LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's Conservatives pledged to cut public spending to rein in a huge budget deficit and called for a sweeping overhaul of the economy as they kicked off their campaign for this year's election on Saturday.

The Conservatives, favourites to win the vote, stole a march on Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Labour Party by announcing they were going into campaign mode, even though the election could still be five months away.

"We are starting our campaign to win the general election today," centre-right Conservative leader David Cameron said in a speech in Oxfordshire.

Cameron made clear that the main election battleground will be the economy and how to rein in government borrowing forecast to reach 178 billion pounds this year.

The fast-growing national debt was "the greatest single risk to sustained economic recovery," Cameron said. "That's why we've been clear about our intention to cut public spending."

Businesses should find it easier from today to offer services in other member states because of the entry into force of EU legislation prohibiting the imposition of 'discriminatory' requirements on businesses from other EU countries.

Examples of requirements that are banned under the legislation - known as the services directive - include economic needs tests and residency requirements.

The legislation also removes barriers to cross-border shopping and cross-border business-to-business sales, and obliges member states to create a website where foreign businesses can find and fill out all the administrative forms necessary to set up a branch or subsidiary in that country.

The Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis estimates that the legislation will bring €60 billion-€140bn of economic benefits to the EU, equivalent to 0.6%-1.5% of the EU's gross domestic product.

It appears, however, that a number of member states have failed either to meet the deadline for putting the directive onto their statute books, or to take all the necessary operational steps so that it fully applies in practice.

According to sources closely following the implementation of the directive, Greece, Slovenia, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg and Poland are among those that have failed to complete the operational steps.

Ukraine's presidential election campaign entered its last two weeks on Saturday with the final opinion polls predicting victory for Party of Regions leader Viktor Yanukovych.

Ukrainian law prohibits the publication of any opinion polls less than 14 days before an election. Voting is due to take place from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Sunday, January 17. Campaigning finishes on the Friday, with voters given the Saturday to consider their choice in an atmosphere of quiet.

The Central Election Committee has registered 18 candidates, including Yanukovych, incumbent President Viktor Yushchenko, current Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, parliamentary speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn and former Rada speaker Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

Polls predict that no candidate will secure an outright majority in the first round, with Yanukovych expected to garner around 30% to 20% for Tymoshenko.

Kazakhstan, run with an iron fist for the past 18 years by Nursultan Nazarbayev, assumed the chairmanship of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) the world's largest security organisation which also promotes democracy in member states.

Given Kazakhstan's human rights record, critics in the West have questioned the OSCE's decision to vote Kazakhstan in as chairman of the organisation.

Nazarbayev has cracked down on opposition and closed down newspapers critical of the regime. Human rights activists have also been arrested and legislation, which restricts the use of the internet was passed last year.

OSCE foreign ministers expressed concern over these developments. In 2007 the OSCE voted in favour of handing the rotating chairmanship to Kazakhstan in exchange for improvements in its human rights record.

Almost a quarter of voters in Iceland have signed a petition against plans to repay money lost by foreigners when an Icelandic online bank collapsed.

The petition urges the president to veto the bill that allows the move, and calls for a referendum on the issue.

Iceland's parliament has approved the plans to reimburse 3.8bn euros (£3.4bn) lost by Dutch and British savers when the Icesave scheme failed in 2008.

Many taxpayers say they are being made to pay for the bank's mistakes.

The compensation amounts to some 12,000 euros for each citizen on the island nation of 320,000.

So Iceland's government is trying to sell its people into slavery by giving in to bullying to accept debts they have no moral obligation for.  Its no wonder that the people object.  They've toppled one government over the financial crisis; will another one be following shortly?

HONG KONG (Reuters) - For lawyer Wilfred Goh, the sign it was time to leave Dubai came early in 2009, when the financial crisis took its toll, plunging the emirate's main stock index down roughly 70 percent in a matter of months.

After speaking to friends and government officials, Goh decided to return to Asia, with the thought that Hong Kong, China or Singapore offered better job opportunities. Goh, 47, eventually got a job back home in Singapore.

"We just felt Dubai's economic climate was not very good and they had started to retrench people," said Goh, who works at the Central Chambers Law Corp in Singapore.

The flight of top foreign work talent from the Gulf's financial hub began in early 2009, and levelled off as the market recovered toward the middle of the year. But then Dubai dropped a bombshell in November, disclosing a delay on a massive debt pile.

Dec. 31 (Bloomberg) -- Li Nan has real estate fever. A 27- year-old steel trader at China Minmetals, a state-owned commodities company, Li lives with his parents in a cramped 700- square-foot apartment in west Beijing.

Li originally planned to buy his own place when he got married, but after watching Beijing real estate prices soar, he has been spending all his free time searching for an apartment. If he finds the right place -- preferably a two-bedroom in the historic Dongcheng quarter, near the city center -- he hopes to buy immediately. Act now, he figures, or live with Mom and Dad forever. In the last 12 months such apartments have doubled or tripled in price, to about $400 per square foot.

"This year they'll be even higher," says Li in the Jan. 11 issue of Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

Millions of Chinese are pursuing property with a zeal once typical of house-happy Americans. Some Chinese are plunking down wads of cash for homes. Others are taking out mortgages at record levels. Developers are snapping up land for luxury high- rises and villas, and the banks are eagerly funding them. Some local officials are even building towns from scratch in the desert, certain that demand won't flag. And if families can swing it, they buy two apartments: one to live in, one to flip when prices jump further.

And jump they have. In Shanghai, prices for high-end real estate were up 54 percent through September, to $500 per square foot. In November alone, housing prices in 70 major cities rose 5.7 percent, while housing starts nationwide rose a staggering 194 percent. The real estate rush is fueling fears of a bubble that could burst later in 2010, devastating homeowners, banks, developers, stock markets, and local governments.

High-End Bubble

"Once the bubble pops, our economic growth will stop," warns Yi Xianrong, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Finance Research Center. On Dec. 27, China Premier Wen Jiabao told news agency Xinhua that "property prices have risen too quickly." He pledged a crackdown on speculators.

Although parallels with other bubble markets, the China bubble is not quite so easy to understand. In some places, demand for upper middle class housing is so hot it can't be satisfied. In others, speculators keep driving up prices for land, luxury apartments, and villas even though local rents are actually dropping because tenants are scarce. What's clear is that the bubble is inflating at the rich end, while little low- cost housing gets built for middle and low-income Chinese.

PENANG, Malaysia, Dec 31 (IPS) - Malaysia may have been spared the worst effects of the economic slowdown due largely to its oil and gas reserves and other natural resources.

But years of spending - some say squandering - of the nation's oil revenues on prestige projects and bailouts could have gone into strengthening the country's social safety nets. As the country's export-oriented economy took a hit, workers lost their jobs, suffered pay cuts, worked fewer days and had their overtime pay slashed.

Children have been largely protected from the adverse impact of the economic crisis due to the social safety nets that were already in place. The government's provision of universal benefits, notably free education and health care, as well as subsidies on a number of essential commodities, have been able to ensure that most children and poor families do not fall through the gaps, said Eva Jenkner, the deputy representative to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Malaysia and a senior economic social policy specialist.

"But concerns remain with regard to the comprehensiveness of the social safety nets, with only limited coverage rates of programmes specifically targeted at poor families and children, and many particularly vulnerable children out of reach of school-based social interventions (such as school feeding programmes)," she told IPS in email interview.

China's state-owned banks have become a main engine of the global recovery, financing the construction of copper mines, purchase of airplanes, expansion of retail stores and other projects even as their U.S. and European counterparts scale back lending.

The surge in Chinese lending, triple the 2008 rate, has provided a lifeline to international corporations during the worst recession in decades, and it reflects a diversification in China's global economic role beyond its holdings of vast amounts of U.S. government debt.

Over the first nine months of 2009, new lending by Chinese banks has injected $1.3 trillion into the world economy, according to statistics from the People's Bank of China, which functions as China's central bank. The beneficiaries have included U.S.-based Southwest Airlines, the Netherlands' Aercap airplane leasing company, Civil Aviation Authority in Dubai, and Foster's brewery and Woolworths supermarket chain in Australia.

China's banks have been signing so many new loan contracts so quickly that the country's banking regulatory commission recently warned them to avoid the "blind" pursuit of size lest they run into the same troubles as their Western counterparts.

Drucker's most important insight concerned the role of the corporation in society. "The business enterprise is a creature of a society and an economy, and society or economy can put any business out of existence overnight," he wrote in 1974. "The enterprise exists on sufferance and exists only as long as the society and the economy believe that it does a necessary, useful, and productive job."

<...>

Drucker showed that there is no "inherent contradiction between profit and a company's need to make a social contribution," but that the former is indispensable to achieve the latter. He also warned that an enterprise that fails to "think through its impacts and its responsibilities" exposes itself to justified attack from social forces. Consumerism and environmentalism, he taught, are not enemies to be vanquished, but symptoms of business' failure to understand its broad social role.

<...>

He held that the purpose of a business is to serve the customer by providing a good or service useful in both personal and social terms. Businesses that took their eyes off that objective in favor of pursuing profit as a paramount goal could not succeed. Such subtle distinctions eluded classical economists.

<...>

His targets included the celebrity chief executive and excessive compensation at the top. "Every CEO, it seems, has to be made to look like a dashing Confederate cavalry general or a boardroom Elvis Presley," he wrote in 1988. But real leadership "has little to do with 'leadership qualities'; and even less to do with 'charisma.' It is mundane, unromantic, and boring. Its essence is performance."

<...>

Excessive compensation, he wrote in 1974, is designed to create status rather than income. "It can only lead to political measures that, while doing no one any good, can seriously harm society, economy, and the manager as well."

And when a financial benefit accrues to managers who lay people off, he stated in 1996, "there is no excuse for it. No justification. This is morally and socially unforgivable, and we will pay a heavy price for it."

...

The Obama administration's $75 billion program to protect homeowners from foreclosure has been widely pronounced a disappointment, and some economists and real estate experts now contend it has done more harm than good.

....

Some experts argue the program has impeded economic recovery by delaying a wrenching yet cleansing process through which borrowers give up unaffordable homes and banks fully reckon with their disastrous bets on real estate, enabling money to flow more freely through the financial system.

"The choice we appear to be making is trying to modify our way out of this, which has the effect of lengthening the crisis," said Kevin Katari, managing member of Watershed Asset Management, a San Francisco-based hedge fund. "We have simply slowed the foreclosure pipeline, with people staying in houses they are ultimately not going to be able to afford anyway."

Mr. Katari contends that banks have been using temporary loan modifications under the Obama plan as justification to avoid an honest accounting of the mortgage losses still on their books. Only after banks are forced to acknowledge losses and the real estate market absorbs a now pent-up surge of foreclosed properties will housing prices drop to levels at which enough Americans can afford to buy, he argues.

"Then the carpenters can go back to work," Mr. Katari said. "The roofers can go back to work, and we start building housing again. If this drips out over the next few years, that whole sector of the economy isn't going to recover."

... Japan's other blunder was its unwillingness to fix its banks. Regulators did not force banks and indebted firms to recognize trillions of yen worth of bad loans. Banks trundled along like zombies, squandering credit to keep insolvent firms on their feet. When the Asian currency crisis hit, many undercapitalized banks toppled over.

The Obama administration has not been quite as forgiving with the banks, but it still has been nowhere near aggressive enough. The regulatory reform meant to curb bankers' destructive risk-taking is moving at a snail's pace through Congress. While the Treasury has forced banks to raise capital, many -- including some of the largest -- remain thinly capitalized and weak.

<...>

The Obama administration has still done a far better job -- up to now -- in addressing the crisis than Japan's governments did. As dismal as 2009 was, it pales when compared with what would have happened without the fiscal stimulus and the Fed's enormous monetary boost.

The White House is now pushing another mini-stimulus plan for next year. Chances are it will need to do a lot more to push reform and boost the economy. If there is an overarching lesson from Japan's lost decade, it is that half measures don't pay.

Goldman Sachs' chief spokesman, Lucas van Praag, issued the following statement in response to the latest installment in Greg Gordon's investigative series on the Wall Street firm, "Investors only could lose in Goldman's Caymans deals," published on Dec. 30:

"The McClatchy story on synthetic CDOs is riddled with factual inaccuracies and lacks a fundamental understanding of the instruments, the market conditions at the time and the intent of investors entering into the trades. There is nothing to be taken away from the story other than the fact that reporter fails to comprehend the subject matter."

Van Praag added: "Mr. Gordon appears to have been inspired by a New York Times story on synthetic CDOs that was published on December 24."

McClatchy stands by its reporting, and rejects as untrue Mr. Van Praag's allegations that the story "is riddled with factual inaccuracies" and that the reporter "fails to comprehend the subject matter."

As flattering as it is, Mr. van Praag's assumption that Greg Gordon produced his Dec. 30 story in six days is incorrect. In fact, he had finished reporting and writing the story, and it was being edited on Dec. 24 when The New York Times published "Banks Bundled Bad Debt, Bet Against It and Won," that paper's variation on the theme of McClatchy's Nov. 1-4 series on how Goldman Sachs had bundled bad debt, bet against it and won.

The imposition of the euro, and the rigid economic policy a single currency implies, is having socially catastrophic effects across much of Europe on a scale that dwarfs Britain's suffering in the 1990s.

Consider the facts. In Spain, unemployment has already reached a gut-wrenching 19.3%. But unemployment for those between 16-24 is a catastrophic 42%. In Greece, youth unemployment is 25%, in Ireland 28.4% and Italy 26.9%. Marginal eurozone countries such as Greece, Spain and Ireland are not just in recession. They are in depression - and so long as they remain inside the euro there is no exit.

nb the author is the Economics Editor of the Daily Mail

keep to the Fen Causeway

Latvia is a member of the EU and is expected to adopt the Euro, but it has not yet reached that stage. Meanwhile, the EU and IMF have told the government to borrow foreign currency to stabilize the exchange rate of the local currency, in order to help borrowers pay mortgages taken out in foreign currencies from foreign banks. As a condition of IMF funding, the usual government cutbacks are also being required. Nils Muiznieks, head of the Advanced Social and Political Research Institute in Riga, Latvia, complained:

"The rest of the world is implementing stimulus packages ranging from anywhere between one percent and ten percent of GDP but at the same time, Latvia has been asked to make deep cuts in spending - a total of about 38 percent this year in the public sector - and raise taxes to meet budget shortfalls."

In November, the Latvian government adopted its harshest budget of recent years, with cuts of nearly 11%. The government had already raised taxes, slashed public spending and government wages, and shut dozens of schools and hospitals. As a result, the national bank forecasts a 17.5% decline in the economy this year, just when it needs a productive economy to get back on its feet. In Iceland, the economy contracted by 7.2% during the third quarter, the biggest fall on record. As in other countries squeezed by neo-liberal tourniquets on productivity, employment and output are being crippled, bringing these economies to their knees.

The cynical view is that that may have been the intent. Instead of helping post-Soviet nations develop self-reliant economies, writes Marshall Auerback, "the West has viewed them as economic oysters to be broken up to indebt them in order to extract interest charges and capital gains, leaving them empty shells."

leaving aside the toryspeak, the rest of the article has some points it would be good to hear debunked or explained. anyone?

"Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do." Jim Hightower

A Somali man has been charged with trying to kill a Danish artist whose drawing of the Prophet Mohammed sparked riots around the world.

The suspect, who was shot by police outside cartoonist Kurt Westergaard's home in the city of Aarhus on Friday, was carried into court on a stretcher.

Police say he broke into the house armed with an axe and a knife.

The suspect, who denies the charge, was remanded in custody. Police say he has links with Somali Islamist militants.

The radical al-Shabab group in Somalia hailed the attack.

Afghanistan's parliament voted on Saturday to reject most of the nominees put forward by President Hamid Karzai to serve in his new Cabinet.

Just seven of 24 nominees were approved in a secret ballot that saw MPs vote on each candidate individually.

Among the seventeen rejects were Energy Minister Ismail Khan and Women's Affairs Minister Husn Bano Ghazanfar, who had both been expected to be reappointed.

Former warlord Khan is seen as a close ally of Karzai, and was a strong supporter of the president in his controversial reelection last year. Ghazanfar was the only woman nominated for a post.

The Saudi foreign minister on Saturday criticized Israel's settlement construction and said the country acts like a spoiled child because the international community is not tough enough in pressuring it to make concessions.

Prince Saud al-Faisal told a press conference in Riyadh that Washington and other players in Mideast peace efforts should take a firm and serious stand to put an end to Israeli construction on land Palestinians want for a future state.

"Israel's announcement Monday that it plans to build building nearly 700 new apartments for Jews in East Jerusalem is a source of worry, which we strongly condemn," he said.

The Palestinians want East Jerusalem as their capital and say each expansion of Jewish housing there is making partition as part of a future peace deal more difficult. The U.S., the Palestinians and the European Union condemned the new Israeli building plan.

The changes across the landscape here would have been hard to imagine just a few years ago.

The rebel groups that started the war in Darfur in 2003, catalyzing a conflict that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, almost seem to have gone into hibernation. So, too, have the infamous janjaweed, the marauding bandits who raped, killed and terrorized countless civilians.

And this planting season, for the first time since 2003, United Nations officials say that tens of thousands of farmers who had been seeking refuge in squalid displaced persons camps returned to their villages to plant crops, a journey many Darfurians would have considered suicide until recently.

US president Barack Obama has accused al-Qaida of being behind the botched plot to blow up a transatlantic passenger jet on Christmas Day.

He said it appeared that the alleged would-be suicide bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had been trained by an al-Qaida affiliate in Yemen.

"We're learning more about the suspect," Obama said in his weekly radio and internet address today.

"We know that he travelled to Yemen, a country grappling with crushing poverty and deadly insurgencies. It appears that he joined an affiliate of al-Qaida, and that this group - al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula - trained him, equipped him with those explosives and directed him to attack that plane headed for America," the president added.

CAIRO -- Iran's foreign minister warned the West on Saturday that it had one month to accept Iran's counterproposal to a deal brokered by the United Nations aimed at slowing the Iranian nuclear program, or else Iran would begin further enriching its nuclear fuel stockpile on its own.

The comments by the foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, were broadcast on state television and presented as an "ultimatum" to the West just two days after Iran missed a deadline set by the United States and its allies to accept a deal that was brokered in October in Geneva.

If the Iranian deadline is not met, Mr. Mottaki said, Iran will enrich its stockpile of low-enriched uranium to 20 percent, though it was unclear if it had the technical ability to accomplish the task. At the 20 percent level, Iran could, in theory, make an extremely crude nuclear weapon. The bigger threat would be that Iran's enrichment could quickly accelerate from there to the much higher grade of fuel typically used in modern nuclear warheads.

More broadly, the Internet has given citizens a chance to discuss and organize action on sensitive issues.

"The Internet has been very important. You can express yourself; you can distribute information to change other people's views; you can communicate; you can organize," says Wan Yanhai, a prominent Beijing-based AIDS activist, who started his organization with the help of email and the Web. "In the past 10 years, it has affected people's lives so much. It has given people courage to change society."

To say that the censors are losing isn't to say they have lost. If the Communist Party's grip over information is loosening, it is far from clear whether its hold on political power in China is ultimately threatened by the trend.

<...>

Mr. Xiao points to the example of Liu Xiaobo, detained in December 2008 for his role in creating Charter 08, a sweeping call for political and legal reform in China. Mr. Liu was sentenced on Christmas Day to 11 years in prison for subversion. But since his detention, thousands more Chinese have signed Charter 08 through Internet sites that disseminate the document. ...

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (Reuters) -- Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen on Friday denied fresh accusations by the Venezuelan government that the Netherlands is supporting US spy flights over Venezuelan territory. (...) Twice in the past two weeks, the government of President Hugo Chavez has publicly claimed that the Dutch have let the US military launch spy flights from bases on the territories of Aruba and Curacao under the guise of drug surveillance missions.

The armoured anti-riot vehicles have a capacity of 10,000 liters to shoot cold and hot water, and three 100 liter tanks to shoot burning chemical liquids. The water is mixed with paint or tear gas that cannot be washed away. Each vehicle has two guns for shooting liquid up to a distance of 70 meters- it is controlled from inside the cabin. The price tag for each unit is 650,000 dollars. Also, a lot of extra burning liquid, paint, and tear gas was purchased.

It took four months for the delivery of the armoured vehicles, and since the Iranian regime was in a hurry, they had them delivered from China's army organization- this is rare!  China's government was in as much of a hurry to get these to Iran.

We pray that this regime will not last to get to use these violent equipments. But even if they do get to use them on the streets, it is nothing to worry about. Iranians are so creative that we will find the cheapest way to destroy them. The tyrannical and blood thirsty government of China should realize that this inhumane action against the people of Iran will turn out to be a big punishment. We will cut off their hands from our country and we will try our best to get rid of their products in our region. Also, China should wait for our full support of the people of Tibet against their barbaric crimes and the Muslim people of Sien Kiang, and we will punch their dirty mouths.

This clear interference of China in Iran's internal affairs and their cooperation in putting down the Iranian people must be condemned by all nations of the world. We also feel sorry for the "Supreme Leader" who is willing to kiss the bottoms of the Chinese who do not even believe in God, but is not willing to listen to the people of Iran.

Translation: Tour Irani

Editor's Note: Officials in China are a special breed. They tend to be restrained when facing the press and stick to the scripted lines. But occasionally they can be caught off guard and make some of the most unusual remarks one can expect from public servants, including those that are funny, annoying, ironic or simply heartless. You can laud them for speaking their minds, or you can criticize them for their big mouth, but you cannot deny that these retorts, rebuttals and asides add much needed color to an otherwise drab portrait of Chinese officialdom. [The top 10 everything of 2009]

1. "We are of high-level positions. So don't bother to call the police."

2. "Why doesn't the public reveal their assets first?"

3. "I will have your website shut down if you (journalist) dare to report it."

4. "Go straight to the fifth floor. Don't choose the first or second floor."

5. "You are doomed to be punished if you fight against the government. Any action against the government is illegal."

6. "You are a mouthpiece for the party (CPC) or the people?"

7. "Build, baby, build! We will make up for your loss."

8. "I say 99 percent of repeat petitioners are mentally ill."

9. "Which media organization do you work for?"

10. "Are you a member of the Communist Party (CPC)?"

A prominent ultra-Orthodox rabbi has asked a Tiberias bus company to launch a line similar to the ones in Jerusalem and Bnei Brak that segregate women from men.

Rabbi Asher Idan from Jerusalem, a ruler on religious matters pertaining to modesty, contacted the company Veolia Transportation last month, saying that ultra-Orthodox Jews from Tiberias wanted a segregated line.

[...]

He added that Veolia would be glad to meet the needs of the Haredi public. But when queried by Haaretz, Veolia would only say that it was "acting according to the directives of the Transportation Ministry as they are issued from time to time, and will continue to act according to them."

..."Nine years ago, the land all around my plot was a yellowish colour. There were only one or two lonely trees," Claudina Loaiza, who has been part of the projects since its onset, told IPS.

The project extends over 56 rural villages, townships and Pijao reservations, which make up six municipalities, and has its central office in Natagaima, 225 kilometres from Bogotá.

The area known as the Pijao region is home to this native group, who used to be spread out in different parts of the country but whose numbers have dwindled. The population is not purely indigenous, though, as there are also many white and mestizo (mixed-race) people. In fact, only a portion of the rural women in the project are Amerindian.

The territory borders with the Tatacoa, a desert that is encroaching on the region, having already swallowed up a once huge tropical forest. It is this forest ecosystem that Manos de Mujer is working hard to regenerate through a number of actions, with the aim of pushing back the advancing desertification.

"When I left the father of my children, because of his drinking and cheating, I began planting my own fruit and vegetable garden in my yard; this was something I really wanted," Loaiza said, her eyes shining as she introduced her daughter and niece, who work the land with her.

PORTLAND, Oregon, Dec 31 (IPS/IFEJ) - While the world's climate negotiators were getting ready for Copenhagen earlier this month, a meeting was taking place in Mumbai to discuss progress in green chemistry, a field that - like the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions - has the potential to greatly enhance the world's environmental health and sustainability.

In the developing countries where so much of the world's manufacturing occurs and which are home to much of the world's worst industrial pollution, a move to green chemistry has the potential to improve working conditions as well as health and safety for communities where industry is located.

As defined by the movement's founders, Paul Anastas, director of Yale University's Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering, and John Warner, president of the Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry, the goal of green chemistry is to create new synthetic materials that are "benign by design".

The aim is to prevent chemical pollution - and by extension, related adverse health impacts - by eliminating potential chemical hazards of new materials at the design stage.

The fundamental idea is that eliminating chemical hazards at the outset - rather than trying to contain or treat these problems after they've occurred - is the best way to prevent such toxics from being released into the environment and of protecting people from exposure to such substances.

At a time when prices for commodities such as tea, cocoa and sugar are soaring to their highest levels in years, lobster, a delicacy associated with luxury living, is selling at bargain prices.

Prices have sunk so far over the past two years that some mass-market restaurant chains have added lobster to their menus. Tennessee-based Ruby Tuesday, with about 850 outlets in the US, offers lobster tails, as well as lobster carbonara and lobster macaroni and cheese.

Hannaford Supermarkets, a New England chain in the heart of the US lobster industry, has the crustacean on special this week at $4.99 a pound, half the price of halibut.

The lobster fishery's woes are closely tied to the global financial crisis, which has shrunk demand for a delicacy long associated with celebration.

The credit crunch has also deprived North American and European processors of working capital. Icelandic banks, among the most prominent casualties of the meltdown in the markets, were big lenders to the seafood industry.

Dec. 31 (Bloomberg) -- Until last year, people in the Ethiopian settlement of Elliah earned a living by farming their land and fishing. Now, they are employees.

Dozens of women and children pack dirt into bags for palm seedlings along the banks of the Baro River, seedlings whose oil will be exported to India and China. They work for Bangalore- based Karuturi Global Ltd., which is leasing 300,000 hectares (741,000 acres) of local land, an area larger than Luxembourg.

The jobs pay less than the World Bank's $1.25-per-day poverty threshold, even as the project has the potential to enrich international investors with annual earnings that the company expects to exceed $100 million by 2013.

"My business is the third wave of outsourcing," Sai Ramakrishna Karuturi, the 44-year-old managing director of Karuturi Global, said at the company's dusty office in the western town of Gambella. "Everyone is investing in China for manufacturing; everyone is investing in India for services. Everybody needs to invest in Africa for food."

Companies and governments are buying or leasing African land after cereals prices almost tripled in the three years ended April 2008. Ghana, Madagascar, Mali and Ethiopia alone have approved 1.4 million hectares of land allocations to foreign investors since 2004, according to the International Institute for Environment and Development in London.

TACKLING climate change will cost consumers the earth. Those who campaign for a green revolution are out to destroy our western lifestyles. Such are the cries of opponents of emissions cuts, and their message has political clout: a number of surveys, including one by New Scientist in 2007, have found that the enthusiasm of voters for policies to alleviate climate change falls off as the price tag increases.

However, a new modelling exercise conducted exclusively for this magazine suggests that these fears are largely unfounded. It projects that radical cuts to the UK's emissions will cause barely noticeable increases in the price of food, drink and most other goods by 2050 (see the figures). Electricity and petrol costs will rise significantly, but with the right policies in place, say the modellers, this need not lead to big changes in our lifestyle.

"These results show that the global project to fight climate change is doable," says Alex Bowen, a climate policy expert at the London School of Economics. "It's not such a big ask as people are making out."

Although it is impossible to precisely predict prices four decades from now, the exercise is one of the most detailed examinations yet of the impact of climate change policies on UK consumers. It provides a useful rough guide to our economic future.

Though its results speak directly to the UK consumer, previous research has come to similar conclusions for the US. In June, one study found that if the US were to cut emissions by 50 per cent by 2050, prices of most consumer goods would increase by less than 5 per cent (Energy Economics, DOI: 10.1016/j.eneco.2009.06.016). The findings are also consistent with analyses by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Washington DC. "Even cutting emissions by 80 per cent over four decades has a very small effect on consumers in most areas," says Manik Roy of the Pew Center. "The challenge is now to convince consumers and policy-makers that this is the case."

Shell has become embroiled in a major row with the World Bank and green energy companies after allegations that it is unfairly refusing to honour warranties on solar power systems sold to the developing world.

....

The rural electrification business under which the Shell systems were sold has now itself been passed on - as have most other parts of the group's solar business - but critics say that Shell, which made profits of $31bn in 2008, has a continuing role in ensuring former customers are not left vulnerable.

"Shell exited solar on a global basis, seemingly without due consideration to how after-sales service and warranty replacements would be provided, thereby damaging the very local solar industries it had earlier helped to create," said Damian Miller, a former Shell manager who now heads his own solar business, Orb Energy.

"In Sri Lanka, poor customers with average earnings of $1,500-$2,000 a month have bought Shell's solar systems. The system is equivalent to 30% of their annual income," he added. "They could only afford a system because they could get a loan from microfinance institutions or other banks. But now there are reports of thousands of Shell's [branded] solar panels failing in the field and Shell seemingly is not replacing them."

The World Bank, which provides financing packages to the developing world, said it too was very worried about a situation in which about 700 solar systems appear to have failed and local suppliers risked going out of business.

But Shell claims that it "transferred" its obligations regarding these system to the successor company, Environ Energy Global PTE Ltd. It would be interesting to see an independent audit of the terms of the transaction, how much, if any, money was paid by Environ Energy Global PTE Ltd. for its newly aquired "assets" and liabilities, etc. Next Shell will be attributing the high failure rate to faulty installation.

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

BLANTYRE, Dec 14 (IPS) - An experience which Belita Simpokolwe went through in December last year remains deeply etched in her memory. "Sometimes I fail to concentrate in class when these things come back to my mind," laments 13-year-old Simpokolwe, a grade six pupil at Kawale Primary School, in the northern Malawi district of Chitipa.

She says what pains her most is that she was victimised by the very people she believed would protect her from any danger that would ruin her future.

But her teacher says it is encouraging that Simpolokwe still performs well in class, and is likely to fulfil her dream of becoming a nurse.

The fourth of five children, Simpokolwe was one of the many victims of kupimbira - a cultural practice in which parents arrange marriages between young girls and older men to get money from a dowry - without the knowledge of the girl.

Sometimes parents offer their girls to men as payment for debt. Kupimbira is an ancient tradition practised by many tribes in northern Malawi.

Belita's story is a tale of horror. "My stepfather ordered me to quit school and get married to a 77-year-old man because he said I was too old for standard four. I refused, and told him I wanted to continue with my education," she says.

They say that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. But it does: the roaring rage of injured male pride. This was amply demonstrated in Egypt when a female Saudi journalist had the audacity to apply logic and consistency to challenge an area of traditional male privilege.

In an article provocatively entitled "My Four Husbands and I", Nadine al-Bedair quite sensibly posed the logical question: if Muslim men are entitled to marry up to four wives, why can't women, in the spirit of equality between believers, have four husbands?

"I have long questioned why it is men have a monopoly on this right. No one has been able to explain to me convincingly why it is I'm deprived of the right to polyandry," she complains.

The outspoken Saudi then goes on to deconstruct and question the traditional justifications for polygamy, including that, in a traditional patriarchal society, it is a shelter for widows, divorcees and women who can't find a spouse; that men have greater sexual appetites than women and get easily bored; that women can't handle more than one man; and that, if women could have multiple husbands, determining paternity would not be possible (an excuse made obsolete by modern science).

"If you are doing business here, you should follow the local law, the sentiments of the people, the culture of the country," says Gulshan Rai, an official in the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, who is overseeing implementation of the new law. "If somebody starts abusing Lord Rama on a Web site, that could start riots," he said.

Iqbal Chagla, a leading Indian attorney on civil liberties and public interest litigation, says fears of public rioting sparked by Web content -- or incendiary content in any medium -- are overstated. "Communal tensions become largely an excuse for denial of civil liberties and denial of freedom of speech," Mr. Chagla said. "It's a very thin line that's being tread."

Still, Google has learned to be wary of material that could ignite unrest, from incendiary comments about politicians such as Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi to user groups bashing revered historical or religious figures.

"In those gray areas it is really hard," says Nicole Wong, Google's deputy general counsel, who oversees the legal aspects of new Google product launches. "On the one hand, we believe very strongly in political speech and, on the other hand, in India they do riot and they blow up buses."

Music has been shown to be beneficial in many areas of health, from stroke recovery to lung condition management.

Ian Noonan, a lecturer in mental health at the Florence Nightingale, said Mr Browne's music would bring another dimension to nursing.

"Music is essential in life. People need creativity and quite often in life when they are in hospital that is lost.

"Everything has to be done in a standardised way and people can be very frightened if they are very unwell.

'Power to soothe'

"But the importance of music goes back to the time of Florence Nightingale.

"She pointed out that it is important that nurses are quiet at night and don't disturb anyone, but she also talks about how familiar songs and things like Home Sweet Home or an Italian aria can sensitively soothe the sick and have the power to restore the soul.

"It is about trying to find a different way rather than looking solely at the Nice (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) guidelines or Department of Health guidance, and about getting students to think in a more narrative way.

amen

"Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do." Jim Hightower

The Daily Mail is really, really horrible.

But we already knew this.

But as casual misogyny and general nastiness goes, the following headline is something of a paradigm example: "Stripper jailed for lacing lover's Angel Delight with poison" - screams the Dail Mail.

FIRST it was planes, trains and automobiles that benefited from computer-aided design technology. Now, as synthetic biologists attempt to build artificial life forms, a CAD system has been developed to allow them to redesign the stuff of life much faster and more easily.

Deepak Chandran and colleagues at the University of Washington in Seattle developed Tinkercell to allow biologists to meddle with the components of, say, a bacterium, and simulate the effect the change has (Journal of Biomedical Engineering, vol 3, p 19).

The package has a library of the components of life, from which users can pick different cells, membrane proteins, fluorescent proteins, enzymes and genes to create their organism. Tinkercell can then simulate the life form to see if it functions as expected.

Figure 2. The TinkerCell Core API. Shown here is the basic structure provided by the Core library. The Core library defines data structures and functions for drawing nodes and connections. Each node and connection can contain "data" associated with that node or connection. This data can include information such as parameters, equations, DNA sequence, or database IDs. Plug-ins, both C and C++, and Python scripts are responsible for populating the data inside each node and connection. For example, a C++ plug-in is responsible for adding the a table of parameter values to each node and connection; another plug-in is responsible for adding reaction rates to all the connections. Another small plug-in stores and updates the spacial co-ordinates of all cells in the model, allowing a modeler to use cell position information inside the model. C and Python programs utilize all this information to perform various analyses, including simulations. Plug-ins also provide the graphical interface for viewing and editing the information stored inside the items.

A duck named Edwina, believed to be the oldest recorded living duck in the United Kingdom, has died at the age of 22.

The mallard was first discovered by Ian Knight and Christine Christopher in a lake near their residence in the market town of Ringwood in Hampshire, England. Edwina, as she was later called, had been attacked by her family and abandoned by her own mother. Ian helped the duck to recover its health and, after a failed attempt to release the creature back into the wild, the duck was adopted as a family pet. She was originally given the male name Edward; however, when -- to the shock of Christopher and Knight - it was discovered that she had the ability to lay eggs, her name was changed to Edwina. Some of the habits of the duck included drinking tea and swimming in a sink.