84% of business leaders in Ireland believe last year's rejection of the Lisbon Treaty by popular referendum damaged the country's international reputation.

The survey of 300 Irish CEOs by the Irish Business and Employers Confederation (IBEC) also found that over 98% of respondents believe EU membership has been important for the success of Irish business.

Among companies with over 50 employees, the figure was 100%, while for companies with fewer than 50 staff, the figure was 97.6%.

This comes as Ireland gears up for a vigorous debate on the Lisbon Treaty ahead of a referendum scheduled for 2 October. The electorate rejected the treaty in June 2008, with 53.4% voting against its adoption.

Even as the German economy suffers through its worst slump since World War II, the government unveiled a seemingly happy surprise on Thursday: Not many people lost their jobs last month.

So has Germany escaped the ravages of the downturn? Probably not, economists say. The apparent resilience of the labor market is more indicative of a peculiarly German approach to combating the punishing recession than of underlying trends in the economy. Germany has found creative ways to keep people off the jobless rolls, whether they have work to do or not.

Mr. Zapatero, 48, is a young Socialist visionary with an old entrenched economy. In an hourlong interview at the Moncloa Palace here on Wednesday, Mr. Zapatero explained how Spain could confront its economic crisis. His strategy is to invest in Spain's future -- education, research, biotechnology and renewable energy -- without moving an inch to infringe on worker's rights, and while extending government unemployment benefits.

William F. Browder, once the largest foreign investor in the Russian stock market, filed court documents in New York this week contending that other Western investors in Russia had colluded with the authorities to steal hundreds of millions of dollars through tax refunds and then laundered the money through New York banks.

September will be a hot month in Brussels for the financial services sector, as the EU prepares to nominate its new internal market commissioner and examine new proposed rules on hedge funds amid rivalries between the UK, France and Germany over financial regulation. EurActiv's network in France and Germany contributed to this report.

In September, the European Parliament is expected to nominate its chief rapporteurs for proposed new EU rules on hedge funds, private equity and capital requirements for financial institutions.

The newly-elected EU assembly is set to play a crucial role in reshaping the initial proposals made by the Commission on these issues.

Earlier in July, the Parliament's economic affairs committee in charge of the dossier elected a British liberal, Sharon Bowles, as its chair. The appointment was widely seen as a success for the City of London and more generally for supporters of a light touch to regulating the financial sector.

A liberal, Wolf Klinz, is also tipped to chair an ad hoc committee to investigate the causes of the financial crisis, due to be established in the autumn.

Germany's largest trade union dealt the Social Democrats' shaky electoral prospects another blow on Friday when it said it would not endorse any party at next month's general election.

The comments by Berthold Huber, head of IG Metall, which is also Europe's largest union, are bad news for the SPD, whose leaders have gone out of their way to woo trade unionists.

"I know there is an historical relationship between the SPD and the unions, but we live in the 21st century," Mr Huber, himself an SPD member, told the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. "The times when the unions could tell people to vote for this or that party are over."

EU promises to help secure funds to reform Ukraine's energy sector; believes deal will avert supply crisis.

The European Commission has announced a deal with Ukraine which it said should avert a disruption of Russian gas deliveries next winter.

José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, said: "The agreement should provide the stability needed to significantly reduce the risk of a further gas crisis".

In January, gas deliveries to European markets were disrupted because of a pay dispute between Naftogaz and Russia's Gazprom. Around 80% of Russia's gas shipments to Western markets go through Ukraine.

Under today's agreement, which the Commission helped to broker, international financial institutions will consider providing up to €1.7 billion in loans to support reform of the Ukrainian gas sector.

In return, Yulia Tymoshenko, the Ukrainian prime minister, has made commitments to raise gas prices for domestic consumers to economically viable levels, restructure Naftogaz, the state gas company, and improve market transparency.

It's true, Germany really is the land of Teutonic efficiency and the Protestant work ethic. A new study shows that Germans work more than most Europeans. 

The most workaholic country within the European Union is Romania, where workers worked an average of 41.8 hours a week in the third quarter of 2008.

Germans aren't far behind, clocking in 41.2 hours, according to the study released this week by Dublin-based Eurofound, an EU agency which tracks working conditions. France had the lowest average working hours in the EU, the average worker toiled away for only 38.4 hours a week.

"It confirms the image of German people being hard-working," Camilla Galli da Bino, a Eurofound information officer, told Deutsche Welle.

Even more surprising, Germans don't actually have to work that hard. The statuatory working week averages 37.6 hours a week across eastern and western Germany. The extra hours are due to the 3.6 hours of overtime Germans clock a week. Only Czechs worked more overtime, squeezing in 3.7 hours a week.

As I was packing my ideas and thoughts to fly to Corfu for a few days holiday, combined with sorting out some family matters, I was thinking that the possibilities of Barroso being re-elected president are starting to fade, if only almost imperceptibly so far. Indeed, despite the European People's Party, which, thanks to the insistence of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, has fervently endorsed the Barroso nomination, and despite the EPP's great electoral victory in the recent European election, it seems incapable of securing the appointment of its Chosen One. If the EPP could have appointed Barroso for another term, it would have done it in mid-July, at the first plenary of the new European Parliament.

The possibilities of Barroso being re-appointed at a later stage are still valid and serious, yet they are less than before. Time works against the President. If his party succeeds in getting a deal with other parliamentary groups, such as the Socialists, before middle of September, Barroso's possibilities are still high, yet still somehow risky. If the matter is further postponed, the risk of a defeat is much higher.

An MI5 officer visited Morocco three times during the period former terror suspect Binyam Mohamed claims he was secretly interrogated and tortured there, according to documents revealed by the high court today .

Lawyers acting for MI5 have repeatedly told the high court in London the agency had no idea Mohamed was in Morocco in 2002-03. But documents passed to the court show an MI5 officer, known as Witness B, visited Morocco during that time.

New evidence of MI5's involvement in Mohamed's earlier interrogation in Pakistan was disclosed yesterday by Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones. Thomas said they had taken the "very unusual step of correcting a judgment", a move dictated by the emergence of new documents about MI5's role in the affair.

All private organ transplants are to be banned in the UK to avoid a perception that patients, including those from overseas, can jump the queue for scarce donor organs by paying for treatment.

The government said today that it will take immediate steps to implement the recommendations of an independent report published by Elisabeth Buggins, former chair of the Organ Donation Taskforce. She recommended banning private organ transplants from 1 October.

Italy has approved the use of the abortion drug RU-486, drawing fierce protests by the Vatican.

The drug, which terminates pregnancy by causing the embryo to detach from the uterine wall, is already available in several other European countries. But approval in Italy had been held up so far by the Catholic Church, which opposes abortion and contraception.

A Dutch judge has ordered the Swedish site The Pirate Bay to block visitors from the Netherlands from accessing the music and film download site. The ruling follows a complaint by Stichting Brein, a Dutch advocacy group for the entertainment industry.

The ruling by the Amsterdam court takes affect on Friday or Saturday. The Dutch judge on Thursday imposed a 30,000-euro penalty for each day The Pirate Bay remains accessible for internet users in the Netherlands. The Pirate Bay is a so-called torrent site; it provides links to files allowing users to download music and films using the bittorrent software. Brein says Pirate Bay is violating copyright law by linking to illegal copies.

According to Brein director Tim Kuik it is a first that a judge orders a foreign website to block access from the Netherlands itself.

The European Union and international lenders unveiled a preliminary agreement on Friday to assist Ukraine financially - enabling the recession-ravaged country to reform its energy sector and pump a stable supply of Russian natural gas to Europe.

Officials said the agreement was intended to help Ukraine reform its vast Soviet-built natural gas supply and transit systems, and to help it buy enough gas reserves for peak winter periods in order to avoid a repeat of January's energy spat with Russia, during which supplies to Europe were cut off.

Rising delinquencies among consumer and corporate borrowers are the "next wave" of the financial crisis and may affect banks that have avoided losses so far, said Deutsche Bank AG Chief Executive Officer Josef Ackermann.

"This crisis has consisted of a series of earthquakes, with changing epicenters," Ackermann said late yesterday at an event in Zurich. "Bad loans are the next wave. Banks that have fared relatively well so far will also be affected by this."

Deutsche Bank, Germany's biggest lender, said this week it set aside 1 billion euros ($1.4 billion) for risky loans in the second quarter. The seven-fold increase in provisions and below- forecast revenue from trading sent the Frankfurt-based bank's shares to the biggest decline in four months on July 28.

The economy's long, churning decline leveled off significantly from April through June, the government reported on Friday, supporting hopes that the economy would turn around in the second half of the year.

The American economy shrank at an annual pace of 1 percent in the second quarter, after contracting at an annual pace of 6.4 percent earlier this year. Government spending, bolstered by the first payouts from a $787 billion stimulus package, propped up the economy and accounted for 20 percent of the country's output.

But consumer spending, which makes up about 70 percent of the overall economy, has continued to fall as fearful Americans hold onto their paychecks and whittle down their spending. This has led to concerns about what will happen once stimulus funds peter out.

Green shoots!

Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine - Patti Smith

July 31 (Bloomberg) -- The dollar slumped to the lowest level of the year, U.S stocks climbed to a nine-month high and gold, oil and copper rallied after a smaller-than-forecast contraction in the economy sent investors to higher-yielding assets. Treasuries increased as inflation concern eased.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.3 percent as of 2:38 p.m. in New York, extending its best monthly gain since 2002, after the Commerce Department said gross domestic product contracted a better-than-forecast 1 percent annual pace. The dollar fell 1.3 percent to 1.4258 per euro, from $1.4075 yesterday, while gold, copper and crude futures increased by at least 2 percent. The yield on the 10-year note slipped 10 basis points, or 0.1 percentage point, to 3.51 percent.

Investors bought commodities and securities that benefit most in an expanding economy on speculation the worst recession in half a century is ending. Government bonds rose after a gauge of consumer spending in the GDP report retreated more than projected, suggesting prices remain in check.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Government regulators could prohibit incentive-based pay packages at large U.S. financial institutions that encourage "inappropriate risks" under a bill approved on Friday by the U.S. House of Representatives.

Heading next to the Senate, where its outlook is uncertain, the bill would also give shareholders in public corporations the right to cast annual, nonbinding votes on executive pay, giving them a louder, but largely symbolic "say on pay."

The House Democrats' bill, part of a broad push to tighten banking and market regulation, would also impose new standards on corporate compensation committees and compensation consultants, requiring them to be independent of managers.

Financial institutions with assets of less than $1 billion would be exempted from the regulation on incentive-based pay.

The House vote signifies progress for Democrats' drive to toughen oversight of banking and markets amid the worst financial crisis in generations and a stubborn recession.

Inflation in the 16-member eurozone went further into negative territory in July in the wake of this year's worldwide economic slowdown. Unemployment in the bloc also took a turn for the worst. 

Preliminary figures from the European Commission's statistics office, Eurostat, showed consumer prices fell more than forecast from minus 0.1 per cent in June to minus 0.6 per cent this month. Economists had forecast a drop to minus 0.4 per cent in July.

Weaker energy and food prices are believed to be central to the overall predicted drop.

But dwindling consumer prices have also helped to stoke fears about the threat of deflation, which in turn could undercut hopes of an early rebound in the eurozone economy from what has been its deepest downturn in more than 60 years.

The eurozone economy shrank by 4.8 percent year-on-year during the first three months of 2009.

However, European Central Bank (ECB) chief Jean-Claude Trichet has insisted that the negative inflation in the eurozone was likely to be short-lived. Trichet told a press conference this month that the latest consumer price data reflected only temporary effects.

The US and Switzerland on Friday reached an agreement on the closely watched dispute over whether UBS should be forced to reveal the identities of thousands of its American clients.

Details of the settlement, which could deal a blow to Switzerland's famed bank secrecy, are still being negotiated by the two sides. However, Stuart Gibson, a lawyer for the US Department of Justice, told the federal judge presiding over the civil case in Miami that there was an "agreement in principle"' on the "major issues" and that the remaining issues were expected to be resolved within a week.

Skype might have to shut down because of a dispute over the core technology used to make the internet telephone system work.

EBay, which paid $2.6 billion (£1.6 billion) for the voice-over-the-internet system in 2005, is facing a court battle with the original founders of the company who retained the rights to the technology at the heart of the system.

EBay admitted in a regulatory filing that it might have to close down the company. It said it was trying to develop alternative software but if that did not work, or if eBay lost the right to the original software: "Skype would be severely and adversely affected and the continued operation of Skype's business as currently conducted would likely not be possible."

The dispute also threatens eBay's plan to spin off Skype, scheduled for next year.

Unemployment in Japan surged to a six-year high as the country set a new record for core consumer price deflation in June, data released on Friday showed.

The 1.7 per cent year-on-year fall in consumer prices, excluding fresh food, and the 5.4 per cent jobless rate highlight the continuing troubles of the world's second-largest economy, despite a sharp rebound in industrial output over the past four months.

The dozens of insurance companies that make up the American International Group show signs of considerable weakness even after their corporate parent got the biggest bailout in history, a review of state regulatory filings shows.

Over time, the weaknesses could mean trouble for A.I.G.'s policyholders, and they raise difficult questions for regulators, who normally step in when an insurer gets into trouble. State commissioners are supposed to keep insurers from writing new policies if there is any doubt that they can cover their claims. But in A.I.G.'s case, regulators are eager for the insurers to keep writing new business, because they see

Next to a Chinese restaurant in Burlington, Vt., lurks a quiet guardian of Wall Street -- an obscure insurance company that is supposed to protect big-money investors in the event of a catastrophic failure of a major brokerage firm.

A failure, for instance, like the one that brought down Lehman Brothers nearly 11 months ago. Now, after years in the shadows, the insurer, the Customer Asset Protection Company, could finally be put to the test, and questions are starting to swirl.

The worry is that the company, which has never paid out a claim, might be unable to cope with the Lehman bankruptcy.

If it were overwhelmed by claims, the banks and brokerage companies that own Capco, as it is known, could end up owing billions of dollars.
...
By some industry estimates reviewed by the insurance department, Capco could face nearly $11 billion in claims but has only about $150 million with which to meet them. The state is examining whether the company sold policies without the means to cover them, according to a person with direct knowledge of the inquiry who had signed confidentiality agreements.
...
Capco, which is private, is something of a financial mystery. Its members include Wall Street giants like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, banks like JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, smaller brokerage firms like Robert W. Baird & Company and Edward Jones, and Fidelity, the mutual fund giant.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are unlikely to repay the government in full for all the capital it has pumped into the companies, according to their regulator.

"My view is that some assets in the senior preferred will have to be left behind as they come out of conservatorship," Federal Housing Finance Agency Director James B. Lockhart said Thursday in response to a question at a panel discussion in Washington. "That will mean that some of the losses will never be repaid."

The Treasury has agreed to pump $200 billion into each company in order to keep them solvent. In exchange, the government receives senior preferred stock that pays a 10% dividend. So far, it has injected $85 billion in total into the companies, but Lockhart said that figure was likely to rise in the coming months.

The value of global financial assets grew from less than 45 per cent of global GDP in 2003 to nearly 490 per cent in 2007.
...
On the fiscal front, governments from the world's largest 20 economies are expected to collectively pump about $US5 trillion into their economies by the end of next year (or nearly 8 per cent of global GDP since the crisis began). Altogether, the measures are the equivalent of an extraordinary and unprecedented 18 per cent of global GDP
...
The average budget deficit for OECD economies increased more than sixfold, from 1.4 per cent of GDP before the crisis in 2007 to 8.8 per cent of GDP in 2010. Public borrowing is required to finance these deficits and is expected to increase from 73.5 per cent of GDP in 2007 to 100.2 per cent in 2010. Among the big advanced economies, net debt will increase from 52 per cent of GDP in 2007 to 79 per cent in 2010.

Hat tip naked capitalism

"Ce qui vient au monde pour ne rien troubler ne mérite ni égards ni patience." René Char

Writing in the Financial Times yesterday, Josef Ackermann - CEO of Deutsche Bank - argued that larger banks are not more dangerous to the health of financial system (and thus to taxpayers) than smaller banks.  According to him, system danger arises primarily from the degree to which banks are "interconnected".

Inadvertently, Mr. Ackermann makes a strong case for banking system reform.  You can break this down into five parts.

NewYork Times technology columnist David Pogue is mounting a campaign against those canned messages that cellular carriers play after the greeting on your mobile phone voicemail (hat tip Mark Thoma's son) - you know, the ones that say "to leave a voice message, wait for the beep," only they take 30 seconds doing so, for th sole purpose of chewing up the mobile phone minutes of the person calling you. (According to Pogue, multiple carrier executives have admitted that the sole purpose of these value-destroying messages is to maximize airtime and hence revenue.)

This is exactly the same kind of "innovation" that we've seen in financial services and in health insurance. In each case, it's what you get when you have too much concentration, so that a small group of oligopolists can effectively agree on the same business practice that generates profits at the consumer's expense.

According to Bloomberg, Decreasing Exports subtracted 0.76% from GDP. At the same time, falling Imports added 2.14%.  Net contribution of the fact that Imports are free falling twice as fast as Exports are = 1.38%.

If they were both falling at the same rate -- if Europe and Asia's consumers were hurting as much as ours -  GDP would have been -2.38%.

If it seems weird to you that the ratio of domestic and overseas shrinking economies and their reduced consumption somehow turned into a positive GDP contributor, well, welcome to the wonderful world of government statistics.

By Sen. Edward Kaufman, Dem. Delaware

Here are just four areas where the SEC needs to act urgently to protect investors and restore market integrity.

First, the SEC should restore the substance of the uptick rule. This rule, a mainstay of investor protection for 70 years until it was repealed in June 2007, required investors simply to pause and to wait for an uptick in price before continuing to short sell. Without such a rule in place, investors who own stocks are more vulnerable to organized "bear raids" - abusive short selling combined with coordinated "misinformation" campaigns - which many believe contributed to the demise of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns, key elements in the collapse of our financial markets last year.

Second, the SEC should implement tougher rules that will stop naked short selling through an enforceable system. Naked short selling is the practice of selling stocks without first locating or borrowing the actual shares needed for timely delivery at settlement, sometimes in a concerted action to manipulate a stock price downward....That is some progress, but not enough. Two months from now, the Commission will finally begin to discuss publicly the potential solutions that I and a bipartisan group of Senators have been urging: either a pre-borrow requirement or a centralized "hard locate" system, which would prohibit short selling unless the executing broker first obtains evidence of a unique identifier number associated with specified shares set aside for timely delivery. The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation tells us that it has the capacity and the willingness to implement that system - but only if the SEC requires it through a rule.

Third, the SEC should ban the use of so-called "flash orders" by high-frequency traders. Flash orders allow exchange members who pay a fee to get a first look at share order flows before the general public. By viewing this buy and sell order information for just milliseconds before it goes to the wider market, these investors gain an unfair advantage over the rest.  As the New York Stock Exchange complained to the SEC on May 28, selling flash orders for a fee provides "non-public order information to a select class of market participants at the expense of a free and open market system." To use a baseball metaphor, flash orders allow some batters to pay to see the catcher's signals to the pitcher, while the rest of us don't see them. Markets that permit a privileged few to have special access to information cannot maintain their credibility.

-Skip-

Finally, the SEC should establish disclosure and transparency equality: the disclosure requirements that apply to pooled funds worth greater than $100 million should apply uniformly to all, including hedge funds, for both long and short positions. And the level of transparency for order flows should be the same for all.

It is tempting to believe that the relative ebullience of stock markets in recent weeks is a reflection of all this and, more importantly, a harbinger of better times to come. If only it were so simple.

As we ought to have learnt by now, market behaviour is as much about animal spirits, group-think, technical factors, and relative opportunities for investment, as about mirroring the world outside.

Recent gains in global equities are only partly about improving fundamentals. Much is the result of trading games and the sheer weight of money coming off the sidelines, with such uninspiring returns to safer assets.

Less than three months after his inauguration as president of South Africa, Jacob Zuma is facing a sustained challenge from some of the same people -- the urban poor and the unions -- who helped loft him to power.

With strikes and protests in the shanties that fringe South Africa's wealthy cities, the images streaming out of the nation -- to the embarrassment of the authorities -- have sometimes reverted to the same visions of police clashing with young men that became familiar during the township protests of the 1980s over apartheid.

"We would call this his first big test, and the one which will give us a sense of how we will look at the next five years," Mandy Rossouw, a South African reporter who has covered some of the unrest, said in a telephone interview. "Zuma wants to come out of this as the unifying leader, but also as the one who can get things done."

WASHINGTON -- A senior American military adviser in Baghdad has concluded in an unusually blunt memo that Iraqi forces suffer from entrenched deficiencies but are now able to protect the Iraqi government, and that it is time "for the U.S. to declare victory and go home."

The memo offers a look at tensions that emerged between Iraqi and American military officers at a sensitive moment when American combat troops met a June 30 deadline to withdraw from Iraq's cities, the first step toward an advisory role. The Iraqi government's forceful moves to assert authority have concerned some American officers, though senior American officials insisted that cooperation had improved.

Prepared by Col. Timothy R. Reese, an adviser to the Iraqi military's Baghdad command, the memorandum details Iraqi military weaknesses in scathing language, including corruption, poor management and the inability to resist Shiite political pressure. Extending the American military presence beyond August 2010, he argues, will do little to improve the Iraqis' military performance while fueling growing resentment of Americans.

"As the old saying goes, `Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days,' " Colonel Reese wrote. "Since the signing of the 2009 Security Agreement, we are guests in Iraq, and after six years in Iraq, we now smell bad to the Iraqi nose."

Those conclusions are not shared by the senior American commander in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, and his recommendation for an accelerated troop withdrawal is at odds with the timetable approved by President Obama.

In a curious case blending the disappearance of a cellphone with allegations of political maneuvering, an official from Zimbabwe's Movement for Democratic Change was set to appear in court to face accusations that could further strain the country's frail coalition government, according to The Herald, a state-run newspaper, on Thursday.

The official, Thamsanqa Mahlangu, the deputy youth minister, was arrested this week, accused of stealing a cellphone from an ally of President Robert Mugabe while sharing a lunch table with him at a political unity event. The accusation relates to a purely criminal charge, but it also seems likely to revive accusations by Mr. Mugabe's adversaries that he is seeking to reassert his absolute grasp on power, using criminal cases against lawmakers to deplete the ranks of his opponents in Parliament.

The head of Honduras's de facto government, Roberto Micheletti, has expressed support for a compromise that would allow the ousted president of his country to return to power, according to officials in the de facto government and diplomats from the region.

But the nation is so polarized over the possible return that Mr. Micheletti is reaching out to other regional leaders for help in building support for such a deal, especially among the country's elite, the officials said.

A plan to increase the American military presence on at least three military bases in Colombia, Washington's top ally in Latin America, is accentuating Colombia's already tense relations with some of its neighbors.

Venezuela, Ecuador and Nicaragua, which are members of a leftist political alliance that is led by President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and backed by his nation's oil revenues, have all criticized the plan, saying it would broaden the military reach of the United States in the Andes and the Caribbean at a time when they are still wary of American influence in the region.

When Neda Agha Soltan was killed on June 20, the world watched in horror. Now a symbol of Iran's reform movement, the memorial to mark the 40 days since her death has seen clashes between mourners and security forces. Her mother told SPIEGEL ONLINE that she just wants to find the culprit.

What's left for a mother who's watched her daughter die on television? A woman who watched as blood streamed from her child's nose and mouth, as her gaze emptied, as those who bent to help her begged her not to let go?

Hajar Rostami Motlagh's daughter died a public death. There's not much that's harder for a mother to take. "Neda believed in God, that's why he bestowed a special death on her," Motlagh said in a telephone interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE on Tuesday. "At least she didn't suffer. Forty-four seconds, and it was over."

A court in Myanmar on Friday delayed a highly anticipated verdict in a case against the pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, citing technical legal reasons, according to reports from Yangon, the main city.

An New Delhi court issued a warrant today for the arrest of the former head of the American chemical company responsible for a gas leak that killed at least 10,000 people in Bhopal 25 years ago.

Warren Anderson was the head of Union Carbide when its factory in the central Indian city leaked 40 tonnes of poisonous gas on 3 December 1984 - the world's worst industrial disaster.

More than 555,000 people who survived the initial disaster are thought to have suffered aftereffects, though the exact number of victims has never been determined. Many have died over the years from gas-related illnesses, including lung cancer, kidney failure and liver disease.

And about 90 per cent of China's billionaires are the children of high-ranking officials. Princelings have fared far better in business than in politics, observed analyst Zhang Hua, who commented on the phenomenon in Hong Kong's Apple Daily in 2007. 'Not a single (princeling) family has been left behind,' he said sardonically. The various families have carved out territories in various industries. The family of former premier Li Peng, for example, controls the country's energy sector. His daughter Li Xiaolin is chairman of China Power International Development, an electricity monopoly. His son Li Xiaopeng used to head Huaneng Power, another energy heavyweight.

Hat tip naked capitalism

"Ce qui vient au monde pour ne rien troubler ne mérite ni égards ni patience." René Char

The U.S. general put in charge of turning around the war in Afghanistan is likely to recommend significant changes in the campaign and may include a request for more U.S. forces that the White House is expected to resist.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal's long-awaited reassessment of the war against Taliban insurgents aims for a transformation of the shaky relationship between U.S. forces and Afghan civilians as troops press a counterinsurgency strategy of clearing and holding populated areas, said officials apprised of the report's contents.

The biggest change urged in McChrystal's report is a "cultural shift" in how U.S. and foreign troops operate - ranging from how they live and travel among the Afghan population to where and how they fight, a senior military official in Kabul said Friday.

When French President Charles de Gaulle took steps to terminate the 20-year French alliance with Israel in the aftermath of its military victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, his decision sent shockwaves around the world. Israel and France had been close since the late 1940s, and their relationship turned into a full-blown strategic alliance after the popular and charismatic Egyptian army officer Gamal Abdel Nasser began providing assistance to rebels fighting French colonial rule.

In 1956, Israel joined France and Britain in an elaborate and ill-fated plan to attack Egypt and retake the Suez Canal after Nasser had nationalized it. In addition to providing Israel with sophisticated military technology, including French-made Mirage and Mystère jets, the French helped the Israelis build a nuclear reactor and a reprocessing plant. The Israel-French alliance aimed at containing the growing power of Pan Arabism was a central component in Israeli national security doctrine at the time.

But de Gaulle's election in 1958 changed all that. Confounding many of his supporters, de Gaulle embraced a transformative foreign policy agenda that led eventually to granting independence to Algeria in 1962 and to a process of repairing relations with Egypt and the rest of the Arab World. With tension rising in the Middle East in 1967, de Gaulle pressed the Israelis not to attack Egypt and declared on June 2 an arms embargo against the country, just three days before the outbreak of the war. De Gaulle's position in 1967 at the time of the Six Day War played a part in France's newfound popularity in the Arab world, while Israel turned towards the United States for arms and diplomatic support.

Could U.S. President Barack Obama play the role of an American de Gaulle? Would a decision by Israel to reject Obama's advice against launching a military strike against Iran's alleged nuclear sites lead to a historic reassessment in the relationship between Washington and Jerusalem?

Also like Blackwater, Triple Canopy has hired mercenaries from countries with atrocious human rights records and histories of violent counter-insurgencies. Among them: Peru, Chile, Colombia and El Salvador. In fact, in Iraq, Triple Canopy hired far more "Third Country Nationals" than Blackwater and DynCorp and has used more TCNs than US citizens or Iraqis. As I reported in my book, Triple Canopy used the same Chilean recruiter (who served in Augusto Pinochet's military) Blackwater used when it hired Chilean forces, including some "seasoned veterans" of the Pinochet era. In El Salvador, the company reportedly used "a U.S.-trained former paratrooper and officer of the Salvadoran special forces during the country's civil war" where the U.S. backed a brutal right wing dictatorship in a war that took the lives of some 75,000 Salvadorans. A Triple Canopy spokesperson reportedly said of the Salvadorans, "They've got the right background for the type of work we are doing." A Triple Canopy subsidiary in Latin America has also reportedly used a former CIA base in Lepaterique, Honduras as a training center. In the 1980s, the facility was used by the CIA and Argentinian military intelligence in training Contra death squads to attack Nicaragua. The base also served as the headquarters for the notorious Battalion 316, a CIA-trained Honduran military unit responsible for torture and disappearances.

The UN Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS), operated by WFP, has a budget for 2009 of $160m (£96m) but has received less than $90m in fees and contributions this year....

WFP said funding for the airline's Chad service will run out on 15 August and needs $6.7m (£4m) to continue flying to the end of the year. ...

The service supplying Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea needs $3.3m (£1.9m) to continue flying to the end of the year. ...

Shortages have already led to UNHAS closing its service in Ivory Coast in February. The Niger service, also suspended that month, is expected to resume in August after a recent donation from the UN Common Emergency Relief Fund.

Go Desertec, best idea since sliced bread.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

ScienceDaily (July 31, 2009) -- Scientists have joined forces in a groundbreaking assessment on the status of marine fisheries and ecosystems. The two-year study, led by Boris Worm of Dalhousie University and Ray Hilborn of the University of Washington and including an international team of 19 co-authors, shows that steps taken to curb overfishing are beginning to succeed in five of the ten large marine ecosystems that they examined.

The paper, which appears in the July 31 issue of the journal Science, provides new hope for rebuilding troubled fisheries.

The study had two goals: to examine current trends in fish abundance and exploitation rates (the proportion of fish taken out of the sea) and to identify which tools managers have applied in their efforts to rebuild depleted fish stocks. The work is a significant leap forward because it reveals that the rate of fishing has been reduced in several regions around the world, resulting in some stock recovery. Moreover, it bolsters the case that sound management can contribute to the rebuilding of fisheries elsewhere.

It's good news for several regions in the U.S., Iceland and New Zealand. "These highly managed ecosystems are improving" says Hilborn. "Yet there is still a long way to go: of all fish stocks that we examined sixty-three percent remained below target and still needed to be rebuilt."

"Across all regions we are still seeing a troubling trend of increasing stock collapse," adds Worm. "But this paper shows that our oceans are not a lost cause. The encouraging result is that exploitation rate - the ultimate driver of depletion and collapse - is decreasing in half of the ten systems we examined in detail. This means that management in those areas is setting the stage for ecological and economic recovery. It's only a start - but it gives me hope that we have the ability to bring overfishing under control.

India will not discuss signing up to legally binding obligations to make absolute cuts in greenhouse gas emissions for at least 10 years, Jairam Ramesh, the country's environment minister, said on Friday.

"In 2020, it's conceivable that we might look at a limited target. But in 2009, no way," said Mr Ramesh.

The toughening of New Delhi's stance marks an escalation in the war of words over global warming that India has waged with the developed world ahead of crucial negotiations in Copenhagen in December. The bad-tempered dialogue bodes ill for the success of those talks.

ScienceDaily (July 31, 2009) -- Comets have contained vast amounts of liquid water in their interiors during the first million years of their formation, a new study claims.

The watery environment of early comets, together with the vast quantity of organics already discovered in comets, would have provided ideal conditions for primitive bacteria to grow and multiply. So argue Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe and his colleagues at the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology in a paper published in the International Journal of Astrobiology.

The Cardiff team has calculated the thermal history of comets after they formed from interstellar and interplanetary dust approximately 4.5 billion years ago. The formation of the solar system itself is thought to have been triggered by shock waves that emanated from the explosion of a nearby supernova. The supernova injected radioactive material such as Aluminium-26 into the primordial solar system and some became incorporated in the comets. Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe together with Drs Janaki Wickramasinghe and Max Wallis claim that the heat emitted from radioactivity warms initially frozen material of comets to produce subsurface oceans that persist in a liquid condition for a million years.

...Embodied energy

Most important, however, is the energy required to manufacture all this electronic equipment (both network and, especially, consumer appliances). The energy used to produce electronic gadgets is considerably higher than the energy used during their operation. For most of the 20th century, this was different; manufacturing methods were not so energy-intensive.

An old-fashioned car uses many times more energy during its lifetime (burning gasoline) than during its manufacture. The same goes for a refrigerator or the typical incandescent light bulb: the energy required to manufacture the product pales into insignificance when compared to the energy used during its operation.

Advanced digital technology has turned this relationship upside down. A handful of microchips can have as much embodied energy as a car. And since digital technology has brought about a plethora of new products, and has also infiltrated almost all existing products, this change has vast consequences. Present-day cars and since long existing analogue devices are now full of microprocessors. Semiconductors (which form the energy-intensive basis of microchips) have also found their applications in ecotech products like solar panels and LEDs.

Where are the figures?

While it is fairly easy to obtain figures regarding the energy consumption ofelectronic devices during the use phase (you can even measure it yourself using a power meter), it is surprisingly hard to obtain reliable and up-to-date figures on the energy consumed during the production phase. Especially when it concerns fast-evolving technologies. A life cycle analysis of high-tech products is extremely complex and can take many years, due to the large amount of parts, materials and processing techniques involved. In the meantime, products and processing technologies keep evolving, with the result that most life cycle analyses are simply outdated when they are published....

Mozilla's Firefox browser has been downloaded over a billion times, an event the Mozilla community is using to launch a new evangelism campaign.

Mike Beltzner, Mozilla's director of Firefox, estimates that the one billionth download took place at 7:47 A.M. Pacific Time on Friday.

To celebrate the event, Mozilla plans on Monday to launch www.onebillionplusyou.com, a Web site devoted rallying the Mozilla community and "as a hub of information concerning the billionth download of Firefox."

Asked to clarify what will actually be on the site, Mary Colvig, marketing manager for Mozilla said in an e-mail that the site "will reflect on how our community members around the world have helped improve the Web."

Whatever there is to be said about the billionth download, Mozilla expects to make it available in 22 languages

All private organ transplants are to be banned in the UK to avoid a perception that patients, including those from overseas, can jump the queue for scarce donor organs by paying for treatment.

The government said today that it will take immediate steps to implement the recommendations of an independent report published by Elisabeth Buggins, former chair of the Organ Donation Taskforce. She recommended banning private organ transplants from 1 October.

The ban will stop foreign patients living outside the UK paying to receive organs donated by British people.

Earlier this year it was revealed the livers of 50 British NHS donors were transplanted into foreign patients over a two-year period, with the bulk of the operations taking place at King's College hospital and the Royal Free hospital in London.

Of the patients, 40 were from Greece or Cyprus, while the remainder included patients from non-EU countries such as China, Libya and the United Arab Emirates.

Health minister Ann Keen said: "We accept her recommendations and will now take these forward to ensure a UK system that is fair and transparent and one which patients and potential donors can have trust and confidence in."

Michael Jackson's death was every bit as strange as his progressively eccentric life. He died in a room that was swelteringly hot as he always felt cold, surrounded by the paraphernalia of addiction - oxygen tanks, an IV drip, empty drug cannisters.

As the details of his final hours have emerged, attention has come to settle on the drug Propofol which he appears to have been given intravenously by his personal doctor in the early hours of June 25, the day he died. Should the imminent toxicology reports confirm Propofol as the primary cause of death, that would place Jackson in a rare category.

There are only two other cases recorded of lay people addicted to Propofol. The first was an American man aged 21 who bought it through eBay and took it through a drip, killing himself - an echo there of Jackson, though in this case the man administered himself. The other was a 25-year-old Berliner who obtained it from vets' clinics. He pretended he kept tropical fish and needed to anaesthetise them.

These exceptions apart, Propofol abuse is confined to the medical profession, specifically anaesthetists and nurses working with them who are constantly in the presence of the drug and have easy access to it. Outside the medical world, the plight of these men and women is relatively little known, a secret world open only to their closest family and friends and carers. Interviews with recovering users, self-help groups and the leading experts in Propofol addiction in the US paint a picture of desperate cravings, yearnings for oblivion, escape from childhood abuse and the slow, stuttering road back to recovery. They reveal too a drug that is almost entirely unregulated, kept freely available to medical staff at the behest of drug companies and health providers. Yet it is powerfully addictive and potentially lethal. A tiny excess dose can stop the heart or suppress breathing, and send the user into a coma from which they never come back.

Propofol, or Diprivan as it trades in America, is a white milky substance that was introduced in 1986. Its popularity as an anaesthetic has steadily grown until it is now the most widely used IV drug for putting patients to sleep. Doctors like it because it is quick to act and leaves a minimal hangover.

But it became known early on that it was addictive. In tests, rats and primates became hooked on it. In 1992 the first human dependency was recorded, an anaesthetist in his early thirties who began injecting himself to cope with stress. His secret was uncovered when he was found unconscious one night in the bathroom at work.

The lost Roman city of Altinum has been found in Italy. Sophisticated aerial images released this week reveal fascinating new details about Venice's predecessor, which was abandoned by its citizens and then sank into the lagoon.

After a long search, the ancient city of Altinum -- considered to be the predecessor of Venice -- has been discovered. In a report published this week in Science, archaeologists at the University of Padua also report that the most popular of Venetian tourist attractions, the Grand Canal, was flowing through the Roman trade town as long as 1,500 years ago.

The former East Germany made significant contributions to modern architecture. Today, they would be historical landmarks full of insights into life in the GDR. But many have been lost.  

Germany has a lot to celebrate this year: 60 years since the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany, 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and 90 years since the founding of the Bauhaus architecture movement in Weimar, to name but a few of the anniversaries.

 

But while the Bauhaus birthday is commemorated with champagne and special exhibits, few are aware that great architects like former Bauhaus student Selman Selmanagic were responsible for developing architectonic modernity in post-war East Germany. Much of their work was destroyed shortly after German reunification.

Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine - Patti Smith

It is a much-belated response, but 25-year-old Robert Nieuwenhuijs' July 27 video reply to Fox News' description of Amsterdam as a "cesspool of corruption" has nevertheless become a hit on the video-sharing website YouTube.

"Amsterdam is a cesspool of corruption. Everything is out of control, it's anarchy", a sidekick of Fox News conservative anchor Bill O'Reilly said during a broadcast in December 2008.

The O'Reilly Factor wanted to prove the point that the liberal drug policy of the Netherlands had backfired, since the Dutch government was planning to tighten the rules governing soft drugs use. "The Netherlands are becoming more conservative", said O'Reilly.

By showing smudgy images of Amsterdam's red light district over negative commentary - "It's a moral disaster" -, O'Reilly wanted to make his viewers believe that Amsterdam has turned into a modern equivelant of Sodom and Gomorrah.

25-year-old film academy graduate Robert Nieuwenhuijs from Amsterdam recently saw the show on YouTube and felt affronted by O'Reilly's Amsterdam-bashing. He decided to post a video reply on YouTube, calling it . He looked up numbers about drugs use from American and Dutch national surveys and made some striking comparisons.

Intriguingly, this could mean the device is even older than thought. The inscriptions have been dated to around 100 BC, but according to Jones the device may have been made at latest in the early second century BC, because after that the Romans devastated or took over the Greek colonies in the region, so it's unlikely that people would still have been using the Greek calendar there.

Hay tip naked capitalism

"Ce qui vient au monde pour ne rien troubler ne mérite ni égards ni patience." René Char

nrc.nl - International - Features - Gay Pride has 'widened and deepened'

"It's still a party. But partying and fighting for what you believe in are not mutually exclusive," says Frank van Dalen, director of Pro Gay, the company behind the Gay Pride celebrations in Amsterdam.

The 14th edition of Gay Pride will see eighty boats converge on Amsterdam's canals. Thirty of them have a "heavy message", says Van Dalen, with themes like violence against homosexuals or the emancipation of Christian homosexuals. There are also "political" boats like that of Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen or Labour minister Ronald Plasterk, whose portfolio includes homosexual emancipation.

"Gay Pride has widened and deepened," says Van Dalen.

In 2009, Gay Pride is looking more socially responsible than ever before. That shows not just in the number and type of boats in the Canal Parade, but also in the surrounding activities during the week. The university of Amsterdam is showing a collection of rare homosexual books, for instance, and the Hermitage museum laid on on a special gay day.

The East German secret police were right to be scared of rock'n'roll and all the Western decadence it implied. Concerts given by Michael Jackson, Pink Floyd and Bruce Springsteen in Berlin in 1988 could well have inspired a revolution. The Stasi were so concerned they spied on Jackson during his visit.

 Files kept by the former East German secret police, the Stasi, indicate that they were worried about the concert that Jackson, who died last month, gave in Berlin in June of 1988. This was just over a year before the fall of the Berlin Wall -- but the East German youth were already restive.

 In a note from the Stasi, found in files revealed by German mass circulation newspaper Bild this week, the secret police were worried that the "youths will do anything they can to experience this concert, in the area around the Brandenburg Gate." And, they noted, "certain youths are planning to (use the occasion) to provoke a confrontation with police."

'Birthers' must be stopped - Los Angeles Times

Never underestimate the ability of a tiny fringe group of losers to ruin everything.

For the last couple of weeks, we've all been laughing heartily at the wacky antics of the "birthers" -- the far-right goofballs who claim Barack Obama wasn't really born in Hawaii and therefore the job of president goes to the runner-up, former Miss California Carrie Prejean.

 Also, when Obama was sworn in as president, he forgot to give his answer in the form of a question.

And yet, every week, the chorus of conservatives demanding to see his birth certificate grows. It's like they're the Cambridge police, Obama's in his house -- the White House -- and they need to see some ID.

And there's nothing anyone can do to convince these folks. You could hand them, in person, the original birth certificate and have a video of Obama emerging from the womb with Don Ho singing in the background ... and they still wouldn't believe it.

Your Vote Which raises the question: Why, in this country, is it always the religious right that won't take anything on fait