Kosmopolito: The Forgotten Trio

Among the institutional changes brought about by the Lisbon Treaty, some have been more present in the media and public debate than others. Three months after the Treaty entered into force, we can still read at least a couple of articles a day about the President of the European Council, the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and, of course, the External Action Service that is now being designed. But with all the attention given to these new actors, one of the old ones has been slightly forgotten. In fact,with all the confusion in the media, it took quite a while for people to learn that the rotating Presidency of the Council of Ministers will still exist and work pretty much as before, with the unofficially existing 18-months Trio now being `officialised' by the Treaty.

EurActiv: Commission gets wires crossed on exit strategies: NGOs

The European Commission is contradicting itself, NGOs have claimed, pointing out that a recently published social protection report goes against key priorities outlined in the bloc's long-term 'Europe 2020' strategy.

The Europe 2020 blueprint ignores the importance of ensuring social protection in exit strategies, despite the EU executive and member states calling for exactly that in a joint report published last week, European social NGOs have claimed.

European social affairs and employment ministers are meeting in Brussels today (8 March) to discuss the Europe 2020 strategy, which the Commission hopes will form the backbone of sustainable growth in Europe for the 2010-2020 period.

SPIEGEL: Walking the Thin Line with Catherine Ashton

The EU's new top diplomat Catherine Ashton has only been in office for 100 days, but she is already running into stiff criticism. Her detractors claim she doesn't have enough dedication, stature or independence. But the EU's leaders chose her precisely because she lacked those qualities.

It was a week in which she was finally hoping to do everything right, for a change. She met with the new president of Ukraine on Monday and flew to Haiti the next day to visit earthquake victims. She had hardly recovered from jetlag after returning from the Caribbean before jetting to the Spanish city of Cordoba for a meeting of EU foreign ministers.

And what did Catherine Ashton, 53, the EU's chief diplomat, come home to at the end of this busy week? More grumbling.

SPIEGEL: It's Time to Invite Russia to Join NATO

Trans-Atlantic security needs have changed fundamentally in the last two decades. The East-West confrontation has ended, and Moscow now shares many interests with NATO. It is time for the alliance to open its doors to Russia, say German defense experts Volker Rühe, Klaus Naumann, Frank Elbe and Ulrich Weisser.

Former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt has noted with concern that many of today's politicians have too little knowledge of history. He could well have added that those same politicians are also frighteningly deficient when it comes to understanding strategic and security issues. In Germany, there is no significant discussion about the future of NATO, its self-image, its strategy for the future and the question of how Russia can be included. Berlin is not showing any opinion leadership, nor is it spurring international debate. This has been a disappointment for other members of the alliance, who are asking themselves whether the Germans are afraid of the debate or are simply no longer capable of contributing to it in a forward-looking way.

Europe's security, though, remains a constant task, and new challenges require different responses than in the past. The Euro-Atlantic region needs peace and stability at home, but it also needs protection against external threats. Ultimately, the emergence of a multi-polar world requires finding a way to offset the political, economic and strategic dynamics of the large Asian powers.

NRC: Spanish fishing town thrives on hash trade

There are only a few ways to make money in Barbate: collecting pine cones, catching squid or trading hashish. Only one of the above is really lucrative.

The grass trade is "like a party, and everyone in Barbate is enjoying it", said Antonio. Although he denied any part in the flourishing drug trade in the southern Spanish fishing town, he was willing to tell how much money can be made in trafficking hashish. "Everybody here knows that anyway," he said, sitting down in his office at the municipal sports complex where he does odd jobs at the weekend.

Antonio, who is referred to by anyone who knows him as 'El Feo' (the Ugly), sported a trimmed mullet and fake Armani sunglasses as he explained what happens when a smuggling boat from nearby Morocco lands in Barbate. "Several people are needed to safeguard the load," he said. "The price is determined based on the risk someone takes."

BBC: Slovakia's separation barrier to keep out Roma

As a structure to keep a minority away from a majority, it has drawn parallels with an earlier wall between Roma and non-Roma in the Czech town of Usti nad Labem, and even with the Berlin Wall and Israel's separation barrier.

But what is new in Ostrovany is that the Roma now form the majority - exactly two-thirds of the population.

France captures 35 `pirates' in three days off the Somali coast - Times Online

The French Navy has captured 35 suspected pirates in three days of operations off the coast of Somalia -- the biggest haul in the two years since EU naval ships started patrolling the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean.

In operations over the weekend the Nivose, a French frigate, seized four mother ships and six skiffs. In one raid on Sunday, French and EU forces used helicopters and fired warning shots to stop and capture a mother ship and two accompanying vessels.

The prisoners are expected to be flown to Kenya, which is already prosecuting about 100 pirates on behalf of Western nations with forces in the area.

The march of civilizations is a series of defenses that man has put up against the dread of pure existence.

From  The Guardian (already in Le Canard enchaîné last week, but they don't have it online, of course).

The Roman Catholic church does not approve of untramelled globalisation so an international trade in communion wafers should not be threatening the livelihood of French convents. Yet it is. Nearly sixty contemplative houses in France are feeling their livelihoods threatened by falling demand for the wafers that the make. Not only is the number of Catholics in France falling, but their product is undercut by cheap imports from Poland, which come from a secular factory. Bad enough that the French were threatened by "The Polish plumber"; the Polish wafer is an even more serious attack on the tranquil heart of France.

Berkutschi.com - Scandal in Norway - 04.03.2010

A year from now the Nordic World Championships will take place on the legendary Holmenkollen. And for this event, the Norwegians built the world's most modern skijumping facility. But now there's only one topic in Norway: The scandal concerning the opening of the new arena.

 

With construction costs of about 220 million Euro the Holmenkollen is the most expensive skijumping facility and the public decided in an online poll that the first jump shall be made by Anette Sagen. Bjoern Einar Romoeren was second in the voting.

 

Romoeren is blamed

But on the evening before the official opening - originally some youth jumpers should have tested the inrun length for Sagen - Romoeren showed up at the hill, put his jumping suit on and made the first jump on the hill, that is a "national treasure" for the Norwegians. At that time Sagen was sitting on a plane returing home from the Continental Cup in Zao (JPN).

 

On the next day Sagen made the first official jump but at the point the situation was already messed up. 6 000 fans came to show their support for Sagen and Romoeren was considered the bad guy because he should have known that his decision to jump was wrong.

*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.

Pensioner jailed for spying on Uighurs - The Local

A 62-year-old Uighur living in Sweden as a political refugee since 1997 has been found guilty of spying for China on Uighur expatriates and sentenced to a year and four months in jail. <...>

From January 2008 until June 2009, [Swedish citizen Babur] Maihesuti had collected personal information about exiled Uighurs, including details on their health, travel and political involvement, and passed it on to Beijing, the court found.

He had given the information to a Chinese diplomat and a Chinese journalist who, on assignment from the Chinese intelligence service, carried out operations in Sweden for the Chinese state.

"The activity has taken place in secret through a special system of telephone calls, (and) was also deceptive since the man did not tell the Uighurs he was dealing with he was working for the Chinese state," the court said.

The court ruled that the espionage was especially serious since Maihesuti had infiltrated the World Uighur Congress and the information passed on "could cause significant damage to Uighurs in and outside China." ...

The march of civilizations is a series of defenses that man has put up against the dread of pure existence.

EurActiv: Eurozone aid for Greece comes one step closer

French President Nicolas Sarkozy promised on Sunday (7 March) that eurozone countries would help Greece if its financial problems worsened. Meanwhile, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said he plans to make proposals soon on a new European institution to help ensure the stability of the euro zone.

Sarkozy was speaking after talks with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, who is looking to secure pledges of support from European capitals that will reassure markets and lower the debt-stricken country's high borrowing costs.

"If Greece needs help, we will be there," Sarkozy said at a joint news conference.

Independent: Britain in final push to tone down EU hedge fund rules

British diplomats will today begin the final stage of a desperate rearguard action against new European legislation that London-based hedge funds and private equity firms warn could drive them out of business.

While Britain has been fighting for some time for a significant watering down of the reforms proposed by the Alternative Investment Fund Management (AIFM) directive, time is running out to secure concessions on behalf of the City, where much of Europe's hedge fund and private equity sector is based. A source close to the talks warned "the UK is not going to get everything it wants".

Britain has spent much of the weekend trying to win the support of smaller European countries. This Wednesday, the directive will move to the European Commission's Committee of Permanent Representatives for consideration. Britain's representative, the diplomat Kim Darroch, will have a final chance to persuade colleagues that amendments are necessary, but only small changes will be possible.

Railway Gazette: High speed tunnels broken through

GERMANY: Federal Transport Minister Peter Ramsauer, DB Chief Executive Rüdiger Grube and Sachsen-Anhalt Transport Minster Karl-Heinz Daehre watched the breakthrough of the 6 466 m western bore of the Bibra tunnel on March 3. The 6 970 m Finne tunnel was also holed through on the same day.

Three twin-bore tunnels totalling 15·4 km are being built for the 123 km Erfurt - Leipzig/Halle high speed line which is set to open in 2015. The route forms part of the 500 km Nürnberg - Berlin Corridor 8 which is being developed at a cost of €10bn under Germany's post-reunification investment plan.

Erfurt - Leipzig journey times will be cut from 70 to 39 min, while Berlin - München will be cut from more than six to around four hours.

On this and other in-construction lines: European Tribune - The EU's emerging high-speed networkS

Another recent news from Spain: I wrote in that diary about the international (Spanish-French) Figueres-Perpignan line, which is a fully completed project, but could not be used as the connecting line on to Barcelona won't be ready until 2012. Now, with a junction, the transport ministry wants to put it in service this year.

*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.

New 'Export' paradigm for the US economy?:

The 5.9 percent annualized surge in fourth-quarter growth -- the fastest since 2003 -- was powered more by exports and business investment than the traditional drivers of consumption and housing. This new mix of demand will boost the economy by 3.7 percent in 2010 and pave the way for 3.5 percent annual average increases thereafter, said Joseph Carson, an economist at AllianceBernstein in New York, who coined the phrase. (...) "What's going to change is how we generate growth, not how fast we can grow," Carson said in an interview. "That's how I come up with a new mix rather than a new normal."(...) Advocates of both camps agree consumption will be restrained as households struggle with an unemployment rate that remained at 9.7 percent in February and a $12.6 trillion reduction in their net worth during the recession. They also agree that emerging markets, not the U.S., will lead the world economy in the recovery. Where they differ is on the extent that U.S. companies can tap into expansion overseas, boosting domestic growth in the process.

"Beware of the man who does not talk, and the dog that does not bark." Cheyenne

More on the Resolution Authority Headfake  Yves Smith  Naked Capitlism

The Powers That Be insist that a magic bullet called a special resolution authority will solve many of the problems with the "heads I win, tails you lose" taxpayer backstopped financial system with inadequate oversight. The prospect of taking terminally sick banks out and shooting them will supposedly reintroduce moral hazard and make banks behave responsibly again.

The problem is that there isn't much evidence to support this optimistic belief. Investment banks were seen as normal enterprises, at risk of bankruptcy, before the meltdown, yet that did not prevent Bear, Lehman, and Merrill from getting themselves into trouble that ultimately proved fatal. And the leaders of these enterprises did not take meaningful financial hits (oh yes, they were less rich than they would have been otherwise, but none of them is at risk of spending his waning years subsisting on dog food), a lesson surely not lost on other bank CEOs.

Then we have the wee problem that the idea of a special resolution authority looks not credible. We've harped more than once that as long as the firms crucial to debt markets remain deeply connected to each other, the idea that one can be taken out gracefully without impacting the others is a fairy tale. We'll believe this comforting story only if we see measures to cut back counterparty exposures, most importantly in the repo and credit default swaps markets.

Bob Teitelman, editor of The Deal, gives a more detailed evisceration of the problems with the idea (I'm jealous that I didn't write this myself):

   The absence of resolution authority has become as handy an excuse for the mess as any, like the lack of a League of Nations after World War I.....Resolution authority, in short, is the Maltese Falcon of regulatory reform. What is this strange bird? Simply put (though nothing here is simple), it's the legislative authority to wind down a financial firm. In fact, this definition is about as far as anyone ever gets on the subject....In its grandiose form (as if its normal form isn't ambitious enough), the mere presence of resolution authority will scare the crap out of stockholders, creditors and counterparties and make them do their job, which is insuring that banks don't go all suicidal, blow themselves up and force regulators to do their jobs....

    But something about resolution authority feels too good to be true. Resolution authority is modeled after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s power to deal with failing banks. That's fine, but when was the last time the FDIC tackled a promiscuously interconnected, global, highly leveraged giant? Given that we seem to have no idea how finance is wired, how can we be sure that we can halt contagion from spreading from a firm rotting faster than a day-old corpse?....Resolution authority might even trigger self-fulfilling prophecies -- setting off an early scramble for the exits, while regulators are still watching the feature. And what about overseas assets?....

    Who believes that if Goldman, Sachs & Co. was flaming out, the feds would not flinch? Answer: no one with a measurable IQ. Resolution authority resembles proactive bubble defense: The optimal time to use it is before the anticipated corpse turns blue. But if Paulson had shuttered Lehman right after Bear collapsed, would he be praised, pilloried or prosecuted like a dog? Lehman would have howled, Congress would have whined, so try door No. 3. Resolution authority demands, well, resolution in the face of a spitting mob. And yeah, money; no free lunch here. To make it fly requires a hero -- Volcker played that role once on inflation -- willing to lose everything. Alas, such lunatics are rare, making resolution authority just a dusty prop from an old movie.

Yves here. Aside from pointing out the obvious, glaring operational issues, Teitelman points out that there is a massive political problem: for resolution authority to prevent contagion, the sick financial firm probably has to be taken out and shot relatively early. Look how quickly Bear went into a death spiral, a mere ten days. Paulson, who was famously aggressive (like it or not, it did take nerve to put Fannie and Freddie into conservatorship) stepped back on Lehman (this seems to have been in part collective frustration of the officialdom team when the Barclays rescue was blocked by the FSA, of having not been prepared for that deal to fail, but it was also clear at the time that Lehman was not going to be rescued, that the bad press on Bear meant the next firm that foundered would not be helped).

Resolution authority would have to be able to quickly untie the Gordian Knot. Cutting might not do. But a start would consist of the authority to seize all assets of the regulated company in whatever country they reside. Kinda hard to do unilaterally. Second best might be to require the unwinding of all Credit Default Swaps that are NOT written around an insurable interest. We are in the position of a surgeon who knows that surgery might kill the patient, but that the cancer will quickly kill the patient anyway, absent the surgery. Just announcing a rule could trigger a stampede, but at least it would end the suspense. At best it might force people to be responsible or risk losing everything.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

They Saved the Big Banks But Kind Of Lost The Economy Doing It

Tim Geithner -- "we saved the economy but kind of lost the public doing it" -- in the New Yorker, out today.

Simon Johnson's take:

  1. Mr. Geithner is quoted as saying, "Some on the left have fallen into a trap set by the Republicans, allowing voters to mistakenly think that the biggest part of the bank bailout had come under Obama rather Bush."  Mr. Geithner should know - as he spearheaded the saving of banks and other financial institutions under both Bush and Obama.  In fact, it's the continuation of George Bush's policies by other means that really has erstwhile Obama supporters upset.
   2. "I think there are some in the Democratic Party that think Tim and Larry are too conservative for them and that the President is too receptive to our advice."  Probably this is linked to the fact that Tim Geithner is not a Democrat.
   3. Geithner also suggests that his critics compare government spending on different kinds of programs under President Obama: "By any measure, the Main Street stuff dwarfs the Wall Street stuff."  This insults our intelligence.  Wall Street created a massive crisis and we consequently lost 8 million jobs; any responsible government would have tried hard to offset this level of damage with all available means.  This includes fiscal measures that will end up increasing out privately held government debt, as a percent of GDP, by around 40 percentage points.  It's not the fiscal stimulus, broadly defined, that is Mr. Geithner's problem - it's the lack of accountability for the bankers and politicians who got us into this mess.

But the Geithner issues reflected here run much deeper.  The New Yorker's John Cassidy alludes to these but he may be too subtle.  Here's the less subtle version.

What exactly was the "Geithner stabilization plan" that frames the article - and is the basis for Secretary Geithner claiming to have saved anything?  We are not really talking about the much vaunted but little used toxic asset/loan purchase program (the "PPIP").  "The plan" here means essentially the stress tests designed by Treasury and run by the Fed - which brought some transparency to banks' balance sheets, but which also used a relatively benign "stress scenario" (watch commercial real estate, residential mortgages, and credit card losses now unfold).

The main feature of the plan, of course, was - following the stress tests - to communicate effectively that there was a government guarantee behind every major bank or quasi-bank in the United States.  Of course this works in the short-term - investors like such guarantees.  But there's a good reason we usually don't guarantee all financial institutions - or act happy when other countries do the same.  Unconditional bailouts lead to trouble, encouraging reckless risk-taking and undermining responsible governance.  You can't run any form of reasonable market system when some big players hold "get out of bankruptcy free" cards.

All crises end - this is actually Larry Summers's famous line.  We avoided a Great Depression primarily because, compared with 1929-31, we have a government sector that is large relative to the economy - and which does not collapse when credit goes into freefall.  What exactly did the Obama administration do in ending the crisis that a Clinton or McCain administration - or even Bush - would not have done?  The most plausible answer is: Nothing.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

NRC: Sanctions against Zimbabwe may be helping Mugabe

The sanctions against Zimbabwe are supposed to hurt the clique surrounding president Mugabe. They may be having the opposite effect.

Two young men with dreadlocks hung around idly near a mall in Eastlea, one of the better suburbs in the Zimbabwean capital of Harare, waiting for a potential employer to pick them up. They had folders filled with references and resumés with them and approached every car that rolled onto the parking lot, hoping to find work. "But there is no work," Jason Chivunga sighed. "Because of the sanctions." His former classmate Blessing Kwaramba nodded in agreement. "We are suffering for it. If there was no boycott, Zimbabwe would reach for the stars. Why are we still being punished?" he asked.

Texas Judge Says Death Penalty Unconstitutional | FOXNews.com

... Saying he could assume that innocent people have been executed, state District Judge Kevin Fine ruled in a pre-trial motion in a capital murder case on Thursday that the death penalty was unconstitutional and found himself on Friday facing a torrent of criticism from a string of high-profile Texans including Gov. Rick Perry.

<...>

"Are you willing to have your brother, your father, your mother be the sacrificial lamb, to be the innocent person executed so that we can have a death penalty so that we can execute those who are deserving of the death penalty?" he said. "I don't think society's mindset is that way now."

On Friday, Fine said he was only focusing on the due process issue the motion brought up and the only guidance on that issue is what has been provided by the U.S. Supreme Court "that places a duty on trial courts to act as gatekeepers in interpreting the due process claim in light of evolving standards of fairness and ordered liberty."

"So I am now charged with interpreting such evolving standards and I'm called upon to assess the current state of our society's standards of fairness and ordered liberty in light of what we as a society now know. And that is that we execute innocent people. This is supported by the exoneration of individuals off of America's death rows." ...

The march of civilizations is a series of defenses that man has put up against the dread of pure existence.

Lessons at Tuba City Hospital, Run by Navajos, About Births - NYTimes.com

... In Tuba City [Arizona] last year [whose hospital is run by the Navajo Nation and financed partly by the Indian Health Service], 32 percent of women with prior Caesareans had vaginal births. Its overall Caesarean rate has been low -- 13.5 percent, less than half the national rate of 31.8 percent in 2007 (the latest year with figures available). This is despite the fact that more women here have diabetes and high blood pressure, which usually result in higher Caesarean rates.

<...>

Dr. Amanda Leib, the director of obstetrics and gynecology at Tuba City, said: "I think the midwives tend to be patient. They know the patients well, and they don't have to leave at 5 to get home for a golf game or a tennis game. As crass as that sounds, I do think it has some influence."

<...>

Some of Tuba City's success probably arises from Navajo culture and customs. Couples often want more than two children, but repeated Caesareans increase the risk of each pregnancy, so doctors and patients are motivated to avoid the surgery. Also, Navajos regard incisions as a threat to the spirit, something to be avoided unless necessary.

Birth is a joyous affair here, and the entire family -- from children to great-grandparents -- often go to the delivery room.

"I've had 12 family members in the room," said Michelle Cullison, a nurse-midwife. "I've frankly never seen a place like this. Whoever that woman wants to be there is there. It's something I would take out to the community."

Linda Higgins, the head of midwifery at Tuba City, said: "All of a sudden Mom is surrounded by women, and they're all helping her and touching her."

As a result, many young women have already seen children born by the time they become pregnant, and birth seems natural to them, not frightening. ...

Wonder what Elisabeth Badinter would have to say about yet another "anti-science" retour en force du naturalisme originating in the U.S.

The march of civilizations is a series of defenses that man has put up against the dread of pure existence.

Chinese factory workers cash in sweat for prosperity | OregonLive.com

Years after activists accused Nike and other Western brands of running Third World sweatshops, the issue has taken a surprising turn.

<...>

In the end, market forces and ambition, not activism or corporate initiatives, pushed up wages and improved working conditions. The forces originally unleashed by the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping still drive China's economy, producing a manufacturing labor shortage and giving villagers viable choices beyond factory work.

<...>

[Factory Girls author Leslie] Chang views sweatshop critics as condescending. She notes that the 19th-century U.S. industrial economy developed in a similar way, as Vermont and New Hampshire farm girls migrated to work in Massachusetts textile plants, sending savings home. She says savvy Chinese workers, not preachy activists, are securing better conditions and wages in China's fast-developing economy. ...

The march of civilizations is a series of defenses that man has put up against the dread of pure existence.

China picks mothers for astronaut training | World news | guardian.co.uk

They are, of course, in peak physical condition, with the flying skills required of any air force ace. But China's first female astronauts have faced an extra challenge: they had to be mothers to qualify for the country's prestigious space programme.

Two women and five men have been selected as the next generation to go into space, a Hong Kong newspaper reported today, citing an unnamed military source.

Xu Xianrong, an expert at the air force general hospital, said women had advantages as astronauts over men because they were more mentally stable, better able to bear loneliness and had better communication skills.

The insistence that they should also be wives and mothers does not relate to their multi-tasking abilities. Officials are concerned that space flight might affect their fertility.

"It's out of the consideration of being responsible for the female pilots," Xu told the state news agency Xinhua. "Though there is little evidence on how the space experience will affect the female constitution, we have to be extra cautious. After all, it's unprecedented in China." ...

The march of civilizations is a series of defenses that man has put up against the dread of pure existence.

European Voice: Barroso wants EU-wide law for radioactive waste

Commission to publish draft law on how to deal with nuclear waste by the end of the year.

The European Commission will propose a law intended to harmonise how countries manage radioactive waste by the end of the year, Commission President José Manuel Barroso announced today.

Speaking at a conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Paris, Barroso said that radioactive waste was "a major pre-occupation" for the public and promised that the Commission would publish a draft law on nuclear waste management before the end of the year.

Green-ish pesticides bee-devil honey makers  By Janet Raloff   Science News

Pesticides are agents designed to rid targeted portions of the human environment of undesirable critters - such as boll weevils, roaches or carpenter ants. They're not supposed to harm beneficials. Like bees. Yet a new study from China finds that two widely used pyrethroid pesticides - chemicals that are rather "green" as bug killers go - can significantly impair the pollinators' reproduction.

....

Ping-Li Dai of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science and the Ministry of Agriculture led a team of researchers at those Beijing institutions together with a physiologist from the Second Military Medical University in Shanghai. The team investigated sublethal effects of bifenthrin and deltamethrin. Bifenthrin is used to kill everything from termites around homes to fire ants, corn pests and the mites that attack fruit trees. Deltamethrin is targeted at aphids, mealy bugs, whitefly, fruit moths, caterpillars on field crops, roaches, horseflies, mosquitoes and fleas.

After first establishing the dose that would kill no more than five percent of exposed bees, the researchers laced sugar water near bee hives with either of the pyrethroids at that tolerable dose. Worker bees had access for 20 days to the pseudo-nectar in each of three successive years. Queens in each colony were dosed every five days over each treatment period. Studied bees had no access to outside nectar during the trial periods.

Compared to queens receiving clean sugar water, those in the pyrethroid groups were substantially less fecund. For instance, clean queens in 2006 laid a little more than 1,200 eggs each day, compared to not quite 900 a day in the bifenthrin group and roughly 600 per day in the deltamethrin group. In general, the weight of eggs laid was higher in the pyrethroid-treated hives, but the hatch rate of pyrethroid-exposed eggs was significantly depressed. It varied by year, but in 2008, for instance, 88 percent of eggs in the control hives hatched versus 71.4 percent of those in the bifenthrin-treated hives and 80.5 percent of the deltamethrin-treated bees.

The success rate of hatchlings, that is the share that reached adulthood, varied from 75 to 95 percent in the control hive - making it between 20 and 40 percentage points higher than in hives where bees had been exposed to a pyrethroid. Dai and colleagues report their findings in the March Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry.

The bottom line, Dai's team concludes: "The impact of pesticides on the colony may be severe."

I guess China does not have a powerful pesticide industry.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

[Europe.Is.Doomed™ Alert]

After Boom and Bust, Solar Power Has a Place in the Spanish Sun - NYTimes.com

... "Even though incentives can create bubbles and bursts, without them this industry won't take off," she [Cassidy DeLine, who analyzes the European solar market for Emerging Energy Research, a firm based in Cambridge, Mass] said. "The U.S. is really behind Europe on this, and if we wait until solar is cost-competitive on its own, we may miss the boat and an opportunity to shape the market."

The most robust Spanish solar companies survived the downturn, have restructured and are re-emerging as global players.

<...>

... Experts predict that, possibly by next year, Italy will be the first place where solar-generated electricity will not need subsidies to compete with electricity from fossil fuel. Italy has abundant sun and sky-high energy rates, given that it imports most of its fossil fuel.

Even with the reduced incentives and local economic downturn, the solar industry gave Puertollano [Spain] something of a face-lift and, potentially, a new economic future. Research institutes there are developing cutting-edge technologies. Unemployment, though now up around 10 percent, has not returned to the 20 percent figure. The city is home to a number of solar businesses: a new 50-megawatt thermal-solar plant owned by the Spanish energy giant Iberdrola created hundreds of jobs. ...

The march of civilizations is a series of defenses that man has put up against the dread of pure existence.

SPIEGEL: Former Regensburg Choirboys Talk of 'Naked Beatings'

Former choirboys of the Regensburger Domspatzen have told SPIEGEL about sexual and physical abuse at two boarding schools attached to the famous Catholic choir. One former choirboy says it's "inexplicable" that the Pope's brother Georg Ratzinger, a former head of the choir, didn't know about it.

The abuse scandal at the Regensburger Domspatzen choir is bigger than had been thought so far. Therapists in and around Munich treated several former choirboys who were traumatized by sexual and other physical abuse.

One man affected told SPIEGEL about cruel rituals in the Etterzhausen boarding school, a preparatory school for younger pupils from which the choir draws its recruits.

ThisIsLondon: Hospital manslaughter inquiry after patient dies begging for water (08.03.10)

Kane Gorny, 22, was so desperate for a drink that he rang police from his bed begging them to intervene.

They arrived at St George's Hospital in Tooting, only to be told by doctors everything was under control. But when his mother Rita Cronin found him the following day, he was delirious and died hours later.

Homicide detectives are investigating and it is understood they are examining the possibility of a corporate manslaughter charge against the hospital.

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma

'The Cove': Taiji, Japanese Village In Oscar-Winning Film, Defends Dolphin Hunting

... After the movie won, the town government issued a short news release.

"There are different food traditions within Japan and around the world," the statement read. "It is important to respect and understand regional food cultures, which are based on traditions with long histories."

<...>

"There are some countries that eat cows, and there are other countries that eat whales or dolphins," said Yutaka Aoki, fisheries division director at the Foreign Ministry. "A film about slaughtering cows or pigs might also be unwelcome to workers in that industry."

The march of civilizations is a series of defenses that man has put up against the dread of pure existence.

and "The current quality improvement curve is still pretty steep."

Using Computing Might, Google Improves Translation Tool - NYTimes.com

... Automated translation systems are far from perfect, and even Google's will not put human translators out of a job anytime soon. Experts say it is exceedingly difficult for a computer to break a sentence into parts, then translate and reassemble them.

But Google's service is good enough to convey the essence of a news article, and it has become a quick source for translations for millions of people. "If you need a rough-and-ready translation, it's the place to go," said Philip Resnik, a machine translation expert and associate professor of linguistics at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Like its rivals in the field, most notably Microsoft and I.B.M., Google has fed its translation engine with transcripts of United Nations proceedings, which are translated by humans into six languages, and those of the European Parliament, which are translated into 23. This raw material is used to train systems for the most common languages.

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While many translation systems like Google's use up to a billion words of text to create a model of a language, Google went much bigger: a few hundred billion English words. "The models become better and better the more text you process," Mr. Och said.

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... Google released a search-by-voice system that was as good as those that took other companies years to build. ...

The march of civilizations is a series of defenses that man has put up against the dread of pure existence.

DENVER -- A rock slide punched gaping holes in a bridge and left huge boulders on Interstate 70, closing a 17-mile stretch in western Colorado and prompting Gov. Bill Ritter to declare a disaster emergency Monday.

The slide struck around midnight Sunday near Hanging Lake Tunnel in Glenwood Canyon, a deep, narrow chasm about 110 miles west of Denver, the Colorado Department of Transportation said.

No injuries or damage to vehicles were reported. All lanes were closed from Glenwood Springs east to the town of Dotsero. Up to 25,000 vehicles a day travel that section of the major east-west artery, department spokeswoman Stacey Stegman said.

Because of the rugged terrain, the shortest detour adds about 200 miles around the mountainous Flat Tops Wilderness Area. Adding to the traffic mess, U.S. 50 was closed over Monarch Pass due to adverse conditions.

Sauri Journal - Shower of Aid Brings Flood of Progress - NYTimes.com

... Sauri [Kenya] was the first of what are now more than 80 Millennium Villages across Africa, a showcase project that was the dream child of Jeffrey D. Sachs, the Harvard-trained, Columbia University economist who runs with an A-list crowd: Bono, both Bills (Clinton and Gates), George Soros, Kofi Annan, Ban Ki-moon and others.

His intent was to show that tightly focused, technology-based and relatively straightforward programs on a number of fronts simultaneously -- health care, education, job training -- could rapidly lift people out of poverty.

In Sauri, at least, it seems to be working.

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Mr. [William] Easterly argues that the Millennium approach would not work on a bigger scale because if expanded, "it immediately runs into the problems we've all been talking about: corruption, bad leadership, ethnic politics."

He said, "Sachs is essentially trying to create an island of success in a sea of failure, and maybe he's done that, but it doesn't address the sea of failure."

Mr. Easterly and others have criticized Mr. Sachs as not paying enough attention to bigger-picture issues like governance and corruption, which have stymied some of the best-intentioned and best-financed aid projects. ...

The march of civilizations is a series of defenses that man has put up against the dread of pure existence.

SPIEGEL: Christoph Waltz Basks in Oscar Glory

Success at the Oscars has vaulted Christoph Waltz from a little-known Austrian character actor to the toast of Hollywood. He won the Oscar for best supporting actor for his portrayal of a suave Nazi officer in Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds." The only German-speaking Oscar winner this year admits he's shell-shocked by his sudden fame.

Clutching the Oscar he won for best supporting actor, Christoph Waltz, 53, seems overwhelmed by his success. Behind the stage of the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles, he smiles at the crowd of wellwishers and politely says "good evening," as if he's just arrived at a cocktail party.

It certainly has been a good evening, for him. The Austrian's portrayal of a ruthless yet debonair Nazi officer in Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds" won him the cinema industry's most coveted award, and he's the only representative of the German-speaking film industry to have won one on Sunday night. Michael Haneke's critically-acclaimed "The White Ribbon," nominated for best foreign film, was passed over.

Sarah Palin sees eye-to-eye with Albertans in Calgary speech - The Globe and Mail

Sarah Palin drew a straight line from Alaska to Alberta as she told a sold-out, largely adoring crowd in Calgary that the province gets her message of less government, lower taxes and development of natural resources.

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The vocal opponent of health-care reform in the U.S. steered largely clear of the topic except to reveal a tidbit about her life growing up not far from Whitehorse.

"We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada," she said. "And I think now, isn't that ironic?" ...

The march of civilizations is a series of defenses that man has put up against the dread of pure existence.

is there a way to uninstall firefox 3.6, so as to keep using tribext?

google and mozilla unhelpful...

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

'Two cheers are quite enough.' - Will Jordan's blog: Tony Baldry MP, working for you. And James Ibori

Interesting post by Craig Murray about another attempt to silence some journalists using Britain's libel laws - ever popular with users, if not those who fall foul of them.

They've got Geraldine Proudler of Olswang - who specialises in "reputation management issues" - to write to various publications who have chosen to highlight the work Tory MP Tony Baldry has done for one James Ibori.

He, for the record, is a Nigerian politician. The UK government has frozen £21m of his assets. They are a lot of assets for a man who earned $25,000 per annum as Governor of Delta State between 1999 and 2007.

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

For those in Paris (tomorrow Wednesday night - March 10)

Soirée-débat: "L'Etat Pyromane: que proposer face à la France de Nicolas Sarkozy?" (La Bellevilloise, mercredi 10 mars, 19h30)

Débat sur l'identité française, fermeture de la jungle de Calais, bouclier fiscal, statut de La Poste, juge d'instruction,... La présidence de Nicolas Sarkozy et son activisme ont suscité de nombreuses controverses et des débats trop vite écartés à cause du rythme effréné des réformes.

A l'occasion de la parution de son dernier essai, L'Etat pyromane, Terra Nova revient sur les principales politiques à l'oeuvre, et avance des orientations alternatives. Les auteurs, acteurs engagés de la société civile, viendront livrer leur grille de lecture du sarkozysme et échanger sur leurs propositions pour changer la France.

Avec
Jean-Pierre Dubois, président de la Ligue des Droits de l'homme, Guillaume Duval, rédacteur en chef d'Alternatives économiques, Olivier Ferrand, président de Terra Nova, Pierre Henry, directeur général de France terre d'asile, Serge Portelli, vice-président au tribunal de Paris, président de la 12ème Chambre correctionnelle, Joël Roman, philosophe et directeur de la collection Pluriel, Benoît Thieulin, directeur de la Netscouade, créateur de La Coopol.

Et Alexandre Aidara, Ariane Azéma, Francis Ginsbourger, William Leday, Maurice Ronai, Bernard Rullier, Benoît Thirion.

Admission : 2€

Address, directions and contact info at the above link.

Unfortunately, I won't be able to go.

The march of civilizations is a series of defenses that man has put up against the dread of pure existence.