians is possible, but that requires brave leadership on both sides," he said. "I ask of you," Netanyahu added, directing his remarks at the Palestinian leader, "something I have not even asked of myself. We must discuss peace as soon as possible, and I am ready to do so. But these cannot be closed talks. We must say these things to the world, to our people and to the Palestinian people."

Last January, as I understand it, the White House promised Big Pharma, big insurance, and the American Medical Association the moral equivalent of what Joel Halderman allegedly demanded of David Letterman: hush money. The groups agreed to stay silent or even be supportive of healthcare reform, as long as they were paid off.

But now that it's time to collect, the bill is larger than the White House expected, and it's going to fall like an avalanche on middle class Americans in coming years. That could mean an ugly 2012 election (read Sarah Palin).

So the President has to do what Letterman did: Refuse to pay.

Reich then describes how Obama promised Big Pharma to "bar on genetic drug manufacturers introducing similar biologic drugs until the originals have been on the market at least twelve years, and no public insurance option to negotiate low drug prices."  Obama promised the Insurance Companies "25 to 30 million more paying customers (many of them young and healthy), a requirement that almost all businesses "pay or play," and no competition from a public option."  And Obama promised the AMA "a permanent fix that would change the reimbursement formula altogether and reward them $240 billion over the next ten years."

But when they all get paid off, who will do the paying? Middle-class Americans who are already in a financial squeeze -- whose wages are lower, adjusted for inflation, than they were thirty years ago, and whose jobs are disappearing. They'll face still higher premiums, co-payments, and deductibles; and they'll pay higher drug prices, Medicare premiums, and taxes to cover the rest.

....

The three big means of containing costs: (1) A true public option (better yet, one that allows anyone now holding private insurance to opt into; (2) authority for Medicare to negotiate low drug prices; and (3) lower Medicare reimbursement rates to doctors (in other words, no "doctor fix").

In addition, the so-called "medical exchanges" in the emerging bills (as well as the public option, which hopefully will be included) should give preference to pre-paid heathcare plans, like Kaiser Permanente, whose doctors are on salary and have every incentive to keep people healthy rather than charge for more services and tests.

So, will Congress honor Obama's promises and drink from the poisoned chalice, or will they take a tip from Jesse Unruh and take the money from the insurance and drug companies and from the AMA and then vote in the things they oppose.  It would be interesting to see Obama's reaction if Congress passed a really good bill that ignored all of his venal promises.  Would he veto the bill?  Don't hold your breath.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

Russia has obtained all the permits necessary to build its 'South Stream' gas pipeline through Turkish territorial waters, discarding Bulgaria as one of the project's transit countries, the Russian press writes today (20 October).

Taner Yildiz, Turkey's economy minister, has granted all the necessary authorisations for the South Stream project to run through Turkish territory, the Russian daily Kommersant writes.

The event, which was hosted by Italian Economy Minister Claudio Scajola in Milan on Friday (19 October), eliminated Bulgaria as a transit country for the Gazprom-favoured pipeline, the daily writes. Bulgaria was also evicted from the Burgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline project, the newspaper adds.

The Fisheries Council meeting in Luxembourg on 19 and 20 October took a number of important decisions and made headway on a number of issues. The discussions were dominated by the Commission's proposals for a root-and-branch reform of the CFP control framework and for fishing possibilities in the Baltic Sea for 2010.

The Control Regulation, proposed last November, has now been approved by Council and will enter into force on 1 January 2010. Delays have been agreed for a number of articles to enable Member States to be fully prepared to implement all measures in the Regulation. Ministers resolved the final outstanding issues, including a degree of harmonisation of sanctions, a new penalty points system, a payback system for overfished quotas and provisions to allow for the suspension of Community assistance in the event of non-compliance by Member States with the agreed control provisions. Furthermore, it was agreed that, for now, recreational catches will not be counted against national quotas. The new control system will provide Europe with the level playing field required to usher in a much-needed culture of compliance in the fisheries sector.

Council also reached political agreement on the Commission proposal on fishing possibilities for fish stocks in the Baltic Sea for 2010. On the positive side, with scientific advice showing that cod stocks in the Baltic are starting to recover, Council was able to agree on total allowable catches (TAC) increases of 15% and 9% for the eastern and western cod stocks respectively.

On the less positive side, the western herring stock continues to cause serious concern, prompting Council to agree on a 16.5% reduction.

European Union farm ministers refused to give their seal of approval on Monday to plans to allow the import of genetically-modified maize from US growers, diplomats said.

During a meeting of European Union agriculture ministers in Luxembourg dominated by crisis in the dairy sector, nations were unable to agree on proposals to greenlight the latest batch of so-called 'Frankenstein foods.'

Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel sought the go-ahead for two strains of corn produced by Monsanto and another by rivals Pioneer to be cleared for import by European firms.

Several sources told AFP that the decision would ultimately be left up to the commission itself, because if no agreement can be reached by the ministers Brussels will have free rein to choose.

BERLIN, Oct 20 (Tierramérica) - The capture and underground storage of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, is a dubious method of effectively reducing the pollution that causes global warming, experts warn.

Scientists, environmentalists and local communities continue to object to the method, which consists of compressing and liquefying carbon dioxide before sending it to underground deposits, and which has been applied for some time to recover petroleum and gas from partially exhausted oil wells.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) looked at these techniques in 2007, and more closely in 2005, when its Working Group III published a 443-page report.

Germany's federal government was forced last summer to halt the process for approving a law authorising the capture and deposit of carbon, after facing opposition from local communities in the regions preliminarily selected for experimenting with the technique.

Rejection of the process has been fuelled by scientific reports and environmental groups. In 2006, geologist Gabriela von Goerne, of the German branch of Greenpeace, said such methods should only be used as a last option in the fight against global warming.

Cambridge, UK - New analytical techniques have revealed that the scale of bushmeat trade in Central Africa may be much larger than originally thought, according to a study published today by TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network.

The study, based on an analysis of food balance sheets provided by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's statistical database FAOSTAT, strongly supports the view that the current situation surrounding bushmeat hunting in Central African rainforests is precarious. According to the analysis, bushmeat extraction rose considerably in the Congo Basin between 1990 and 2005, despite the overall decrease in forest cover in Central Africa.

Cameroon appears to be exceeding--by more than 100%--an estimated sustainable offtake of 150 kg of game meat per square kilometre of forest, and Gabon and the Republic of Congo are both close to this limit. The greatest rise in bushmeat production was in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the yield rose from 78,000 tonnes in 1990 to 90,000 tonnes in 2005. In the Republic of Congo, production almost doubled, from 11,000 to 20,000 tonnes per year in the same time period.

"While the FAOSTAT bushmeat data are probably underestimates and should be regarded with caution, the data are the most readily available official sources of information on production of wild meat in the Congo Basin and are valuable indicators of bushmeat production and consumption trends," says Stefan Ziegler, Programme Officer with WWF Germany, and author of the report.

Wildlife is a significant and direct source of protein for more than 34 million people living in the Congo Basin and bushmeat hunting is a key component of many peoples' livelihoods in Central Africa.

Reston VA (SPX) The arctic could potentially alter the Earth's climate by becoming a possible source of global atmospheric carbon dioxide. The arctic now traps or absorbs up to 25 percent of this gas but climate change could alter that amount, according to a study published in the November issue of Ecological Monographs.

This figure shows the mean extent of permafrost in the Arctic, estimated for (a) the years 1990-2000 and (b) the years 2090-2100. Credit: A. David McGuire, USGS

In their review paper, David McGuire of the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Alaska at Fairbanks and his colleagues show that the Arctic has been a carbon sink since the end of the last Ice Age, which has recently accounted for between zero and 25 percent, or up to about 800 million metric tons, of the global carbon sink.

On average, says McGuire, the Arctic accounts for 10-15 percent of the Earth's carbon sink. But the rapid rate of climate change in the Arctic - about twice that of lower latitudes - could eliminate the sink and instead, possibly make the Arctic a source of carbon dioxide.

....

On the scale of a few decades, the thawing permafrost could also result in a more waterlogged Arctic, says McGuire, a situation that could encourage the activity of methane-producing organisms. Currently, the Arctic is a substantial source of methane to the atmosphere: as much as 50 million metric tons of methane are released per year, in comparison to the 400 million metric tons of carbon dioxide the Arctic stores yearly. But methane is a very potent greenhouse gas- about 23 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide on a 100-year time scale. If the release of Arctic methane accelerates, global warming could increase at much faster rates.

"We don't understand methane very well, and its releases to the atmosphere are more episodic than the exchanges of carbon dioxide with the atmosphere," says McGuire. "It's important to pay attention to methane dynamics because of methane's substantial potential to accelerate global warming."

Photos from the Midway atoll which is rather isolated place in Mid-Pacific though unfortunately in the midst of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — Wikipedia.

BBC —
Nearly two million Laysan albatrosses live on the islands. Researchers have concluded that every single one contains some quantity of plastic.

 About one-third of all albatross chicks die on Midway, many as the result of being mistakenly fed plastic by their parents.

Analysis by Beena Sarwar

KABUL, Oct 18 (IPS) - `Give peace a chance' may just be another cliché for many, but for women who have suffered the ravages of war, endless strife and other forms of conflict, joining hands to find meaningful solutions to their collective aspiration lends it a whole new meaning.

Within the South Asian region, Pakistan, India and Afghanistan have for decades been torn by internal and external conflicts that have cried out for, but have not quite found, a lasting resolution.

"We waited for a long time to see what the men would do for peace," Zahira Khattak, a member the think-tank formed by Pakistan's Awami National Party (ANP), told IPS.

For Khattak and scores of other women in this region, not only has peace proved elusive, they have also been left out of much of the peace efforts by their respective states.

"Why should this be so?" argued Khattak. "For 5,000 years women have been sitting in `jirgas' (tribal councils), at least in Afghanistan. We have `jirgas' all over Pakistan's tribal areas also, and we thought why not introduce this concept?"

Back in September, my Boing Boing co-editor Xeni Jardin blogged a photo of a Japanese Ralph Lauren store display featuring model Filippa Hamilton with her proportions digitally altered so that "her pelvis was bigger than her head." Xeni posted the image as a brief and pithy comment on the unrealistic body image conveyed by couture advertising - in other words, she posted it as commentary, and thus fell into one of the copyright exemptions that Americans call "fair use" and others call "fair dealing".

The Ugandan anti gay bill has been tabled in parliament and now it awaits the president Yoweri Museveni to sign and make homosexuality officially illegal. The previous code was not clear but now the bill called "The anti homosexuality Bill 2009" tabled by a member of parliament David Bahati which states that any homosexuality act or tendencies might face the death penalty or face life imprisonment. The Ugandan writes:

In a report for the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology, experts said the results backed the findings of lab experiments.
They wrote: "We found that individuals walking while talking on a cell phone displayed inattentional blindness in a real-world situation.
"Even a task as practiced as walking can be disrupted by cell phone conversations. Although walking and talking on a cell phone on campus seems unlikely to be particularly hazardous, it can cause problems. A cell phone user walking slower and changing directions complicates the navigation task for everyone else."

Professor Hyman added: "Cell phone use causes people to be oblivious to their surroundings while engaged in even a simple task such as walking.

"Cell phone users walk more slowly, change directions and weave more often - and fail to notice interesting and novel objects. The effect appears to be caused by the distraction of a cell phone conversation, because people walking in pairs did not display the same range of problems. Something about the conversation seems to limit attentional capacity.

"If people experience so much difficulty performing the task of walking when they're on a cell phone, just think what this means when put into the context of driving safety. People should not drive while talking on a cell phone."

New maps show population hotspots