BERLIN -- One way to understand a country is to see who its people turn to during a crisis. As Germany's Social Democratic Party is discovering, the people's will can prove very unpredictable.

With their country in the throes of the global economic crisis and a federal election just over the horizon, the center-left SPD thought Germans would seek leadership from someone from the party's blue-collar, beer-drinking base. Instead, Germans have turned to an independently wealthy aristocrat from Bavaria by the name of Karl-Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg.

The 37-year-old economics minister, a member of the conservative Christian Social Union, has quickly emerged as the country's most popular public figure, topping both Angela Merkel and the SPD's candidate for chancellor, Foreign Minister Frank Steinmeier, in approval polls prior to the Sept. 27 election. It has been an astounding rise for someone who emerged on the national scene just a few months ago, a hastily selected replacement for an unexpected resignation in February from Merkel's cabinet.

A minister has been shot dead in Russia's turbulent Ingushetia region. This comes just weeks after a failed suicide attack on the Ingush president and amid an upsurge in tensions in the Muslim-dominated region.  

Officials said Ingush Construction Minister Ruslan Amerkhanov was shot dead in his office on Wednesday.

Russian news agencies are reporting that Amerkhanov was shot dead at point-blank range when a group of armed men burst into his office in Ingushetia's capital, Magas.

Muslim-dominated Inghushetia and other regions in Russia's northern Caucasus are battling Islamist militants who are waging a low-level but increasingly deadly insurgency against the pro-Kremlin local authorities.

Wednesday's killing was the latest in a series of high-profile attacks on top officials in the Caucasus republics.

'Those Who Made Mistakes Will Bear the Consequences'

In a SPIEGEL interview, Rüdiger Grube, CEO of German national railway Deutsche Bahn, discusses his first 100 days in office, the effects of the economic crisis and the consequences of a spying scandal at the company.

SPIEGEL: Deutsche Bahn is having a hard time staying out of the headlines these days. New details are emerging in the scandal involving the company spying on its own employees, the so-called "data affair." Berlin's commuter rail system is in chaos and freight traffic revenues are down by up to 40 percent. Are you regretting your decision to take over from Hartmut Mehdorn as CEO?

 A high speed ICE train in Munich main station: Deutsche Bahn has had a troubled few months. Rüdiger Grube: No, not at all. But the first 100 days were undoubtedly turbulent. I was forced to make decisions far more quickly than I had planned.

SPIEGEL: Such as?

Grube: Take, for example, the technical problems. The problems with the wheels in Berlin's commuter rail system, the S-Bahn, are nothing new. We had similar issues with the high-speed ICE train last year. But this sort of thing cannot be allowed to happen, and for that reason I have convinced management to create the position of executive board member for technology and system networks. These issues must be given top priority.

DRESDEN, Germany -- In recent months, two big computer chip makers slipped through Dresden's fingers, challenging the notion that an area that likes to think of itself as "Silicon Saxony" can continue to churn out high-technology devices by the millions. But not every inhabitant of this picturesque city considers that a bad thing.

The loss has fired a debate over whether the future of Dresden, in what was once East Germany, should lie more in research and design, rather than manufacturing, and few are more passionate about the intellectual side of the chip-making business than the young entrepreneurs at Blue Wonder Communications. Barely four months old, the company is angling for a piece of the lucrative business in designing chips for the next generation of wireless technology.

Not one of its employees, almost all of them engineers, will actually make anything.

"We need to put money in places that create knowledge, not things," said Wolfram Drescher, one of two co-chief executives at the company. "If all we had were production and not knowledge, I'd be standing on the street, unemployed."

On a surprise visit to the breakaway Georgian province of Abkhazia, Russian PM Vladimir Putin pledged 500 million dollars to build bases and defend Abkhazia as tensions with Georgia appear to grow.

REUTERS - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin made a surprise visit to the breakaway region of Abkhazia on Wednesday, pledging half a billion dollars to strengthen the defences of the Moscow-backed rebel enclave.

 

Russia recognised Abkhazia and another breakaway region, South Ossetia, as independent states last year after Russian troops repelled a Georgian attempt to retake South Ossetia in a five day war which ended on Aug. 12, 2008.

 

Tensions have been rising along the de facto borders between the regions and Georgia proper, raising concerns that another conflict could be easily sparked.

 

The terror suspects on trial for plotting attacks against American targets in Germany claim their actions were driven by hatred against a country they believe is waging war against Islam. The men say their targets were US soldiers -- and they wanted to kill many of them.

At the time al-Qaida attacked the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, Fritz Gelowicz was still opposed to the act of terror. But a little over a year later, the young man from southern Germany, who converted to Islam at the age of 16, was already determined to "someday take part in the jihad." He says he was motivated by the United States' "unconditional support" for Israel. Gelowicz felt there was "a war by the USA against Islam."

American relatives of victims of the Lockerbie bombing reacted with fury today to news that the Libyan man convicted of the atrocity could soon be freed on compassionate grounds.

In stark contrast, however, their British counterparts - many of whom have always doubted the guilt of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi - backed his release.

Pan Am Flight 103 from Heathrow to New York's JFK was brought down over the Scottish village of Lockerbie on December 21, 1988, killing all 259 people aboard and 11 more on the ground below.

It remains the UK's worst terrorist attack but nobody was brought to justice for it until 2000, when al-Megrahi, an intelligence officer and head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines, was found guilty by a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands. He was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 27 years for the murder of those who died.

One in five young people left without work as unemployment expected to soar above 2.5 million

The number of people without a job in Britain is expected to reach 2.5 million today, with almost 1 million of those under the age of 25 - a fifth of the nation's young people.

The figures will show that overall unemployment has risen by over 800,000 in a year - a 50 per cent increase - as almost every sector of the economy, from construction to the City, sheds labour. Economists are also warning that the public sector, previously immune to recession, will soon begin to cut jobs rapidly. Analysts believe that by May - the last possible date for Gordon Brown to call an election - 3 million people will be out of work.

The Bank of England will also publish its Inflation Report today, its definitive view of the economy, which is widely expected to contain stern warnings about the dangers to economic recovery. Last week the Bank announced a further £50bn cash injection for the economy to encourage growth.

Britain faces a surge in drug addiction, alcoholism and domestic violence as the second wave of the recession and rising unemployment take a grip, the leading public sector watchdog warns today.

Councils are not doing enough to prepare their communities for the fallout as the impact of more business failures, bankruptcies and the soaring jobless toll leads to deepening social and human problems, the Audit Commission reports. The watchdog, which monitors the performance of local councils and services, says that most authorities already face extra demands for benefits, welfare and debt counselling. One in three has extra pressure on social and mental health services, and on state school places from parents who can no longer afford to educate their children privately.

Official figures today are expected to show unemployment among young people breaking the million mark. Some 30 per cent of 16 and 17-year-old school-leavers are unemployed, the highest level since records began in 1992. Overall unemployment is expected to have hit a 14-year high of 2.5 million in the three months to June.

Banks are making the highest profits on mortgages since records began. Customers are also facing record costs for overdrafts and personal loans.

The difference between the interest rate that banks charge and the rate at which they borrow is the biggest since the Bank of England started collecting data 15 years ago.

The figures demonstrate that, two years after the credit crunch began, consumers are being hit harder than ever, despite the Bank cutting interest rates to an all-time low of 0.5 per cent.

Japanese wholesale prices were down by a record 8.5% in July compared with a year earlier, highlighting the growing deflationary pressure in the economy.

Weak demand during the downturn and the fall in the price of oil have put downward pressure on prices.

On Tuesday, the Bank of Japan kept interest rates at 0.1% to try to boost consumer demand.

Revised figures also showed that industrial output rose 2.3% in June, down from the initial 2.4% estimate.

Recent data showed consumer prices had fallen by a record 1.7% in the year to the end of June.

The forecast for the Dutch economy has improved slightly. The bureau for economic policy analysis CPB is now predicting a cautious recovery in 2010.

It isn't over yet. The CPB is predicting zero growth over 2010, a slight improvement over the 0.5 percent negative growth it was predicting for 2010 a few months ago. But it would mean that the Netherlands is recovering from the recession a little sooner than predicted. This year will still see negative growth of 4.75 percent according to the CPB.

As a result, the CPB's unemployment figures are lower than previously predicted as well: 410,000 (5.25 percent) in 2009 and 615,000 (8 percent) in 2010. In its last estimate the CPB predicted 730,000 unemployed.

Predictions of the CPB have been a bit over the map this year... First they predicted the recession wouldn't be so bad, then it became dramatic and now it's "not as bad as we first thought".

One might get an inkling that CPB doesn't have much of a clue either...

Billionaire, feds give out $175M to aid neediest students around the state

"It's free money!" said Alecia Rumph, 26, who waited in a Morris Park, Bronx, line 300 people deep for the cash to buy uniforms and book bags for her two kids.

"Thank God for Obama. He's looking out for us."

Thousands of people lined up at banks and check-cashing shops to withdraw the cash that magically appeared on their electronic benefit cards....

The no-strings-attached money went to families receiving food stamps or welfare.

Every child between 3 and 17 was eligible for $200, which worked out to 813,845 kids across the state - including 498,866 in the city.

Gov. Paterson and Mayor Bloomberg joined [George] Soros to announce the payments at Public School 208 in Harlem, where the billionaire reminisced that as a penniless student in London, he survived because of a handout he got from Quakers.

"This gift has a special personal meaning to me, because I was once also a recipient of charity," Soros said in a choking voice. "I'm very pleased that I'm able to repay what they gave me."

some peculiar representations of Medicare and Medicaid (current benefit schedules and A-F supplementals'mandatory benefits), and provisions of Dingell's bill (the FP header at thomas.gov). weird comments like this...

Q   Good afternoon, Mr. President.  I'm Jackie Millet (phonetic) and I'm from Wells, Maine, and my question is, I am presently on Medicare and I do have a supplement.  But if something happens to my husband, I lose the supplement.  

[Medicare Pt. A insureds voluntarily purchase "Advantage" plans --formerly called "supplemental" policies of classes A-F-- to acquire benefits NOT offfered by Pt. A, B, C, D as well as to finance Pt.A, B cost shares. Ms Millet confirms, her husband's income pays the premium of one of these. Elsewhere BHO characterizes fed share of total monthly premium paid for all Millets, $177B* annualized, as inefficient insurer "subsidies." When in effect the feds, like employers, are "subsidizing" insureds' costs to carry coverage. Does BHO then reason "his" bill mandates lower Advantage premiums? Not exactly.]

And what will happen?  I take a lot of medications.  I need a lot -- I've had a lot of procedures.  And how will Medicare under the new proposal help people who are going to need things like this?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, first of all, another myth that we've been hearing about is this notion that somehow we're going to be cutting your Medicare benefits.  We are not.  AARP would not be endorsing a bill [this claim disputed by AARP today] if it was undermining Medicare, okay?  So I just want seniors to be clear about this, because if you look at the polling, it turns out seniors are the ones who are most worried about health care reform.  And that's understandable, because they use a lot of care, they've got Medicare, and it's already hard for a lot of people even on Medicare because of the supplements and all the other costs out of pocket that they're still paying.  

So I just want to assure we're not talking about cutting Medicare benefits.  We are talking about making Medicare more efficient, eliminating the insurance subsidies, working with hospitals so that they are changing some of the reimbursement practices.

[Is Millet to infer her premium cost are likely to increase or decrease, if feds eliminate insurance subsidies?

...that your townhall participant takes home to stew over the health care "reform" fire. Two weeks later, Rassmussen's calling to test her comprehension.

Here'sanother.

You say you take a lot of medications; that means that doughnut hole is always something that's looming out there for you. If we can cut that doughnut hole in half, that's money directly out of your pocket.  And that's one of the reasons that AARP is so supportive, because they see this as a way of potentially saving seniors a lot of money on prescription drugs. OK? All right.

WTF does he truly mean? And who is coaching this man?

----
*"The inefficiencies all come from things like paying $177 billion to insurance companies in subsidies for something called Medicare Advantage that is not competitively bid, so insurance companies basically get a $177 billion of taxpayer money to provide services that Medicare already provides." So incorrect. Congress made the market for Advantage coverages precisely because Medicare Pt. A, B exclude numerous services and expenses.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

China and Japan between them own almost as much of the rest of the world put together

<note> Need Plan B</note>

The changes in the last year are interesting....

Modern conservatives engage in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.Galbraith

Burma's pro-democracy opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi will appeal the ruling junta's decision to convict her for breaking the terms of her house arrest. US national John Yettaw, who swam to her house, will also lodge an appeal.

AFP - Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and US national John Yettaw will both lodge appeals against the ruling junta's decision to convict them, their lawyers said Wednesday.
  
Suu Kyi's house arrest was prolonged for another 18 months on Tuesday, sparking international outrage, while her co-defendant Yettaw was sentenced to seven years of hard labour and imprisonment.
  
Suu Kyi's lawyer Nyan Win said her legal team would appeal because they were "not satisfied" with the judgement, which stemmed from an incident in which Yettaw swam uninvited to Suu Kyi's lakeside home in May.

The leaders of the United States, Canada and Mexico have pledged to work together to tackle the H1N1 flu, drugs cartels and the economic recession, during a summit in the Mexican city of Guadalajara.

But the talks between Barack Obama, the US president, his Mexican counterpart Felipe Calderon and Stephen Harper, the Canadian prime minister, failed to resolve the issue of Mexican lorries being allowed into US territory.

The recent cancellation of the trucking programme is in violation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), and prompted Mexico to impose $2.4 bn in import tariffs on US products in March.

Obama said after the summit on Monday that the US congress was examining the issue, citing safety conerns with Mexican trucks as the reason for the restrictions. 

In the wake of a bogus election, the deadly harassment of protestors and squabbling among hardliners, everything seems to have changed in Tehran. Two men could now pose a serious threat to the regime: Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri and multimillionaire Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Sometimes a kiss is more than just a kiss. The kiss in Tehran last Monday was certainly unique, as kisses go.

During the inauguration ceremony to mark his "reelection," disputed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, 52, bowed to religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 70, and attempted to grasp his hand to kiss it, but Khamenei turned away at the last minute. When Ahmadinejad attempted to at least embrace the supreme leader, Khamenei turned away again, leaving Ahmadinejad awkwardly facing his shoulder. It was a scene straight out of a low-budget slapstick comedy.

On the border between Thailand and Cambodia, a mighty battle is taking place - and the outcome will determine whether millions of people live or die.

If the right side falters and fails, the long list of the dead will consist overwhelmingly of children and pregnant women. But this fight is passing virtually unnoticed in the outside world. Why? Because the lives at stake are - initially, at least - "only" "those of Asians and black Africans.

The war is against a tiny parasite that is suddenly - and rapidly - stripping away our ability to treat one of the deadliest diseases known to man. If the war fails, we will be left defenceless before it.

Malaria is already the biggest killer in the world after Aids and tuberculosis. It infects 250 million people a year - the vast majority in Africa - and kills 1.5 million of them. In the Central African Republic last year, I met a woman the same age as me, 30, who was stalking her village, howling and ripping at her hair. She stopped long enough to tell me she had given birth to four children, and three had died spasming and shrieking of malaria. Now her youngest baby had all the symptoms, and she couldn't bear it. "Why is this happening? Why?" she kept yelling, to herself, to the sky, to no one.

Atlantic salmon have returned to France's River Seine after an absence of nearly a century, with hundreds swimming past the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame cathedral this year.

The reappearance of salmon and other species chased from these waters by dams and pollution is all the more remarkable because no efforts have been made to reintroduce them. They came back on their own.

"There are more and more fish swimming up the Seine," said Bernard Breton, a top official at France's National Federation for Fishing. "This year the numbers have exceeded anything we could have imagined: I would not be surprised if we had passed the 1,000 mark," he said.

A NOAA-led team of scientists has found that the apparent increase in the number of tropical storms and hurricanes since the late 19th and early 20th centuries is likely attributable to improvements in observational tools and analysis techniques that better detect short-lived storms.

The new study, reported in the online edition of the American Meteorological Society's peer-reviewed Journal of Climate, shows that short-lived tropical storms and hurricanes, defined as lasting two days or less, have increased from less than one per year to about five per year from 1878 to 2008.

"The recent jump in the number of short-lived systems is likely a consequence of improvements in observational tools and analysis techniques," said Chris Landsea, science and operations officer at NOAA's National Hurricane Center in Miami, and lead author on the study. "The team is not aware of any natural variability or greenhouse warming-induced climate change that would affect the short-lived tropical storms exclusively."

With a small group of fans, the Portuguese Nobel prizewinner for Literature journeys in the footsteps of the main character of his latest novel "The Elephant's Journey". Salomon, the pachyderme protagonist, travelled from Lisbon to Vienna in the 16th century. The three day tour in a minibus tour with José Saramago crosses Portugal from Lisbon to Figueira de Castelo Rodrigo.

The sun is already burning on this June morning as fourteen people pile into the minibus parked in the Praça de Londres Park in Lisbon, close to the home of Saramago. The last ones to board are José Saramago himself and his wife Pilar del Rio. She is the president of the foundation named after him and the organiser of the trip.

Pilar addresses the group "we are going to be the first ones to follow Salomon's Journey". It is the start of a pioneering adventure, similar to that of the Camino de Santiago or Don Quixote. "We have no idea what lies ahead", warns Pilar, but her husband immediately pipes up "but we're going to see some wonderful things".

t's Saturday afternoon in the school holidays and it's one-in, one-out at Hollister, the teen fashion favourite in Westfield, the upmarket London shopping centre. Welcome to Gossip Girl... sorry... the heart of recession-struck Britain. Posing in gaggles (the girls) and gangs (the boys), the teenagers queuing up to get into Abercrombie & Fitch play with their BlackBerrys and artfully tousled hair, seeming blissfully unaware that we have recently been to the brink of financial Armageddon. But then, with ready access to their parents' cash and no financial commitments, Britain's teenage consumers are recession-proof -- and what's more, they've been identified as the most fashion-obsessed in the world.

The advertising agency JWT recently asked young people in the UK, America, Brazil, Canada and Australia which items they would never cut back on, no matter how tight their finances. Brits ranked "buying new clothes" higher than any other nation in the poll. Another report reveals that this summer will see British kids deploy a collective spending power of more than £132m per week, thanks to an extra £23m per week in disposable income from summer jobs and more pocket money. And last month, O2 upped the ante with the introduction of a prepay Visa card aimed at teenagers.

Georges Dukson was one of the great heroes of the Resistance. But when the French capital was liberated, General de Gaulle wanted him out of the picture. Matthew Cobb investigates a tragic injustice

It is 3pm on Saturday 26 August 1944. Paris is liberated. Under a blazing sun, General Charles de Gaulle, in full dress uniform, is standing at the Arc de Triomphe. He is at the head of a massive parade to celebrate the end- the previous day - of Nazi rule in the French capital. He also wants to show who is the new master in the country.

To the left of de Gaulle is Georges Bidault, head of the Conseil National de la Résistance; to the right, de Gaulle's personal delegate, Alexandre Parodi. Behind them can be seen the leading figures of the Free French army and the Resistance. Out of sight, behind the camera, are four tanks of General Leclerc's 2nd Armoured Division, which the day before had entered Paris and helped seal victory. Beyond them, a million joyous Parisians line the sides of the Champs Elysees. This is a moment, and an image, that will go down in history.

But there is another figure in this iconic photograph, taken 65 years ago this month (and shown right). On the right there is the only black person in the photo - indeed, one of the few black people on the demonstration. He is wearing a mixture of civilian clothes and military puttees. His right arm is in a sling. In every respect he is different from the smartly-dressed white men who dominate the demonstration.

LACOSTE, France -- The Marquis de Sade once lived here in this hotbed of Protestantism, a stunning town built of café-au-lait-colored stone, holding the heights across the Luberon River valley from the proud Catholic spires of Bonnieux. He was jailed and institutionalized after the residents of the town objected to his sexual and political views; his castle here was sacked in 1789.

Pierre Cardin, 87, seems an odd inheritor. But after he bought the ruins of the castle nine years ago and then established a summer music festival here, some of the 450 residents of Lacoste, which votes for the left, began to treat him like a hated nobleman, a representative of global capitalism. Nor did it help that he kept on buying properties, even at a fair price.

Now he says he owns 42 buildings in this picture-postcard village, and he has no patience with the locals who think he is destroying the town. Instead, having sunk nearly $30 million into Lacoste, while employing 80 people in the summers, he thinks he has saved it.

Psychological Barriers Hobble Climate Action

Despite warnings from scientists that humans need to make changes now if they want to avoid the worst effects of climate change, "people don't feel a sense of urgency," the association said in a statement.

Numerous psychological barriers are to blame, the task force found, including: uncertainty over climate change, mistrust of the messages about risk from scientists or government officials, denial that climate change is occurring or that it is related to human activity.

Other factors include undervaluing the risk.

Two persons have robbed the Graff jewellery in London's upmarket New Bond Street, getting away with a hoard of rings, bracelets, necklaces and watches worth 40 million pounds (€47 million), in the biggest such robbery in the United Kingdom.

AFP - Robbers pulled off what is thought to be Britain's biggest jewellery heist in a 40-million-pound (47-million-euro, 65-million-dollar) raid at a chic London shop, police said Tuesday.
  
Two smartly dressed men armed with handguns walked in to Graff, on London's upmarket New Bond Street last Thursday and threatened staff before getting away with 43 rings, bracelets, necklaces and watches.
  
As they left, they dragged a female member of staff with them and fired a warning shot outside the shop, although no-one was injured and the assistant was left behind as they raced off.
  

Sales of cordon blue recipe books and Le Creuset cookware have jumped as American filmgoers rush to recreate meals featured in the new Meryl streep film Julie & Julia.

The film, written and directed by Nora Ephron of When Harry Met Sally fame, tells the story of chef Julia Child and New York community worker, Julie Powell.

It is based on Powell's memoir Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously, which details her yearlong attempt to cook each of the 524 recipes in Child's culinary classic Mastering the Art of French Cookery.

Antony Gormley's fourth plinth art project was censored earlier today after a naked participant was ordered to cover up by the police.

The living sculpture, who gave his name only as Simon, aged 49, was lowered on to the plinth in Trafalgar Square at 1am, fully clothed and waving. Left to his own devices, he then stripped off - raising cheers, wolf whistles and laughter from bystanders, as well as a cry of: "Well done mate".

The plinther, from the Yorkshire region, stretched out his arms and took a swig of water from a bottle as he took the spotlight, casting a shadow on the National Gallery nearby.

Just a few minutes after revealing all, he was told by organisers to cover up: "Simon, you're going to have to put something on or [the police] want you down ... some pants or something. Thank you."

The plinther obliged by putting his boxer shorts back on, to boos from the crowd.

Some background — A EuroTrib Plinther?.