BRATISLAVA, Jun 26 (IPS) - Rights groups in Slovakia have attacked new abortion legislation they say not only breaches women's rights to privacy and regulations on medical confidentiality but could force some women into undergoing risky, illegal abortions.

Under the legislation, approved last week, women who want abortions will only be able to undergo the procedure two days after they have been given official advice on the `risks and alternatives' by their doctor. Information about them, including an identity number given to every Slovak at birth, will also be sent to a state health information institute.

The age at which adolescents have to gain their parents' informed consent for an abortion has also been raised from 16 to 18.

But the legislation continues to allow abortion on request up until 12 weeks of pregnancy and until 24 weeks if the foetus has a genetic defect or the woman's life or health is in danger.

Christina Zampas, senior legal advisor for Europe at the Centre for Reproductive Rights, told IPS: "This is the first time that an EU member state has managed to create significant barriers to women accessing abortion.

"This runs against a worldwide trend of liberalisation of abortion laws which reflect the fact that creating barriers to abortion does not reduce abortion numbers, it merely endangers women's health and rights."

EU Employment and Social Affairs Commissioner Vladimír Špidla yesterday (25 June) urged EU member states to do more to protect young people facing unemployment, and reiterated a number of proposals for battling the EU's jobs crisis.

Speaking at a keynote conference during the 2009 Employment Weekexternal  in Brussels yesterday, Špidla said he was "particularly concerned" by the plight of young people, who have been among the hardest-hit by the bleak employment landscape as a result of the recession.

"Employment remains the greatest defence against social exclusion," the commissioner emphasised.

The European Commission earlier this month recommended that EU member states sign up to a commitment to provide five million apprenticeships across Europe this year and next. This would allow young Europeans facing unemployment to "ride out the storm" and be "more employable" at the end of their training, a Commission spokesperson told EurActiv.

However, the spokesperson admitted that this target had not been officially adopted by EU leaders, whose conclusions at the EU summit earlier this month were "very general" in respect of the Commission's action points.

The German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück has told the BBC that Germany must begin to reduce its dependence on foreign trade.

Germany was ranked by the World Factbook as the biggest exporter in the world last year.

But the downturn in global trade caused by the credit crisis has hit it hard.

The German government expects the country's economy to contract by 6% this year, largely because of very steep falls in exports.

Some economists have argued that Germany had relied far too heavily on foreign trade, which made it rich in the boom times but left it vulnerable to a global crisis.

Its finance minister Peer Steinbrück has now admitted in an interview with the BBC that the current balance between foreign and domestic markets must start to change.

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti economic commentator Oleg Mityayev) - The economic downturn has hurt both the price and the volume of the natural gas Russia exports to Western Europe.

However, some analysts attribute the drop in Russian gas exports to another major reason, Gazprom's inflexible pricing policy, which could eventually lose the gas monopoly its European customers. However, officials at Gazprom do not plan a policy change. Neither do they see any reason to panic.

Deputy Energy Minister Sergei Kudryashov said on June 23 one of the problems with Russian gas exports was the lack of flexibility in liberalized European markets when the competition grows fierce. By Kudryashov's estimate, demand for gas in Europe dropped by a mere 5% in the first quarter, while Russian exports plummeted by nearly 60%.

It transpires that, along with the shortfall in earnings, the key Russian gas exporter lost part of its control of the European gas market to competitors.

The next day, June 24, Gazprom's Deputy CEO Alexander Medvedev did his best to rebut criticism of the monopoly's export policy. He admitted that supplies to Europe at the end of 2008 and beginning of 2009 were cut for reasons beyond their control.

Gazprom's relations with foreign customers are regulated by long-term contracts, where quarterly price adjustments are based on European petroleum prices six to nine months before. In the first half of 2008, oil reached a peak, gas prices also peaked, and so after the relevant time lag, prices reached $500 per 1,000 cubic meters in the forth quarter. The price remained high in early 2009.

That is why Europeans drew more heavily on their underground gas storage tanks. In Medvedev's estimates, they increased the use of previously accumulated fuel by 65% in the first quarter. This move naturally affected Gazprom's earnings along with other gas suppliers, Nigeria and Algeria, but benefited Norway which trades on the spot market for gas, where deals take immediate effect. In addition, Norway then commissioned a huge gas deposit, Ormen Lange.

The Russian-Ukrainian gas conflict also seriously harmed Russia's supplies to Europe, resulting in a 4.5 billion cubic meter shortfall for European consumers.

Nevertheless, Medvedev does not believe Gazprom is losing its grip on the European gas market (of which the Russian monopoly has controlled a quarter until recently), and sees no point in abandoning the existing pricing or contract policy.

Brussels / Luxembourg - European environment ministers have sidestepped the key emissions reduction strategy of classifying carbon dioxide as a pollutant during consideration of new laws to limit industrial pollution.  The move further questions Europe's claim to be a leader in climate action, with California requiring carbon pollution mitigation for the last two years and reclassification under consideration elsewhere.

The EU Environment Council reached a common position on the new Industrial Emissions Directive. The draft law overhauls the framework for controlling pollutants such as sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and dust from thousands of industrial installations across Europe, combining and strengthening seven earlier pieces of legislation.

WWF is calling for carbon dioxide standards to be added to the proposal, in order to respond adequately to the increasing scale and urgency of the global climate crisis. Such a move could cut Europe's total greenhouse gas emissions by around a quarter over the next two decades. But EU ministers failed on this occasion to seize the opportunity.

"Environment ministers skipped aimlessly past what is an obvious game-changing move. In the face of increasingly stark warnings from scientists, Europe has missed a straight-forward opportunity, using a proven regulatory tool, to plan the phase-out of dirty coal-fired power stations," said Mark Johnston, Coordinator for Power Plant CO2 Standards at WWF. "Such a move, which is still possible later this year, would inject a huge confidence boost into the slow-moving global negotiations."

Emission performance standards have been used successfully by European law-makers for more than two decades, leading to dramatic environmental improvements on issues like acid rain and smog.

The first generation of Albanians born after the collapse of Communism in December 1990 vote in a general election on Sunday.

The vote is seen as a major test of Albania's progress towards future integration with the European Union.

Three million registered electors will vote in what has turned essentially into a contest between two candidates: Sali Berisha, the current prime minister and head of the Democratic Party; and the popular mayor of Tirana, Edi Rama, who leads the opposition Socialist Party.

Both Mr Berisha and Mr Rama promise more jobs, better living standards, new infrastructure and a tougher fight against corruption.

A Swedish court has thrown out a request for a retrial by the four men behind The Pirate Bay website.

The four were found guilty of promoting copyright infringement in April and face jail sentences and hefty claims for damages.

The Pirate Bay's lawyers called for a retrial when it emerged that one of the judges in the case belonged to several copyright protection groups.

The Swedish court said the judge's affiliations did not bias the case.

Twenty hours of journey time separate Belfast, via Dublin and Budapest, from Batar but, surveying the medieval conditions in which the Roma live here, one might do better to take as a measure of distance not years, nor even decades, but centuries.

Florin Fekete returned on Monday with his wife and two sons. "There is no work here. Life in Belfast was good, we had really good times but I could not risk my family's lives. I asked some of the ones who were attacking us, `What do you have against us?'.

"The reply was, `We hate you because you are gypsies'. But even though I am afraid, I want to go back. Is it safe now, do you think?"

The cancer of sectarianism, which fuelled decades of violence, is now, as foreigners arrive in greater numbers, embracing racism. A report by the University of Ulster in 2007 made the astonishing claim that Northern Ireland has the highest proportion of bigoted people in the Western world.That was supported by an Equality Commission study this week that found that nearly a quarter of people in the province object to having a migrant or a gay person as a neighbour.

Investment banks are going to have a lot of explaining to do. After the lows of 2008, and despite the mauling they've had from politicians and the public, 2009 is going to be a bumper year for those that lived to tell the tale. The banks have pocketed an incredible $16 billion in fees in the second quarter, according to Thomson Reuters first half data on deals and fee income, released on Friday. Click here for related news.

True, this is down from Q2 2008, when fees were almost $24 billion. But it should not come as a surprise to anyone who has been watching -- often in disbelief -- the huge amount of capital raising that has been going on in both the equity and bond markets.

Take the bond markets, where total first-half issuance -- excluding financials -- has already reached $598 billion, outstripping previous records for an entire year. If anyone pretends it has been tough selling these bonds, don't believe them. The sales teams have been pushing at an open door, with fund managers buying anything they could get their hands on. The fees are good and so far this year, the risk has been limited.

The ones to suffer have been the loan desks, with syndicated lending hitting a 13-year low. But since this market has always been seen as a loss-leader to help sell other products, there are probably fewer tears being shed at the top of the banks involved.

The UK government's reaction to EU proposals on financial regulation will provide a "potential watershed moment" for UK-EU relations, argue Sir Brian Unwin, ex-president of the European Investment Bank, and Graham Bishop in a June report published by the London-based Federal Trust.

Unwin and Bishop analyse two major contributions to the policy discussion on financial reform in Europe - the de Larosière report and the subsequent European Commission communication - and compare them to their British equivalent - the Turner report.

The Turner report "anticipates much that is contained in the de Larosière report and the Commission's communication," write the two experts. But the report responds differently to whether we "need more Europe or less Europe," they assert.

Although the de Larosière report advises the EU not to "centralise for centralisation's sake," it does advocate "more Europe", according to the two experts, and "it is on the question of supervision at the European Union level that the de Larosière report most significantly differs from Lord Turner's thinking".

Oil giants will be forced to tussle for contracts worth an estimated $16bn (£9.7bn) live on Iraqi television in a bizarre contest they fear could end up resembling a game show.

More than 30 energy companies, including BP, Shell and ExxonMobil may be forced to make last-minute alliances and reveal their offers in a tense round of bidding due to start early next week.

The scheme appeared to come as a shock to some of the major oil companies. Others admitted they "had an inkling" that Baghdad would conduct the process in the open but had not expected a televised spectacle.

The economic crisis, which has claimed more than 5 million jobs since the recession began, did not strike the entire country at once. A map of employment gains or losses by county tells the story of how those job losses first struck in the most vulnerable regions and then spread rapidly to the rest of the country. As early as August 2007, for example--several months before the recession officially began--jobs were already on the decline in southwest Florida; Orange County, Calif.; much of New Jersey; and Detroit, while other areas of the country remained on the uptick.

Click through for the map.

Central banking as partisan politics

First, such mergers and acquisitions re-enforce the survival of the fattest syndrome that has turned banks and shadow-banking institutions into monsters of perverse incentives for excessive risk taking.  Throughout the north-Atlantic region, concentration and monopoly power in the banking sector will be higher after the crisis than before it.

Second, there was a superior alternative.  The special resolution regime (SRR) for commercial banks administered by the FDIC should have been made available to Merrill Lynch.  Merrill Lynch was an investment bank for which no SRR existed.  That itself was a scandal and a major failure of regulation, expecially since the authorities must have become aware of this when Bear Stearns went belly-up in March 2008.  Some day the history will have to be written of the collective dereliction of duty by regulators, government officials and legislators, that resulted in the absence of quick and efficient mechanisms for putting banks and other highly leveraged, systemically important institutions through an insolvency process lasting no more than a weekend.  Later in 2008, the two remaining large independent investment banks were transmuted into bank holding companies.  That could and should have been done for Merrill.

Merrill could, through the SRR, have been put through a Chapter 11-lite, in which some or all of its unsecured creditors could have been forcibly converted into common stock holders (in inverse order of seniority).  Its board and top management could at the same time have been fired without golden parachute.  Merrill Lynch as a legal entity would have ceased to exist.  New Merrill, the same organisation except for the old leadership, would have re-emerged with a sound balance sheet containing lots of equity and little, possibly no, unsecured debt.

The mandatory debt-to-equity conversion should have gone up the seniority scale until Merrill was properly capitalised.  The whole exercise (conversion to commercial bank status and debt-to equity conversion) should have taken no more than a weekend.

Instead, the regulators and the Treasury decided to cut an opaque deal of questionable legality to save the skins of the unsecured creditors of Merrill.  By doing this they created a merged entity (Bank of America + Merrill) that would fail without government support and, if prevented from failing by a tax payer bail-out, would become a zombie bank: alive but doing very little new lending.

TRIESTE, Italy (Reuters) - Washington is to dramatically overhaul its Afghan anti-drug strategy, phasing out opium poppy eradication, the U.S. envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan told allies on Saturday.

Richard Holbrooke, attending a G8 conference on stabilizing Afghanistan, also discussed efforts to support its August 20 election. Washington has nearly doubled its troops to combat a growing Taliban insurgency and provide security for the vote.

"The Western policies against the opium crop, the poppy crop, have been a failure. They did not result in any damage to the Taliban, but they put farmers out of work," Holbrooke told Reuters after a series of bilateral meetings in Italy.

"We are not going to support crop eradication. We're going to phase it out," he said. The emphasis would instead be on intercepting drugs and chemicals used to make them, and going after drug lords.

WASHINGTON, Jun 24 (IPS) - In March 1997, FBI Director Louis Freeh got what he calls in his memoirs "the first truly big break in the case": the arrest in Canada of one of the Saudi Hezbollah members the Saudis accused of being the driver of the getaway car at Khobar Towers.

Hani al-Sayegh, then 28 years old, had arrived in Canada in August 1996 after having left Saudi Arabia, by his own account, in August 1995, for Iran and Syria. The Canadian government charged him with being a terrorist, based on claims by the Saudi regime.

In order to be transferred to the United States without facing deportation to Saudi Arabia, where he was believed to face the death penalty, al-Sayegh had to agreed to a plea bargain under which he would admit to having proposed an attack on U.S. personnel, for which he would have to serve up to 10 years in prison.

In fact, the only thing al-Sayegh had actually admitted to, according to FBI sources, was having proposed an attack on one AWACS plane that had been turned over to the Saudi Air Force - a proposal he said had been rejected. Both before and after being brought to Washington, moreover, Al-Sayegh steadfastly denied any knowledge of the Khobar Towers bombing.

Despite that consistent denial by al-Sayegh, a Washington Post story on Apr. 14, 1997 quoted U.S. and Saudi officials as saying that al-Sayegh had met two years earlier with senior Iranian intelligence officer Brig. Gen. Ahmad Sherifi and that Iran was the "organising force" behind the Khobar bombing. That story, leaked by officials supporting the Saudi version of the Khobar story, cited Canadian intercepts of al-Sayegh's phone conversations in Ottawa before his arrest as allegedly incriminating evidence.

A senior Iranian cleric yesterday called for protesters to be executed as "enemies of Allah", as authorities came one step closer to formally declaring Mahmoud Ahmadinejad winner of the disputed election.

The demand that demonstrators "must be shown no mercy" came as the main opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi took a more conciliatory attitude towards authorities by saying he will seek official approval for future demonstrations - a significantly more emollient stance than 24 hours earlier, when he vowed to "neutralise this evil conspiracy" against the public. In addition his website was attacked by hackers, and is now blank.

Saad Hariri has been asked to form a new Lebanese government after garnering the support of 86 members of the 128-seat body, officials say.

Michel Sleiman, the Lebanese president, issued a decree appointing Hariri prime minister-designate after meeting him at the presidential palace in Beirut on Saturday.

"According to the constitution and after the president consulted with the speaker of parliament and parliamentarians, he summoned Saad Hariri and tasked him with forming a new government," a presidential statement said.

At approximately 6:30 a.m. local time, heavily-armed elements of the Honduran military began circulating outside the presidential palace. The president was reportedly arrested, taken to the airforce base in Tegucigalpa and transferred out of the country. This is a rapidly developing situation, with protestors now gathering in Tegucigalpa. Electricity has been cut and local media interrupted.

It is no secret that the last two months of 2008 and the first two months of 2009 were especially trying times for industries across the economic spectrum.

What many may not realize, however, is that the recycling industry--which has steadily grown over its 30-year lifespan--was hit hard by the economic downturn as well.

As domestic recyclables in the U.S. continued to provide a relatively constant supply, demand decreased from China.

At one point during the most prominent part of the downturn, boatloads of recycled goods were stalled in Chinese harbors because of the lowered demand.

Currently, inventories in recycling warehouses remain high, and many managers do not want to accept more supply until the market picks back up again.

Some municipalities are even recognizing the drop in recycling commodity prices and offering suggestions for what to do about it.

SUNDIAL, West Virginia, June 23, 2009 (ENS) - West Virginia State Police today arrested at least 29 demonstrators, including government climate scientist Dr. James Hansen, actress Daryl Hannah, and 94 year-old former West Virginia Congressman Ken Hechler, for tresspassing on the property of a mountaintop removal coal mining company to protest the destructive practice.

The protesters deliberately entered the Goals Coal plant owned by coal giant Massey Energy to draw public attention to the destruction of mountains immediately above the Coal River Valley community of Sundial in Raleigh County.

The demonstrators attempted to deliver a letter of demands to the company regarding this facility, which they say threatens the students at Marsh Fork Elementary School.

See Monday OT comments.

According to the most recent report on the status of the world's fisheries by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, fisheries supply at least 15% of the animal protein consumed by humans, provide direct and indirect employment for nearly 200 million people worldwide and generate $US85 billion annually. This same report indicates that 28% of the world's fisheries stocks are currently being overexploited or have collapsed and 52% are fully exploited.

A new study published in this week's issue of PLoS Biology provides the first global evaluation of how management practices influence fisheries' sustainability. The study assessed the effectiveness of the world's fisheries management regimes using evaluations from nearly 1,200 fisheries experts, analyzing these in combination with data on the sustainability of fisheries catches.

The results indicate that most fisheries management regimes are lagging far behind standards set by international organizations, and that the conversion of scientific advice into policy, through a participatory and transparent process, plays the most critical role in determining the sustainability of fisheries.

ASUNCION, May 19 (IPS) - Counting cases of machista or sexist violence separately shows that "what is happening is practically a genocide, and a hidden one at that," says Susana Chiarotti, coordinator of the Committee of Experts on Violence (CEVI) which is following up on implementation of the Convention of Belém do Pará.

The Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women, adopted in the Brazilian city of Belém do Pará in 1994 by the 34 members of the Organisation of American States (OAS), defines all forms of gender-based violence as human rights abuses, and stipulates binding measures to eradicate it.

Chiarotti, an Argentine lawyer and long-time activist in the regional women's rights movement, is also the coordinator of the non-governmental Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defence of Women's Rights (CLADEM), which is active in 17 countries.

La Belle France: charming bistros, glorious wines and cheeses, bountiful markets, streets filled with the smell of freshly baked bread - all emblems of the greatest food culture that the world has known. Sadly, though, that culture is now in eclipse. Twenty-five years ago, it took some effort to dine poorly in France; these days bad meals are depressingly common, and it can be tough to find even a decent baguette in some villages and towns.

And there is an even more shocking statistic: France is now the second most profitable market in the world for McDonald's. La Belle France has been conquered by Le Big Mac.

[Torygraph Alert]

The authorities in Sri Lanka have arrested a popular astrologer who predicted that the president will be ejected from office, police say.

Chandrasiri Bandara announced last week that the government would flounder in September and October because of political and economic problems.

The opposition have condemned the arrest and warned that the country is heading towards a dictatorship.

A group of locals and housing activists have seized the constituency home of the MP couple who had the highest expense claim of all! Both Labour MPs they were known as "Mr and Mrs Expenses" two years before the MP spending scandal broke; Mrs Keen, a health minister recently admitted making an expense claim for private hospital treatment for a member of her staff. At the centre of their scandal was their double mortgage claim, where they illegally used Parliamentary expenses to pay interest on the mortgages of both their homes - one of which has now been occupied by outraged locals along with activists from all backgrounds and nationalities.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A bidder agreed to pay $1.68 million for a steak lunch with billionaire investor Warren Buffett in a charity auction completed Friday night, according to eBay Inc's website, where the bidding took place.

The winning bid in the 10th annual fund-raiser fell short of last year's record $2.11 million, paid by Hong Kong-based investor Zhao Danyang. The starting price was $25,000.

The identity of the winning bidder could not immediately be determined. EBay was not immediately available for comment. A call to Buffett was not immediately returned.

The King of Pop and one of Charlie's Angels have died, but what people really want to know - according to Google search statistics - is who Mark Sanford, the governor of Califorina, was visiting in Argentina.

WELL before midsummer, the sun sets late over Paris. Even at 9 p.m., you can sit on the banks of the Canal St.-Martin in the 10th Arrondissement, and see in the still water the reflection of the sky, a blue mottled with thin clouds, and the low pale buildings with their amber lights just turned on, and the ruffled, fractal edge of the trees in full green bloom. Night seems as if it will never come. <...>

And you, you'll take off on foot, up along the canal toward Belleville, where Asian, Arab and African immigrants live alongside artists and yuppies and bobos. And you'll climb the stairs at the Hipotel Paris Belleville and collapse into the single bed of your spartan room, not caring that the toilet is in a smelly closet down the hall, because the sheets are clean, the rate is dirt cheap and you've just experienced the most wonderful, traditional and frugal activity in the City of Light -- the picnic.

The picnic is the great democratizing institution of summer, when Parisians spill onto riverbanks and bridges and into parks and gardens, chasing away the memories of winter and rain with baguettes and bottles, sandals and sundresses. For the wealthy, picnics are a lark, for the less wealthy an escape, and for this Frugal Traveler, who spent nine days in Paris at the end of May and early June, proof that classic Parisian indulgence doesn't have to cost a fortune. ...

Here's the track.  Enjoy.

Skennah Kowa