(Reuters) - Efforts to clinch a deal on the way banks, insurers and markets in the European Union are supervised failed on Wednesday and talks will resume in late August or early September, EU sources said.

"Talks have not led to an agreement this morning. Negotiations have now been postponed until the end of August, early September," a European Parliament source said.

Fourteen EU member states earlier this week (12 July) used a pioneering cooperation law to press ahead with plans to simplify divorce rules for couples of different nationalities.

 European Union governments gave the 14 states the go-ahead on Monday, a moment described as "historic" by EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding.

Couples in these countries will be able to choose which country's law applies to their divorce, helping them avoid potentially long and expensive proceedings. The countries are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia and Spain.

Enhanced cooperation

It is the first time the EU has used an "enhanced cooperation" clause, foreseen in the treaties and that allows a group of at least nine countries to take joint steps in an area where they cannot secure the agreement of all 27 member states.

The Socialists and Democrats group in the European Parliament yesterday (13 July) warned against quarrelling over numbers and figures in the EU assembly's newly-formed committee on budget reform. 

 Presenting a paper to the press, Goran Färm, S&D spokesperson for budget policy, said the group had decided that the current political and economic context would make it difficult to increase the EU's own resources and address budget reform in the right manner.

"We need to prove that EU spending is good for all," Färm said, adding that a majority of citizens view negotiating the EU budget as a process imbued with political horse-trading and vested interests rather than one which addresses the needs of ordinary Europeans.

The economic crisis has prompted many member states to call for a more restrictive approach to the EU budget, despite having given the Union new competences with the Lisbon Treaty and new policy priorities with the Europe 2020 strategy.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev arrived in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg on Wednesday for talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

A memorandum of understanding between the Skolkovo foundation, which supervises the eponymous innovation hub outside of Moscow, and Germany's Siemens AG is expected to be signed during the two-day talks.

France's lower house of parliament has overwhelmingly approved a bill that would ban wearing the Islamic full veil in public.

There were 335 votes for the bill and only one against in the 557-seat National Assembly.

It must now be ratified by the Senate in September to become law.

The ban has strong public support but critics point out that only a tiny minority of French Muslims wear the full veil.

Many of the opposition Socialists, who originally wanted the ban limited only to public buildings, abstained from voting after coming under pressure from feminist supporters of the bill.

President Nicolas Sarkozy has backed the ban as part of a wider debate on French identity but critics say the government is pandering to far-right voters.

Shots have been fired at police in Northern Ireland during a third night of rioting in Irish-nationalist parts of Belfast.

Police said on Wednesday that a lone attacker armed with a handgun fired four to six shots overnight as riot police fought groups of masked protesters in Ardoyne, in the north of the city.

Demonstrators also hurled petrol bombs and a pipe bomb at police officers, who deployed water cannon in response.

Around 82 police officers have been injured during the three days of rioting, which began on Sunday night when three officers were hit with gun pellets.

France has staged its traditional Bastille Day parade amid criticism from human rights groups at the invitation of some African leaders.

Soldiers from 13 African nations marched through Paris on Wednesday to mark 50 years of independence from French colonial rule.

Protesters denounced France's ties to its former colonies in a demonstration on the eve of the parade, condemning some of the African leaders invited to the ceremony of committing atrocities.

"We are scandalised by the presence on the official stand, among the heads of state invited by [French president] Nicolas Sarkozy, of dictators who fire
on their own people," Odile Tobner of Survie, one of the groups leading the protest, said.

In a further setback for Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right coalition, power in Germany's most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, shifted to the center-left on Wednesday. The state assembly elected Social Democrat Hannelore Kraft as regional governor at the head of minority government.

The center-left Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens took control of Germany's most populous state on Wednesday with the election of a minority government in North Rhine-Wesphalia that spells further trouble for Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The state -- Germany's most-populous, with some 18 million people -- had been ruled since 2005 by a center-right coalition of Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats and the pro-business Free Democrats headed by former Governor Jürgen Rüttgers, but it lost its majority in a regional election on May 9 and failed to build a workable coalition after weeks of negotiations with other parties.

Regional SPD leader Hannelore Kraft, a 49-year-old former business consultant, couldn't muster an absolute majority of her own either but decided to form a minority government with her preferred partner, the Greens. It took two rounds of voting in the state assembly on Wednesday but she won the required simple majority in the second round with 90 deputies voting for her, 80 against and 11 abstaining.

Several top German politicians have expressed their support in recent months for abandoning the country's decades-old system of conscription. Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle is the latest to support the shift.

Should Germany discard its conscription army? It is a question which was taboo for decades, particularly given the country's erstwhile position on the Cold War's front line. Even since the fall of communism, while the period of conscription has been repeatedly shortened, few have seriously considered converting the Bundeswehr into an exclusively professional army.

In recent months, however, an increasing number of leading politicians in Germany have begun considering a fundamental reform of the country's military -- including the abolishment of conscription. In an interview with the daily Hamburger Abendblatt, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, head of Merkel's coalition partner the pro-business Free Democrats, reiterated his support for eliminating the draft.

"I am convinced that we should turn the Bundeswehr into a professional army," Westerwelle said. "It would be the correct decision to end conscription as quickly as possible." He said he thinks it would be possible to end Germany's system of conscription before the next general elections, currently set for 2013.

Der Präsident des Eisenbahnbundesamtes, Gerald Hörster, warnt in einem Schreiben vom 14. Juli, das dieser Zeitung vorliegt, den Vorstand der Bahn vor einer Verletzung seiner gesetzlichen ,,Sicherheitsverpflichtung". Wörtlich schreibt Hörster: ,,Die Vorfälle geben hinreichenden Anlass zu der Annahme, dass nicht gewährleistet werden konnte, dass die Risiken für die Fahrgäste auf ein verantwortbares und rechtlich zulässiges Maß beschränkt geblieben sind." Hörster rekapituliert in dem Brief Auskünfte des Bahnvorstands, die er auf eine Anfrage vom 12. Juli bekam. Danach sei ein Abkühlen bei höheren Temperaturen als 32 Grad nicht gewährleistet, und ,,durch unglückliche Umstände" habe überdies ,,die Luftzufuhr versagt".

German prosecutors have raided 13 branches of the Swiss bank Credit Suisse in connection with an inquiry into tax fraud.

The prosecutor's office in Dusseldorf said on Wednesday that about 150 investigators took part in searches.

The search is focusing on allegations that bank staff assisted clients to evade taxes.

Tax officials bought a CD in February that reportedly contained information on about 1,100 wealthy Germans.

July 14 (Bloomberg) -- For Germany, bailing out its neighbors to save the euro is proving a price worth paying.

Rising share prices and foreign sales at Bayerische Motoren Werke AG and Siemens AG show why it may be worth keeping the single currency even as some voters balk at the cost of rescuing Greece and demand a return to the deutsche mark. As exporters benefit from the lower labor costs and currency stability fostered by the euro's 1999 introduction, unemployment has dropped close to an 18-year low and the DAX Index is the 16- nation bloc's best performing major benchmark this year.

That's reinforcing Germany's status as a pillar of euro stability rather than a weak link as European policy makers scramble to stop the region lurching back into recession.

SPAIN: Following the opening of a 0·6 km section of Line 2 from Pep Ventura to Badalona Pompeu Fabra on July 11, the Barcelona metro network now exceeds 100 km in length. The new station opened to the public at 15.00 after the official inauguration ceremony.

The network is now 100·2 km long with 137 stations. In total 15·6 km of tunnel and 14 stations have entered service in the last two years...

JAPAN: The: prototype Series E6 mini-Shinkansen trainset for East Japan Railway's Akita route was unveiled to the public at Sendai depot on July 9...

...The maximum speed in commercial service will be 320 km/h between Tokyo and Morioka on the Tohoku Shinkansen, and 130 km/h between Morioka and Akita on the mini-Shinkansen section of upgraded conventional line.

The Series E6 features a nose around 13 m long to reduce noise and pressure pulses at tunnels...

In spite of fiscal and monetary woes, eurozone industrial production continued to grow in May, helped by a weak euro and inventory restocking.

Industrial output rose 0.9 per cent in May, according to the European Union's statistical arm. Paired with strong data in March and April, the three-month moving average preferred by analysts stands at 1.2 per cent, the highest since data were first gathered in 1990.

But the headline figure once again masked stark divergences between the so-called "core" and "peripheral" economies of the eurozone. Whereas Germany grew 2.9 per cent over April, and France 1.9 per cent, Spain contracted by 0.3 per cent and Portugal 0.7 per cent.

There is at least Dylan Ratigan on MSNBC telling some hard truths about our economy and financial system. In Zero Hedge he cites a Barry Ritholtz article describing a Bloomberg poll:

Almost four out of five Americans surveyed in a Bloomberg National Poll this month say they have just a little or no confidence that the measure being championed by congressional Democrats will prevent or significantly soften a future crisis. More than three-quarters say they don't have much or any confidence the proposal will make their savings and financial assets more secure.

A plurality -- 47 percent -- says the bill will do more to protect the financial industry than consumers; 38 percent say consumers would benefit more.

"Banks and the government are making out, not the ordinary person," says Lenore Critzer, a 70-year-old retiree and poll participant who lives in Nelson, Ohio, about 40 miles from Cleveland. "We're going to have another crisis and worse."

While skeptical about the bill's benefits, Americans don't want a return to the days before the financial markets suffered their biggest turmoil since the Great Depression: A plurality of respondents says they have become more supportive in recent months of tougher regulations. By a three-to-one margin, Americans have grown more favorable to stronger regulation rather than less.

Ratigan goes on to describe what the bankers have accomplished as "corporate communism" and asserts that they will "use what I call the Big Tarp Lie to pander for the vote of Senator Scott Brown and others." He continues:

This lie must be beaten back by all of us like whack-a-mole every time it rears its ugly head.  Please help me by sending this information to any Politician, Media Figure, Banker, Neighbor or Robot that you find repeating it - they can take our money, but they don't own the truth.

Let's break it down:

1.  TARP itself hasn't even made money.  AIG alone still owes us $75.6 billion.  However, they always add the caveat "Other than AIG..." when they say that the bailouts were "profitable".  But the AIG money was DIRECTLY PAID to many of these same banks that "paid back their TARP" at an outrageous 100 cents on the dollar!  Mind you, this was done by government officials that were the former employees and current shareholders of the very banks they were helping.  Let's make the banks like Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Societe Generale pay back the $105 billion of stolen taxpayer money before we let anyone say "TARP was paid back."

2.   TARP is a tiny little part of a massive amount of taxpayer support.  TARP is actually less than 10% of your tax dollars that have been handed to the banks.  And now the banks "paid back" the tiny slice that is TARP with OUR money and you are supposed cheer them for savvy.  At this very moment, the taxpayer is still owed $2.02 Trillion dollars for the bailout by our Politicians and Banksters, and that number is growing every day.

Never mind the money that these same banks make getting endless 0% interest loans from the Federal Reserve (aka You) while either they lend it back to you at 14% or just lend it right to back the government and pocket the yield.  Never mind the multitude of benefits they get from being Too Big Too Fail.  But you're not supposed to pay attention to that; you're only supposed to notice how fast they paid back TARP!

ICO is the agency through which the government lends directly, mostly to businesses.

ICO loans are originated by commercial banks and cajas, as service providers.

Given that many OECD countries including Spain have bailed out or put into receivership banks over the past 3 years, those could have been nationalised (General Motors was nationalised, but not the failing banks!). This would have reduced the time needed to set up a "public bank" from years to months.

By laying out pros and cons we risk inducing people to join the debate, and losing control of a process that only we fully understand. - Alan Greenspan

Stefan Ortseifen, the former chief executive of German bank IKB (IKBG.DE), was convicted of market manipulation on Wednesday but avoided going to jail in one of the few criminal cases to be prosecuted in the aftermath of the global banking crisis.

IKB, one of the highest-profile casualties of the collapse in the U.S. subprime mortgage market, required billions of euros in bailout money and is involved in a current case in the United States brought against Goldman Sachs (GS.N) over a complicated subprime-related financial product which it sold to IKB in 2007.

Ortseifen was fined 100,000 euros ($127,100) and received a 10-month suspended jail sentence for market manipulation, with the court ruling that investors were misled about the parlous state of IKB's finances two years ago. At the time Ortseifen was earning around 1.6 million euros a year, according to IKB's annual report for 2006/07.

Five more US soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, sending Nato's death toll to 11 in 24 hours.

Four soldiers belonging to the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) were killed by a bomb in southern Afghanistan, Nato said.

Another US soldier died in a separate attack also in the south of the country.

It comes a day after three US soldiers and five Afghan civilians died in a suicide attack in Kandahar province.

France has staged its annual Bastille Day parade, amid criticism at the presence of some African leaders.

Armies from former colonies celebrating 50 years of independence were invited to join the military parade.

A human rights group has said that some of the troops and leaders should instead be facing trial for war crimes.

Critics also said the move gave the false impression that France granted them independence, when many fought against French rule.

...

Heads of state and troops from Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo-Brazzaville, Gabon, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Chad and Togo watched from the official stand.

...

A Gabonese activist, Marc Ona, compared African leaders at the parade to "colonial governors who find themselves together with chief colonialist Nicolas Sarkozy to celebrate keeping Africa in international penury".

However, Mr Sarkozy has strenuously denied being guilty of "colonial nostalgia", and said the African troops who attended the parade were a testament to the "strength of the ties" that united France and its former colonies.

KAMPALA, July 14 (Xinhua) -- Kenya has handed over a suspected member of Somalia's hard-lined faction al Shabab to Uganda after three bomb blasts killed 73 people in the Ugandan capital of Kampala, Ugandan official said here on Wednesday.

Fred Opolot, Ugandan government spokesman, said the suspect named Ali Isa Ssenkumba was arrested by Kenyan police in Nairobi last week and handed over to Uganda on Tuesday.

The Knesset approved on Wednesday an initial reading of a bill calling for heavy fines to be imposed on Israeli citizens who initiate or incite boycotts against Israel. If approved into law, the fines would apply to anyone boycotting Israeli individuals, companies, factories, and organizations.

"In the U.S. there is are laws aimed at preventing Americans from boycotting U.S. allies, including Israel. It appears that in light of the reality in Israel, we need a similar law that applies to Israeli citizens," said the bill's sponsors - coalition chairman Zeev Elkin (Likud), MK Arieh Eldad (National Union) and MK Dalia Itzik (Kadima).

A week after federal regulators blocked financing programs for home energy efficiency retrofits around the country, California officials are using different tactics to try to change their minds. Some, like state utility officials, have sent pleading letters. But California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown said Wednesday that he is taking the government straight to court.

Brown is initiating "major action" against the Federal Housing Finance Agency to restart the stalled Property Assessed Clean Energy programs, known as PACE. The programs encouraged homeowners to use bond-backed property tax assessments to install solar panels and make insulation improvements. The funds are paid back over a decade or more through a senior lien attached to the property, which takes precedence over an existing mortgage in the case of a foreclosure.

But on July 6, the Federal Housing Finance Agency issued a statement saying that PACE loans presented "unusual and difficult risk management challenges" for lenders, servicers and mortgage securities investors in a "fragile housing finance market."

The decision, which effectively suspended all PACE programs nationwide, agreed with concerns voiced by federally controlled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in May. The federal agency directed the lenders to avoid the programs.

Calling the move a "regulatory strangulation of the state's grass-roots program," Brown is suing the agency and the lenders to allow PACE programs to proceed. In the complaint, to be filed in U.S. District Court in Oakland, Brown says that the programs were mischaracterized as "loans" instead of "assessments" and improperly portrayed as violating Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's standard lending procedures.

Christopher `Dudus' Coke, alleged drug lord and leader of Jamaican gang, the Shower Posse, was arrested on 22 June. Coke's arrest, writes Horace Campbell, opens up the possibility to `reveal the full extent of the corruption of the politics of Jamaica and the Caribbean by their rulers in collaboration with the intelligence, commercial and banking infrastructures of the United States'.

Honduras:

Several leading Honduran businessmen have suggested that Honduras place an economic embargo on Nicaragua to protest the country's unwillingness to recognize the Lobo government. In a role reversal, Honduras may now place some economic pressure on the Ortega government to make it change its policies. (La Tribuna, El Nuevo Diario)

Well, with so much focus on the release of Cuban political prisoners, the US release of a Puerto Rican nationalist, scheduled to arrive here tomorrow, has flown beneath the radar:

Carlos Alberto Torres (born September 19, 1952) is a Puerto Rican nationalist who was convicted and sentenced to 78 years in prison for seditious conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States. Torres was linked to the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (FALN), which claimed responsibility for numerous bombings.[1]  He was not included in the 1999 Clinton clemency offer  to others FALN members.[2] (...) Several human rights organization including the American Association of Jurists has called for the release of Alberto Torres.[5]  ...Carlos was granted parole in May 2010. His release date is in July 2010.

Colombia:

On July 13, 2000 - 10 years ago yesterday - President Bill Clinton signed into law a special $1.3 billion appropriation of mostly military aid to Colombia. Known as "Plan Colombia," it became the framework for U.S. assistance to the hemisphere's largest aid recipient for the following decade.  The Washington Office on Latin America commemorates this anniversary with a new online publication, "Don't Call it a Model," a copy of which is hosted here at the Just the Facts website.

A tiny mushroom, little known to scientists, is behind some 400 sudden deaths in China, experts say.

For 30 years, during the rainy season, scores of villagers in Yunnan province have died suddenly of cardiac arrest.

Following a five-year investigation, researchers from the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Beijing say they have the culprit.

The mushroom, know as Little White, belongs to the Trogia genus and has three toxic amino acids, experts say.

BRUSSELS, Jul 14, 2010 (IPS) - Genetically modified (GM) foods will be introduced more quickly in Europe as a result of a new proposal, some Brussels officials fear.

Over the past 12 years, the European Union has effectively observed a moratorium on the cultivation of new GM crops because of widespread opposition to biotechnology among both the public and some of the EU's governments.

In a paper published Jul. 13, the Union's executive, the European Commission, superficially recognised that governments have the right to keep the territories they administer GM-free. But privately officials say that the aim of the initiative is to speed up the approval process for GM foods.

John Dalli, the EU's commissioner for food safety, said that the proposal would not allow individual governments to ban GM foods on health or environmental grounds as central EU bodies are tasked with assessing any risk that such crops may pose. But the governments would be allowed to cite moral or ethical considerations when imposing unilateral bans.

Lawyers advising the organisation Friends of the Earth have found that such grounds would be legally intangible and could easily be challenged by biotechnology companies in courts.

Think it's hot this summer? Wait until you see Google's simulation of a world with an average global temperature rise of 4C.

Using a map that was first launched by the former Labour administration in October 2009, the coalition government has taken temperature data from the Met Office Hadley Centre and other climate research centres and imposed it on to a Google Earth layer.

It's a timely arrival, with warnings this month that current international carbon pledges will lead to a rise of nearly 4C and the Muir Russell report censuring some climate scientists for not being more open with their data (but exonerating them of manipulating the scientific evidence).

Tests of Toyota vehicles by the US transportation department have revealed that many accidents blamed on sudden acceleration were actually caused by drivers mistakenly pressing the accelerator instead of the brake.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that "dozens" of data recorders were tested as part of a broad federal investigation into Toyota's recalls, placing blame on driver error rather than vehicle malfunction.

"The early results suggest that some drivers who said their Toyotas and Lexuses surged out of control were mistakenly flooring the accelerator when they intended to jam on the brakes," the report said.

On Saturday, the head of Louisiana's Department of Children and Family Services sent a letter to Ken Feinberg, the federal government's oil-spill compensation czar, informing him that BP has slashed its payments to 40,000 Gulf Coast residents who have taken an economic hit from the disaster. This morning, BP issued a statement saying that news reports citing the 40,000 figure were inaccurate; the actual number, it said, was 4,000. 

Those news reports got their stats right out of the DCFS letter to Feinberg. So where did DCFS get the 40,000 figure? From BP. "It was in a face-to-face meeting," Trey Williams, DCFS's communications director, told me after I read him BP's statement. (BP sent it to me after repeated requests for comment; Williams hadn't yet heard from the company.) When I pointed out that it seemed that BP was implying the DCFS people present at that meeting had misheard, he thought that was pretty funny, in a sad and frustrating way.

BP spokesman John Curry says he doesn't know whether the company originally gave DCFS a bad estimate or if DCFS just misunderstood. Either way, he says, "We've taken a look, and it's only about 4,000 that will be affected." The company says it is only cutting off claimants who haven't turned in required paperwork.

ASUNCIÓN, Jul 14, 2010 (IPS) - A year ago, Ramona Pereira was stuck with humdrum domestic drudgery in a rural village in Paraguay. Now she is the leader of a committee of women dairy producers in her community, and at 38 she feels like a new woman.

"This is where I work," Pereira told IPS with a mixture of pride and shyness, as she opened the door to the small dairy in Aveiro, a village 40 kilometres southeast of the capital city, near the town of Itá.

The "tambo", the term used in the southern cone of South America for a small dairy farm which sells unpackaged milk directly, is run by a partnership of a dozen women working in three shifts.

These women mow and chop hay and mix it with a supplement to provide balanced nutrition for the cows. They milk the cows twice a day, feed them and keep the community "tambo" spic and span, as well as selling the surplus milk that their families do not consume to neighbouring villagers.

Every day they strive to strengthen their committee, named "Jaikove Porlâ Rekávo" ("Aiming for Wellbeing") in Guaraní, which is spoken by 94 percent of Paraguayans and is an official language, alongside Spanish. The committee was created in August 2009 by 30 women from Aveiro, ultimately reduced to 12 partners, all of whom have children.

Next time you're tempted to pour leftover cooking oil down the sink, think again. A team of British sewer flushers is up against what they describe as "solid wall of fat" under London's Leicester square, the result of years of careless flushing by the city's inhabitants.

Thames Water, the company responsible for London sewers, estimates that over 1,000 tonnes of fat and waste are being removed from under Leicester Square, "enough to fill nine London Double Decker buses". According to the company, the build-up, which they nickname "fatbergs",  is the result of accumulated "sewer abuse": when anything other than water, human waste or toilet paper is put down drains. The company has launched a new campaign, "Bin it, don't Block it", to highlight the scale of the problem.

If you've ever had cooking fat solidify in your kitchen sink, you'll know how hard the stuff is to get rid of. Imagine the muck multiplied by several thousands, and you'll get an idea of how colossal - and stomach-turning - the cleanup mission is. 

Europe's targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions should be drastically toughened, three of the European Union's most powerful member states say today in a surprise development that will leave businesses fuming.

Ministers from Germany, France and the UK come together for the first time in the Financial Times to call for the EU to slash emissions by 30 per cent by 2020, instead of the current 20 per cent target.

They say moving to the higher target unilaterally would not be difficult and would prevent Europe from lagging behind in the global race for green technology.

"If we stick to a 20 per cent cut, Europe is likely to lose the race to compete in a low-carbon world to countries such as China, Japan or the US, all of which are looking to create a more attractive environment for low-carbon investment," the ministers said.

WASHINGTON -- At the government's insistence, BP postponed crucial testing last night on its most recent effort to cap the well that's been gushing oil and gas into the Gulf of Mexico for nearly three months.

....

Although the decision was not specifically prompted by information they've gleaned from a seismic survey in recent days, the results of that survey will be used as they review their options and determine whether to move forward.

The team working on the well doesn't know what condition it's in, BP's senior vice president, Kent Wells, said this morning in a technical briefing. If there's a weakness in the underground pipe, "the integrity loss could be in numerous different places," Wells said, and they'd have little way of knowing exactly where pressure was being relieved.

If the problems are far below the ocean floor, that's less of problem than if there's pressure higher up in the well, more toward the ocean floor. Their fear is that if it is higher up in the well, Wells said, it could put pressure in a place that allows oil to breach the pipe and leak oil to the surface.

....

Rep. Ed Markey, who heads the Energy and Environment Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, sent a letter to Allen calling for BP to release information about the integrity of the wellbore and potential sea floor leaks "in light of the delayed attempt to conduct pressure tests on the new containment cap system."

Pascagoula, Miss. -- Robert Downs leads the scientists who sniff at fish.

Each day, his team of seven sensory experts dip their noses into large Pyrex bowls of snapper, tuna and other raw seafood to test for even a whiff of the pungent oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.

....

"We use specific terms for the aroma," said Downs, who supervises the seafood smellers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's marine lab here. "Diesel oil. Bunker oil. Asphalt. Rubber-band-like. Tar."

Each olfactory analyst has a super schnoz, able to smell oil diluted to one part per million. That's 40 times more sensitive than your average proboscis.

It's also more sensitive than science can explain. Last month, the team caught a faint scent in a red snapper that chemists and toxicologists could not confirm despite three days of testing at an NOAA marine science lab in Seattle. The result: A rich fishing area off Louisiana's coast stayed off-limits.

"The nose knows," Downs said.

A woman's body shape may influence how good her memory is, according to US researchers.

Although carrying excess weight anywhere appears to impair older women's brains, carrying it on the hips may make matters worse, they say.

The Northwestern Medicine team found "apple-shaped" women fared better than "pears" on cognitive tests.

But depositing fat around the waist increases the risk of cancer, diabetes and heart disease, experts warn.

BOGOTÁ, Jul 13, 2010 (IPS) - In Colombia, western medicine has nearly succeeded in pushing midwives -- "parteras" or "comadronas," as they are known in Spanish -- out of existence. But some tenacious practitioners are pushing for a law to formalise the role of midwife as a health worker.

"Through 2009 and so far in 2010, there have been no deaths of women attended by a member of the United Midwives of the Pacific Association," said Liceth Quiñones, 22, who works as a midwife in Buenaventura, the principal Colombian port on the Pacific coast.

Daughter of 60-year-old midwife Rosmilda Quiñones, Liceth was three in 1991 when her mother founded the association, which she still heads. With the acronym ASOPARUPA, it has 250 members in the western departments (provinces) of Chocó, Valle, Cauca and Nariño.

At six, Liceth was already assisting her mother. "Midwifery is learned through the oral tradition and through practice," she explained to IPS. When she was 13 she recognised when a placenta did not come out completely and knew it was urgent to get the mother and newborn to the hospital.

BERLIN, Jul 14, 2010 (IPS) - The failed "war on drugs" has not only badly damaged countries where it is waged, it is responsible for driving up HIV infection rates in some countries, says an official declaration endorsed Wednesday by three former Latin American presidents in advance of the XVIII International AIDS Conference that begins Jul. 18 in Vienna.

In Eastern Europe and Central Asia, injecting drug use is the primary cause of new HIV infections. Outside of sub- Saharan Africa, injecting drug use accounts for approximately one in three new cases of HIV, experts will report at the week-long meeting.

"The war on drugs has failed...Instead of sticking to failed policies with disastrous consequences, we must direct our efforts to the reduction of consumption and the reduction of the harm caused by drugs to people and society," said former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

"Repressive policies are firmly rooted in prejudices, fears and ideological visions. The way forward to safeguard human rights, security and health is a strategy of peace not war," said Cardoso.

Cardoso, along with former presidents Ernesto Zedillo of México and César Gaviria of Colombia, have endorsed the Vienna Declaration that lists a range of harms stemming from the war on drugs, and notes that the criminalisation of people who use drugs has resulted in record high incarceration rates, placing a massive burden on taxpayers.

There's a by-election in Walsall tomorrow. The Conservative candidate has either reproduced a leaflet from May, or misprinted the leaflet and bodged two important amendments. If you look at the black blotches on the page you will see two things.

Circumventability, then, is a sign of a sensible paywall, not a sign of a badly-designed one. People will get around any paywall if they really want -- just pasting the headline into Google News will often work fine. Newspapers shouldn't worry about the people who do that; instead, they should be flattered. And spend their efforts instead on improving their relationships with their paying customers.

he RIAA's "business plan" is even worse than I'd guessed it was.

The RIAA paid Holmes Roberts & Owen $9,364,901 in 2008, Jenner & Block more than $7,000,000, and Cravath Swain & Moore $1.25 million, to pursue its "copyright infringement" claims, in order to recover a mere $391,000. [ps there were many other law firms feeding at the trough too; these were just the ones listed among the top 5 independent contractors.]

Embarrassing.

If you're looking for a textbook example of how not to use social media, it's your lucky day. Gillian McKeith - nutritionist, television presenter, celebrity poo enthusiast  - has given a lesson that should be taught in primary schools.

Even if they never figure out how to turn Foursquare into a profitable enterprise, they have a real shot at offloading it on Google or stock market investors, at least if history as any guide. Think of the pre-profit payment to Foursquare's co-founders, then, as a reward for their ability to talk people out of their money.

Read more...

Possibly related PR:
Feb 2010
Mar 2010
Jul 2010

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

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george needs a new manager...

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

France striker Thierry Henry has signed for New York Red Bulls, the Major League Soccer (MLS) team announced on Wednesday.
 
The Red Bulls said that 32-year-old Henry, who will quit Barcelona, has signed a "multi-year" contract with the club.

Henry will be joining England's David Beckham and Sweden's Freddie Ljungberg in taking his career "across the pond". As with these other European players, Henry will not be restricted by the strict MLS salary cap.

"It is without question that Thierry Henry is one of the most successful and recognisable soccer players over the past 15 years," said Red Bulls Global Soccer boss Dietmar Beiersdorfer.

Female members of the Czech parliament have posed for a glamorous calendar to highlight the growing presence of women in Czech politics.

The 2011 calendar features four women MPs from the Public Affairs party wearing little in the way of clothing in a series of images that dispatch the traditional image of staid and serious parliamentarians. The country returned its highest ever number of women MPs at the last general election.

Two other women, one the party's candidate for the mayor of Prague, make up the numbers, with each politician photographed twice for the calendar, which will be sold for charity.

LOL

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

Stare at Boobs for Longer Life

Frankfurt, Germany, December 6 -- A rather bizarre study carried out by German researchers suggests that staring at women's breasts is good for men's health and increases their life expectancy.
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She added, "Just 10 minutes of staring at the charms of a well-endowed female, is roughly equivalent to a 30-minute aerobics work-out."

We at the editorial board of this comment take note that yes, that's the word "she" above; the intensive research program (of which we're a lifelong member) was run by a woman doctor, likely with breasts.

We also note that the study was conducted in Frankfurt, with a higher percentage of financial professionals likely skewing the results.

In Wales and other ET'ers are possibly aware that some of the pioneering research in this crucial area has been conducted on Parisian subways, or on pub crawls, with surprising results.  Now confirmed.

The ET editorial cabal should of course take note that no jpegs of the subject matter were linked to in the creation of this comment.

Skennah Kowa