LONDON, Jul 21, 2010 (IPS) - German Chancellor Angel Merkel's weekend visit to China has put a positive spin on the increasingly complex economic relations between China and the European Union, but the flurry of deals signed has not disguised the fact that Beijing faces challenges over its EU policies both at home and abroad.

Beijing's stated commitment to continue investing in euro-denominated assets is being challenged by a vocal lobby of domestic critics who clamour China's piles of foreign exchange reserves should be put to better use. And the government's ambitions to nurture national champion companies coupled with restrictions placed on foreign businesses in China are now receiving daily attacks from Western politicians and executives.

Displeasure over China's post-crisis policies towards foreign businesses was voiced long before Merkel arrived in Beijing. First it was U.S. President Obama who took up the issue by calling for a level-playing field for U.S. business operating in China. Last week British Foreign Secretary William Hague pressed the matter when meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi.

Hague said businesses in the European Union were increasingly worried over the way Chinese officials were enforcing regulations and the way indigenous innovation rules were impeding market entry for foreign companies.

A UN war crimes court has ordered the former prime minister of Kosovo to face a retrial two years after he was acquitted on charges of murder, torture and rape.

The president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugolsavia (ICTY) said the original trial of Ramush Haradinaj was hampered by witness intimidation.

The exhumation follows a request from Ceausescu's family, who have questioned whether the couple were really buried in the Ghencea cemetery in Bucharest.

Nicolae Ceausescu ruled Romania from 1965 until he was toppled in the 1989 revolution.

He was caught and executed with his wife after the couple tried to flee.

A Bosnian court has jailed a man for 10 years for taking part in the massacre of 8,000 people at Srebrenica in 1995.

Marko Boskic, 46, was found guilty of crimes against humanity after confessing his role in the killings. Prosecutors said in mitigation that he gave "important information" that will help in prosecuting others.

Angela Merkel adopted her most relaxed and friendly manner when speaking to the press on Wednesday, fielding questions on a variety of subjects in her traditional pre-summer holiday press conference.

Despite terrible opinion poll ratings - if elections were held this week, the governing coalition of Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) would receive only 34 percent of the vote - Merkel drew positive conclusions from the government's first ten months in office.

The leader of a Kurdish rebel group engaged in a guerrilla war with Turkey has told the BBC it is willing to disarm in return for greater political and cultural rights for Turkey's Kurds.

The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) is designated a terrorist organisation by Turkey, as well as the EU and US.

If an agreement were reached, it would bring an end to a 26-year-old conflict.

The deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, was under pressure today after a series of gaffes in the House of Commons forced the government to issue clarifications on Iraq and immigration policy.

Downing Street distanced itself from Clegg's stance on the invasion of Iraq after the Liberal Democrat leader declared it "illegal" at prime minister's questions.

In a further blow to the deputy PM, the Home Office was forced to clarify remarks he made about the future of the Yarl's Wood detention centre.

Den deutschen Finanzbehörden ist eine weitere Steuer-CD mit Angaben über deutsche Kunden einer Liechtensteiner Bank angeboten worden. Sie wurde bereits vor Monaten der schleswig-holsteinischen Finanzverwaltung offeriert und soll die Daten von Hunderten mutmaßlichen Steuerhinterziehern tragen, die bei der Liechtensteinischen Landesbank (LLB) ihr Geld vor dem Fiskus versteckt hatten.

Das gespeicherte Anlagevolumen soll etwa eine halbe Milliarde Euro betragen. Die Datensammlung aus dem zweitgrößten Liechtensteinischen Geldhaus soll aus jüngerer Zeit stammen. Kiel will die CD nach einer Stichproben-Analyse angeblich kaufen. Dies ist bereits mit dem Bundesfinanzministerium besprochen worden. Die endgültige Zusage zum Kauf steht noch aus.

Strage di pecore e capre in Val d'Ultimo, in Alto Adige, ad opera di un lupo e di un orso sconfinati dal Trentino. In particolare, nella zona piu' prossima alla val di Rabbi un lupo avrebbe attaccato e ucciso negli ultimi giorni 11 pecore e 2 capre, valutazione confermata dai guardacaccia di Merano. Sui monti sopra San Pancrazio si muove invece un orso, che avrebbe ucciso non meno di 3 pecore, mentre altri ovini sono ancora dispersi. Numerosi anche gli alveari distrutt

Die Höllenfahrten in überhitzten ICE-Zügen waren womöglich noch schlimmer als geschätzt: Interne Messungen der Bahn sollen Temperaturen von mehr als 70 Grad ergeben haben.

Bei der kürzlichen Klimaanlagen-Panne hat die Deutsche Bahn einem Medienbericht zufolge in ihren ICE-Zügen Temperaturen von bis zu über 70 Celsius gemessen. Dies gehe aus einer "internen Störfallanalyse" des Konzerns hervor, berichtet das ZDF-Magazin Frontal 21 in seiner heutigen Sendung.

An officer who was filmed apparently pushing a man to the ground during the G20 protests will not face charges over his death.

Ian Tomlinson, 47, died minutes after being caught up in the clashes on 1 April 2009 in the City of London.

Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer said the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) concluded that "there was no realistic prospect of conviction".

The incident and its aftermath was caught on amateur video.

Mr Starmer said that there was a "sharp disagreement between the medical experts" about the cause of death, which led to three post-mortem examinations being conducted on Mr Tomlinson.

The BNP leader's invitation to the Royal event had caused controversy with many of his critics claiming he should never have been invited.

Now, the Palace has issued a statement barring the far right politician for "overtly using his personal invitation for party political purposes".

A spokeswoman said the decision to deny him access was taken this morning.

It is understood the Queen decided to withdraw his ticket after he posted a blog calling for suggestions on what he should say to Her Majesty.

Mr Griffin described the decision as "an outrage" and "thoroughly anti-British".

The International Court of Justice has found that Kosovo's declaration of independence did not violate international law.
The top UN court began the announcement of its advisory opinion at 3pm today, and it is expected to conclude its remarks at 6pm.

Earlier today two well placed sources told Balkan Insight that nine out of 14 judges considering the International Court of Justice's case on whether Kosovo's declaration of independence was legal voted in favour of the view that the move `does not run counter to international law'.

Four from the 15-strong panel, which includes the chairman, voted against and one abstained, according to two diplomats working for different international organisations in Pristina.

One source told Balkan Insight that Belgrade had been informed yesterday.

Balkan Insight has been unable to independently verify this information.

BERLIN, Jul 20, 2010 (IPS) - More than three years after the start of the financial crisis that brought the world economy to the brink of collapse, the governments of industrialised countries are still struggling to reach a consensus on the minimum regulation required for the operations of international banks and hedge funds.

This was confirmed just ahead of the meeting of the Group of Twenty (G-20) in Toronto last month, a summit of the world's largest economies, including several developing countries, like India, Brazil and Indonesia, and the European Union (EU).

Even though the EU agreed to propose at the summit the introduction of a tax on international financial transactions, also called Tobin tax, this scheme was not approved at the meeting. Canadian minister of finance Jim Flaherty told the press ahead of the meeting: "I can assure you that the majority of the G- 20 is opposed to this tax."

The German finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, also excluded the possibility of Germany alone raising the tax. At a press conference in Berlin late last month, he contended that the EU collectively must raise the tax.

The German government is the main supporter of the Tobin tax in Europe. Most European countries except Britain support a tax on financial transactions. Britain opposes it vehemently, arguing that the tax would raise costs of financial operations, compelling operators to operators to move their base of operation elsewhere.

WASHINGTON -- U.S. President Barack Obama signed into law the most sweeping financial regulatory overhaul since the Great Depression Wednesday, saying that the new laws will foster innovation, not hamper it.

Speaking at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C., Wednesday morning, Obama noted that over the past two years the nation has faced the worst recession since the Great Depression, with millions of Americans losing their jobs and watching the value of their retirement savings decline.

Loss-making coal mines across the EU will have to close over the next four years, the European Commission says.

State subsidies for such mines will only be allowed if a closure plan is in place. Production subsidies are to be replaced by social and environmental aid for affected areas.

Baidu Inc., operator of China's most popular online search engine, reported second-quarter profit that beat analysts' estimates as a censorship dispute with Chinese regulators hampered main rival Google Inc.

Net income for the three months ended June more than doubled to 837.4 million yuan ($123.6 million), or 2.40 yuan per American depositary receipt, Baidu said today in a statement. That exceeded the 710.4 million yuan average of 14 analysts' estimates compiled by Bloomberg. In the year-earlier period, Baidu's profit was 383.3 million yuan, or 1.10 yuan per ADR.

Baidu gained advertisers from Google after the U.S. company shut its China-based search site in March and redirected local users offshore to avoid censorship rules in the world's biggest online market. The Beijing-based company's stock has climbed 78 percent in U.S. trading this year, making it the best performer in the Morgan Stanley Internet Index.

"We believe the market-share gain for Baidu versus the market-share loss for Google is likely related to Google China's partial exit [!]," Citigroup Inc. analyst Alicia Yap wrote in a July 19 report. The changes in Google's China site "caused increasingly bad user experiences," according to Yap.

Read more...

Even as Bernanke is receiving his last minute briefing on what to say (everything, EVERYTHING, is good) and what to play dumb on (explaining the price of gold for example), a new report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research concludes that digging ourselves out of the current unemployment hole, which is 7.5 million less people having jobs than did in December 2007, will take at least 4 years, and not occur prior to March 2014. However, this assumes a flat working-age population, something the Fed would love to be the case. Alas, the country is growing: and if one incorporates the effects of labor force growth into the above analysis, as the CEPR authors have done using CBO projections, then we may have a much larger problem on our hands: the study concludes that taking into account the approximately 14 million new job seekers in the future, then the December 2007 unemployment rate will not be met until April 2021! Welcome to the new normal. Of course, both of these analyses assume that the economy will immediately commence growing and generating jobs at the recovery rate seen in the 2000s, when about 166,000 jobs per month were being added. With every month that this does not happen the 2021 date will continue being pushed out further into the future. Perhaps one of the Senators today can ask a question of Bernanke just how he plans on reconciling this glaringly simple explanation for why the US economy will be underwater for a period of over a decade.

However, it would not be inconceivable for birth rates to go down and infant deaths to increase over this period. That would warm the hearts of Malthusians.

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

The common thought amongst even reasonably educated and economically literate Americans is that China is 'stuck with US Treasuries' and has no choice, so it must perform within the status quo and do as the US wishes, or face a ruinous decline in their reserve holdings of US Treasuries.

And with real short term US Treasury interest rates decidedly negative, meaning that it is costing you money to hold dollars, there is a case to be made that there are a lot of 'price takers' out there in this world. Wow, they are just that good, aren't they. Having their heyday in a genuine deflation. A subtle tax levied on all holders of US dollars, probably more significant because of the official understantement of inflation. Yo, come git some.

I think China is already diversifying their reserve portfolio, and more stealthily and effectively than one would imagine. Further, I suspect that through the use of hedging short positions and derivatives such as Credit Default Swaps, China would be able to cover a greater portion of its reserves than the common mind might allow. And if this is in reality one theater in a global struggle for power, sacrificing a pawn or two, and even a bishop, would be a small price to pay to bring down the world's remaining superpower, as indirectly and gracefully as is possible. War is never cheaply waged.

It would most certainly be a nuclear option to outright dump Treasuries outright, and would raise the ire of what is still a formidable military power. But it is the Western mind that is so incapable of seeing the many shades of gray in every situation, the subtle gradations in a range of choices that I believe China not only sees but is already actively pursuing.

Exhibit A from Jesse's post:

China rating agency condemns rivals  Financial Times

The head of China's largest credit rating agency has slammed his western counterparts for causing the global financial crisis and said that as the world's largest creditor nation China should have a bigger say in how governments and their debt are rated.

"The western rating agencies are politicised and highly ideological and they do not adhere to objective standards," Guan Jianzhong, chairman of Dagong Global Credit Rating, told the Financial Times in an interview. "China is the biggest creditor nation in the world and with the rise and national rejuvenation of China we should have our say in how the credit risks of states are judged."

....

"The financial crisis was caused because rating agencies didn't properly disclose risk and this brought the entire US financial system to the verge of collapse, causing huge damage to the US and its strategic interests," Mr Guan said.

....

"The US is insolvent and faces bankruptcy as a pure debtor nation but the rating agencies still give it high rankings ," Mr Guan said. "Actually, the huge military expenditure of the US is not created by themselves but comes from borrowed money, which is not sustainable."

Jesse's conclusion:

China is not the only country that resents the devastating frauds that the US has perpetrated on not only its own people but the rest of the world through its Wall Street banks and ratings agencies.

Most Americans overlook this developing estrangement that is beginning to isolate the US and UK from even their traditional allies in Europe and South America and Asia. This is a serious error, but so typical of the short term mentality dominated by greed, dishonesty, and self-delusion that captured the American psyche in the latter part of The New American Century. But what choice does Europe have except to take what the Anglo-Americans serve them. Take it or leave it. And ain't currency war hell?

It never pays to have a 'checkerboard mentality' when your opponent is playing Go."

If you enjoyed how well the Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium Model employed by US mainstream economists guided us through the ongoing Great Clusterfuck you will really enjoy how it plays when our greatest creditor China employs its own "rational expectations". Who knows. They might even hire Goldman to advise them.

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

"We three were each asked to sign the letter organized by Sir Harold Evans and now co-signed by many of our friends, including Joseph Stiglitz, Robert Reich, Laura Tyson, Derek Shearer, Alan Blinder and Richard Parker. We support the central objective of the letter -- a full employment policy now, based on sharply expanded public effort. Yet we each, separately, declined to sign it.

Our reservations centered on one sentence, namely, "We recognize the necessity of a program to cut the mid-and long-term federal deficit..." Since we do not agree with this statement, we could not sign the letter.

Why do we disagree with this statement? The answer is that apart from the effects of unemployment itself the United States does not in fact face a serious deficit problem over the next generation, and for this reason there is no "necessity [for] a program to cut the mid-and long-term deficit."

On the contrary: If unemployment can be cured, the deficits we presently face will necessarily shrink. This is the universal experience of rapid economic growth: tax revenues rise, public welfare spending falls, and the budget moves toward balance. There is indeed no other experience in modern peacetime American history, most recently in the late 1990s when the budget went into surplus as full employment was reached.

We agree that health care costs are an important issue. But health care is a burden faced by both the public and private sectors, and cost control is a job for health policy, not budget policy. Cutting the public element in health care - Medicare, especially - in response to the health care cost problem is just a way of invidiously targeting the elderly who are covered by that program. We oppose this.

Yes, shale gas is there, but it is expensive to produce, and there is much, much less of it available at today's low prices than policy people, investors, and energy consumers are counting on. It is not a cheap and simple way to replace coal (in America), or Russian gas supplies (in Europe). I am, however, humbled in the presence of the marketing genius of the promoters who have convinced so many people to buy the story.

European regulators plan to detail three scenarios when they publish the results of their stress tests on the region's banks this week, according to a document by the Committee of European Banking Supervisors.

Banks will publish their estimated Tier 1 capital ratios under a benchmark for 2011, an adverse scenario and a third test that includes "sovereign shock," according to a template prepared by CEBS for the banks and obtained by Bloomberg News.

In the last scenario, banks will publish their estimated losses on sovereign debt held in their trading book as well as "additional impairment losses on the banking book" that they may suffer after a sovereign debt crisis, according to the document dated July 15.

First it was Indonesia, then South Korea. Inspired by the strength of an Asian recovery that has left the western developed world standing, regional central bankers are challenging old Western orthodoxies, and are embracing once dreaded capital controls.
...
It is no surprise this newest trend is gaining force in Asia, as global liquidity from developed countries sloshes into the region and central bankers, increasingly concerned about controlling rising inflation and looming asset bubbles, look for a policy toolkit to control these inflows. Thailand's central bank governor is just the latest to publicly challenge the status quo.

It makes little sense arguing about the BDI without taking into account the blizzard of dire data from the US over recent weeks, and the turn in the OECD leading indicators for China, India, Brazil, France, Italy, the UK, and Canada - ie, the world economy minus Germany (which is a special case with a rigged currency).

China's campaign of lending curbs to cool the property sector are starting to bite... There was sharp slowdown in Chinese industrial output in tail-end of Q2. Baoshan Iron and Steel has cut steel prices for the last two months, and China Steel Corp (in Taiwan) followed this week. Lloyd's List has reported warnings that some Chinese steel makers may default on contracts with shippers.

When the US Federal Reserve reveals suddenly that it may abandon its exit strategy and resort instead to another blitz of stimulus - ie, QE2 - it is surely worth asking why. Leaving aside the collapse in the ECRI leading indicator last week to -9.8 (a level that has always preceded recession in the post-war era, but may of course be wrong this time because we are in a zero-rate, mega-stimulus, fin de regime, total upheaval that makes any comparison with past cycles meaningless), there are some hard facts.

BANGKOK, Jul 21, 2010 (IPS) - Thanks to a loophole in the international regime to control the proliferation of nuclear weapons, military-ruled Burma could very well carry out its reported intent to go nuclear behind a veil of secrecy, free of scrutiny from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

That is the privilege the South-east Asian nation enjoys under the Small Quantities Protocol it signed with the Vienna-based IAEA in April 1995, three years after Burma, also known as Myanmar, became party to the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

This protocol allows parties to the treaty, which seeks to build a global nuclear non-proliferation regime, to have up to 10 tonnes of natural uranium and 2.2 pounds of plutonium without having to report such possessions to the IAEA.

This means also that countries like Burma do not have to open their doors to IAEA inspection teams and can avoid disclosing details about new nuclear facilities until six months before these start operations.

It is of little wonder, then, why a former IAEA director is urging Burma to clear the air about its reported nuclear plans by becoming a party to the Additional Protocol of the NPT, which gives the IAEA more powers to inspect nuclear activity in a country.

AP - President Omar al-Bashir arrived in Chad onWednesday for an African summit, the first time Sudan's leader has risked arrest by traveling to a member state of the International Criminal Court.

Bashir faces charges of genocide and crimes against humanity for atrocities committed in Darfur. Because Chad is a member of the ICC, it could have Bashir arrested, but Sudan's government spokesman indicated he did not think that would happen.

The United States will impose new sanctions on North Korea in a bid to stem its nuclear weapons ambitions, Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, said.

Clinton said the measures were designed to stamp out illegal money-making ventures used to fund the nuclear programme.

BAQUBA: A car bomb near a mosque in the city of Baquba, north of Baghdad, killed 28 people and wounded 46 on Wednesday, security officials said.

The bomb in a car parked near a Shia mosque in the city exploded at around 1500 GMT, an official from Baquba Operations Command said.

Police have imposed a curfew in the city's Abu Sayeeda neighbourhood as they suspect there may be more bombs in the area, the official said.

NEW YORK - Hedge fund mogul Jeffrey Epstein becomes a free man today, five years after he was first accused of sexually abusing underage girls. After months of reporting, The Daily Beast's Conchita Sarnoff reveals exclusive details of the investigation and the legal wrangling that saved him from a long prison term. She reports:

Honduras: The headlines in many newspapers across Central America ... pronounced Wednesday morning that Honduras was "approved to reincorporate itself into SICA [Central American Integration System]".

But is that really true? The Presidents of all the Central American countries except Nicaragua met in El Salvador and reportedly issued a proclamation urging the OAS to rapidly reincorporate Honduras back into the OAS. That would be news, but of course, is not the same thing as being reincorporated into SICA.

Economist Intelligence Unit - According to a household survey conducted by the Puerto Rican Department of Labor, unemployment rose in April to an all-time high of 16.9% (221,000 people), compared with 14.3% in December 2009 and 13.1% in December 2008, indicating a worsening trend. (...) Although stimulus funds will continue to flow throughout 2010, it is unlikely that these will be able to boost economic activity, private consumption and employment as [Puerto Rico Governor] Mr. [Luis] Fortuño had first promised. This will complicate the government's plans to implement highly unpopular measures necessary to reduce fiscal imbalances. Thus far Mr Fortuño has avoided a government shutdown (as occurred in May 2006 when the government could not meet payroll costs) in part by cutting 30,000 public-sector jobs, but as the recession lingers there will be little political appetite for similar measures. Although Mr Fortuño has put forward a slightly smaller budget for 2010/11, political pressures and a poor revenue outlook will preclude any significant fiscal improvements. After rising above 5% of GNP in 2008/09, the Economist Intelligence Unit expects the fiscal deficit to remain above 4% of GNP in the forecast period.

Africa faces a mounting number of disasters, such as floods, drought, food security and the spread of diseases, but must also deal with the likely impact of global climate change that could intensify these problems.

To help tackle these tragic threats to Africa's human and economic well-being, space-based technologies are being identified.

Nearly a 100 decision-makers and senior experts on disaster-risk management from African countries, Europe, the Middle East and America met July 6-9 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

This notable gathering of officials was organized by the United Nations Platform for Space-based Information for Disaster Management and Emergency Response, known as UN-SPIDER together with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) with support of the Government of Austria and in cooperation with Secure World Foundation.

The UN ECA called for more use of space-based technologies in Africa.

The size and number of marine dead zones-areas where the deep water is so low in dissolved oxygen that sea creatures can't survive-have grown explosively in the past half-century. Red circles on this map show the location and size of many of our planet's dead zones. Black dots show where dead zones have been observed, but their size is unknown.

It's no coincidence that dead zones occur downriver of places where human population density is high (darkest brown). Some of the fertilizer we apply to crops is washed into streams and rivers. Fertilizer-laden runoff triggers explosive planktonic algae growth in coastal areas.

The algae die and rain down into deep waters, where their remains are like fertilizer for microbes. The microbes decompose the organic matter, using up the oxygen. Mass killing of fish and other sea life often results.

Satellites can observe changes in the way the ocean surface reflects and absorbs sunlight when the water holds a lot of particles of organic matter. Darker blues in this image show higher concentrations of particulate organic matter, an indication of the overly fertile waters that can culminate in dead zones.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory is partnering with the National Science Foundation to illustrate the usefulness of renewable energy in the most extreme climate conditions on Planet Earth. While summer reigns supreme in North America, faraway American outposts hibernate in the undying dark of an Antarctic winter. There, wind energy systems are currently helping to power research stations by capturing energy embedded in the polar winds. In the polar summer, when Antarctica trades endless night for endless sunshine, solar panels will take their turn

Chinese officials have warned of a severe threat to wildlife from one of the country's worst reported oil spills as an army of volunteers was dispatched to beaches to try to head off the black tides.

At least one man has drowned in crude during the clean-up operation, which has expanded as the area of the slick has doubled in size despite earlier government assurances that it was being contained and posed no risk to ecologically sensitive areas.

Loss-making coal mines across the EU will have to close over the next four years, the European Commission says.

State subsidies for such mines will only be allowed if a closure plan is in place. Production subsidies are to be replaced by social and environmental aid for affected areas.

The new regulation targets hard coal - not lignite (brown coal).

Most subsidies go to mines in Germany's Ruhr region, north-west Spain and Romania's Jiu Valley.

The UN is considering reducing the number of countries involved in faltering international climate talks in an effort to push through a deal.

In a document published yesterday, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) outlined the idea among back-up plans if stalled talks fail to produce a successor to the Kyoto protocol, which expires in 2012.

Countries which are party to the Kyoto protocol in June asked the UN climate secretariat to report on legal options to avoid a political vacuum or gap. Legal remedies to avoiding a gap focus on tweaks to the treaty, such as cutting the number of countries required to approve any new targets or extending the existing caps to 2013 or 2014, the UN document said.

BP acknowledges it posted on its website an altered photo that exaggerates the activity at its Gulf oil spill command centre in Houston.

The picture posted over the weekend showed workers monitoring a bank of 10 giant video screens displaying underwater images.

The spokesman Scott Dean said yesterday that three screens were blank in the original picture and a staff photographer used Photoshop software to add images.

PETERSBURG, Neb., Jul 21, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- State and local officials and community leaders attended a ceremonial groundbreaking held today for the Laredo Ridge Wind project near Petersburg.

The project was developed by Midwest Wind Energy, LLC of Chicago and is owned and operated by Laredo Ridge Wind, LLC, an affiliate of Edison Mission Group (EMG) of Irvine, Calif., a subsidiary of Edison International /quotes/comstock/13*!eix/quotes/nls/eix (EIX 32.30, -0.70, -2.11%) . All of the electricity produced at the site will be sold under a 20-year contract to the Nebraska Public Power District (NPPD).

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- President Cristina Fernandez signed a new law Wednesday making Argentina the first country in Latin America to legalize marriage for same-sex couples.

Civil registries across the nation will now begin processing long lists of marriage applications from gay couples. The first such ceremony in Buenos Aires is set for Aug. 13.

"Today we are a society that is a little more egalitarian than last week," Fernandez said at the signing ceremony.

Representatives of groups for gays and lesbians cheered, crying out "Equality, equality!"

"In the past, it was thought that one of the selective advantages of having a large brain is that it facilitates the development of new behaviour to respond to the ecological challenges that the individual has not experienced before, such as a sudden reduction in food or the appearance of a new predator ", Cesar Gonzalez-Lagos, main author of the study and researcher at the Centre of Ecological Research and Forestry Applications (CREAF) associated with the Autonomous University of Barcelona, highlights to SINC.

The results, which are published in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology, reveal that "species which have developed large brains live for longer than those with small brains, as the protective brain theory suggests, and therefore, can reproduce more times", the researcher stresses.

If the animal is protected by a large brain, this results in greater survival and a longer life. "However until recently there has been little evidence and there had been no agreement on whether species with larger brains live longer", the scientist points out.

According to this hypothesis, the brain would adopt a "protective" role which would help to reduce mortality and lengthen the reproductive live of the individuals, thereby compensating the energetic and development costs associated with a large brain.

The evidence is correlative, not cause-effect

KUALA LUMPUR, Jul 21, 2010 (IPS) - The prospect of motherhood filled 17-year-old Fatimah's heart with dread.

This, the Muslim youngster told the magistrate she appeared before in March, is why she left her newborn baby to die in a garbage bag here in the Malaysian capital four months ago. "I feared punishment and condemnation from my family and teachers in college," said Fatimah (not her real name).

The teenage mother was charged with abandoning her baby - a crime in this moderate Muslim-majority country, whose public has been increasingly worried by a spate of media reports police finding dead or alive newborn babies in trash bins and public places, including convenience stores.

"I had nowhere to go. I hid the pregnancy by wearing loose clothes," Fatimah told the court when her case came up for trial in May. In the end, Fatimah, whose relationship with her boyfriend had ended, delivered a baby girl on the stairs of a shop, alone.

In Jerusalem, lying your way into a woman's bed can get you in big trouble. A court has convicted an Arab man of "rape by deception" and sentenced him to 18 months in prison after he posed as a Jew in order to have sex with a Jewish woman.

The details of the case are vague and bizarre: After a chance meeting, in which 30-year-old Sabbar Kashur introduced himself as "Daniel," apparently as a way of  tricking the woman into thinking he was Jewish, the pair stole away to a nearby office building and had sex. He left before she could even get dressed (which, you know, violates common decency but not any actual laws), but after the fact she somehow discovered that he wasn't Jewish. (Cue the politically incorrect jokes.) In the final ruling, Jerusalem District Court Judge Tzvi Segal wrote: "If she hadn't thought the accused was a Jewish bachelor interested in a serious romantic relationship, she would not have cooperated." 

HARTFORD, Conn. -- A federal judge in Connecticut has ruled competitive cheerleading is not an official sport for schools looking for ways to meet gender-equity requirements.

U.S. District Judge Stefan Underhill said competitive cheerleading is too underdeveloped.

The ruling comes in a lawsuit filed by members of the volleyball team at Quinnipiac University. The players sued after the school announced last year that it would eliminate the team for budgetary reasons.

Astronomers have found one of the heaviest stars ever seen, helping to answer a question that has been a mystery for a century: just how big can stars get?

A story posted on the Daily Star about a brand-new Grand Theft Auto game based on real-life killer Raoul Moat has been pulled following an uproar over the fact that the U.K. news site made the whole thing up.

Sometimes it seems like the videogame industry just can't catch a break. Take, for instance, this story posted by the Daily Star with the blaring headline, "Raoul Moat: Videogame, Film and Book Plans Cause Fury." Moat, for those who don't know, was a 37-year-old U.K. man who shot his ex-girlfriend, killed her new partner and then shot and critically wounded a police officer before killing himself a few days later during a standoff with police. And while tragic, it would have nothing whatsoever to do with our little world of digital entertainment except for the efforts of the Daily Star, which dug up a fake cover for Grand Theft Auto Rothbury and proclaimed that work on the game was already underway.

Recently, I had the good fortune to be invited by NPR to submit an essay on a favorite thriller of mine. I decided to write about George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, which is both an excellent thriller and an increasingly powerful and relevant political warning -- a combination readers of my latest novel, Inside Out, will know I find appealing.

Milwaukee Road No. 261 has steamed more than a million miles since it rolled out of a factory in eastern New York state 66 years ago, but on Tuesday, it was the locomotive's trip of six feet -- straight up -- that made all the difference.

As volunteers, railroad hobbyists and the merely curious looked on, two heavy-duty cranes lifted the engine's boiler, cab and frames off the eight drive wheels.

The wheels, each of which is 74 inches tall and weighs 7 1/2 tons, must be refurbished, and lifting the engine's boiler and frames was perhaps the riskiest part of an 18-month overhaul of the steam locomotive that could cost $1 million.

"This is probably something that hasn't been done in the U.S. for 40 years," said Steve Sandberg, who was overseeing the operation at Minneapolis Junction for the nonprofit group that owns the engine, Railroading Heritage of Midwest America...

The engine can produce 4,500 horsepower and is capable of 74 mph.

Bill Withuhn, curator emeritus with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, said that when No. 261 is running again, it will be the largest active coal-burning steam locomotive in the world...

When they lifted the boiler, the cranes were able to weigh it: 227,000 pounds, or 113 1/2 tons.

The Rainbow Gathering is this year in the forest of Northern Savo. Police Commissioner Jyrki Haapalan has apparently turned up, tuned in and jaw dropped. "It was a real eye-opener. Everyone should go and see it. Their lifestyle deserves real respect: they do everything together, they respect nature and take away their rubbish. I saw no drunks, everyone hugs each other and we police welcome them heartily."

Unlike the Fuzz, most downmarket Finnish media focus on the abundant nakedness at the camp.

You can't be me, I'm taken

An investigation is under way after police seized a photographer's camera and images were later deleted from it.

Paul King was taking pictures of a crash in Wokingham, Berkshire, when he was confronted by a traffic officer.

Mr King said he was acting within the law and the action, on Tuesday, cost him up to £400 in loss of earnings.

Thames Valley Police returned the camera with images they put on to a disc. The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) said it would investigate.

Mr King, who has 25 years experience as a news photographer, works across the Thames Valley supplying images to the media.

Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

Two More Masseuses Report Al Gor Penis Massages

Just when Al Gore's "crazed sex poodle" masseuse assault allegations were waning, the National Enquirer digs up two more masseuses who say Gore propositioned them. Or, more precisely, "pointed at his erect penis and ordered her, 'Take care of THIS.'"

Read more...

Possibly related "lectures":
2007
1945

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

YELLOWSTONE -- Signs in Yellowstone National Park say don't get too close to the wildlife, but a woman from Farr West, Utah, did -- and paid the price. She even got video of what happened.

On Monday, the woman was in an area about a mile away from the Old Faithful geyser. She and a friend spotted a bison and got close to it. She'll be the first to admit they shouldn't have done that.

Cathy Hayes kept her distance while getting video of a buffalo in Yellowstone National Park.

"So we're here in the park and there's a buffalo, and he's just wandering across the road," she says in the footage.