Only two months after being sworn in, partners in Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government are finding it increasingly difficult to paint over differences on issues ranging from tax cuts to anti-terror measures. 

The conservative bloc comprising Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), had for years longed for a governing partnership with the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP). Their wish was granted when voters at the September 27 general elections gave the parties the required mandate for the alliance.

 

However, the difficult negotiations that preceded the signing of the coalition agreement in October didn't seem to augur well for the partnership. And signs of discord have continued to afflict the coalition into 2010.

 

"The image of the coalition can be better," the head of the FDP's parliamentary group, Brigit Homburger, told the dpa news agency on New Year's day.

 

Meanwhile, the FDP secretary general, Christian Lindner, made it clear who his party held responsible for flaws in the coalition's image. He told the Tagesspiegel newspaper on Saturday, January 2, that the CDU/CSU lacked orientation where questions of core values were concerned.

 

In turn, the chairman of the employees' group in the CDU/CSU parliamentary contingent, Peter Weiss, told the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper that the FDP was finding it hard to "say goodbye to party congress rhetoric and engage in the hard realities of government business."

New full-body scanners are already being ordered by the British Airports Authority, the prime minister said this morning as he outlined a new regime of tightened airport security.

Speaking on BBC One's Andrew Marr programme, Gordon Brown pre-empted the findings of his own review by saying future passengers must expect to be scanned by the controversial scanners. The devices have received mixed appraisals on whether they are suitable to detect the new type of explosive that 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is accused of using in an attempt to blow up a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day.

Since that attempted attack, an urgent review into airport security has begun. The transport secretary, Andrew Adonis, is expected to report its findings to parliament this week.

BAA, which operates six British airports, said today it would move quickly to install full-body scanners at London's Heathrow.

"Now that the government has given the go-ahead, we will introduce full-body scanners as soon as practical," a spokesman for BAA told Reuters. He said BAA was just looking at introducing the scanners at Heathrow - Europe's busiest airport by passenger numbers - at this stage.

Russia has stopped shipments of oil to Belarus following a dispute about pricing, oil traders said on Monday.

The move will set off alarm bells in Europe, triggering memories of last January's natural gas war between Russia and Ukraine that left several eastern European cities without gas for days. Oil, however, is more fungible than gas, and easily made up with alternative suppliers, so the consequences of the dispute are unlikely to be as severe.

The cut-off is the first since January 2007, when Russia stopped pumping oil to Belarus for three days following a similar tariff battle, which was eventually resolved in Russia's favour.

Despite the action, oil exports to Europe were still flowing and refineries in Belarus had a week's worth of oil stockpiled, Reuters reported.

Irina Yesipova, of Moscow's energy ministry, told Russian news agency RIA Novosti on Sunday that oil transit flows to Europe were unaffected by the dispute: "Transportation is being carried out in full measure and the negotiation process is continuing right now," she said, without giving details.

Julia Nanay, of the Washington-based Petroleum Finance Company, said the pipeline via Belarus supplied up to 800,000 barrels a day of oil products to Germany and Poland. "If this delivery were cut it would be serious. However, the crude continues to transit Belarus for now and Germany and Poland are receiving oil," she said.

Bloodthirsty 'sport' is dying a slow death across Spain, as younger audiences turn away

Already faced with a rapidly ageing fanbase at home and widespread incomprehension and rejection abroad, Spanish bullfighting has suffered another major setback after the Catalan parliament voted to outlaw it completely across the region.

The decision was so controversial that some deputies hunched over their desks to hide their fingers from photographers as they punched in their votes. After a narrow initial victory for the abolitionists - 67 in favour and 59 against - the law could become effective as soon as May.

Spain's right-wing press was quick to attribute the result to Catalan separatists' desire to dissociate themselves from an activity often considered as typically Spanish as tapas, siestas and flamenco. Unofficially, though, even before Friday's decision, it seems bullfighting circles in the rest of Spain had given Catalonia up as a lost cause.

Germany's short-time working program has helped prevent massive unemployment during the current recession. Although the model has been admired internationally, its biggest test is still ahead. The hugely expensive scheme is a risky bet that the economy will turn around in 2010.

A Somalian man caught breaking into the home of a cartoonist whose portrayal of the prophet Muhammad sparked fury across the Muslim world five years ago was arrested in Kenya last year, Danish media reports said today.

The Danish PET intelligence agency knew the 28-year-old man had been detained in Kenya in September for allegedly participating in planning an attack against the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, the Politiken newspaper said.

The report, citing unnamed sources, said the man was later released because of a lack of evidence.

Clinton visited Kenya as part of an 11-day tour of Africa during August.

Bo Jensen, the Danish ambassador to Kenya, told the Ritzau news agency the Somali man was arrested in Kenya for having incomplete travel documents.

However, he said the Kenyan authorities never told the embassy that he was suspected of involvement in any terror plot, adding that the newspaper had misunderstood the situation.

Senior Labour figures have voiced concerns that Tony Blair's appearance at the Iraq inquiry in the coming weeks will wreck any prospect of him helping the party at the general election.

The Labour leadership, which fires its opening shot in the election campaign today, has so far not agreed any formal role for the man who led it to three successive election victories.

The Iraq inquiry, which was set up by Gordon Brown and which resumes its hearings tomorrow, is reopening old divisions between Brownites and Blairites months before Labour seeks a fourth term.

Growing criticism is being voiced within the former Prime Minister's inner circle about Mr Brown's decision to hold the inquiry with public hearings in the run-up to the election.

Budget airline Ryanair has been accused of being "puerile and childish" over its payment policy by business watchdog the Office of Fair Trading (OFT).

OFT chief executive John Fingleton attacked the company for fees that Ryanair adds when customers use all but one type of credit card to pay online.

He told the Independent newspaper that the firm used a legal loophole to justify charging the extra fee.

Ryanair said their payme

Those invited for consultation include Jacques Delors, the long-serving Commission President (1985-1994) who is considered as one of the 'fathers of Europe'.

Felipe González, former Spanish Prime minister (1982-1996) and chairman of a reflection group on the future of Europe will also join, alongside former Spanish commissioner Pedro Solbes (1999-2004).

...

The meeting's first priority is to make progress on the first objective of the Spanish EU presidency, namely, to re-enforce a "European economic government" and improve the coordination of the EU's common policies in economic affairs and employment, the Spanish daily says.

Just listened to David Cameron's speech on health policy, which was profoundly depressing. Cameron obviously thought so too; much of it was delivered from a text written in the sort of management jargon that has so sapped the will to live in the public sector in the New Labour years. He was so uninterested in some of the detail that he appeared not to notice the glaring discrepancy between the radical decentralisation that he promised and the radical centralisation of unified maternity services in each area.

After facing opposition from all quarters to its initial plan to establish new rules to regulate the sampling and retention of DNA via secondary legislation, the Home Office belatedly introduced clauses about DNA in the Crime and Security Bill 2009-10. Opposition to a blank check for the Secretary of State was so predictable that introducing these clauses, among many other unrelated ones, close to a year after the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruling against the UK appear the result of deliberate delaying tactics. There's no date set yet for when the bill will progress to the second reading stage.

One change introduced in the bill got most of the attention: the proposition to retain DNA profiles of innocents for six years instead of 12. Another figure picked out of thin air with little justification. Missing in the bill is any mention about retention rules of the associated Police National Computer (PNC) records, and it would seem that the Home Office is now keen to hold on to these even when it will relent and delete DNA profiles, fingerprints and palm prints. Here are high level details about what's in store, extracted from the Explanatory notes accompanying the Crime and Security Bill 2009-10:

WASHINGTON -- Banks and other lenders are still foreclosing on Americans' homes at a rate that's outpacing the Obama administration's main effort to stem the crisis.

In fact, while the Treasury Department's Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, has started the mortgage modification process on almost 760,000 homeowners who are at risk of losing their homes, less than 5 percent of those workouts have become permanent, government data show.

"HAMP has made only limited progress for nine months now, and the residential foreclosure crisis continues to mount," said Richard Neiman, the superintendent of banks in New York state and a member of the Congressional Oversight Panel that was formed to monitor the Treasury bank bailout funds that support the mortgage program. He was appointed to the post by the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives.

Another member of the oversight panel, U.S. Rep. Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican and a critic of the bailout bill, called the mortgage program "a failure."

In a recent report, he said the administration's efforts "have assisted only a small number of homeowners while drawing billions of involuntary taxpayer dollars into a black hole." (Hensarling recently left the panel.)

The Treasury Department acknowledges that its program needs to do a better job of making hundreds of thousands of trial modifications permanent, but an official said the program is making progress and is on track to meet many of its goals.

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.

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

CAPE CORAL, Fla. -- After an improbable rise from the Bronx projects to a job selling Gulf Coast homes, Isabel Bermudez lost it all to an epic housing bust -- the six-figure income, the house with the pool and the investment property.>

Now, as she papers the county with résumés and girds herself for rejection, she is supporting two daughters on an income that inspires a double take: zero dollars in monthly cash and a few hundred dollars in food stamps.

With food-stamp use at a record high and surging by the day, Ms. Bermudez belongs to an overlooked subgroup that is growing especially fast: recipients with no cash income.

About six million Americans receiving food stamps report they have no other income, according to an analysis of state data collected by The New York Times. In declarations that states verify and the federal government audits, they described themselves as unemployed and receiving no cash aid -- no welfare, no unemployment insurance, and no pensions, child support or disability pay.

Their numbers were rising before the recession as tougher welfare laws made it harder for poor people to get cash aid, but they have soared by about 50 percent over the past two years. About one in 50 Americans now lives in a household with a reported income that consists of nothing but a food-stamp card.

A Middle Eastern investment fund that pays Tony Blair about £1m a year as an international adviser is in talks to develop one of Iraq's biggest oilfields.

Mubadala, a United Arab Emirates investment firm, is in negotiations to join a consortium of western oil companies developing the Zubair oilfield in southern Iraq. More than £6 billion of investment is required for the project.

Blair has always insisted that the Iraq conflict was never linked to the country's vast oil reserves, but he was facing criticism this weekend over his role with Mubadala. The investment firm, which receives 80% of its revenues from oil and gas, in

Stronger regulation should be the first line of defense against excessive speculation that could send the economy into a new crisis, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Sunday.

But he didn't rule out higher interest rates to stop that from happening.

The Fed chief's remarks were his most extensive on the subject since the housing market's tumble led to the gravest financial crisis since World War II -- and perhaps the worst in modern history, in his view.

Critics blame the Fed for feeding that speculative boom in housing by holding interest rates too low for too long after the 2001 recession.

But Bernanke, in a speech to the American Economic Association's annual meeting in Atlanta, defended the central bank's actions. Extra-low rates were needed to get the economy and job creation back to full throttle after the Sept. 11 attacks and accounting scandals that rocked Wall Street, he said.

Bernanke said the direct links were weak between super-low interest rates and the rapid rise in house prices that occurred at roughly the same time. The stance of interest rates during that period "does not appear to have been inappropriate," he said.

Public-Transit Passengers Face Rough Ride

Public transportation will be more crowded and more expensive this year as big-city transit systems across the country respond to severe budget pressures.

Funding from state and local governments -- a key part of budgets for transit systems -- has been cut and ridership is down overall, prompting transit officials to trim service and raise fares at a time when many customers are pinched themselves.

San Francisco is raising fares for commuters this month. Chicago will lay off workers and eliminate bus routes in February to avoid fare increases. New York City is planning to wind down free and reduced-cost student fares starting in September. And Washington, D.C., is proposing to decrease the frequency of trains.

Private companies could make a profit by selling water back to the public under a little-noticed provision in California's $11.1 billion water bond. In a state where water is an especially precious resource, this provision may become controversial as it goes before voters in 2010....

[A]ccording to the San Francisco Chronicle, the bond allows for the creation of joint powers authorities who "may include in their membership governmental and nongovernmental partners that are not located within their respective hydrologic regions in financing the surface storage projects."

"The bond basically spreads the cost over the state of California. This puts us in a position of having general taxpayers subsidizing at least some profits for a private corporation. And that's not right, especially at a time when we have huge budget deficits," said Mark Schlosberg, Western regional director of Food and Water Watch, a nonprofit organization in Washington....

The bond provides for the formation of what are known as joint powers authorities - usually a coalition of public entities that pool resources for projects they probably couldn't do, or couldn't afford to do, on their own. The water bond, though, specifically allows for the creation of joint powers authorities that "may include in their membership governmental and nongovernmental partners that are not located within their respective hydrologic regions in financing the surface storage projects."

Read more...

Possibly related lesson:

IRR

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

A key proposal in the overhaul of money market regulation suggests that money market fund managers will have the option to "suspend redemptions to allow for the orderly liquidation of fund assets." You read that right: this does not refer to the charter of procyclical, leveraged, risk-ridden, transsexual (allegedly) portfolio manager-infested hedge funds like SAC, Citadel, Glenview or even Bridgewater (which in light of ADIA's latest batch of problems, may well be wishing this was in fact the case), but the heart of heretofore assumed safest and most liquid of investment options: Money Market funds, which account for nearly 40% of all investment company assets....

Yet what is strange is that even with all the adverse consequences of holding cash in Money Markets, the total AUM of this "safest" investment option is still substantial, at nearly $3.3 trillion as of December 30, a big decline yes, but a decline that should have been much greater considering even the president since March 3 has been beckoning his daily viewership to invest in cheap stocks courtesy of low "profit and earning ratios" (that, and the specter of President's Working Group on Financial Markets). Could this action, whereby investors will no longer have access to money that historically has been sacrosanct and reachable and disposable on a moment's notice, be the last nail in the coffin of money markets? We believe so, however, we are not sure if it will attain the desired effect. With an aging baby boomer population, which would rather burn their money than invest in the stock market again and relive the roller-coaster days of late 2008 and early 2009, the plan may well backfire, and result in even more money leaving the shadow system and entering such tangible objects as deposit accounts (at community banks, of course), mattresses and socks. And speaking of the President's Working Group...

Inadvertantly ties in the forgotten 2008 road show "Blueprint for America's Working Women and Families."

Possibly related news:

Automatic Workplace Pensions
We'll help you save
PWG (1, 2, 3, 4)...no conspiracy theory, really.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. lenders involved in risky mortgage lending that contributed to the 2007 financial crisis were also some of the fiercest financial lobbyists, according to a report by International Monetary Fund economists.

In the report "A Fistful of Dollars: Lobbying and the Financial Crisis," the economists said their studies showed that lenders taking on the most risk were also the most active in lobbying against laws and regulations related to mortgage lending.

The study did not name any of the lenders but the language in it implied that they were among the biggest banks and mortgage brokerage companies in the nation.

"Lenders that lobby more intensively on these specific issues have (i) more lax lending standards measured by loan-to-income ratio, (ii) greater tendency to securitize, and (iii) faster growing mortgage loan portfolios," the report said.

"Ex post, delinquency rates are higher in areas in which lobbying lenders' mortgage lending grew faster, and, during key events of the crisis, these lenders experienced negative abnormal stock returns," it added.

The study is the first to document how lobbying may have contributed to excessive risk-taking in the U.S. housing market that led to the 2007 financial crisis, economists Deniz Igan, Prachi Mishra and Thierry Tressel said.

... the odds are that any good economic news you hear in the near future will be a blip, not an indication that we're on our way to sustained recovery. But will policy makers misinterpret the news and repeat the mistakes of 1937? Actually, they already are.

The Obama fiscal stimulus plan is expected to have its peak effect on G.D.P. and jobs around the middle of this year, then start fading out. That's far too early: why withdraw support in the face of continuing mass unemployment? Congress should have enacted a second round of stimulus months ago, when it became clear that the slump was going to be deeper and longer than originally expected. But nothing was done -- and the illusory good numbers we're about to see will probably head off any further possibility of action.

Meanwhile, all the talk at the Fed is about the need for an "exit strategy" from its efforts to support the economy. One of those efforts, purchases of long-term U.S. government debt, has already come to an end. It's widely expected that another, purchases of mortgage-backed securities, will end in a few months. This amounts to a monetary tightening, even if the Fed doesn't raise interest rates directly -- and there's a lot of pressure on Mr. Bernanke to do that too.

Will the Fed realize, before it's too late, that the job of fighting the slump isn't finished? Will Congress do the same? If they don't, 2010 will be a year that began in false economic hope and ended in grief.

Oil prices have risen above $80 a barrel on the New Year's first day of trading, driven by hopes of a US economic recovery and reported comments that Russia had cut supplies of crude to Belarus.

The central European state on Monday denied there had been any suspension in supplies from Russia, the world's largest oil and gas producer.

"The information on cutting supplies does not correspond to reality," Marina Kostyuchenko, a spokeswoman for Belarussian state oil refiner Belneftekhim, was quoted by the AFP new agency as saying.

"Oil is arriving both for transit and for refineries."

Her comments follow a report by the Interfax news agency which quoted a Belarus oil industry source as saying that Belarus's refineries were not receiving Russian oil on Monday morning.

For something I'm working on: we know that China is pursuing a mercantilist policy: keeping the renminbi weak through a combination of capital controls and intervention, leading to trade surpluses and capital exports in a country that might well be a natural capital importer. We also know, or should know, that this amounts to a beggar-thy-neighbor policy -- or, more accurately, a beggar-everyone but yourself policy -- when the world's major economies are in a liquidity trap.

But how big is the impact? Here's a quick back-of-the-envelope assessment.

...

And, if we think of the United States as bearing a proportionate share, and also use the rule of thumb that one point of GDP = 1 million jobs, we're looking at 1.4 million U.S. jobs lost due to Chinese mercantilism.

Al-Qaida threats have forced Britain and the United States to close their embassies in Yemen today amid increasing concern about the roots of terrorism in the Arabian peninsula in the wake of the Christmas Day bomb plot.

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said the British embassy in the capital, Sana'a, was closed today "for security reasons" and a decision would be taken later as to whether it would reopen tomorrow.

A statement posted on the US embassy website said its bureau was closed due to "ongoing threats" from al-Qaida. It said the embassy sent warning last week to US citizens in Yemen urging them to be vigilant. A US embassy spokesman would not comment on whether there had been a specific threat.

Yemen has been under scrutiny since the failed attempt by the Nigerian-born Umar Abdulmutallab to blow up a US airliner on Christmas Day. Abdulmutallab was trained in Yemen and yesterday Barack Obama said al-Qaida's branch there was behind the attempted attack.

Gordon Brown today confirmed that he and Obama had agreed to back a counterterrorism police unit in Yemen. In a statement, Downing Street said the unit was part of a plan to "intensify joint US-UK work to tackle the emerging terrorist threat from both Yemen and Somalia".

The US believes the official intelligence assessment of Iran's nuclear programme is wrong and Tehran is working on the design of a nuclear weapon, it was reported today.

Washington is seeking support for new sanctions against Iran at the UN security council following the expiry of a new year deadline, imposed by the US president, Barack Obama, for Tehran to respond to an offer of economic help and improved diplomatic relations in return for curbing its nuclear programme.

Washington is distancing itself from a controversial National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), produced by several US spy agencies in 2007, which suggested Iran had suspended work on weapons design four years earlier.

"After reviewing new documents that have leaked out of Iran and debriefing defectors lured to the west, Mr Obama's advisers say they believe the work on weapons design is continuing on a smaller scale - the same assessment reached by Britain, France, Germany and Israel," the New York Times reported.

The key sources of new intelligence are likely to include two recent Iranian defectors - Ali Reza Asgari, a Revolutionary Guards general who vanished in Istanbul in 2007, and Shahram Amiri, a leading Iranian nuclear scientist, who disappeared while on a pilgrimage to Mecca last summer.

Mexican police have captured an alleged drug lord two weeks after his more powerful brother was killed in a shootout with troops.

Carlos Beltran Leyva was arrested in Culiacan, capital of the Pacific coast state of Sinaloa, where he and several of his brothers allegedly started their gang.

Two weeks ago his brother Arturo, reputed head of the Beltran Leyva cartel, was killed in the central city of Cuernavaca. He was the highest-ranking cartel suspect to be killed or captured since the president, Felipe Calderón, deployed tens of thousands of soldiers and police three years ago to fight drug gangs.

Officials have previously described Carlos Beltran Leyva, 40, as a key member of the gang, but it was unclear whether he took over as chief after his brother died.

A third brother, Alfredo, was arrested in January 2008. At least one other, Mario, remains at large and is listed as one of Mexico's 24 most wanted drug lords, with a $2m reward offered for his capture. Carlos was not included on the list, although the public safety department said there had been a warrant for his arrest since 2008.

A senior commander of a Ugandan rebel group has been killed in Central African Republic, Ugandan officials have said. 

Brigadier Bok Abudema of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) was killed in the town of Djema on Friday amid an ongoing operation against the group by Ugandan forces across several countries in the region.

Lieutenant Colonel Felix Kulayige, Uganda's defence and army spokesman, said Abudema was the only casualty of the raid that killed him but troops also recovered two women who had been with him.

Nuri al-Maliki, the Iraqi president, has come in for criticism from opposition groups over what they describe as his "weak response" to Iran's seizure of an oil well that Baghdad considers its own.  

Iranian soldiers seized the well in December and critics of al-Maliki say his "weak response" illustrated the prime minister's loyalty to his fellow Shia majority across the border in Iran.

Following decades of border disputes between the two countries. the Iraqi opposition is seeking to exploit the incident to its advantage ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for March.

A court in Egypt has ruled in favour of the government's decision to ban students from wearing the face veil (niqab) while taking university examinations.

But female students who had appealed the ban when it was originally imposed by the government last October have vowed to appeal the verdict.

The students said the ban on niqab infringed on their religious rights.

"We had never hoped to see such a verdict issued by our fair Egyptian judicial system. Our rights are being raped. What freedom would we have after this? Where is freedom in Egypt?," one student told Al Jazeera after Sunday's verdict.

National Hmong leaders in Fresno are asking President Barack Obama to intervene on behalf of 4,500 Hmong who were forcibly repatriated from Thailand to Laos this week.

In a letter to Obama, the Fresno-based Lao Veterans of America Institute, which calls itself the nation's largest Hmong and Lao veterans organization, accuses the Thai military of brutalizing refugees who objected to the repatriation.

Laos denied the U.N. immediate access to the refugees, saying Wednesday that it would "complicate" matters but that international observers could visit later, The Associated Press reported.

Thailand deported the Hmong on Monday in a massive 24-hour military operation, ignoring concerns by the U.N., the United States and others that the Hmong could face persecution by the Lao government, the AP reported.

Wangyee Vang, president of the Lao Veterans of America Institute, said refugees have called his organization by cell phone to describe the abuse and ask for help.

... Tohti is not a separatist or even a political dissident. He's a Communist Party member and a teacher at a top Chinese university who sees himself as a bridge between Hans and Uighurs.

<...>

Tohti is an animated speaker, more preacher than teacher. A slideshow running behind him in a continuous loop flashes images of Urumqi in the days after the riots: burned-out cars, police and soldiers patrolling the city, weeping Uighur women begging Chinese security forces for information about their detained relatives, angry Han marching in protest against the violence.

He uses the classroom to build ethnic pride.

<...>

In China, these are topics not usually talked about in public. Hearing them in class is exhilarating for young Uighurs who say discrimination is a daily fact of life.

<...>

Instead, he urges students to use Chinese law to protect themselves, and to avoid overseas Uighur rights activists.

"I tell them, 'You need to engage with the Han in Beijing. Stop looking to the West," Tohti said with a barking laugh during an interview in his Beijing apartment. "The West isn't going to send troops to fight a war against China for you.'"

Yet officials lump him together with the overseas activists and accuse him of inciting the July riots. ...

TOKYO - Japan's prime minister said Monday he will press for more equal ties with Washington this year, the 50th anniversary of a joint security treaty that grants many special privileges to U.S. troops stationed in the country.

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, in a New Year's speech shown live on national television, said he hopes the alliance will evolve to become more open and candid. It is important "for both sides to be able to firmly say what needs to be said, and to increase the relationship of trust," he said.

Under a security pact signed in 1960, U.S. armed forces are allowed broad use of Japanese land and facilities, and currently some 47,000 American troops are stationed in Japan. The U.S. is obliged to respond to attacks on Japan and protects the country under its nuclear umbrella.

More than half those troops are stationed in the southern island of Okinawa, where many residents complain about noise, pollution and crime linked to the bases.

U.S.-Japan ties have become strained since Hatoyama took office in September over the relocation of Futenma U.S. Marine airfield on Okinawa, as part of a broader reorganization agreed in 2006. The plan calls for 8,000 Marines to be transferred to the U.S. territory of Guam and for Futenma's facilities to be moved to a northern part of Okinawa.

DUBAI (Reuters) - Started at the height of the economic boom and built by some 12,000 laborers, the world's tallest building will open on Monday in Dubai as the glitzy emirate seeks to rekindle optimism after its financial crisis.

Burj Dubai, whose opening has been delayed twice since construction began in 2004, will mark another milestone for the deeply indebted emirate with a penchant for seeking new records.

In June 2006, the U.S. banned CPMIEC and three other Chinese companies from conducting business in the U.S., citing their alleged sales of missile technology to Iran in defiance of previous sanctions. Two months later, a shipment of oil-drainage tanks from Shanghai landed at the port of Tacoma, Wash., bound for a New York City firm, American Forge & Foundry Inc. The shipper: a unit of CPMIEC, according to a shipping record known as a bill of lading.

U.S. enforcement officials say it can be difficult for U.S. companies to avoid doing business with foreign companies and individuals under sanction. Problems with translating company names can be an issue, they say. Sanctioned companies also have proved adept at creating aliases or subsidiary shell companies to mask their ownership, they say.

"To the extent that a U.S. institution does process a transaction for a designated entity, those transactions tend to be inadvertent and are corrected quickly upon detection," says the OFAC's Mr. Szubin.

The TSA said anyone traveling from or though nations regarded as state sponsors of terrorism -- as well as "other countries of interest" -- will be required to undergo enhanced screening. The TSA said those techniques include full-body pat-downs, carry-on bag searches, full-body scanning and explosive detection technology.

[...]

The State Department lists Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria as state sponsors of terrorism.

Science News Share   Blog   Cite Print   Email   Bookmark Fast Pace of Glacier Melt in the 1940s: Lower Aerosol Pollution

ScienceDaily (Jan. 1, 2010) -- The most recent studies by researchers at ETH Zurich show that in the 1940s Swiss glaciers were melting at an even-faster pace than at present. This is despite the fact that the temperatures in the 20th century were lower than in this century. Researchers see the main reason for this as the lower level of aerosol pollution in the atmosphere.

In Switzerland, the increase in snow in wintertime and the glacier melt in summertime have been measured at measurement points at around 3,000 metres above sea level -- on the Clariden Firn, the Great Aletsch glacier and the Silvretta glacier -- without interruption for almost 100 years. As part of his doctoral work, Matthias Huss used this unique range of measurements to examine how climate change in the last century affected the glaciers. The work was carried out under the supervision of Martin Funk, professor and head of the Department for Glaciology at the Laboratory for Hydraulics, Hydrology and Glaciology ('VAW') at ETH Zurich, who is also co-author of the stud

Egypt comes high on the list of 18 countries that import the largest amounts of grains, especially wheat and corn, according to the International Grains Council (IGC). Egyptians gobble up some 220 million loaves of bread daily. On average, an Egyptian consumes 180 kilograms of flour every year, compared to the international average of 90 kilograms. Egypt uses an amount of wheat equivalent to that used by 37 European countries combined.

Scientists and conservationists are to intensify their efforts this year to save one of Earth's most powerful, and threatened, creatures: the tiger.

Biologists have placed Panthera tigris at the top of a list of 10 key animals facing extinction, which should become the focus for major conservation efforts in 2010, they say.

"This year has been designated the International Year of Biodiversity by the United Nations and so we have created a list of 10 critically important endangered animals that we believe will need special monitoring over the next 12 months," said Diane Walkington, head of species programme for the WWF in the UK. Animals on the WWF list include the polar bear and the giant panda.

Lisa Simpson becomes a vegetarian...some will recognize the challenges she faces...

CHICAGO -- Asian carp, the voracious, nonnative fish whose arrival near Lake Michigan is threatening to cause havoc in the Great Lakes, are now setting off strife on land as well.

In an urgent effort to close down Chicago-area passages that could allow the unwanted fish to reach Lake Michigan, the State of Michigan is suing the State of Illinois and other entities that govern the waterways here. Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin have filed documents in recent days supporting Michigan's move, and Indiana says it will soon do the same.

The new rift between these Midwestern states, which would reopen a nearly century-old legal case in the United States Supreme Court over Great Lakes waters, comes at a particularly sensitive moment -- just as the numerous entities with interests in the Great Lakes had united in what lakes advocates consider some of their most significant progress in decades.

In 2008, the eight states that touch the Great Lakes helped push through a federal-state compact that bars diversion of water from the lakes unless all of the states (and the Canadian provinces involved) agree. That Great Lakes Compact, which was years in the making, at last calmed fears that other water-starved regions might tap into the lakes, which make up 20 percent of the world's freshwater.

And this fall, the federal government approved what many saw as the first step in a major restoration for the lakes, long sought in these states.

Some $475 million was designated to clean up pollution, protect habitat and fight invasive species in the Great Lakes

France has joined other European countries in selling off part of its stock of swine flu vaccines after it emerged that one shot was enough to fight off the virus.

AFP -  France has joined other European countries in selling off millions of its emergency swine flu vaccines after buying far more than it needed to fight the outbreak, the government said Sunday.

A diesel oil leak from a pipeline in northwest China's Shaanxi Province has been taken under control, said the pipeline owner, China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) on Saturday.

The company said it has immediately shut down the pipeline when the accident, which led to "large amounts of" diesel fuel leaking into the Chishui River, as well as the Weihe River - a major branch of the Yellow River, was discovered early Wednesday.

<...>

A 700-people crew has been working on the cleanup. So far, much of the leaked oil and polluted silt has already been taken away, according to the company.

Despite the cleanup, oil has been detected in the river water 33 km downstream the leakage site, the government said.

It added that it has warned the local residents not to use the river water directly as the leakage may pollute the Yellow River.  ...

OSLO, Norway - Aker University Hospital is a dingy place to heal. The floors are streaked and scratched. A light layer of dust coats the blood pressure monitors. A faint stench of urine and bleach wafts from a pile of soiled bedsheets dropped in a corner.

Look closer, however, at a microscopic level, and this place is pristine. There is no sign of a dangerous and contagious staph infection that killed tens of thousands of patients in the most sophisticated hospitals of Europe, North America and Asia this year, soaring virtually unchecked.

The reason: Norwegians stopped taking so many drugs.

Twenty-five years ago, Norwegians were also losing their lives to this bacteria. But Norway's public health system fought back with an aggressive program that made it the most infection-free country in the world. A key part of that program was cutting back severely on the use of antibiotics.

It is, as we like to say on this cynical little island, "typical" that a few weeks after the Met Office assured us that this would be one of the warmest winters on record we find ourselves in the midst of the deepest freeze for thirty years. This is, after all, the same Met Office that assured us of a "barbeque summer" last year. The past three years have seen a similar pattern of Met Office hype followed by disappointment and shivering. In today's Sunday Telegraph, Christopher Booker claims that the Exeter-based institution's bad record in recent years is no coincidence:

It would connect turbines off the wind-lashed north coast of Scotland with Germany's vast arrays of solar panels, and join the power of waves crashing on to the Belgian and Danish coasts with the hydro-electric dams nestled in Norway's fjords: Europe's first electricity grid dedicated to renewable power will become a political reality this month, as nine countries formally draw up plans to link their clean energy projects around the North Sea.

The network, made up of thousands of kilometres of highly efficient undersea cables that could cost up to €30bn (£26.5bn), would solve one of the biggest criticisms faced by renewable power - that unpredictable weather means it is unreliable.

... One issue, [Steven] Solomon says, is that water's cost doesn't reflect its true economic value. While a society's transition from oil may be painful, water is irreplaceable. Yet water costs far less per gallo---- and even less than that for some.

"In some cases, where there are large political subsidies, largely in agriculture, it does not [cost very much]," Solomon says. "In many cases, irrigated agriculture is getting its water for free. And we in the cities are paying a lot, and industries are also paying an awful lot. That's unfair. It's inefficient to the allocation of water to the most productive economic ends."

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"I think there's plenty of water in the world, even in the poorest and most water-famished country, for that 13 gallons to be given for free to individuals -- and let them pay beyond that," he says.

<...>

Solomon notes some good water news, too. The United States has made significant progress in curbing its water use, thanks to market forces and legislation such as the Clean Water Act.

"Our water use between 1900 and 1975 actually tripled relative to population growth," he says. "Since 1975 to the present day, it has flat-lined. And we still had a population increase of about 30 percent and our GDP continued to grow. So it's an amazing increase in water productivity."

It appears to be centered around an article from august:

So someone sent out a press-release.

It is a bit funny that this group is situated about 10 kilometers from Aleklett.

A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!

The type of DNA extracted and analysed is that stored in mitochondria - the "powerhouses" of cells. This mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is passed down from a mother to her offspring, providing a unique record of maternal inheritance.

Using technology pioneered in the study of DNA from Neanderthal bones, they were able to distinguish between ancient genetic material from the Kostenki male and contamination from modern people who handled the bones, or whose DNA reached the remains by some other means.

Future studies like the one in Current Biology could help shed light on whether the humans living in Europe 30,000 years ago are the direct ancestors of modern populations or whether they were replaced by immigrants who introduced farming to the continent several thousand years ago.

I've been really pissed at The Obama Administration (and President Obama) lately, which has made it difficult for me to see the good things that he's been doing.

This week, the Obama Administration did two things that were more than just good. They were great.

First, the Obama Administration will restore those millions of missing Bush emails.

Click on this NASA web site and download the 2010 ISS Calendar. Notice something odd about the dates? Did January 1, 2010 start on a Wednesday? Does February have 30 days? Does March have 31 days? Does April have 31 days? And December 1, 2010 is New Years Day. That's as far as I went. Doesn't anyone check these things before putting them on their web site? WOW! Must be the same group that mixed up miles and kilometers.

ScienceDaily (Jan. 3, 2010) -- Scientists from The Scripps Research Institute have determined for the first time that prions, bits of infectious protein devoid of DNA or RNA that can cause fatal neurodegenerative disease, are capable of Darwinian evolution.>

The study from Scripps Florida in Jupiter shows that prions can develop large numbers of mutations at the protein level and, through natural selection, these mutations can eventually bring about such evolutionary adaptations as drug resistance, a phenomenon previously known to occur only in bacteria and viruses. These breakthrough findings also suggest that the normal prion protein -- which occurs naturally in human cells -- may prove to be a more effective therapeutic target than its abnormal toxic relation.

The study was published in the December 31, 2009 issue of the journal Science Express, an advance, online edition of the journal Science.

"On the face of it, you have exactly the same process of mutation and adaptive change in prions as you see in viruses," said Charles Weissmann, M.D., Ph.D., the head of Scripps Florida's Department of Infectology, who led the study. "This means that this pattern of Darwinian evolution appears to be universally active. In viruses, mutation is linked to changes in nucleic acid sequence that leads to resistance. Now, this adaptability has moved one level down -- to prions and protein folding -- and it's clear that you do not need nucleic acid for the process of evolution."

Reporting from Nairobi, Kenya - In a year as a "freelance" slum electrician, Francis Otieno has been shocked five times. Three of the accidents were "not so bad," just enough to throw him across the room. Two nearly killed him.

"I just cried out. I didn't know what was going on. I passed out," he says. "For two days, I didn't know where I was."

But he was luckier than his best friend, who had the job before him: He was killed when he jumped on a roof to fix a short, unaware that the roof was live because a rat had nibbled at a wire.

If people here in the Kibera slum outside Nairobi, the capital, waited for the government to connect every mud hut and corrugated iron shack to electricity, they'd never have light.

It's DIY or do without.

Gordon Brown outlines new airport security regime but opinions remain mixed as to whether scanners can detect liquids

New full-body scanners are already being ordered by the British Airports Authority, the prime minister said this morning as he outlined a new regime of tightened airport security.

Speaking on BBC One's Andrew Marr programme, Gordon Brown pre-empted the findings of his own review by saying future passengers must expect to be scanned by the controversial scanners. The devices have received mixed appraisals on whether they are suitable to detect the new type of explosive that 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is accused of using in an attempt to blow up a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day.

The education-specific channel of its iTunes Store, launched in 2007, has reached a new milestone, recording more than 100 million downloads, Apple told CNET on Friday.

According to Apple, one of the most popular areas of iTunes U has been that of the United Kingdom-based Open University (iTunes link),

Fox News' Brit Hume gave Tiger Woods some personal advice Sunday morning, telling the scandal-plagued (and Buddhist) golfer to 'turn to Christianity' to make a full recovery.

On "Fox News Sunday," Hume -- the former leader of Fox News' political reporting and host of "Special Report" who now serves as an analyst for the network -- said that Woods' recovery "depends on his faith."

"The extent to which he can recover seems to me depends on his faith," Hume said. "He is said to be a Buddhist. I don't think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. My message to Tiger would, 'Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world."

The apparition of the Virgin Mary in churches around  Egypt since 10 December has raised intense controversy on the Egyptian street. Responses have ranged from harsh criticism and denial to unquestioning belief.

Thousands have been coming nightly to the Virgin Mary Alwarrak and Almassara-Shubra churches since the first sighting. The faithful hope to be blessed by her light, the skeptical just want to see for themselves. Together, they have stood for 12 continuous hours staring at the sky, some praying and asking her to appear while others gossip. Some claim they have seen the Virgin Mary, while others say they saw illuminated pigeons. The rest say it is a hoax.

Two Belgian bankrobbers have been named the Darwin Award winners of the year after killing themselves while trying to crack open a safe.

The pair used so much dynamite that they managed to destroy the entire bank building - and themselves with it.

Wendy Northcutt, the founder of the annual awards, declared them the 2009 winners of the Darwin Awards, given to those doing the most to improve the human gene pool by removing themselves from it.

England's longest New Year party finally ended this morning when a snow plough and gritter reached Tan Hill Inn, the highest pub in the country, where 30 students and teachers had been cut off for two days.

Supplies of draught beer were down to Black Sheep's Riggwelter as the group from Leeds University cross country club consoled themselves amid 7ft drifts.

They were joined by 17 people rescued from the nearby A66 which was closed between Bowes and Brough as heavy snowfall hit the whole Pennine chain yesterday . The Snake Pass between Manchester and Sheffield was also impassable after drifting caused by high winds.

An even longer siege by the weather is still under way at Cape Wrath on Scotland's north-western tip, where John Ure, 57, is waiting for his wife Kay to return with the ingredients for Christmas dinner. Mrs Ure went shopping in Durness, 11 miles away by boat and car, on 19 December but the road was then closed by snow and she has been holed up in a friend's caravan ever since.

"I'm looking forward to a belated Christmas dinner but it might be Burns' Night - 25 January - before it happens," she said. She has regularly phoned her husband, who has ample supplies and has promised not to open any Christmas presents until she gets back.

Among the many collections of quotes from 2009 in the American media, none has been complete without "hiking the Appalachian trail" -- the euphemism given by the office of Mark Sanford, the governor of South Carolina, to explain his absence while he was in Buenos Aires with his Argentine mistress.

However, the last laugh may be with the wronged wife he had left at home.

Described by one friend as "Katharine Hepburn meets Margaret Thatcher", Sanford has also launched her own website and, in a delicious act of revenge, is poised to use her husband's infidelity to launch her own political career.

Jacob Zuma, the polygamous president of South Africa, is to gain his third first lady in a traditional Zulu wedding on Monday.

Zuma, 67, will marry Tobeka Madiba in a private family ceremony at his homestead in rural KwaZulu-Natal province, the president's office confirmed. Madiba, 36, will be Zuma's third current wife and his fifth marriage overall. He is also reported to be engaged to another woman.

The Zulu tribe, the biggest ethnic group in South Africa, practises polygamy by tradition. Zuma once told an interviewer: "There are plenty of politicians who have mistresses and children that they hide so as to pretend they're monogamous. I prefer to be open. I love my wives and I'm proud of my children