The European Commission will today (12 July) propose a series of measures to protect savers from the risk of failure in a move aimed at restoring confidence in the banking system and preventing public panic during financial storms.

 Michel Barnier, the EU's internal market commissioner, is planning to review legislation governing bank deposit guarantees and the protection of retail investors, according to a Commission note obtained by EurActiv.

He is also embarking on a more ambitious venture to introduce guarantees against the failure of insurance firms with a "minimum set of common requirements" across Europe.

Russian gas monopoly Gazprom is trying to unsettle the EU-favoured Nabucco gas pipeline consortium by trying to enlist one of its members, German utility RWE, for the alternative South Stream pipeline, the Handelsblatt daily reported yesterday (11 July).

 Alexander Medvedev, Gazprom's vice-president, proposed that German energy utility RWE (Rheinisch-Westfälisches Elektrizitätswerk AG) should become part of South Stream, writes Handelsblatt, quoting sources close to the negotiations.

RWE, the second largest electricity producer in Germany, is already a member of the Nabucco consortium (see 'Background').

Should Gazprom succeed in ousting RWE from the Nabucco consortium, the EU-favoured project would be pronounced dead, the German press wrote.

Irish minister for justice Dermott Ahern has confirmed that Dublin is seeking to block a new European Commission initiative that would allow the free transfer of personal data on EU citizens to Israel.

The minister's statement over the weekend, reported in Israeli daily Haaretz on Monday (12 July), follows recent media reports that Ireland is concerned the data could be misused after eight fake Irish passports were allegedly used by Israel's intelligence agency Mossad in the assassination of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh earlier this year.

As a result, Irish officials last week called for the scrapping of commission plans to declare Israeli data protection standards as being sufficient to allow the transfer of personal data.

Without the formal declaration, the broad transfer of the personal information such as bank and telephone details between the two sides is forbidden.

"It may well be the case that Israel provides data protections which meet EU standards," a spokesman for Mr Ahern said last week, reported the Irish Times.

"But the minister believes the EU committee has to take very serious account of the forgery of EU passports - including Irish ones - by Israel in recent months."

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Transparency campaigners are worried that a PR outfit which lobbies the EU on maritime issues has "bought up the top of the EU's maritime department lock, stock and barrel."

The alert comes as Malta's Joe Borg, the commissioner responsible for maritime affairs and fisheries until last year, gets set to start work with Fipra, a PR consultancy actively lobbying on maritime issues, whose main office is about 100 yards from the commission's headquarters in Brussels.

On 11 June, the commission gave Mr Borg the green light to work at the firm, saying: "In view of the fact that Mr Borg's envisaged activity falls outside the scope of his portfolio during his time in office," it did not even need to convene its Ad Hoc Ethical Committee, a body which examines potential conflict of interest when commissioners leave the EU.

Mr Borg is to join his old colleague John Richardson, a former director in the European Commission's "Directorate General Mare," the EU's maritime and fisheries department, who in September 2008 became Fipra's "maritime policy and diplomacy special advisor."

During his time at the commission, Mr Richardson headed the task force that drafted the EU's 2007 Integrated Maritime Policy, which deals with competition, employment and environmental standards in the sector. He also headed up the Baltic Sea, North Sea and Landlocked Member State directorate.

Corporate Europe Observatory, the EU transparency watchdog, has sharply criticised the developments, noting that Fipra has not even signed up to the commission's own lobbyist registry.

European Court of Justice rules against US firm that sells MMT on the EU market.

Europe's highest court has rejected a claim from an American company that an EU decision to restrict a potentially risky chemical compound was unlawful. The outcome will be seen as a vindication of the precautionary principle, the `better-safe-than-sorry' approach that underpins many EU laws to protect health and the environment.

In a judgement yesterday (8 July), the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that an EU law to restrict the fuel additive MMT was lawful. MMT is a manganese compound added to petrol to stop it igniting too quickly. Although hardly used in the EU, talk of banning it sparked a high-stakes lobbying battle inside the European Commission in 2008. (See this European Voice.com article for more.)

The EU imposed restrictions on MMT in 2009, citing the risk of damage to human health and possible damage to car engines. Under the EU's fuel quality law, MMT in fuel shall be limited to 6 milligrams of manganese per litre from 2011, falling to 2mg per litre from 2014.

Afton, the only company that sells MMT on the EU market, said this amounted to a de facto ban, and that the limits were arbitrary and unscientific.

President Nicolas Sarkozy faces the nation in a prime time TV interview Monday night as he battles record low approval ratings and a growing political donations scandal that has turned into the biggest challenge confronting the French president since he took office three years ago.

In a rare summer time TV interview Monday, Sarkozy will face French journalist David Pujadas, the main anchor of the public televison network France 2, on the terrace of the Elysée presidential palace - a first in France.

The embattled French president has also promised to address questions from ordinary French people posted on the presidential Facebook page in an attempt to reach out to voters.

Just days after German Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition struck a deal to revamp the country's healthcare system, senior members of the governing parties have expressed doubts about the bill.

Leading members of Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) and their junior partners, the Free Democrats (FDP) ended months of intense debate on Tuesday of last week when they agreed on a compromise to fill next year's 11-billion euro ($13.95 billion) gap in healthcare funding.

A major provision in the bill, crafted by Health Minister Philipp Roesler, would raise the mandatory health insurance premium, which is shared by employers and employees ,to 15.5 percent of wages, up from the current 14.9 percent.

GP practices will be obliged to join forces to commission treatment directly under a reform blueprint published by Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary.

They will be handed much of the multimillion-pound budget currently handled by primary care trusts (PCTs), which will be abolished along with strategic health authorities.

Exclusive: Two protesters beaten by unidentified police officers during a Gaza demonstration in London receive £25,000 in compensation from the Metropolitan Police, writes home affairs correspondent Simon Israel.

"A falling tree makes more noise than a growing forest ." Laozi.
Whatever the sound: a rustling of big leafy fronds, a sudden crash, an echo of leaves stripped from broken branches, even before you can understand the direction and the intensity, you know it's a new scandal in the forest. It's enough to casually glance at the headings in a newspaper or listen to half a sentence in a café in the morning. The fallen trees are a common news item, background hum. Our hearing is so used to the constant sound of rotten wood or dried-out wood that is lying on the ground that every other sound is a marvel, an exception, so improbable to be invariably ignored. The voice of the forest is in fact unknown to us. The campaign groups, the associations of citizens that develop a new idea about refuse, about renewable energy, about the regeneration of the territory and a thousand other positive ideas, are invisible to our senses. Covered up by the incinerators, by nuclear power stations, by the Great Useless Works, by the endless trials for mafia and for corruption of members of the government and of parliamentarians. A noise that leads to deafness, repeated and wearing like a vuvuzela. The trumpeters of the scandals, the crows in every bush, have the task of transforming the crashing noises in melodies, the rotten wood into politicians, into industrialists, into blameless bankers, even after the verdict of the Court of Cassation. In the forest each one counts for one. The tiny shoot can become a great oak. The forest is enough in itself and perhaps this is disenchanting, this apparent indifference in relation to the degradation of Italy is in reality a step change from the past, a slow change to doing it yourself, taking into your hands the future of your own country, from the Val di Susa, to the referendum for public water, to the new industry of waste recycling at Vedelago, to the cleaning of rivers and streams, to the "gruppi di acquisto solidali" (GAS) {purchasing solidarity groups}, to the participation in town council meetings, to the opposition to military bases like the one at Dal Molin in Vicenza. The forest grows, the old trunks, corrupted and full of woodworm, fall down. It seems that the noise they make covers up everything. Keep your ears open. Like the American Indians, put your ears to the ground. There's a new music that's growing. It's honest and discreet but it's irresistible. It's you.

tell it...

" Nothing can bring you peace but yourself." R.W.Emerson

Italian police launched one of their biggest operations ever against the powerful 'ndrangheta crime syndicate on Tuesday, arresting 300 people including top bosses and seizing millions worth of property in pre-dawn raids.

The man believed to be the 'ndrangheta's top boss, Domenico Oppedisano, was picked up in Rosarno, a small coastal town in Calabria, the southern region where the organization is based, police said.

Also arrested was the man in charge of the gang's businesses in Milan, where the 'ndrangheta has been making major inroads.

(Reuters) - It's too early to call the end of the euro zone crisis, but signs are growing that Europe may have turned a corner in its struggle to restore financial stability.

French Economy Minister Christine Lagarde, mangling a treasured Winston Churchill quotation, said last week: "We are in the middle of the beginning of the end."

More prudently, we may be seeing "the end of the beginning."

The evidence comes partly from financial markets, which are calmer, partly from the real economy, which is perkier, and partly from policy, which is responding at last to at least some investor concerns.

There are still plenty of risks -- lack of faith in planned stress tests of European banks; low or no economic growth; more credit rating agency downgrades of sovereign debt; an eventual Greek default or debt restructuring; weaknesses in euro zone governance; and political resistance to painful reforms.

But on balance, things are starting to look up.

July 12 (Bloomberg) -- Bank of America Corp. and Wall Street firms that notched perfect trading records in the first quarter are now depending on an accounting benefit last used in the depths of the credit crisis to prop up their results.

Bank of America, the biggest U.S. bank by assets, may record a $1 billion second-quarter gain from writing down its debts to their market value, Citigroup Inc. analyst Keith Horowitz estimated in a June 23 report. The boost to earnings, stemming from an accounting rule that allows banks to book profits when the value of their own bonds falls, probably represented a fifth of pretax income, Horowitz wrote.

Investor fears of a Greek default, stalled U.S. economic recovery and tougher industry regulations have rattled markets, snapping banks' trading streaks and rekindling doubts about their creditworthiness. Prices for Bank of America's credit derivatives -- used by traders to bet on the likelihood of the firm's default -- rose by 34 percent during the second quarter, while Morgan Stanley's doubled and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s surged 86 percent.

The deepest recession in Britain's post-war history was even more severe than previously feared, the government said today.

Fresh information collected by the Office for National Statistics showed that the peak to trough decline in output was 6.4% of gross domestic product rather than the original 6.2% estimate.

The new figures confirmed that the six successive quarters of negative growth from spring 2008 until autumn 2009 were the toughest for the economy since the Great Depression of the 1930s, harsher even than the slump of the early 1980s.

The sovereign debt crisis would seem to create worry enough for European banks, but there is another gathering threat that has not garnered as much notice: the trillions of dollars in short-term borrowing that institutions around the world must repay or roll over in the next two years.

The European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the International Monetary Fund have all recently warned of a looming crunch, especially in Europe, where banks have enough trouble raising money as it is.

Their concern is that banks hungry for refinancing will compete with governments -- which also must roll over huge sums -- for the bond market's favor. As a result, credit for business and consumers could become more costly and scarce, with unpleasant consequences for economic growth.
...
Banks worldwide owe nearly $5 trillion to bondholders and other creditors that will come due through 2012, according to estimates by the Bank for International Settlements. About $2.6 trillion of the liabilities are in Europe.

U.S. banks must refinance about $1.3 trillion through 2012. While that sum is nothing to scoff at, analysts seem most concerned about Europe because the banking system there is already weighed down by the sovereign debt crisis.

Alessandro Profumo, UniCredit's chief executive, has received lukewarm reactions from other European banks to his proposal for a €20bn privately financed fund to support cross-border banks in distress. The continent's bankers are presumably more warmly united around the main purpose such a fund would serve - to dam a rising tide in favour of a bank levy.

Some of the mixed feelings about Mr Profumo's idea, floated in an FT comment article yesterday, can be put down to confusion about exactly what the proposal entails. He explicitly says it is not a resolution or bail-out fund intended to cover the losses of insolvent banks. The idea, rather, seems to be for Europe's cross-border banks to voluntarily pay into a fund that, if wholesale markets were to freeze up as they have done in this crisis, would carry solvent banks through their dire straits until they could again raise funding in the markets.

China, the world's largest foreign exchange holder, bought several hundred million euros of Spanish bonds last week as Asian investors returned to the eurozone peripheral market after a two-month hiatus.

China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange, or Safe, which manages the reserves under the country's central bank, was allocated up to €400m ($505m) of Spanish 10-year bonds in a debt deal last Tuesday, according to people familiar with the situation.

Safe had put in an order for about €1bn after demand rose to €14.5bn in a matter of a few hours last Tuesday. Mike Amey, portfolio manager at Pimco, said: "The fact big Asian investors are back in the market is a big vote of confidence for the eurozone. There was strong demand for the Spanish bond. It really helped sentiment."

BEIJING (AP) -- A Chinese firm that aims to compete with Western rating agencies declared Washington a worse credit risk than Beijing in its first report on government debt Sunday amid efforts by China to boost its influence in global markets.

Dagong International Credit Rating Co.'s verdict was a break with Moody's, Standard & Poors and Fitch, which say U.S. government debt is the world's safest. Dagong said it rated Washington below China and 11 other countries such as Switzerland and Australia due to high debt and slow growth. It warned the U.S. is among countries that might face rising borrowing costs and risks of default.

The report comes amid complaints by Beijing that Western rating agencies fail to give China full credit for its economic strength, boosting borrowing costs -- a criticism echoed by some foreign analysts. At June's G-20 summit in Toronto, President Hu Jintao called for the creation of a more accurate system.

Dagong, founded in 1994 to rate Chinese corporate debt, says it is privately owned and pledges to make its judgments impartially. But in a sign of official support, its announcement Sunday took place at the headquarters of the Xinhua News Agency, the ruling Communist Party's main propaganda outlet.

Dagong's chairman, Guan Jianzhong, said the current Western-led rating system is to blame for the global crisis and Europe's debt woes. He said it "provides the wrong credit-rating information" and fails to reflect changing conditions.

Jesse has a bit to say about this, including:

Governments like China do not take actions like this randomly, and their quasi-state organizations do not march to the beat of their own drummer. It will be interesting to watch this develop, and calculate the strategy, to figure out the next steps.

From a thematic perspective, coming up, competitive devaluations, and a shift in the reserve currency regime that will resemble a seismic shift, most likely pivoting around the SDR composition discussions later this year.

The US battered the euro and has been sitting on gold and silver ahead of the SDR discussions. And now China has slipped a shiv between the ribs of the almighty Dollar. This is just the overture, the prelude to the dance.

And further down the road, trade wars, well, at least trade wars more overt than the ones which have been ongoing since 1980, in which the US based multinationals thought they were pulling the strings, breaking the back of American labor.

And guess who the arms dealers are in this paper chase, selling to all sides? Who are the untouchables, the TBTF, a strategic asset in the financial arsenal of democracy? When these boys roll into town it's time to hide the women, children, livestock and provender.

The world needs more than three major credit ratings agencies because their actions exacerbate market swings, European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet was quoted on Tuesday as saying.

"The ratings agencies in general tend to amplify rises and falls in financial markets. You can see it still today very visibly. That goes against financial stability," he said in an interview with French daily Liberation.

"It is probably appropriate not to continue to have a worldwide oligopoly of three agencies. But the underlying issue is to attenuate or cancel out this amplification to which the rating agencies contribute."

RAMALLAH, Jul 12, 2010 (IPS) - Israeli intelligence has warned that a new war with Hezbollah on Israel's northern border with Lebanon cannot be ruled out, following heightened tensions between United Nations peacekeeping forces and Hezbollah supporters in the south of Lebanon.

"Israel has to be ready for any sudden provocation or outbreak of hostilities," Dan Diker from the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs tells IPS. "The same way the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war was triggered over Hezbollah capturing Israeli soldiers."

In 2006 Hezbollah guerillas captured several Israeli soldiers after laying ambush along the border. This led to the second Israel-Lebanon war which lasted just over a month until UN Resolution 1701 brought hostilities to an end.

Dr Samir Awad from Birzeit University near Ramallah, however, thinks the possibility of a military confrontation in the near future is slim, and that the current flare-up has more to do with internal Lebanese politics.

"Neither side wants war at this stage. Both Israel and Hezbollah are unwilling to pay the high price of a new and bloody conflict. The events in the south are related to a power struggle in the Lebanese government," Awad tells IPS.

BOGOTÁ, Jul 11, 2010 (IPS) - The so-called para-politics, para-institutions and para-economy in Colombia "have their place in the dock" among the accused, said eight former leaders of ultra-right armed paramilitary groups, now demobilised and charged with crimes against humanity in the nation's decades-long civil war.

From prison, the eight sent a letter last week to those who were once among their potential military targets: the leaders of the centre-left Alternative Democratic Pole (PDA), Gustavo Petro, former presidential candidate for that party, and Iván Cepeda, congressman-elect and spokesperson for the Movement of Victims of State Crimes (MOVICE).

What prompted the letter was a meeting between Petro and Colombia's conservative president-elect, the former Defence minister Juan Manuel Santos, who has declared he will set up a "government of national unity."

AFP - The International Criminal Court added genocide Monday to the list of charges against Sudan's President Omar al-Beshir, after issuing a warrant for his arrest for war crimes and crimes against humanity last year.
   
"The Chamber finds that there is sufficient evidence to establish reasonable grounds to believe that (Omar al-Beshir) is criminally responsible ... for those charges of genocide," said a court decision published on Monday.
   
The ICC's appeals chamber ordered judges in February to rethink their decision to omit genocide from a warrant issued for the Sudanese leader's arrest in March 2009.

AFP - Japan's premier faced an uphill battle Monday to push through promised reforms, from reviving the economy to whittling down massive public debt, after his party's electoral mauling at the weekend.
   
Naoto Kan, who took office just a month ago as Japan's fifth leader in four years, suffered a heavy blow when his centre-left Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) lost the upper house of parliament in an electoral rout Sunday.
   
The result, worse than predicted by opinion polls and pundits, signalled that the world's number two economy is in for another stretch of weak leadership as it seeks to end two decades of economic stagnation.

An Israeli military investigation has concluded that flawed intelligence and poor planning led to the lethal interception of a flotilla of ships attempting to break the blockade of Gaza.

The 150-page report does not blame the commandos who opened fire, killing nine Turkish activists, after being confronted by pro-Palestinian demonstrators during the raid.

Iran's state media say an Iranian nuclear scientist has taken refuge in Pakistan's embassy in Washington and is seeking an immediate return to his homeland.  The scientist, Shahram Amiri, went missing during a pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, where Iran says he was captured and handed over to U.S. intelligence agents - a claim the United States denies.

The latest twist in Amiri's case follows conflicting accounts, reportedly by the scientist himself, that he had been kidnapped and tortured by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency or, conversely, he was in the United States for academic studies.

Amiri had been working for Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, which the United States and other countries suspect is trying to develop nuclear weapons - a charge Tehran denies.

The European Commission will tomorrow (13 July) propose an overhaul of the EU's policy for approving genetically modified (GM) crops, which will allow countries more freedom to ban cultivation on their territory while retaining an EU-wide authorisation system.

 The new policy for GM crop cultivation, to be unveiled tomorrow, aims to draw a line under years of stalemate between countries that support GMOs and those opposed to their cultivation.

The initiative aims to deliver on a promise made by European Commission President José Manuel Barroso before his reappointment last year (EurActiv 03/09/09).

At present, EU member states are only able to restrict GM crop cultivation under strict conditions, as authorisation licences are valid across the 27-country bloc, in accordance with the principles of the EU single market.

July 12 (Bloomberg) -- China is buying unprecedented amounts of uranium, signaling that prices are poised to rebound after three years of declines.

The nation may purchase about 5,000 metric tons this year, more than twice as much as it consumes, building stockpiles for new reactors, according to Thomas Neff, a physicist and uranium- industry analyst at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Prices will jump by about 32 percent next year, the most since 2006, RBC Capital Markets said.

India and China are leading the biggest atomic expansion since the decade after the 1970s oil crisis to cut pollution and power economies growing more than twice as fast as Europe and North America. The boom, combined with slowing supply growth, may benefit Cameco Corp., a co-owner of the world's largest uranium mine, and Areva SA, the largest builder of reactors.

"China's demand is insatiable," said Dave Dai, an analyst at the Daiwa Institute of Research in Hong Kong. "They will have to take almost whatever is available."

Chinchpada, India (AFP) July 11, 2010
Lush green mangrove trees and shrubs stretch into the distance on the muddy outskirts of Navi Mumbai in western India, the low-lying land swollen with heavy monsoon rains

Nearby, the people of Chinchpada are starting their day: women wash and dry clothes in the open, children walk barefoot to school along a dirt track and men sip tea at a stall.

But the village, nearly a dozen others like it nearby, and 160 hectares (395 acres) of the steaming mangroves are under threat.

A blue sign on the roadside indicates why: "Site For International Airport," it says in large white letters.

India's government is expected to make a decision on whether to give the go-ahead for the 90-billion-rupee (1.9-billion-dollar) project within weeks, after a battle between developers and opponents lasting more than a decade.

Beijing (AFP) July 9, 2010
Chinese authorities have seized 76 tonnes of milk powder tainted with the same chemical responsible for the deaths of six babies two years ago, state media said Friday.

The powder was seized in northwestern China's Gansu province after tests showed it contained up to 500 times the allowed level of the toxic industrial chemical melamine, Xinhua news agency reported.

The Beijing News said tainted powder has also been detected in Jilin province in China's northeast and that two officials from the dairy company at the centre of the latest discovery in Gansu had been detained.

The reports highlight China's continued problems reining in the use of melamine, which is used to make plastics but has been widely and illegally added to dairy products to give the appearance of higher protein content.

Africa's extensive network of national parks is failing to stem the decline of large mammals, according to a new study that highlights biodiversity loss across the continent.

Populations of large mammals such as zebra, buffalo and lion have declined by an average of 59% since 1970, according to the research, which collated data from parks including popular tourist safari destinations such as the Masai Mara in Kenya and the Serengeti in Tanzania.

The study warns that urgent efforts are needed to better protect the animals and secure the future of the parks, which draw millions of tourists each year and provide much-needed income.

Ian Cragie, a conservation scientist at the University of Cambridge who led the study, said: "Although the results indicate that African national parks have generally failed to maintain their populations of large mammals, the situation outside the parks is undoubtedly worse. Many species like rhino are practically extinct outside national parks."

Progressive groups and fisherman are attacking the Obama administration for not protecting cleanup workers in the Gulf from hazardous oil and chemical dispersant fumes. Last week, a coalition of local and national groups launched BPMakesMeSick.com, a petition calling on President Obama to ensure that BP provides workers in the Gulf with respirators.

The petition, sponsored by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), states:

We cannot let the denial of protective gear that hurt so many 9/11 clean-up workers happen again with the Gulf clean-up workers.

President Obama and the federal government must demand that BP allow every clean-up worker who wants to wear respiratory protective equipment to do so--and ensure that workers get the equipment and training they need to do their jobs safely.

The UK's Royal Society is launching a major study into human population growth and how it may affect social and economic development in coming decades.

The world's population has risen from two billion in 1930 to 6.8 billion now, with nine billion projected by 2050.

The society acknowledges it is delving into a hugely controversial area, but says a comprehensive and scientific review of the evidence is needed.

Doomsday: How BP Gulf disaster may have triggered a 'world-killing' event

Ominous reports are leaking past the BP Gulf salvage operation news blackout that the disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico may be about to reach biblical proportions.

251 million years ago a mammoth undersea methane bubble caused massive explosions, poisoned the atmosphere and destroyed more than 96 percent of all life on Earth.  Experts agree that what is known as the Permian extinction event was the greatest mass extinction event in the history of the world.

55 million years later another methane bubble ruptured causing more mass extinctions during the Late Paleocene Thermal Maximum (LPTM).

The LPTM lasted 100,000 years. [3]

Those subterranean seas of methane virtually reshaped the planet when they explosively blew from deep beneath the waters of what is today called the Gulf of Mexico.

Now, worried scientists are increasingly concerned the same series of catastrophic events that led to worldwide death back then may be happening again-and no known technology can stop it.

The article then goes on to discuss in somewhat less lurid detail.

I lack the knowledge required to evaluate.


If you never fail, you're not trying hard enough.

MONROVIA, Jul 11, 2010 (IPS) - Vivian Howard is a single mother who cooks and cleans like just about any other woman in Liberia - but in her work life she's in charge of 22 strong, athletic men. The first and only centre female referee in Liberia with a FIFA badge, Howard is standing shoulder to shoulder with the men of Liberia.

There's a perception - especially in the international community - that in a country led by Africa's first elected female president, women in Liberia are taking the lead in all walks of life.

It's true there are more female ministers in Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf's government than ever before, new legislation has been passed to protect and promote women's rights and some women are being given chances in life that they had never experienced.

However, women still remain firmly on the bottom rung of society. They're the most vulnerable members of the community in terms of access to education, access to health and access to justice.

July 12 (Bloomberg) -- South Africa has pulled off what many said couldn't be done: a soccer World Cup that filled stadiums and gave thousands of fans a party they won't forget.

The month-long tournament, the world's most-watched sporting event, ended yesterday with a victory for Spain at Soccer City stadium in Johannesburg. Foreign visitors to the competition may have numbered half a million, the Finance Ministry said, exceeding an earlier estimate by 200,000.

The absence of any serious crime, the tournament's smooth operation and the publicity given to South Africa will help the country shed its reputation for murder and racial tension, said Pratibha Thaker, Africa director at the London-based Economist Intelligence Unit. Now, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan says he hopes the country can use that drive to tackle unemployment, AIDS and poor educational standards.

"Before the World Cup, the news was all about crime and AIDS," Thaker said in a July 5 phone interview. "What we're seeing now is a very favorable image. This will help to boost tourism and boost the recovery. It's crucial that the government keeps the momentum going."

AP - Fidel Castro is back. The aging revolutionary leader will appear Monday on Cuba's key public affairs television program, according to a front-page headline in the Communist-party newsletter Granma. It may be the most prominent appearance by the former president since he fell ill in 2006.

Castro, 83, was set to discuss his concerns about the Middle East on the Mesa Redonda - or Round Table - a daily talk show about current events that is usually transmitted live on state media and seen across the island.

AFP - A total solar eclipse drew an 11,000-kilometer (6,800-mile) arc over the Pacific Sunday, plunging remote territories into darkness, but drawing thousands of curious tourists and their dollars.
   
The skies grew black in the middle of the day as the Moon slipped in front of the Sun and aligned with the Earth, blotting out the sunshine that just moments earlier had swathed the island's silent, ancient stone guardians.
   
Applause erupted from thousands of stargazers who began gathering days ago on this remote Chilean outpost for the rare four-minute, 41-second eclipse.

Two men who organized a controversial art exhibition in Moscow in 2007 were found guilty of inciting hatred by a Russian court on Monday, but the judge let them go free, after ordering them to pay fines. The trial was fiercely criticised by human rights activists.

Art expert Andrei Yerofeyev and former museum director Yury Samodurov had set up the Forbidden Art Exhibition at the Museum of Moscow. The show included a depiction of Jesus Christ with a Mickey Mouse head, and a spoof Coca-Cola ad carrying the slogan, "This is my Blood."

Tommaso Dorigo, a physicist at the University of Padua, has said in his blog that there has been talk coming out of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, that the Higgs has been discovered.

The Tevatron, the huge particle accelerator at Fermi - the most powerful in the world after the LHC - is expected to be retired when the CERN accelerator becomes fully operational, but may have struck a final blow before it becomes obsolete.

The New South Wales Health Care Complaints Commission (HCCC) has compiled a damning report into Australia's most prominent anti-vaccination group, the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN).

The HCCC accuses the AVN of providing inaccurate and misleading information and selectively quoting research out of context to argue against vaccination.

The report has also noted accusations that the AVN harassed the parents of a child who died of whooping cough last year, after they advocated the importance of childhood vaccination.

BBC Sport was guilty of a false start this weekend when it launched a half-baked Olympic microsite with some unfortunate - and unflattering - holding text in place... see if you can spot it (scroll down for a close-up and some other screengrabs): 

The Church of England's ruling synod has decided that women bishops should be allowed, but there are further steps to take before they can be ordained.

The General Synod has given minimal concessions to traditionalist Anglicans who opposed the move.

They had sought exemptions from serving under women bishops and guaranteed access to a male alternative.

But the synod decided women bishops should be able to decide the identity of any bishop entering their dioceses.

They would also have the ability to dictate the functions these bishops could carry out.

12 July 2010

This is a single issue newsletter asking for your urgent help in getting a government website closed down. The site, set up by the treasury to allow people to suggest ways to cut government spending, is full of hate-filled racist and disablist suggestions, including the sterilisation of benefits claimants, the return of the workhouse and the forced repatriation of asylum seekers and migrants.  Some of the site's content is so extreme it may even constitute a criminal offence.

The Spending Challenge website was set up on Friday by the coalition government and features an introduction and video on its home page by chancellor George Osborne.

In his video Osborne tells visitors that "Your government needs you, please get in touch" and the introduction assures visitors that:

A previous study found that evening people are smarter than morning people. In a new paper, Kanazawa replicates the finding and provides a theoretical grounding. Because the nocturnal lifestyle allowed by electricity didn't exist 10,000 years ago, we must now rely on general intelligence to override our early-to-bed instincts. So those with more of it stay up later. How much later? See below.

Night Lights

Bedtimes and wake-up times for Americans in their 20s by IQ.

Very Dull (IQ < 75)

Weekday: 11:41 P.M.-7:20 A.M.

Weekend: 12:35 A.M.-10:09 A.M.

Normal (90 < IQ < 110)

Weekday: 12:10 A.M.-7:32 A.M.

Weekend: 1:13 A.M.-10:14 A.M.

Very Bright (IQ > 125)

Weekday: 12:29 A.M.-7:52 A.M.

Weekend: 1:44 A.M.-11:07 A.M.

Authorities in Switzerland have decided not to extradite film director Roman Polanski to the US to face sentencing for a case dating back to 1977.

Polanski, 76, has been under house arrest in his Swiss chalet since December 2009 pending the decision.

He is wanted in the US over a conviction for unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl.

Swiss Justice Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf said the "restrictions on his liberty have been lifted."

A Swiss official said the US cannot appeal the decision.

AFP - Fugitive burglar and Internet folk hero, the "Barefoot Bandit," was nabbed by Bahamas police Sunday after one last daring attempt to evade capture -- this time in a stolen boat.
   
Bahamian authorities said 19-year-old Colton Harris-Moore was arrested seven days after they found the wreckage of a stolen plane he is believed to have flown to the archipelago.
   
"In an effort to avoid capture, the suspect engaged in a high-speed chase, by boat, with police," a police official told reporters.
   
"After a brief chase, the suspect was taken into custody without incident," he said, adding that Harris-Moore was arrested with a firearm and other evidence.

After decades of success which ranged from one of the medium's earliest self-publishing triumphs to a mainstream crossover that would defy all expectations for the phrase "comic book movie," one of the comics greatest stories has come to an end as The Cleveland Leader has confirmed that writer Harvey Pekar died this morning at the age of 70.

In one of strangest -- though most welcome -- reviews in The New York Times in recent years, Alessandra Stanley openly mocks the three-hour (yes, you read that right) PBS documentary about Nixon/Reagan strong man George F. Shultz.   She makes fun of the length over three Mondays -- even Jefferson only got three hours, and from Ken Burns, famous for going overlong -- and we even get a shot at the sponsors.  Well, at least the film reveals that the buttoned-down Shultz has a small tattoo of a Princeton Tiger on his butt.

Afghanistan's Taliban insurgents are training monkeys to use weapons to attack American troops, according to a recent report by a British-based media agency.

Reporters from the media agency spotted and took photos of a few "monkey soldiers" holding AK-47 rifles and Bren light machine guns in the Waziristan tribal region near the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The report and photos have been widely spread by media agencies and Web sites across the world.

chinaganda

" Nothing can bring you peace but yourself." R.W.Emerson