Sweden's prime minister, the current chair of EU summits, says he is half-way through consultations to determine a shortlist for the new EU top jobs.

Fredrik Reinfeldt said he expected to be ready soon to call a special EU summit to appoint the permanent EU president and foreign policy chief.

The Belgian Prime Minister, Herman van Rompuy, has emerged as a frontrunner for the post of EU president.

The number of errors in EU spending fell again in 2008, but the level of errors remains high in some areas, especially cohesion policy, according to a report published today by the European Court of Auditors.

Vitor Caldeira, the court's president, told members of the European Parliament's budgetary control committee that the overall level of irregular payments "has decreased in recent years, due to the improvements in the management of the budget, but it is still too high in some areas".

Siim Kallas, the European commissioner responsible for auditing, said that the auditors' report was the "the best report so far". He pointed out that the proportion of the EU budget that falls under areas where the level of error was over 5% has been halved since 2004, to around 30%.

Caldeira stressed that the error rate was not the same as fraud. Where the court found cases of fraud, it referred them to the EU's anti-fraud unit OLAF, he said.

Health minister Ab Klink is now advising that children from six months to four years old get vaccinated for swine flu, or Mexican flu as it is referred to in the Netherlands. In doing so he is following the advice of the director of the health council, J.A. Knottnerus.

But the authorities are increasingly up against scare stories about the alleged danger of the flu vaccine that are rampant on the internet. Klink on Tuesday launched a counter-attack against the rumour mill. "The vaccine is safe," he said, "in the sense that the possible damage outweighs any risk. The stories on the internet are devoid of any scientific basis, while the vaccine has been scientifically tested."

Health council director Knottnerus said his decision to recommend vaccination for young children is based on the risk they might develop serious pneumonia. He expects deaths among small children from swine flu to remain very low.

Knottnerus also said the swine flu pandemic "will probably be less serious than we thought a couple a months ago".

Opposition parties in Turkey have delayed the government's announcement of its plan to end a conflict in the mainly Kurdish south-east.

Interior Minister Besir Atalay ran out of time to present the measures in parliament as nationalist MPs jeered.

The plans are thought to include some Kurdish language education, restoring Kurdish place names and more freedom to use Kurdish in election campaigns.

The announcement is now expected on Thursday.

The speaker of the lower house of the Italian parliament, Gianfranco Fini, said on Tuesday after meeting Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi that a draft law putting time limits on trials - one of Berlusconi's key demands in his fight against judges who he says are biased against him - would be presented soon.

Fini said the draft law would impose a six year limit on the three stages of court cases - initial trial, first appeal, and final appeal. He said this could be ready in a matter of days but did not comment on whether the law would impact cases against Berlusconi. Trials in Italy can last for more than a decade.

Observers say the law could apply to some of the prime minister's trials, depending on when it comes into effect and its retroactivity.

The days of taxed-to-the-hilt smokers bulk-buying cigarettes in cheap eastern European countries could be numbered following an agreement between European Union finance ministers on Tuesday.

Smokers in a many northern and western European countries have long complained of relatively high prices for their tobacco fix, in some cases such as Britain nearly doubled once excise rates are added in.

That in turn has triggered huge legal and black-market overseas trade amid an explosion in budget travel over the past decade.

However, ministers finally brokered a compromise deal in Brussels that will see minimum excise rates increased across the 27 EU member states by January 1, 2014, from 64 euros (96 dollars) per 1,000 cigarettes to 90 euros.

After basking for days in the limelight of Germany's reunification celebrations, Chancellor Angela Merkel returned to the political fray Tuesday when she presented her government's priorities, warning that the worst effects of the global financial crisis would hit Germany next year.

Making her first policy speech since being sworn in for a second four-year term two weeks ago, Mrs. Merkel gave a pessimistic assessment of the German economy, something she rarely did when the global financial crisis began to pummel Germany earlier this year. Back then, Mrs. Merkel, who was facing re-election, said Germany might even weather the storm.

But her hour-long speech to legislators in the Bundestag, or lower house of Parliament, was often blunt as she hammered home the point that Germany had some way to go before emerging from the economic crisis.

Britain has offered to hand over half of its sovereign land in Cyprus in an effort to broker a peace deal between Greek and Turkish cypriots, the UN has said.

The offer "would be conditional on a comprehensive agreement being agreed by the leaders of the two communities and then accepted by a majority of their populations," the UN said in a statement on Tuesday.

The deal, which would see 45 square miles handed over, would then be formally ratified by both sides, it continued.

Britain retains three per cent of territory on Cyprus, which was a colony until 1960.

Lloyds Banking Group is to cut 5,000 more jobs by the end of next year as it continues to reduce overlap following its merger with HBOS last year.

Some of these cuts are temporary staff, but Lloyds said 2,600 permanent jobs would be lost in the UK.

Most of the cuts will come in its operations unit, which includes IT, collections and payment services.

The union Unite accused the bank of "corporate arrogance" and short-termism following the announcement.

Lloyds has now announced more than 10,000 job cuts so far this year.

UK banks Barclays and HSBC have both reported continuing profits, and indicated that the worst of their bad debts may be coming to an end.

Barclays made a pre-tax profit of £1.56bn in the three months to 30 September, down 45% from a year ago.

While HSBC did not give any figures, it said profits for the same period were "significantly ahead" of last year.

HSBC said its bad debts had now fallen to their lowest level since the the second quarter of 2008.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Two former Bear Stearns Cos hedge fund managers were acquitted on Tuesday of fraud charges in the first criminal trial of prominent Wall Street executives stemming from subprime mortgage securities that fueled a market meltdown.

A jury in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, New York, reached its verdict in the month-long trial of hedge fund managers Ralph Cioffi, 53, and Matthew Tannin, 48, after less than six hours of deliberations.

"I'm happy," Cioffi said, as the families of both men shed tears of relief after the verdict was read.

The verdict is a blow for government prosecutors and could have implications for government investigations of possible wrongdoing at other companies at the center of the global financial crisis, including bailed-out giant insurer American International Group Inc and the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

Shares in Volkswagen have plunged 8% on news that Qatar's sovereign wealth fund plans to sell 25 million preference shares in the carmaker.

Qatar has built up a sizeable stake in VW and, despite the sale, said it was committed to investing in the company.

Earlier this year, it said it planned to become the third-biggest shareholder in what is Europe's largest carmaker.

Last month, Barclays shares were hit hard when Qatar sold £1.3bn worth of shares in the UK bank.

The European Commission (EC) has objected to Oracle's proposed takeover of Sun Microsystems, casting doubt on the $7.4bn (£4.4bn) deal.

The commission has issued a preliminary assessment raising concerns that the takeover could hurt competition in the computer database market.

Oracle said that it would "vigorously oppose" the EC objections.

The deal between business software firm Oracle and hardware and software maker Sun was first announced in April.

Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Monsanto Co., reeling from its first market-share losses to DuPont Co. in a decade, may be losing the confidence of some investors based on early results from the new modified seeds it's counting on to beat competitors.

DuPont, the second-biggest seed maker, grabbed U.S. sales from Monsanto this year, showing its larger rival that farmers won't always pay for the most advanced seeds. Monsanto aims to regain market share with corn that contains eight genetic changes and the first update of its herbicide-resistant soybeans in 13 years.

Monsanto Chief Executive Officer Hugh Grant is counting on the new soy and corn varieties to add $1 billion to profit by 2012. A survey of growers early in the harvest now under way indicates the seeds aren't meeting yield expectations, contributing to an 11 percent decline in Monsanto's shares the week the results were circulated.

"The distrust that could be building in the market is very negative for Monsanto," Paul Baiocchi, a senior market strategist at Delta Global Advisors, which manages $1.5 billion, including Monsanto shares, said in a telephone interview from San Francisco.

Tens of thousands of training places could be axed under plans to claw back £340m from England's further education and skills budget.

A leaked government document suggests a proposal to axe at least 133,000 training places - some for the most deprived areas in the country.

Adult apprenticeship budgets and further education college places are also being ear-marked for savings.

The government said it was consulting on how best to make efficiency savings.

In September, David Cameron stood before the Tory Party conference, took out a lighter, and tried to set fire to the safety net that protects the British poor from splattering into extreme poverty.

Nobody noticed at the time: he mentioned in a few throwaway lines that he wants to look westward and copy the Wisconisn model of welfare reform. These distant-sounding proposals might sound attractive at first, because they have latched on to a real problem. There are great swathes of British cities where everyone is jobless, often for life.

en. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) introduced sweeping legislation Tuesday to reform financial regulation, in part by stripping the Federal Reserve of its regulatory responsibilities and creating a new federal agency charged with keeping banks in good health.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Top Blackwater executives authorized about $1 million in payments to Iraqi officials to buy support and silence criticism of the private security firm after a deadly shooting in Baghdad in 2007, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.

In September 2007, Blackwater workers fatally shot at least 14 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad's Nisour Square, an incident that provoked protests in Iraq and prompted the Iraqi government to deny Blackwater a license.

Four former executives said in interviews that Blackwater approved the payments in December 2007 but they did not know whether the cash was delivered to Iraqi officials or the identities of potential recipients, the Times reported.

Blackwater's strategy, which would have been illegal under U.S. law, created a deep rift inside the company, the sources told the newspaper.

Not all groups have felt the recession equally.

Saudi Aramco, national oil company of the world's largest oil producer and exporter, decided earlier this month it will drop West Texas Intermediate (WTI) as the benchmark for pricing its oil for sale in the US market.

In January 2010, Aramco will use the Argus Sour Crude Index (ASCI) to price its oil for the market; it's heavier and has higher sulfur content than WTI. The index, launched in May, uses the volume-weighted average of daily spot sales of the three U.S. Gulf Coast medium sour crudes: Mars, Poseidon, and Southern Green Canyon.

....

In principle, the movement in WTI prices is supposed to reflect supply-demand conditions in the US, the largest consumer in the world, burning almost one quarter of the of the 86.14 million b/d consumed worldwide in 2007. And sour crudes usually should sell at a discount to light crudes such as WTI because the latter are cheaper to refine.

However, distortions caused by logistical or inventory constraints at Cushing, Oklahoma, the WTI delivery and pricing point, can dislocate WTI prices away from North Sea Brent and US gulf crude prices.

Historically, WTI has traded pretty much in line with Brent and gulf sour crudes. But WTI price movement has become increasingly volatile in recent years. The recent inventory glut at Cushing, OK due to the demand slump, coupled with new pipelines transporting Canadian Oil Sands crudes has distorted the WTI price against other benchmarks throwing the global oil market into disarray.

SPY gunning was part of the Fed's spring/summer collection. Fall/Winter is all about the ES. With all the SPY IOIAs broadcast for the world to see, and JPM's clients not too happy that pop media like Zero Hedge makes it all too obvious when Jamie Dimon's boys are executing market manipulation orders for their prime quant clients, the latest way to drive the market higher, especially on days like, well, everyday when there is no volume to speak of, is by (gunning up) the futures market. Our friend, he Pragmatic Capitalist does a pretty, pretty, pretty convicing job of demonstrating just how that happens.

I don't know if any characteristic of this massive 6 month rally has been more apparent than the huge futures run-ups we've seen at random points during the trading day.   Without news, the S&P 500 futures get gunned on huge volume and surge higher.  I've seen it at least every other day for 6 months.  It tends to occur on low volume days such as the one we're currently experiencing. As you can see in the chart below, the futures are getting gunned on massive volume without any coinciding volume in SPY.  This means an institution is jamming the futures higher knowing that they can drive the market higher on no volume.  Effectively, they can take out every asking price with a large enough order and immediately create a 0.25% bump in the market in no time.  If you've been wondering why we've seen huge surges on low volume days and conviction high volume selling on down days this explains much of it.  I don't know if there is malfeasance behind this or if the buyer is simply too stupid to input trades at the bid (like most rational investors do as they try to achieve the best low price), but this is certainly an odd phenomenon that I cannot recall occurring so routinely over the course of my career.  Who is the mystery institutional buyer that just needs to place their huge block orders with such urgency?
(Bold in original)

And in the "more tin-foil hat" category we present this report by the black helicopter fearing men of Grant Thornton which summarizes many of our, Themis Trading, as well as Senator Kaufman and Schumer's concerns about what is happening to the no-longer free markets, and in fact, the overall economy, courtesy of the casino style strategies that have become the norm with the advent of high frequency trading. It may have cost 22 million jobs, but at least HFT provides liquidity and tightens spreads in AIG, C and FNM. Fair tradeoff. (ARG says: "Make those Zombies dance!")

Some highlights:

    * The decline in the number of U.S. listed companies has cost our economy millions of potential jobs.
    * Market structure changes began to erode support for small cap stocks and eventually worked their way up to damage the support for larger companies.
    * The results of low transaction-cost Casino Capitalism are that short-term, high-frequency traders are squeezing out long-term investors, the listed market for public companies is in decline, and this decline is taking the U.S. economy with it.
    * The small and micro cap markets have in many ways become a Hotel California - companies check in but they can't check out by going private (except through delisting, bankruptcy or acquisition).
    * The need for improved stock markets has never been greater. Bridging the widening gap between small cap and large cap issuer needs should be a national imperative.(Bold in original)

The Grant Thornton Report has some very good points, but also includes the following:

There is a depression in U.S. stock markets, evidenced by the precipitous decline in the number of publicly listed companies. This is not a global phenomenon; the United States is seriously lagging other industrialized nations in the formation of such "listed" companies. The culprit is changes to market structure that have inhibited economic recovery,
impaired the job market and undermined U.S. competitiveness. The problem is dire, but solutions are attainable. We can fix market structure to support the IPO and listed markets and to drive growth -- and Congress and the SEC can lead the way toward adding billions in tax revenue to the U.S. Treasury without costing taxpayers a dime.(My bold)

All in all, more evidence in support of NBBooks' diary Debunking the Myth of the Financial Markets  

If sanity be culturally normative, then by the norms of this culture I claim insanity.

Gold is unlike any other commodity.  It is costly to extract from the earth and to refine to a reasonable degree of purity.  It is costly to store.  It has no remaining uses as a producer good - equivalent or superior alternatives exist for all its industrial uses.  It may have some value as a consumer good - somewhat surprisingly people like to attach it to their earlobes or nostrils or to hang it around their necks.  I have always considered it a rather vulgar metal, made for the Saturday Night Fever crowd, all shiny and in-your-face, as opposed to the much classier silver, but de gustibus... .

...

Because to a reasonable first approximation gold has no intrinsic value as a consumption good or a producer good, it is an example of what I call a fiat (physical) commodity.  You will be familiar with fiat currency.  Unlike what Wikipedia says on the subject, the essence of fiat money is not that it is money declared by a government to be legal tender.  It need not derive its value from the government demanding it in payment of taxes or insisting it should be accepted within the national jurisdiction in settlement of debt. Instead the defining property of fiat money is that it has no intrinsic value and derives any value it has only from the shared belief by a sufficient number of economic actors that it has that value.

...

In a world with multiple fiat moneys, the zero value of money equilibrium lurks for each of the fiat currencies, including gold.  Admittedly, as regards gold, so far so good.  Gold has positive value.  It has had positive value for nigh-on 6000 years.  That must make it the longest-lasting bubble in human history.

There are three parts of a long-term solution. The first is to promote greater exports, partly through dollar depreciation and partly through expanded government support for export financing, for example extended to credit-constrained low-income countries that want to purchase US-produced technology. Dollar depreciation is under way but other kinds of export promotion have not begun.

A second component is a massive expansion of education spending and job training. The unemployment rate among college graduates is only 4.7 per cent, while it is 15.5 per cent among those without a high-school diploma. The US woefully under-invests in education outlays for the poor, who drop out of school and then cannot find gainful employment.

...

The third component is to spur an investment boom in areas of high social return that are currently blocked by the lack of clear policies. The conversion to a low-carbon economy would create jobs in the short run, a more productive economy in the medium run, and US technological leadership in the longer run.

Charles Taylor, the former Liberian president, has claimed at his trial in The Hague that he was indicted for war crimes as part of a "regime change" plan by the United States to gain control of West African oil reserves.

Taylor questioned the fairness of his trial by the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone, which is trying him on allegations he controlled and supported fighters who murdered and mutilated thousands of civilians during Sierra Leone's 1991-2002 civil war.

"I am convicted already," he told the three international judges, in his final day of direct testimony in his own defence after 13 weeks in the witness box.

The former Liberian leader, 61, has frequently hit out at Washington in sometimes venomous monologues, accusing the country of seeking to overthrow him and of hypocrisy on human rights.

Turkey is set to announce details of a plan to end a conflict in the mainly Kurdish south-east of the country.

The interior minister was to present the plan to parliament on Tuesday, but was delayed by opposition protests. The announcement is expected on Thursday.

It is thought to include restoring Kurdish place names, some education in the Kurdish language, and more freedom to use Kurdish in election campaigns.

Some 40,000 people have been killed in the 25-year Kurdish fight for autonomy

Three Czech soldiers who served as part of the Nato force in Afghanistan have been suspended for wearing Nazi symbols, Czech defence officials say.

Two are said to have adorned their helmets with symbols of SS divisions while serving in eastern Afghanistan.

Czech Defence Minister Martin Bartak said their behaviour was "unacceptable" and suspended them immediately.

The soldiers' commanding officer was also suspended pending further investigation, defence officials said.

Saudi Arabia will continue its air strikes against Yemeni rebels until they pull back from the two countries' border, the kingdom's deputy defence minister has warned.

Prince Khaled bin Sultan pledged to keep up a military offensive against the Houthi rebels on Tuesday, as he visited Saudi troops in the kingdom's southwest Jizan province, the AFP news agency reported.

"We are not going to stop the bombing until the Houthis retreat tens of kilometres inside their border," he said.

Al Jazeera has obtained exclusive footage showing the Taliban in Afghanistan displaying what appears to be US weapons.

The fighters say they seized the arms cache from two US outposts in eastern Nuristan province.

On the night that Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election, 21-year-old Mohammed el Gharani was sitting in a segregation cell in Guantanamo Bay's high security Echo Block.

He remembers the excitement among his fellow prisoners at the prospect of an Obama presidency. "Everyone was very hopeful; people were saying he was going to change things, that he would close the prison," Gharani, who was released in June, says.

"Even the guards were telling us that if he won, things would improve for us." 

They were to be disappointed. A year after Obama's election win, Al Jazeera has learnt that despite the new president's pledge to close the prison and improve the conditions of detainees held by the US military, prisoners believe that their treatment has deteriorated on his watch

Iraq is attempting what must rate as the biggest PR challenge since Nicolas Sarkozy ordered French media to convince the world he's actually six inches taller - that of enticing western tourists to sample the delights of the sun-kissed land astride the Tigris.

This unenviable task has fallen to Hammoud al-Yaqoubi, chairman of Iraq's tourism board, who described security as a "minor problem" and insisted to the Times that a group of intrepid Russians recently enjoyed a ten-day trip "in which none suffered injury".

La destrucción causada por las inundaciones en Tabasco abarcan el 100 por ciento de su territorio, aseguró el gobernador de Tabasco, Andrés Granier, por lo que llamó a las autoridades federales a entregar ayuda suficiente.

Google translation:

The destruction caused by floods in Tabasco cover 100 percent of its territory, said Tabasco Governor Andres Granier, so called [on] federal authorities to deliver adequate aid.

This is a major disaster in a country that doesn't need any more major disasters.

By popular request ... Madness takes it's toll. Have exact change ready.

The sole House Republican to vote in favor of the health care legislation, Representative Anh Cao of Louisiana, said in an interview Tuesday that he had been getting some "pretty nasty responses."

WASHINGTON - Finger-pointing erupted between federal agencies Tuesday over Fort Hood shooting suspect Nidal Hasan. Government officials said a Defense Department terrorism investigator looked into Hasan's contacts with a radical imam months ago, but a military official denied prior knowledge of the Army psychiatrist's contacts with any Muslim extremists.

The two government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case on the record, said the Washington-based joint terrorism task force overseen by the FBI was notified of communications between Hasan and a radical imam overseas, and the information was turned over to a Defense Criminal Investigative Service employee assigned to the task force. The communications were gathered by investigators beginning in December 2008 and continuing into early this year.

....

The disclosure came as questions swirled about whether opportunities were missed to head off the massacre in which 13 died and 29 were wounded last Thursday -- a familiar, early stage in the investigation of headline-grabbing crimes when public officials involved in a case often speak anonymously as they try to shift any blame to rivals in other agencies.

....

The FBI has launched its own internal review of how it handled the early information about Hasan. Military, law enforcement and intelligence agencies also are defending themselves against tough questions about what each of them knew about Hasan before he allegedly opened fire in a crowded room at the huge military base in Texas.

The US government has rejected a report that Washington has a team ready to secure Pakistan's nuclear arsenal due to fears that the country is unstable.

Ian Kelly, a state department spokesman, dismissed the report by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker which said that the US has a special force in place that would move to secure Pakistan's nuclear weaponry in the event of a crisis.

"The US has no intention of seizing Pakistani nuclear weapons or material - we see Pakistan as a key ally in our common effort to fight violent extremists and to foster regional stability," Kelly said.

The Maldives, which is at the forefront of a campaign to get the international community to act on a looming global warming crisis, has a more immediate problem on hand. A rising tide of religious extremism is driving this tropical paradise of a low-lying string of islands down the road to a new conservatism.

What is more, the spread of militant Islam in the country and the appeal of a radical strain of Islam are drawing Maldivian youth into global jihadi groups.

"Hundreds of Maldivians" have been recruited by the Taliban and are fighting in Pakistan, Maldivian President Mohammed Nasheed told the CNN-IBN news channel during his recent visit to India.

The military base deal signed last month gives the United States access to seven Colombian military bases to carry out drug trafficking operations.

Leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sunday lambasted the agreement and told his people and armed forces to "prepare for war."

Colombia immediately issued a statement denying any hostile intentions towards any of its neighbors and threatened to bring the matter before the United Nations and Organization of American States.

At least 30 people were killed and 70 others injured in a suicide car bomb explosion at congested Farooq e Azam Chowk in Charsadda district on Tuesday afternoon, police said. Dr. Manzoorullah of district headquarters hospital said that six more  victims of the blast succumbed to their injuries on late Tuesday  evening. The condition of several injured is stated to be critical. The dead also include women and children. The Chief Minister NWFP Ameer Haider Khan Hoti has ordered probe of the deadly blast, he added.
District Police Officer Charsadda Riaz Khan told APP that apparently a suicide bomber in an explosive packed car blasted himself minutes after he passed through the Farooq e Azam Chowk on Tangi road. He rejected news reports about any security lapse.
Eyewitnesses said DPO Charsadda was believed to be  target of the terrorists, who narrowly escaped. Nine critical  injured were brought to Lady Reading Hospital Peshawar for treatment.

GENEVA, Nov 9 (IPS) - Given the billions of dollars and euros that the U.S. and EU spend on trade-distorting support measures and the intractable lobby groups demanding these subsidies, these rich states' promises to reduce such amounts will come to nought. It makes no sense for poor African states to allow these goods to flood their markets.

This is the view of Babacar Ndao, a farmer from Senegal and a member of the West African Network of Farmers' Organisations and Agricultural Producers, known by its French acronym ROPPA. He was in Geneva recently at the invitation of Our World Is Not For Sale's agriculture working group.

Our World Is Not For Sale is a loose grouping of non-governmental organisations, activists and social movements "fighting the current model of corporate globalisation embodied in the global trading system".

Like the other invited farmers from Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe, Ndao is critical of the text presented in December 2008 by Ambassador Crawford Falconer which still constitutes the basis of the Doha Round talks on agriculture.

Ndao argues that developed countries will not eliminate export subsidies by 2013, as agreed at the World Trade Organisation's ministerial conference in Hong Kong. Neither will they reduce their trade-distorting domestic support. Instead, they have become skilful in shifting notifications between the so-called amber, blue and green boxes.

November 10, 2009: A never-before-seen view of the turbulent heart of our Milky Way galaxy is being unveiled by NASA on Nov. 10. This event will commemorate the 400 years since Galileo first turned his telescope to the heavens in 1609. In celebration of this International Year of Astronomy,

Light bulbs, bottle caps, toothbrushes, Popsicle sticks and tiny pieces of plastic, each the size of a grain of rice, inhabit the Pacific garbage patch, an area of widely dispersed trash that doubles in size every decade and is now believed to be roughly twice the size of Texas. But one research organization estimates that the garbage now actually pervades the Pacific, though most of it is caught in what oceanographers call a gyre like this one -- an area of heavy currents and slack winds that keep the trash swirling in a giant whirlpool.

The annual meeting of the body charged with conserving Atlantic tuna opens on Monday to warnings that this is its "last chance" to manage things well.

The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (Iccat) is criticised for setting high quotas and not tackling illegal fishing.

Stocks of bluefin tuna are at about 15% of pre-industrial fishing levels.

US Commissioner Rebecca Lent said her country and others feel this is Iccat's last chance to put things right.

"We think Iccat is the body that should be managing bluefin tuna, and this is its chance to prove it can do so effectively," she told BBC News from the meeting in Recife, Brazil.

A problem-plagued Japanese mission to an asteroid just may have received its final blow. The Haybusa mission to asteroid Itokawa in 2005 is currently trying to return to Earth, but now has suffered a breakdown in the third out of four ion thrusters.

The cause was a voltage spike due to problems with a neutralization vessel, which previously caused the failure of two other thrusters. The fourth and only remaining thruster was shutdown earlier by engineers after signs that it also might succumb to high voltage damage.

Monsanto Facing `Distrust' as It Seeks to Stop DuPont (Update2) - Bloomberg.com

The new soybeans, known as Roundup Ready 2 Yield, boosted yields 7.3 percent, St. Louis-based Monsanto said today in a presentation. That's at the low end of the company's prior forecasts for a 7 percent to 11 percent gain.

The new soybeans were planted on 1.5 million acres in their first year on the market and will be on as many as 10 million acres in 2010, a 2 million acre increase from previous plans, Monsanto said. They cost growers $74 an acre, 42 percent more than the earlier product.

Farmers' Expectations

About 20 farm managers and seed distributors in five states said in a report released Oct. 27 that yields from the new soybean seeds didn't meet their expectations, said Jon Gates, research director at OTR Global, the research firm that conducted the study.

GM soy suffers from "yield drag", ie it is less productive than non-GM varieties. This attempt at fixing that appears to be a resounding failure.

And note the price increase compared to real yield increase. All this is so you can use Monsanto's patent weedkiller Round-Up.

When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind

Keep It In The Family, Gordon

What makes this decision politically sensitive, is that Gordon Brown has close family connections to the nuclear industry. His younger brother Andrew Brown works for EDF Energy, the UK subsidiary of EDF, which operates nuclear power stations in France, and which is one of the leading companies pushing for a nuclear rebuild programme in the UK. Andrew Brown was appointed as EDF Energy's Head of Press on 13 September 2004.

http://www.nuclearspin.org/index.php/Gordon_Brown

For a measure of solace in the city, Hugo Garcia climbs to the top of a hill crowned with walnut groves that El Sereno residents know simply as the Heavens.

"The Heavens are as good as it gets" northeast of downtown Los Angeles, said Garcia, 52, a leader of a struggle to stave off development on what remains the largest open space left in the working-class Latino community. "The Westside has the Pacific Ocean. We've got this hill, a place of nature and solitude -- and we'd like to keep it that way."

El Sereno residents were elated when the Los Angeles City Council voted a week ago to settle a lawsuit over a contested luxury subdivision planned for the hill, agreeing to buy the property for $9 million with a goal of transforming it into a nature preserve in a community with one of the lowest parkland-to-people ratios the city.

The developers of the property, Monterey Hills Investors, had sued the city after the council demanded more environmental review of the project planned for the site.

This paper boldly challenges the long established misconception that the catastrophic failure of expensive software projects is detrimental to society.  Historical analysis of bureaucracies such as the Australian Tax Office shows that massive software automation has not increased their real efficiency since the 1950s.  Any increase in the efficiency of individual workers has simply been consumed by increased bureaucratic complexity, as predicted by Parkinson's law.   As the primary net effect of software is to facilitate bureaucratic complexity it is therefor essential that software projects fail if society is to function effectively.  In this way the heavy burden of guilt can be lifted from the shoulders of the numerous project managers that have subconsciously devoted their careers to ensuring that projects rarely, if ever, succeed. 

What, exactly, is Rupert Murdoch thinking? First, he announces that all of Newscorp's websites will erect paywalls like the one employed by the Wall Street Journal (however, Rupert managed to get the details of the WSJ's wall wrong - no matter, he's a "big picture" guy). Then, he announced that Google and other search engines were "plagiarists" who "rip off" Newscorp's content, and that once the paywalls are up (a date that keeps slipping farther into the future, almost as though the best IT people work for someone who's not Rupert "I Hate the Net" Murdoch!) he'll be blocking Google and the other "parasites" from his sites, making all of Newscorp's properties invisible to search engines. Then, as a kind of loonie cherry atop a banana split with extra crazy sauce, Rupert announces that "fair use is illegal" and he'll be abolishing it shortly.

The row over the sacking of Professor David Nutt is, it seems, rumbling on nicely with this exchange between Evan Harris and Alan Johnson in regards to the accuracy, or otherwise, of comments made by Johnson in his statement to the House of Commons:

The exchange contains this classic example of politician, Johnson, answering the question he'd have preferred to have been asked, not the one he was actually asked:

To Index on Censorship and English PEN it has become increasingly clear that English libel law and the use of `super-injunctions' are having a profoundly negative impact on freedom of expression, both in the UK and abroad. Writers such as Simon Singh, and respected current affairs programme Newsnight, have found themselves facing defamation suits, whilst human rights campaigners are often forced to edit and retract articles in the face of potential libel action.

In the Bloomsbury branch of Waterstone's, I am trying to find a quiet seat to read Tacitus's account of Seneca's suicide when I come across something more diverting. A customer is asking an assistant to explain the baffling price deal on Hilary Mantel's Booker-winning novel Wolf Hall.

"I'm confused," she says. "It says here that if I spend more than £10 I can have the book for £8.99." That would be a good deal: the recommended retail price (RRP) for the hardback is £18.99. But there is a problem. "I only want to buy this book and nothing else. Does that mean I'll have to pay the full price, £18.99?"

"I wish they wouldn't do that," the assistant says. "They shouldn't have deals that are so confusing it takes more than a minute to explain."

LONDON - For the first time brands will have the content of their websites policed by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) under plans to extend the regulator's remit to include all 'online marketing'.

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - Women's careers are being stymied by more than a glass ceiling. Bosses believe women have more family-work conflict, which is a misconception that is holding them back, according to new research.

And it's not just male managers who have the wrong idea.

"These perceptual biases held for both male and female managers," Jenny Hoobler, of the University of Illinois at Chicago, and her co-authors said.

"Even though female employees actually reported slightly less family-work conflict than their male counterparts, their managers still perceived them as having greater family-work conflict, a perception that had significant implications for women's organizational advancement."

Hoobler and her co-authors, Sandy Wayne and Grace Lemmon, ironically found than problems often emerged as a result of company-sponsored programs meant to assist workers in managing family-work conflict.

Their findings, published in the The Academy of Management Journal, showed that employees participating in such programs may send the wrong signal to their managers, particularly that they have family demands and need assistance in balancing home and work domains.

A Brazilian student who was expelled from university for wearing a short dress has been readmitted.

Bandeirante University, a private college in a suburb of Sao Paulo, reversed its decision, following a public outcry and government criticism.

Videos of people jeering and swearing at the student, Geisy Arruda, have circulated widely on the internet.

They show the 20-year-old being led off by security guards on 22 October with a long, white coat covering her dress.

Commenting on news that there have been three more resignations from the Government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, in the wake of the sacking of its Chair, Professor David Nutt, Liberal Democrat Science Spokesman Dr Evan Harris MP said;

 

"The latest resignations represent a deepening in the crisis of confidence of scientists in the Government - in particular, in the Home Secretary. That they come after Alan Johnson met the ACMD demonstrates that he just doesn't get it when it comes to the importance of respecting the academic freedom and integrity of independent, unpaid, science advisers

The Vatican may be a little closer to deciding how it deals with the tricky problem of extra terrestrial - and most likely non-Catholic - life forms, as it wraps up a conference on astrobiology this week.

The Vatican Observatory has been running a "joint study week" on Astrobiology this week together with the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

The Vatican has been already deemed 2009 to be the International Year of Astronomy, with the Pope kicking off proceedings last December by saying what a standup guy Galileo was, and musing on the pagan origins of the Roman cityscape.

If an inept or abrasive boss is ruining your workday, you may be taking that stress to heart, literally. New research links having a poor supervisor to a higher risk of heart attack, and that's not all: people who don't like their managers also take more sick leave. The findings, which come from surveys of thousands of employees in Europe, don't prove that bad bosses cause illness and heart problems, the report's author said. And the findings regarding heart attacks only look at men.

Couple Sues AARP | Bacon, Lettuce, Tomato | 10 Nov 2009

The suit, filed yesterday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, claims that James and Allison Halpern purchased an AARP Medical Advantage Plan in March 2008, after receiving an advertising packet touting it as a "primary insurance plan." The couple dropped their old health insurance policy. But after Allison Halpern was diagnosed with breast cancer, they learned their new plan only provided limited coverage, and would not pay for the cost of a crucial surgery.

According to the complaint, AARP's advertising materials did not indicate that the health plan only provided limited coverage. AARP suspended sales of the policies earlier this year when Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) opened a congressional investigation into their marketing.

Possibly related news:

AARP royalties
Buns of Steele
inefficient subsidies


Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

A Boston train driver is being hailed as a hero after managing to avoid hitting a woman who had fallen on the tracks when alerted by passengers on the station platform.

Orange Line operator Charice Lewis saw the passengers at the platform waving their arms in the hope of getting her to stop, and at the same time she received a radio warning to pull the emergency brakes.

"I saw the people, the people were waving. That's normal after a game," she said. "The people were waving, but they were waving a little bit too much and they were really, really close to the yellow line, which they are not supposed to be. So that's obviously telling me 'slow your train down, slow your train down'.

The unemployment rate may top 10 percent, but there is an opening at the University of California, Santa Cruz for a Deadhead. The library is advertising for an archivist to handle the library's Grateful Dead collection.

A woman who was banned from making loud noises during sex has lost an appeal against her conviction.

Caroline and Steve Cartwright's love-making was described as "murder" and "unnatural" at Newcastle Crown Court.

Neighbours, the local postman and a woman taking her child to school complained about the noise.

Mrs Cartwright, 48, from Washington on Wearside, lost the appeal against a conviction for breaching a noise abatement notice.

She argued she had a right to "respect for her private and family life" under Article 8 of the Human Rights Act.

A blackened bottle of beer found in the wreck of the Hindenburg zeppelin is expected to fetch thousands of pounds at auction.

The bottle was found by a fire-fighter cleaning up the American airfield where the German airship exploded in 1937.

The bottle will be the most expensive ever bought if it meets its estimated price of £5,000 ($8,337) on Saturday.

Graham Nearn, who has died aged 76, was one of the most imaginative and innovative motoring entrepreneurs of the postwar era, and the man who almost single- handedly kept alive the iconic Lotus Seven sports car design. The brainchild of the Lotus founder Colin Chapman, whose Formula One cars were a dominant force in grand prix racing during the 1960s, the Lotus Seven was designed to offer state-of-the-art racing technology to enthusiasts on a budget. Bought in kit form for about £500, its Ford 1,172cc engine, could deliver up to 75bhp, giving impressive acceleration up to 80mph in a car that weighed only 500kg. But when Chapman decided to develop a more up-market image for the Lotus range, Nearn stepped in to ensure that the spindly little sports car survived and thrived.