On the surface, the German electoral system is similar to that of most other Western countries, although it does have its own quirks and peculiarities. DW-WORLD explains. 

When Germans go to their polling stations - often in schools or other public buildings - they select candidates for parliament with marks on a multiple-choice ballot. But when it comes to tallying the ballots, it's a whole different ballpark.

Under Germany's parliamentary system, considerations other than the check mark come into play in determining the final makeup of the Bundestag - including things like 5 percent clauses, overhang seats and first and second votes.

But the most important difference is that Germans don't elect their chancellor directly. Instead, they elect parties, and the parties gaining the majority of seats in the Bundestag then elect the chancellor.

Turkey has marked a sad anniversary of 50 years knocking on Europe's door, with some enthusiasts hoping that the EU's recent deal on the Nabucco gas pipeline could speed up Ankara's membership bid.

The Eurasian country of 74 million on Friday (31 July) marked a half century from the first official announcement of its application to join the EU, which was then called the European Economic Community.

In 1959 Turkey sent the first application to join the EU, which numbered just six member states

On the same day in 1959, Turkey's prime minister Adnan Menderes made the first partnership application to join the economic bloc of what was then six countries, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, created only two years before in 1957.

Ankara's bid came before several other EU countries now seen as the bloc's heavyweights, such as Britain or Spain, joined the currently 27-member club. But it has proceeded in a death-slow tempo and along with re-emerging doubts about the ultimate goal of the mutual relationship and contacts between Turkey and Europe.

Canadian officials have deported former German industry lobbyist Karlheinz Schreiber, who sought to evade prosecutors in Germany for a decade. He was at the center of one of Germany's biggest postwar political scandals and will likely face trial on multiple charges.

The plane from Toronto arrived in Munich at 9:22 a.m. on Monday. Two police vans and three unmarked vehicles awaited the arrival. Their quarry: Karlheinz Schreiber, the infamous 75-year-old former arms lobbyist with dual Canadian-German citizenship, who had been at the center of Germany's biggest postwar political scandal.

Leading representatives of the German governing parties will meet on Monday (3 August) in Berlin to formulate legislation on how to implement the EU's Lisbon treaty, as requested by the country's constitutional court.

A new deal is needed after Germany's highest court on 30 June ruled that the Lisbon treaty can only be ratified if the national parliament's role is first strengthened.

The Bundestag: Germany's ratification of the Lisbon treaty was suspended by its top court

The 147 page-long ruling suspended the ratification process of the treaty until the new provisions requested by the court come into force.

Time is short for Berlin as the German parliament will soon be dissolved due to general elections on 27 September.

France will demand that fruit and vegetable farmers pay back their EU subsidies, according to French Agriculture Minister Bruno Le Maire. Subsidies dealt to French farmers between 1992-2002 totalled some 500 million euros.

AFP - French farmers will have to pay back hundreds of millions of euros in subsidies after the European Union ruled the state aid amounted to unfair competition, the agriculture minister said on Monday.

 

Fruit and vegetable farmers received more than 330 million euros (468 million dollars) in illegal subsidies from the French state between 1992 and 2002, according to the European Commission.

 

"We will have to launch proceedings to be reimbursed by the farmers," said Agriculture Minister Bruno Le Maire in an interview with Le Parisien newspaper.

The Netherlands Muslim Party has announced it will be fielding candidates in local elections next year in five towns and cities, including Amsterdam and The Hague.
 
Party chairman Henny Kreeft says he is also in discussion with party branches in at least a further five municipalities on whether they will field candidates. In June Mr Kreeft said he hoped party representatives would be standing in twenty districts. The NMP will launch its election manifesto after Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting, which this year ends on 19 September.

If it is successful, the NMP will not be the first Islamic party to be represented in Dutch local politics. The Islam Democrats have held a seat on the local council in The Hague since 2006.

More than 15,000 Italian women, including academics and scientists, have endorsed a petition attacking the "sexist policies, behaviours and discourse" of Silvio Berlusconi, a Milan academic has said.

Professor Chiara Volpato, from the University of Milan-Bicocca, said that thousands of women responded to an internet appeal made in June after Italian academics urged the wives of world leaders to boycott the G8 summit to protest against the alleged antics of the Italian Prime Minister, who is embroiled in scandal over his private life.

The wives of the leaders, including Sarah Brown, ignored the appeal and joined their husbands at the summit in L'Aquila. Mr Berlusconi's wife, Veronica Lario, was noticeably absent, having announced that she planned to divorce her husband after he was pictured with Noemi Letizia, a lingerie model from Naples, at her 18th birthday party in April.

News of the women's petition came as several opposition MPs renewed their demand for Mr Berlusconi to appear before the Italian parliament to respond to allegations about his "encounters with young women".

Germany's center-left Social Democrats, struggling to revive their flagging election campaign, will present a "Germany Plan" on Monday to eradicate unemployment by 2020 by promoting green technology. Rival parties say it's a completely unrealistic pledge that smacks of desperation.

German Deputy Chancellor Frank-Walter Steinmeier presenting his election team last week. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) candidate to become chancellor in the Sept. 27 election, will make a fresh attempt to revive his campaign on Monday by pledging to create 4 million jobs and create full employment by 2020.

Steinmeier, whose center-left party is trailing Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives by more than 10 points less than eight weeks before the election, will present his "Germany Plan" on Monday evening.

SPIEGEL has seen the 67-page document which outlines plans to create 2 million jobs in industry through improved efficiency in the consumption of energy and raw materials and by promoting green technologies such as electrically-powered cars.

Enel and Electricité de France have created a joint venture to assess the feasibility of building at least four nuclear power plants in Italy, marking the latest stage in the relaunch of the country's nuclear industry more than 20 years after it was rejected by the public.

The new venture, known as Sviluppo Nucleare Italia, will be based in Rome and follows the signing of an agreement between the heads of government of the two countries in February to restart nuclear power production in Italy.

Police have closed down many illegal cannabis plantations, but they hardly ever investigate who is making money from them. That is the conclusion of an investigation by the Brabant detective force into organised crime in the cannabis trade in six police regions in the south of the Netherlands.

The result are confirmed by public prosecutor Gerrit van de Burg in Den Bosch, who heads the national task force for the fight against cannabis plantations.

In 2004, the Dutch government announced a crackdown on organised crime in the cannabis cultivation sector. It was to be a concerted effort by police, local authorities, housing associations and energy companies.

But according to detective Stephan van Nimwegen, who headed the investigation, police departments still give cannabis plantations low priority compared with murder, robbery or hard drugs investigations.

Van Nimwegen said closing down cannabis plantations was "fighting the symptoms".

Georgia's foreign ministry has accused Russia of attempting to move the South Ossetian border deeper into Georgian territory, increasing tensions between Tbilisi and Moscow.

The ministry said Russian troops entered the village of Kveshi, near South Ossetia on Sunday, with the aim of creating a new border.

But EU monitors said Russian border guards had assured them they had no plans to move their checkpoint to the new area.

Georgia's accusation comes days before the first anniversary of the Russia-Georgia war, which was fought over the breakaway province.

India's fast-growing information technology outsourcing sector has hit out at the red tape of the consular regimes of many European Union countries, saying that they form formidable protectionist barriers against services exports to the trading bloc.

A survey by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, published on Monday, lambasted the difficulties of gaining work permits for IT professionals, their spouses, and the often unreasonably short duration of visas. It said visas often restricted workers to one country, or even one city, thereby hindering Indian companies from reaping economies of scale by doing bulk work for multiple countries.

British manufacturing grew for the first time in 16 months during July, boosted by the fastest flow of new orders since November 2007.

According to the Chartered Institute of Purchasing & Supply (CIPS), the Purchasing Managers Index, which measures activity in the manufacturing sector, rose from a reading of 47.4 to 50.8 between June and July. It is the first time the measure has risen above 50, the dividing line between contraction and growth, since March 2008.

David Noble, chief executive of CIPS said: "The manufacturing sector has clearly pulled out of the nosedive it was in earlier this year and is no longer plummeting." He said customers had cut inventories so severely in the downturn that they were now in need of new stock in order to meet improved sales. However, Mr Noble warned it was still early days and said smaller businesses continued to bear the brunt of the recession.

However, in a stunning development, China entered the fray this month and signed an agreement to loan $1 billion to Moldova at a highly favorable 3% interest rate over 15 years with a five-year grace period on interest payments. The money will be channeled through Covec, China's construction leviathan, as project exports in fields such as energy modernization, water systems, treatment plants, agriculture and high-tech industries.

Curiously, China has offered that it is prepared to "guarantee financing for all projects considered necessary and justified by the Moldovan side" over and above the $1 billion loan. In effect, Beijing has signaled its willingness to underwrite the entire Moldovan economy which has an estimated gross domestic product of $8 billion and a paltry budget of $1.5 billion.

New migrants who demonstrate an "active disregard for UK values", possibly including protesting at homecoming parades of troops from Afghanistan, could find their applications for a British passport blocked under new citizenship proposals published today.

But migrants who contribute to the "democratic life of the country" by canvassing for political parties could find the application process speeded up so that it takes one year instead of three.

The new Nato secretary general today called for a "strategic partnership" with Russia a year after the Kremlin's war in Georgia triggered the worst tension between Moscow and the west for nearly 20 years.

In his first public appearance since he took up the post, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former Danish prime minister, said good relations with Russia were a priority during his five-year tenure. His statement will worry Nato members of central Europe and the Baltic who are protesting to the White House over Barack Obama's recent overtures to the Kremlin.

RAI, the state-owned TV channel, recently launched a new satellite platform, owned jointly with Mediaset, the Prime Minister's company. RAI and Mediaset own 48.25% each of the project, with Telecom Italia owning 3.5%. An unnamed Milan stock analyst, quoted by DowJones Newswires, said that "Sky may have to worry about the possibility of losing 40% of its audience, which is attached to RAI and traditional free-to-air channels", which hitherto have been available on the Sky satellite. Some of RAI's channels have already been pulled from Sky viewers, and others may be in future. The analyst went on to say that "in the medium term, this is a move that may benefit Mediaset". President Napolitano has expressed some concern about this issue - which is certainly a blatant case of using the machinery of the Italian state in order to benefit the private business interests of the prime minister - but it seems highly unlikely that he will intervene in any way.

is that why you can get Current TV on sky, which does devastating documentaries about Genoa and Berlu?

expect more Times articles slagging His Phallus?

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

obs in the European Union continued to disappear in June, with unemployment reaching a four-year high and putting extra pressure of the bloc's coffers to help laid-off workers back into employment.

According to fresh data released by the EU's statistics office, Eurostat, on Friday (31 July), some 21.5 million people - or 8.9 percent - were out of work in the 27-nation EU in June. The figure was 9.4 percent in the 16-member euro area - the highest in 10 years.

Construction workers - the sector has been hit especially hard

Spain, hit hard by the collapse of its construction sector, recorded the highest jobless rates at 18.1 percent, followed by Baltic States, Latvia (17.2 percent) and Estonia (17 percent).

On the other hand, labour markets in the Netherlands and Austria seem to be in the best shape. The two countries have just 3.3 percent and 4.4 percent unemployed respectively.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission has helped Ukraine to secure international loans to prevent a repetition of last winter's gas cut-off.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the European Investment Bank and the World Bank will together put forward $1.7 billion (€1.2 billion).

Ms Tymoshenko (l) and Mr Barroso - gas sector reforms could harm Ms Tymoshenko's political ambitions

Three hundred million dollars is to help Ukraine buy Russian gas to fill storage tanks for the coming winter. The rest is to pay for reforms to its distribution network over the next 18 months.

The deal is conditional on Ukraine increasing transparency in its state-owned gas distributor Naftogaz, reducing gas waste and bumping up household energy prices to market levels.

Catastrophic shortfalls threaten economic recovery, says world's top energy economist

The world is heading for a catastrophic energy crunch that could cripple a global economic recovery because most of the major oil fields in the world have passed their peak production, a leading energy economist has warned.

Higher oil prices brought on by a rapid increase in demand and a stagnation, or even decline, in supply could blow any recovery off course, said Dr Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the respected International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris, which is charged with the task of assessing future energy supplies by OECD countries.

Barclays and HSBC shrugged off the near-collapse of the financial system to report combined half-year profits of almost £6 billion today.

The duo - which both avoided taxpayer support at the height of last autumn's crisis - posted profits of nearly £3 billion each, mainly due to strong investment banking results.

But both banks also bore the scars of almost £13 billion in bad debts as consumers and businesses hit by recession default on loans.

Barclays' write-downs rose 86 per cent to £4.56 billion, while HSBC's were up 39 per cent to 13.9 billion US dollars (£8.3 billion).

Britain's manufacturing sector grew for the first time in 16 months in July, according to a survey from the Chartered Institute of Purchasing & Supply (CIPS).

The CIPS manufacturing purchasing managers' index rose to 50.8 last month from an upwardly revised 47.4 in June, the first time the number has been above the 50 level that divides contraction from growth since March last year.

July's figure was well above expectations of a rise to 47.7 and marks a sharp rebound from the record low of 34.9 set in November.

Speaking as a taxpayer, I am getting seriously fed up with the banks. They seem hell-bent on resuming business as usual, or as near as they can contrive. They will probably get their way. And we will end up with the bill again.

It is not as if we lack ways of averting this. In fact, I have a modest proposal of my own, which I will come to. But the odds are stacked against us.

By the time the next crisis hits, today's senior bankers will have moved on. So will senior politicians. Only taxpayers are without that option, except in a rather terminal sense.

The world economy cannot sustain any further rise in the oil price, the International Energy Agency's chief economist warned as oil prices rose toward a record high for the year.

Fatih Birol told the Financial Times that prices higher than about $70 could dampen a world economic recovery.

"If we go one step further, if we see prices go much higher than that, we may see it slow down and strangle economic recovery," he said of oil prices on Friday, when the European benchmark was around $70.

European oil on Monday reached a high for the year of $73.75, spurred by manufacturing data from China and construction data from the US.

Global manufacturing is clearly on the rebound, with survey reports on Monday showing activity contracting at a significantly slower pace in the US and continental Europe, and UK industry back on a growth path.

The upbeat results added to evidence that the world's main economic regions stabilised in July, bringing closer the prospect of growth resuming.
...
However, a return to solid growth was still not certain in many parts of the world, economists warned. Much of the recent improvement reflected companies rebuilding inventories, and was boosted by China's rebound, argued Marco Annunziata, chief economist at Unicredit. "I'm worried that the world economy doesn't have the stamina to keep growing."

June Employment Comparing Recessions

Just when I had finally worked out that the GFC had been caused by beer swilling, cocaine snorting, lap dancing club habitues who were irresistible to the opposite sex, I find I was wrong! It seems that the GFC was the work of economists who wish that they were beer swilling, cocaine snorting, lap dancing club habitues irresistible to the opposite sex.

The continuing ability of Big Finance to play our elected representatives, and thus the taxpayer, should surprise no one.  This is about organized money against relative diffuse public interests.  It's Mancur Olson's Logic of Collective Action meets sophisticated media managers with experience in emerging market crises - they know that as long as you can look confident and pump in money, everything turns around and people forget (and then you can re-run the show).

More puzzling is the reluctance of other well-organized interest groups to act against Big Finance.  In particular, powerful business groups - like Independent Community Bankers of America - understand very well what happened and the way in which are largest banks were responsible.  Yet they refuse to push for regulatory reform, either in broad terms or with regard to consumer protection (e.g., see their policy statements; recent testimony).

Their reasoning is fascinating but completely wrong.

Paul Moore warned his employers at the banking giant HBOS that he believed lending had got out of control. He claims he lost his job as a result. In going public with his story, he tells Elena Curti, he found the inspiration to be a whistleblower through his Catholic faith

It comes as no surprise that Paul Moore trained as a barrister. One can easily imagine him in wig and gown querying the most minute details of a witness's account during his cross-examination. He took the same forensic approach in his post in charge of risk at the financial services giant, HBOS, at the height of the credit boom: scrutinising documents, conducting structured interviews and observing meetings with an eagle eye. He may have done his job too well; when he discovered the bank was lending on a reckless scale he urged his masters to row back. Instead he was "summarily dismissed" in 2005.

Then there he was last February, before the Treasury Select Committee, setting out meticulous details of the bank's cata­strophic lending. Overnight Moore became the "HBOS whistleblower" and for several days was in the eye of a media storm. Yet he says he felt perfectly calm, describing it as "a tremendous moment of grace". He was, he explains, impelled by his Catholic faith to set out what he had learned about the scale of the risks taken by HBOS and why much of the British banking industry imploded in spectacular fashion last autumn. (continues)

By PAM MARTENS   CounterPunch

As the newly appointed Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission prioritizes its agenda to investigate how a 200-year old system conceived to establish fair pricing and trading of stocks and bonds morphed into a rigged backroom casino of craps tables piled high with triple-A rated junk that crippled the world's largest economy, they must place Wall Street's private justice system at the top of their list for subpoenas.

The rationale is as simple as this:

    (a) there is only one industry in America bringing the country to its knees;

    (b) there is only one industry in America which requires its workers to contractually relinquish their access to the courts as a condition of employment;

    (c) look under that rock first for the thousands of industry whistleblowers who walked out of these kangaroo courts with gag orders, leaving behind their documents, placed under seal by colluding lawyers.

Here's a sample of what the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission will find when it looks at how corruption was kept in a black box by mandatory employment contracts on Wall Street:

    "The Policy makes arbitration the required and exclusive forum for the resolution of all employment disputes based on legally protected rights (i.e., statutory, contractual or common law rights) that may arise between an employee or former employee and the Corporate & Investment Bank or its current and former parents, subsidiaries and affiliates and its and their current and former officers, directors, employees and agents...the arbitrator shall be bound by applicable Firm policies and procedures and shall not have the authority to alter or otherwise modify the parties `at-will' relationship or substitute his or her judgment for the lawful business judgment of Firm management."

In other words, when you work for Wall Street you enter a twilight zone where the financial elite make their own laws and run their own private justice system to carry out those laws. (Arbitrators, even outside of Wall Street, are not required to follow the nation's laws or legal precedent or write a reasoned decision based on those laws.)

Typically, Wall Street employee claims were arbitrated by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), now known as FINRA, where current or former industry personnel routinely sit as judge and jury.  (See Judicial Apartheid, CounterPunch, July 20, 2009 on how the NASD was caught rigging the selection of arbitrators.)  In the above Wall Street employment contract, the American Arbitration Association (AAA) was designated to hear claims if NASD declined.

What a hoot. The Chinese Communists invaded Washington on Monday demanding not that we sacrifice our freedoms but rather that we balance our budget. Creditors get to make that kind of call. And the Marxists of Beijing, who have turned out to be the world's most prudent bankers, are worried about their assets invested in our banana republic.

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"China has a huge amount of investment in the United States, mainly in the form of Treasury bonds. We are concerned about the security of our financial assets" was the way China's assistant finance minister put it. Briefing reporters at the US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, he added, "We sincerely hope the US fiscal deficit will be reduced, year after year." Quite sincerely, one suspects, given a US budget shortfall this year that is slated to reach $1.85 trillion.

Suddenly, it was US officials who were promising deep reform to their disgraced economic system rather than demanding it from incompetent foreigners. President Barack Obama's economic team of Clinton-era holdovers, who a decade ago had hectored China on the virtues of fiscal responsibility, now were falling over themselves to reassure the Chinese that their $1.5 trillion stake in US government-issued securities is safe, and that they should buy more at this week's $200 billion Treasury auction. If they don't, we're in big trouble.

US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner promised to behave, saying the US is "committed to taking the necessary measures to bring our fiscal deficits down to a more sustainable level once recovery is firmly established." Now let's hope that the Chinese Communists and their natural allies among congressional deficit hawks will be able to keep him to his word.

ka-chink!

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

Any doubts as to whether Iceland's elite has declared war on its people were dispelled this weekend.

...

Then, secret documents detailing massive loans to Kaupthing Bank's biggest shareholders were leaked to WikiLeaks. Although it was widely understood that the powers-that-be received large loans, the size of the loans was astounding. Plus, there is something visceral in pairing up the names and the loans. It is for the sake of these unscrupulous characters that the next generation faces massive deprivation?!?

The attorneys for New Kaupthing Bank (now owned by the Icelandic government) first threatened WikiLeaks with legal action, then successfully obtained from the Reykjavík Magistrate, who is a relative and good friend of Kaupthing insiders, an injunction barring the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service News from revealing the details of these widely-available documents. Astonishingly, the INBS News complied with this obviously illegal and ineffective order.

NATO welcomed Denmark's former Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen on his first day in the organization's top job. He vowed to continue to fight for stability in Afghanistan and to renew relations with Russia. 

Operations in Afghanistan, and relations with Russia and the countries bordering the Mediterranean, will be NATO's top priorities over the next four years, the alliance's new secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said on Monday.

"I want to see NATO reach its full potential as a pillar of global security," Rasmussen told journalists at his first press conference in his new role.

Israel's ultranationalist foreign minister promised Monday to step down if he is charged after police recommended that he be indicted for a string of alleged corruption offenses.

Police say they have enough evidence to charge Avigdor Lieberman with accepting bribes, fraud, money laundering and other offenses. The country's attorney general must now decide whether to indict him, and that could take months.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, has officially endorsed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the winner of the country's June presidential election.

Monday's endorsement of Ahamdinejad's victory comes ahead of his swearing-in before parliament for his second term on Wednesday, despite the president suffering a string of setbacks amid an apparent rift with his own conservative camp.

 "The official ceremony was held and supreme leader approved Mr Ahmadinejad's presidency," the Arabic language al-Alam state television said.

DUBAI (Reuters) - Al Qaeda's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri said a truce offered to the last U.S. administration was still on the table, but President Barack Obama must withdraw troops from Muslim lands and meet other demands.

"If Obama wants to (reach) an understanding then he should respond to Sheikh Osama (bin Laden's) two offers," Zawahri said in an interview with al Qaeda's media arm As-sahab, posted on an Islamist website on Monday.

Zawahri warned that militants would continue to fight "until doomsday" unless their conditions were met. "The minimum the mujahideen would accept (includes) ... the exit of infidel troops from all of the land of Islam and an end to stealing Muslims' wealth under the threat of military power."

In a SPIEGEL interview, ousted President Manuel Zelaya, 56, discusses the coup in his native Honduras, the lack of intervention from Washington, his political ties to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his hopes to unseat the regime by peaceful means.

SPIEGEL: Mr. President, you have now established your headquarters in northern Nicaragua, only a few kilometers from the Honduran border. Will you attempt, as you have already done several times in recent weeks, to return to Honduras on your own?

Zelaya: I could go back across the border today or tomorrow, but I'm being threatened. The coup leaders want to murder me, or at least arrest me, as they have done once before. I want to prepare for my return in a peaceful way. Hondurans should know: I am prepared to resume control of the country at the appropriate moment. For now, we are organizing the resistance.

The commander of Russia's strategic nuclear missile forces has resigned, Interfax news agency reported on Monday, the latest in a spate of departures from the military top brass.

Interfax quoted unnamed sources as saying General Nikolai Solovtsov would shortly leave his post as head of the missile forces, after reaching the retirement age of 60 in February.

MOSCOW, August 3, (RIA Novosti) - At least 46 journalists have been killed in 21 countries since the beginning of 2009, the International News Safety Institute (INSI) report said.

The reports states that Somalia, Mexico, Pakistan, Iraq and Philippines are documented as the most dangerous countries for journalists.

"The situation in Mexico is causing grave concern with at least three deaths confirmed and three more under investigation," the report said.

A second man has died of pneumonic plague in a remote part of north-west China where a town of more than 10,000 people has been sealed off.

The 37-year-old victim was a neighbour of the first person to die from the plague, a herdsman aged 32 in Ziketan in Xinghai in Qinghai Province.

The sparsely populated area is mostly inhabited by Tibetans.

Pneumonic plague, which attacks the lungs, can spread from person to person or from animals to people.

A spokeswoman for the World Health Organization, Vivian Tan, said an outbreak such as this was always a concern, but praised the Chinese for reacting quickly and for getting the situation under control.

A BBC correspondent in Beijing, Michael Bristow, says that unlike in the past the authorities are being very open about this outbreak.

A simmering scandal in Brazil's senate is likely to come to a head today when President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is expected to meet José Sarney, president of the senate and a key figure in the governing coalition, to decide his political future.
...
Analysts warn of at least three dangers for the government if Mr Sarney steps down. As a prominent leader of the PMDB, the biggest party in congress, he has been able to guarantee support for policy when it is needed.

The government's legislative agenda would be in jeopardy; it would risk losing control of a senate inquiry into alleged wrongdoing at Petrobras, the government-controlled but publicly traded oil company; and backing for Dilma Rousseff, the president's chosen candidate to succeed him after next year, would come under threat.

Human rights groups have condemned a forthcoming law in Venezuela under which anyone guilty of "media crimes" could be jailed for up to four years.

The bill seeks to punish journalists and anyone they interview who "causes panic", "disturbs social peace" or compromises national security. The move is part of the fight by President Hugo Chávez against what he calls "media terrorism".
...
While presenting proposals for the law on Thursday, Luisa Ortega Díaz, the country's top prosecutor, insisted that freedom of expression "must be limited".

Government officials also confirmed that the licences of 50 private radio stations accused of operating illegally were being reviewed. The announcement followed recent warnings that the licences of as many as 240 radio stations could be revoked, amounting to more than a third of all broadcasters. Mr Chávez has also threatened to shut Globovisión, Venezuela's last remaining strongly anti-government television channel.

The House hearings on rescission - the retroactive cancellation of individual health insurance policies - were over a month ago, but after its initial run through Daily Kos it seems to have waited a bit before popping up on Baseline and Slate.  James Kwak at Baseline described the practice as rare, affecting only 0.5% of the population.
...
If the top 5% is the absolute largest population for whom rescission would make sense, the probability of having your policy cancelled given that you have filed a claim is fully 10% (0.5% rescission/5.0% of the population).  If you take the LA Times estimate that $300mm was saved by abrogating 20,000 policies in California ($15,000/policy), you are somewhere in the 15% zone, depending on the convexity of the top section of population.  If, as I suspect, rescission is targeted toward the truly bankrupting cases - the top 1%, the folks with over $35,000 of annual claims who could never be profitable for the carrier - then the probability of having your policy torn up given a massively expensive condition is pushing 50%. One in two.  You have three times better odds playing Russian Roulette.

If Washington continues to operate in the role of a global hegemon, with its military inventory of 865 facilities in more than 40 countries and overseas US territories, it could well follow in the former Soviet Union's footsteps and become a crippled economic power.

According to the 2008 official Pentagon inventory of our military bases around the world, our empire consists of 865 facilities in more than 40 countries and overseas US territories. We deploy over 190,000 troops in 46 countries and territories.
...
These massive concentrations of American military power outside the United States are not needed for our defense. They are, if anything, a prime contributor to our numerous conflicts with other countries. They are also unimaginably expensive. According to Anita Dancs, an analyst for the website Foreign Policy in Focus, the United States spends approximately US$250 billion each year maintaining its global military presence. The sole purpose of this is to give us hegemony - that is, control or dominance over as many nations on the planet as possible.

The Obama administration is looking at transferring inmates at Guantánamo to a combined jail and courtroom facility at an existing prison on the US mainland, officials confirmed today.

A task force set up by Barack Obama to consider options for closing Guantánamo by January 22 is expected to publish its findings over the summer.

Options being looked at include converting a civilian prison in Michigan, which has already been dubbed Gitmo North in anticipation, or a military prison in Kansas, Fort Leavenworth.

Kenya's more than 4,000 death row inmates all will have their sentences commuted to life imprisonment, the president announced Monday, describing their wait to face execution as "undue mental anguish and suffering."

No death sentence has been carried out in the past 22 years in the East African nation. President Mwai Kibaki said he made the decision following advice of a constitutional committee and that he was commuting the sentences using powers provided for under Kenya's constitution.

"Extended stay on death row causes undue mental anguish and suffering, psychological trauma (and) anxiety while it may as well constitute inhuman treatment," the president said in a statement.

Forecasters say this one is brewing up to be the second-strongest on record

A new El Niño has begun. The sporadic Pacific Ocean warming, which can disrupt weather patterns across the world, is intensifying, say meteorologists.

So, over the next few months, there may be increased drought in Africa, India and Australia, heavier rainfall in South America and increased extremes in Britain, of warm and cold. It may make 2010 one of the hottest years on record.

The cyclical phenomenon, which happens every two to seven years, is a major determinant of global weather systems. The 1997-98 El Niño combined with global warming to push 1998 into being the world's hottest year, and caused major droughts and catastrophic forest fires in South-east Asia which sent a pall of smoke right across the region.

Climate change, border disputes and the opposition of residents to expansion threaten eastern Poland's unique woodlands.

Acontest between competing needs of conservation and economic growth is threatening the future of large parts of Europe's last ancient forest. The 380,000-acre Bialowieza Primeval Forest, which straddles the border between Poland and Belarus, is one of the largest unpopulated woodlands remaining in Europe. It has been a Unesco World Heritage Site since 1979, is home to the continent's largest herd of bison, and resembles - in appearance and the self-contained food chain it supports - the fabled wildwood that covered much of Europe's plain, and, indeed, England before man intervened.

On the Polish side of the border, residents are opposing plans to extend the protected zone of this unique habitat, which is under threat from rising temperatures and declining rainfall. Encouraged by international conservation agencies, Warsaw wants to enlarge the area's national park, which occupies less than a fifth of the Polish part of the forest. It has offered up to 100 million zlotys (£20m) to be shared among the nine communities that would be affected by broader regulations protecting wildlife.

A group of farmers have created these extraordinary 'murals' by planting rice in different colours in Japanese paddy fields.

The creations emerge in the late summer months after the rice plants have had a chance to grow.

But the farmers first sketch out their designs on computers so that they know exactly where the rice needs to be planted.

Cooler conditions and light rain have helped firefighters in their efforts to control wildfires that have been raging across the holiday island of La Palma in Spain's Canary Islands, where thousands have been evacuated.

AFP - Firefighters on the Spanish island of La Palma were on Monday beginning to master a fire that has forced thousands of people to flee their homes, local authorities said.
   
Fanned by strong winds, the fire on the small island in the Canaries archipelago has ravaged some 2,000 hectares of pine forest and destroyed dozens of homes since it erupted on Friday night.
   
But cooler temperatures, gentler winds and light rain on Monday helped firefighters to bring one of the two active fronts under control, the authorities said.

After focusing on oil, metals and minerals for decades, Japan's huge trading houses are turning to agricultural commodities, with Tokyo enthusiastically supporting the shift amid concerns about local and global food security.

The move by the sogo shosha, or general trading companies, comes as the Japanese government prepares to launch plans this month to finance investment in food production overseas. Japan is the world's largest net importer of food, buying in more than $40bn (€28bn, £24bn).

Japanese officials say the 2007-08 food crisis stemmed from decades of under-investment in agriculture, a view shared by the Group of Eight rich countries. Tokyo believes that expanding food production, through public-private partnership with its local trading houses and other companies, will help mitigate future risks.

India and China are to co-operate in monitoring the melting of glaciers in the Himalayas, a border region crucial to both countries' water supplies and one over which they have gone to war.

Jairam Ramesh, India's environment minister, said that, as part of a scientific investigation into the health of what are called the Water Towers of Asia, academic research bodies on both sides of the mountain range would share information. He also told the FT that New Delhi was open to a dialogue about water resources with Beijing, saying the two countries shared concerns.

Over a third of German national TV programmes are produced in Cologne. Alongside the eight channels based on the banks of the Rhine, in `media city', are the offices of the young, resolutely feminist FrauTV and the militant magazine Emma

`Women's media' - does the concept ring a bell? Magazines full of sample sachets of new shower gels? Saturated with ads? Celebrity rumours? Quizzes about your relationship? If that's what the women's press boils down to in your eyes, that's because you haven't discovered two German alternatives, FrauTV and Emma. They bring female issues to the fore, but through frank discussions between the sexes, or from an explicitly feminist perspective. As an antidote to ditsy, superficial and conventional women's weeklies, a trip to Cologne, where their offices are based, does the world of good. No more tapestry!

'Welcome to our show for young embroidery enthusiasts, vixens, angels of vengeance, goddesses, mums, grannies, married women, lesbians, tomboys, singletons, cows, witches, teenagers, walking clothes-horses, virgins, nice old ladies... and men, of course.' FrauTV's trailer sets the tone for the show. While the approach might be as youth-orientated as a copy of Closer, with an audience just as diverse as Marie Claire's readership, presenter Lisa Ortgies and her team stay away from beauty obsessions and make sure their viewers are getting some intellectual nourishment. Because on FrauTV, the subjects range from abortion and diets through to Jehovah's witnesses and sex addiction. It's a `modern, female, magazine show that doesn't need to be confrontational, but stays open-minded and clear-sighted about issues that affect women, covering them with journalistic rigour and, occasionally, a fair amount of charm and humour,' explain the creators. 'FrauTV isn't one of these programmes that are only interesting to women. Increasingly, it's also a show for men.'

World Breastfeeding Week started on Sunday. For the next seven days the beauty of breastfeeding, related health aspects and the problems it may lead to - for example at work or in social life - will be in the spotlight. 
 
A number of special breastfeeding cafes have been opened in the Netherlands over the last couple of years. In sociable surroundings young mothers can exchange experiences and get tips from professional maternity carers. They can do this openly, without having to worry about colleagues or other onlookers.
 
Wendy Seelen from Careijn Maternity Care runs a breastfeeding cafe at `De Peer' in Breda. Mothers meet there every Wednesday morning.
 
"Our approach is not really to solve problems," Wendy says "but to offer a place where mothers can get answers to their questions and support by exchanging information. A good atmosphere is also important, hence the cafe concept. Mothers should also be able to meet each other outside a health care environment, because breastfeeding does not belong in a health care environment. Moreover, it is something that belongs in the outside world."

WARSAW -- Two dozen homeless men are building a ship to sail themselves around the world at the St. Lazarus Social Pension here, in the yard of a former tractor factory. Sparks fly from the rusty 55-foot hull as they weld it into form, even after losing the priest who led and inspired the mission.

These men with sharply lined faces and blurry, old tattoos have set out to prove their seaworthiness, and to prove that they have some value to society, even if society has largely written them off.

"Some people smack themselves in the head when they hear, and probably think we're crazy," said Slawomir Michalski, 51, who was a welder in the famous Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk and joined the strike led by Lech Walesa in 1980 that helped shake the foundation of Communist rule in Poland and the entire Soviet bloc. It was a singular moment in Polish history and one that adds resonance to tales of shipbuilding here.

A Croatian island that was home to a sinister Titoist re-education camp for 40 years will shortly be provided with a memorial and documentation centre. For former detainees, acknowledgement of the horror they endured remains an ongoing combat, reports Dutch daily Trouw.

One night in 1949, in a darkened cell in Montenegro, Dmitar Kastratovic, an 18-year-old student, sat with his hands tied behind his back. A leader of the youth section of the local communist party, he had been arrested ten days earlier for possession of a Soviet newspaper. The secret police agent interrogating him shoved a pistol against his chest, "Who is smarter, Tito or Stalin?" After hours of grilling, Kastratovic finally replied "Stalin." Two days later, he was sent for three years to the island prison on Goli Otok.

Today, Kastratovic is nearly 80, but the memories of the horror that he experienced there continue to haunt his nightmares. He remembers being forced to work for hours without water in the searing midday sun. "Sometimes, they only gave us four beans to eat, but if the guards heard anyone complaining, all of us were punished. They made us run for hours, and battered us with truncheons until we collapsed." Kastratovic eventually lost a kidney to the torture on the island, and he still suffers from debilitating headaches -- but he was one of the luckier inmates. Images of friends, who committed suicide by jumping from the rocks, or those who died from exhaustion still appear in his dreams. He was ordered to carry the bodies of the dead to the other side of the island, where he had to bury them with his bear hands.

A new strain of the virus that causes AIDS has been discovered in a woman from the African nation of Cameroon.

It differs from the three known strains of human immunodeficiency virus and appears to be closely related to a form of simian virus recently discovered in wild gorillas, researchers report in Monday's edition of the journal Nature Medicine.

The finding "highlights the continuing need to watch closely for the emergence for new HIV variants, particularly in western central Africa," said the researchers, led by Jean-Christophe Plantier of the University of Rouen, France.

Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National party, was speaking to Channel 4 News last month when he made a statement that infuriated Vaughan Gething.

"There is no such thing as a black Welshman," the BNP MEP for north-west England said. "You can have a black Briton; you can't have a black Welshman. Welsh is about people who lived in Wales since the end of the last ice age."

Gething, who is hoping to be the first black person elected to the Welsh assembly, says: "On that basis, most white people wouldn't qualify.

"It's quite clear that Nick Griffin just doesn't accept that black British people or black Welsh people are entitled to call themselves proper, full citizens of the country.

"And every time he tries to define what an ethnic Briton is, it's all bollocks. Because the definition he's searching for is really about saying 'white people who speak English'.

"There have been black Welsh people for centuries. Cardiff, in particular, has had centuries' worth of the port and people being brought there to work and settling there and being accepted as part of the community. All of my memories are from the UK. This really is my country."

Vaughan is a good friend of mine, I worked on his campaign when he was a councillor and I'm involved with his campaign as an AM candidate. I also know him through work, no escaping each other!

The Wales TUC conference in May was the first time I have ever heard him speak about his ethnicity and I've known him personally and politically for about 6 years. He's a very talented man. Take a look at the comments underneath the article. Pure racism and accusing him of playing the race card which he has genuinely never done.  Not nice stuff. And we wonder why we don't get a greater diversity of people in politics.  

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THE "malaise" suffered by President Nicolas Sarkozy during a run in the park a week ago has thrown light on a relentless self-improvement campaign inspired by his wife, Carla Bruni, a former supermodel known for an inquiring mind and an almost perfect physique.

It has emerged that under her influence Mr Sarkozy has given up chocolate, pastries and ice-cream. So determined is he to fight the flab that he often contents himself at mealtimes with a plate of fruit and cottage cheese.

Under Ms Bruni's tutelage, Mr Sarkozy is also trying to improve his mind, familiarising himself with artists more elevated than the popular entertainers he used to enjoy. He has even begun to read French literature.

As well as jogging three times a week for up to one hour, he has also been working out on the lawn of the Elysee Palace with Julie Imperiali, Ms Bruni's personal trainer, whose focus is on strengthening the pelvic floor muscles.

Even before he collapsed a week ago, aides and friends had voiced fears that Mr Sarkozy, 54, was becoming obsessive about shedding his "love handles", constantly weighing himself and looking at his watch in the hope of achieving better times for his runs.

"He's been looking more like a Tour de France rider recently than a president," said Patrick Balkany, an ally in his centre-right party.

A new interview with special FX  maestro Douglas Trumbull, that includes some very interesting unglitzy movie background.

Special effects wizard and film director Douglas Trumbull once changed the way we look at science fiction movies -- and yet he walked away from film 25 years ago after a career of frustration. Trumbull helped redefine the field with his work on Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," showing at the Topia Arts Center on Sunday, July 12. Trumbull went onto direct the much-loved cult film "Silent Running" and to lend his effects talents to "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" and "Blade Runner."

He redirected his career after directing the ill-fated film "Brainstorm" -- mostly remembered as Natalie Wood's last film -- and kept to his self-imposed exile by stretching his creativity in the field of immersive entertainment, kicked off with his design of the Universal Pictures "Back to the Future" ride. It's only recently that he has even considered returning to the world of major motion pictures.