Bank stress tests were greeted with a mixture of cynicism and relief this weekend. Amid market doubts over their toughness, German banks stand accused of hiding their exposure to sovereign debt. 

 Six of the 14 German banks tested did not disclose their exposure to sovereign debt, one of a few key benchmarks in an exercise designed to test banks' resilience to future economic shocks.

The US, the International Monetary Fund and markets had heaped pressure on regulators to fully disclose banks' exposure in the tests.

Officials from Germany's BaFin regulatory authority said the banks were not obliged to fully disclose their exposure under German law, the Financial Times reported.

Turkey's main opposition CHP party said it was deeply disappointed by the "wrong advice" it said it had received from within the European socialist ranks to which it is affiliated, EurActiv has learned.

 Turkish politicians from the Republican People's Party (CHP) rebuked the European socialists over the weekend for pressuring them to back a proposed constitutional reform package.

The reform package, tabled by the ruling AK Party, a moderate Islamic party, is to be put to a crucial referendum on 12 September. The CHP, the country's oldest political party, is a member of Socialist International, the worldwide association of social democratic, socialist and labour parties.

A leading socialist lawmaker in the European Parliament, Austrian Socialist MEP Hannes Swoboda, recently called on the party to back the constitutional amendment package, saying the referendum would test whether the CHP "wants to be considered a true social democratic party".

Two education goals and two differing situations: France is currently lagging behind in its 'Europe 2020' aim of reducing the number of early school leavers, but is exceeding its target of increasing the proportion of people who complete higher education. EurActiv.fr reports.

 French education has been undergoing major change lately. Reforms were instigated under the presidency of Jacques Chirac and have continued under Nicolas Sarkozy. They were largely based on the EU's Lisbon Strategy objectives.

France is currently behind in its 'Europe 2020' goal of cutting the share of early school leavers to below 10%. In 2008, 82% of pupils completed secondary school, while 18% of them left school without obtaining all their qualifications. Within this 18% figure, 8% obtained the brevet des collèges (gained at 15 years old) but did not get any further.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - A member of a German quintet of professors that is currently challenging the legality of Europe's recently-devised support measures has said they threaten to create enormous tensions between EU citizens if allowed to stand.

In a telephone interview with EUobserver on Thursday (22 July), Wilhelm Nolling, professor of economics at the University of Hamburg, said the idea that Greece would be able to pay back its loans to EU states was simply "ridiculous," given the country's level of indebtedness and lack of competitiveness.

As a result, EU citizens in lender countries would increasingly begin to question the merits of this implicit system of wealth redistribution, he predicted.

"A transfer union will destroy the social peace in Europe," he said. "Do you think the Germans will be able to keep quiet?"

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - MEPs and defence experts are calling on the EU commission to go after market-distorting, corrupt side-deals to big weapon deals between member states, such as the ones greasing Germany's submarine sales to Portugal and Greece.

As EU officials are packing their holiday suitcases in Brussels, prosecutors in Germany, Portugal and Greece are on to a hot summer, tracing the complex trails of bribes and side-contracts to the German submarines each of the southern countries signed up for at a price of over €1billion.

The EU hypocrisy of allowing Greek and Portuguese governments allocate huge parts of their budget for questionable defence purchases, while they are being pressed for austerity measures to cap their deficit, already made headlines such as

"The submarine deals that helped sink Greece" in the Wall Street Journal earlier this month.

(Reuters) - A World Trade Organisation panel has ruled that the European Union was wrong to impose duties on three types of electronics products from the United States and other countries, trade sources said on Monday.

The WTO panel backed the United States as well as Japan and Taiwan in their complaint that EU duties on flat-panel displays, multifunction printers and television set-top boxes violated the WTO's Information Technology Agreement (ITA).

That 1996 agreement eliminated duties among a group of 72 participating countries on goods like computer screens and printers to promote trade in high-tech products.

REUTERS - EU foreign ministers approved tighter sanctions on Iran over its disputed nuclear programme on Monday, with steps to block oil and gas investment and curtail
Tehran's refining and natural gas capability.
 
The measures go well beyond sanctions imposed by the United Nations last month and mirror steps taken by the United States in recent weeks to apply extra pressure on Tehran to return to negotiations over its uranium enrichment programme.
 
As well as adopting harsher sanctions, including targeting Iranian banks and insurance companies, the foreign ministers called on Iran to resume talks over its enrichment work, which Western powers see as a veiled quest to develop nuclear weapons.

European Union foreign ministers have formally given a green light for negotiations to begin over Iceland's bid for membership of the 27-country bloc.

The ministers agreed to start the talks on Tuesday this week but acknowledged that a lack of domestic support for the move could be a potential obstacle that would have to be overcome.

"Popular opinions have to be taken on board, and you have to communicate the value (of joining)," said Steven Vanackere, Belgium's foreign minister. According to one poll this month, public opposition to joining the EU has risen to about 60 per cent from about 54 per cent in November last year.

Another key issue will be financial services, and there will be pressure on Iceland to compensate the UK and the Netherlands for losses suffered by investors in Icesave, the failed online bank.

Ahead of tonight's Newsnight special on the Coalition (at 2230 on BBC Two) it is worth asking a big question:

Were Conservative MPs railroaded into accepting the coalition on the basis of a lie, or at best an unfortunate misunderstanding?

That's the allegation which has been swirling round among Tories at Westminster for several weeks now.

One Conservative MP - far from a right-winger - reckons David Cameron lied to the shadow Cabinet and his backbench MPs at least four times in the hours leading up to the coalition agreement with the Lib Dems on 11 May.

A fast-track process for deporting failed asylum-seekers, which gives them little or no notice of their immediate removal, is unlawful, the high court ruled today.

The decision will have an impact on Home Office deportation practices and could lead to more last minute, legal challenges on behalf of those fighting to remain in the UK.

The case was brought by Medical Justice, an organisation that provides independent medical and legal advice to detainees in immigration removal centres.

Britain must answer in court claims that it is turning a blind eye to UK firms that trade in lucrative Congolese "conflict minerals", a campaign group announced today.

The group, Global Witness, said the firms continued to buy minerals from rebel militias, prolonging a 12-year conflict. It planned to sue the government for failing to refer the firms for UN sanctions.

The move comes amid global efforts to halt the trade in rebel-controlled minerals such as tin, gold, and coltan, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where millions have died since civil war erupted in 1998.

Four in 10 people who say they voted Lib Dem would not have done had they known the party would enter a coalition with the Tories, a poll suggests.

But 86% of Conservative voters would have voted the same way had they known their party would join forces with the Lib Dems, the ComRes survey found.

The poll of 1,009 adults for Newsnight also showed 37% of Lib Dem voters felt their party was dishonest about cuts.

Lord Ashdown said the coalition was the only option for a stable government.

Last month unison members in Southampton went on strike over the city council's plans sack employees and replace them with unpaid volunteers. The council plans to get rid of 6 librarians. According to unison this will lead to one library being run exclusively by volunteers.

This, I am afraid, is a sign of things to come. As Richard noted last week, Cameron's Big Society is set to involve replacing public service professionals with unpaid labour. And this is a big problem for both public sector workers and public service users. The most immediate problem for Southampton's Librarians is that they face losing their jobs at a time when jobseekers outnumber vacancies by a ratio of 5 to 1. In other words they the real possibility of long term unemployment. More generally, the use of volunteer labour raises a damocles axe above the heads of all public sector workers. How easy will it be to push for decent wages, when your employer has an army of unpaid Gill Archer types at its disposal.

It's official: people in Ireland literally raided their piggy banks as they were hit by some of the toughest austerity measures and the longest recession in Europe.

The Central Bank of Ireland issued less than half the number of coins last year than in 2008 and actually took €23m (£19m) worth of coins out of circulation in 2009, because of extra supply from coin jars at home, data showed.

European regulators have accused Germany and its banks of reneging on a deal to publish full details of sovereign debt holdings, as part of the four-month-long stress test exercise of the country's banking sector.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Arnoud Vossen, secretary-general of the Committee of European Banking Supervisors, the pan-European banks regulator, said: "We agreed with all supervisory authorities and with the banks in the exercise that there would be a bank-by-bank disclosure of sovereign risks."
...
But six of the 14 German banks tested - Deutsche Bank, Postbank, Hypo Real Estate, mutual groups DZ and WGZ, and Landesbank Berlin - did not publish the expected detailed breakdown of sovereign debt holdings, although Postbank disclosed some information on Sunday. Every other European bank, bar Greece's ATEbank, which failed the test, complied with the disclosure requirement.

Chinese banks are facing serious default risks on more than Rmb1,550bn ($228bn) in loans they have lent to local governments across the country, according to senior Chinese officials.

In a preliminary self-assessment carried out at the request of China's banking regulator, the country's commercial banks have identified about one-fifth of the Rmb7,700bn lent to local government financing vehicles, which are mostly used to fund regional infrastructure projects.
...
Since the start of this year, top Chinese bankers and regulators have publicly warned that many of the loans used to boost growth through massive infrastructure spending and a property boom will eventually go bad.

"The risks in government-backed financing vehicles, the property industry and sectors with overcapacity problems are particularly worth noting," CBRC chairman Liu Mingkang said last week in a prepared statement on risks in the banking system.
...
But analysts say the apparent success of the clampdown on lending actually disguises a worrying new trend that involves banks co-operating with lightly regulated trust companies to keep loans off their books.

Hu Xiaolian, deputy governor at the Chinese central bank, has released a paper which suggests it's soon time for China to peg the yuan to a basket of foreign currencies, rather than the U.S. dollar alone.

This especially makes sense for China given that, going forward, the U.S. might not the voracious consumer it once was. Thus tying itself at the hip to the dollar might not be as useful as it was before.

Hu Xiaolian:

Compared with pegging to a single currency, the exchange rate regime with reference to a basket of currencies will help adjust exports and imports, current account, and balance of payment in a more effective manner.

Europe's top competition watchdog has opened probes into IBM over concerns that the US company may have abused its dominant position in the multibillion-dollar market for mainframe computers.

Antitrust officials at the European Commission said on Monday that they were initiating two formal investigations against the company - one resulting from complaints received over the past 18 months and a second on the Commission's own initiative.

The government put banks on notice today that it "stands ready" to intervene if a lack of lending to businesses threatens the economic recovery. At the same time, it set out a number of ideas to help businesses obtain finance in the downturn.

As business secretary Vince Cable published a green paper on financing private sector recovery, he warned banks that one of the "sticks" that could be used against them if they refused to lend or paid out excessive dividends and bonuses was a tax on profits.

CAIRO, Jul 26, 2010 (IPS) - Almost two months since Egypt announced it would reopen its Rafah border terminal with the Gaza Strip, operation of the crossing remains sorely limited.

"Rafah has only been opened to passengers and some medical supplies," Hatem el-Buluk, journalist and resident of Al-Arish, located some 40 kilometres west of Rafah, told IPS. "Everything else, including food and construction materials, must enter the strip via Israeli-controlled border crossings."

On Jun. 1, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak announced that Rafah -- the strip's only border crossing not shared with Israel -- would be opened to humanitarian aid "indefinitely". The surprise announcement came one day after Israeli commandos killed nine Turkish activists aboard a ship bringing humanitarian aid to the besieged coastal enclave.

...

Since the Jun. 1 announcement, some 37,000 Gazans have exited or entered the strip, according to an official border source quoted in the state press. The vast majority of passengers have been students, medical patients and expatriate workers.

Material traffic through the crossing, however, continues to be strictly limited by authorities, informed sources say.

ANKARA, Jul 26, 2010 (IPS) - The strained diplomatic relations between Turkey and Israel since June have unveiled intensive jockeying between regional powers for influence in the Middle East peace process.

In the aftermath of the Mavi Marmara incident, Turkey demanded an official apology by Israel, the opening of an international inquiry and damages to the victims and their families, under threat of sanctions. The Israel Defence Force (IDF) had on May 31 raided the Turkish flagship, which was attempting to break the naval blockade of the Palestinian Port of Gaza, causing the death of nine Turks.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has brushed aside the demands, and Turkey has already implemented some of its threats, closing its airspace to Israeli military aircraft, putting a halt joint military exercises, and recalling its ambassador from Jerusalem.

The rift between the two countries has brought to the front Turkey's emerging strategy to become the regional power of the day, filling the vacuum left by Iraq's collapse in 2003.

(Reuters) - At least 45 civilians, many women and children, were killed in a rocket attack by the NATO-led foreign force in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province last week, a spokesman for the Afghan government said Monday.

The incident happened in Helmand's Sangin district on Friday when civilians crammed into a mud-built house to flee fighting between NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops and Taliban insurgents, Siyamak Herawi told Reuters.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy confirmed on Monday the death of French aid worker Michel Germaneau, held captive by Islamic militants in North Africa since April.

The leader of Al Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM), Abdelhamid Abu Zayd, released an audio recording on Sunday claiming his group had killed Germaneau to avenge the killing of six group members in a joint military raid on Friday. 

Even before WikiLeaks published the 91,000 classified documents on the war in Afghanistan on Sunday, officials across the United States government embarked on an aggressive campaign to contain the public relations damage.    The first shot came from National Security Advisor General James Jones who accused WikiLeaks of action that could put "the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security." He added that "the irresponsible leaks" will not deter Washington's commitment to the fight in Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

BUCHAREST, Jul 26, 2010 (IPS) - "We are trying to change children's attitude to food and to make sure there are still farmers in our countries in a decade or two," says Marta Pozsonyi, one of the Romanian representatives at the first Terra Madre Balkans meeting that took place in Sofia last week.

The Sofia reunion was the first to take place among producers from the Balkans under the framework of Terra Madre, the world meeting of slow food communities launched by Slow Food International in 2004.

Slow Food International is a non-profit eco-gastronomic organisation founded in 1989 to counteract fast food, the disappearance of local food traditions, and sensitise people to the impact of consumer choices.

The concept of slow food is catching on fast in the Balkans, where small- scale farming is severely threatened by the promotion of industrial agriculture and by commercial practices which keep small producers from selling directly to consumers.

The Democratic leadership in the US Senate has suspended efforts to pass a climate change bill. It abandoned not only its planned comprehensive cap-and-trade measure, similar to one already passed by the House of Representatives, but also a more modest bill aimed at electric utilities. The Senate will most likely pass an energy bill of some sort, but this will barely even pretend to make progress on curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

This surrender concludes a story that began with the Kyoto protocol in 1997 and reached its climax last December at the Copenhagen climate change conference. At that long-anticipated gathering, the world's governments expected to replace the Kyoto system, which had made no perceptible dent in the problem, with a new and more effective regime. They left with nothing.

No matter, smiled Barack Obama and other leaders through clenched teeth: this would not stop the US and its partners moving forward with plans of their own. Oh, really? The whole enterprise, from top to bottom, has now collapsed.

Tony Hayward, chief executive of BP, is to leave the company, bowing to pressure over his handling of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion, the aftermath of which has become America's worst environmental disaster.

Hayward's departure, to be announced tomorrow, follows months of speculation on his future amid a series of gaffes which have drawn scorn from US politicians.

British, American and Norwegian engineers are in a race to design and build the holy grail of wind turbines - giant, 10MW offshore machines twice the size and power of anything seen before - that could transform the global energy market because of their economies of scale.

Today, a revolutionary British design that mimics a spinning sycamore leaf and which was inspired by floating oil platform technology, entered the race. Leading engineering firm Arup is to work with an academic consortium backed by blue-chip companies including Rolls Royce, Shell and BP to create detailed designs for the "Aerogenerator", a machine that rotates on its axis and would stretch nearly 275m from blade tip to tip. It is thought that the first machines will be built in 2013-14 following two years of testing.

BP will start deep-water drilling off the coast of Libya within weeks in spite of concerns about the UK group's environmental and safety record after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster.

The move comes as BP faces increased scrutiny over its acquisition of rights to a big oil and gas field off the African coast three years ago, a subject that overshadowed the visit of David Cameron, UK prime minister, to Washington this week.

At 1,700 metres below sea-level in Libya's Gulf of Sirte, the well will be 200 metres deeper than the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico which triggered the worst US offshore oil spill disaster when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20, killing 11 people.

Anti-carbon trading activists shut down the website of the European Climate Exchange (ECX), over the weekend, replacing the site with a spoof page lampooning the industry.

The website of the London-based carbon credit trading platform was hacked at close to midnight on Friday and showed the spoof homepage for around 22 hours. It then took technical staff another day to restore the official homepage.

Instead of its normal rolling ticker data listing bids for carbon credit futures, the ECX website blared: "Super promo - climate on sale: Guaranteed profit!"

Explaining the "carbon trade scam", the spoof site decried how the EU's flagship environmental policy is "susceptible to corporate lobbying," offers industry "licences to pollute so they can continue business-as-usual," and "generates outrageous profits for big industry polluters, investors in fraudulent offset projects [and] opportunist traders."

PENANG, Malaysia, Jul 26, 2010 (IPS) - It is a paradox, all right. Women make up more than half of those who take part in protests and other activities organised by her political party on issues affecting low-income workers, says Rani Rasiah of the Socialist Party of Malaysia.

But when it comes to holding official positions at the party's local branches, more than half of the officials happen to be men, she observes.

"Maybe the womenfolk feel they have responsibilities at home and are unable to attend regular party meetings and the demands that come with them," reasons the party's deputy secretary general.

''There is also a certain degree of control at home about women going out at night or leaving the household to attend regular meetings," she continues. ''Maybe the women themselves lack self esteem and self-confidence to play a leadership role.''

VIENNA, Jul 26, 2010 (IPS) - The global conference on AIDS in Vienna last week will be remembered for "Broken Promises Kill", a slogan echoed by a coalition of activists who had gathered from around the world.

Throughout the week-long conference, demonstrators clamoured for attention to the funding crisis severely impacting the global fight against AIDS.

"It is important to bring the urgency faced by the AIDS crisis to as many people as possible," Dr. Nafis Sadik, United Nations special envoy to AIDS in the Asia and Pacific region told IPS as she sidled past a crowd of demonstrators.

"This noise is to force people to recognise the crisis. It is not a party. It is a meet to confront AIDS, health and the failure of governments to live up to their responsibility," a protester from the crowd said amid the din of sloganeering.

AFP -  Angry survivors demanded answers from organisers Sunday after 19 people were killed in a stampede at Germany's Love Parade and prosecutors launched an inquiry into how the tragedy unfolded.

At a heated press conference in the western German city of Duisburg, officials said 18 of the dead had been identified, including six foreigners, from Australia, Italy, the Netherlands, China and two from Spain.

By Jessica SALTZ Berlin, Germany Eyewitnesses recall a tsunami wave of people pushing forward - Jessica Saltz, 25/07/10

Deputy police chief Detlef von Schmeling said the victims, aged between 20 and 40, died as they scrambled to escape from a crush in a narrow, overcrowded tunnel that served as the only entrance to the festival grounds.

The bloody oppression of the Mennonite Free Church in the 16th century is one of the darkest chapters in European history. This past week, Lutherans issued an official apology for the cruel persecution of the Anabaptists - and both parties celebrated their reconciliation in a very moving ceremony.

 

"We still remember being a prosecuted minority," said Larry Miller, secretary general of the Mennonite World Conference.

 

The Mennonite Free Church is the main branch of the descendants of the Christian Baptist movement. Mennonites are known as Anabaptists because they only baptise adults and not underage children.

Do the languages we speak shape the way we think? Do they merely express thoughts, or do the structures in languages (without our knowledge or consent) shape the very thoughts we wish to express?
...
To find out, my colleague Alice Gaby and I traveled to Australia and gave Pormpuraawans sets of pictures that showed temporal progressions (for example, pictures of a man at different ages, or a crocodile growing, or a banana being eaten). Their job was to arrange the shuffled photos on the ground to show the correct temporal order. We tested each person in two separate sittings, each time facing in a different cardinal direction. When asked to do this, English speakers arrange time from left to right. Hebrew speakers do it from right to left (because Hebrew is written from right to left).

Pormpuraawans, we found, arranged time from east to west. That is, seated facing south, time went left to right. When facing north, right to left. When facing east, toward the body, and so on. Of course, we never told any of our participants which direction they faced. The Pormpuraawans not only knew that already, but they also spontaneously used this spatial orientation to construct their representations of time.
...
All this new research shows us that the languages we speak not only reflect or express our thoughts, but also shape the very thoughts we wish to express. The structures that exist in our languages profoundly shape how we construct reality, and help make us as smart and sophisticated as we are.

WASHINGTON -- Owners of the iPhone will be able to break electronic locks on their devices in order to download applications that have not been approved by Apple. The government is making that legal under new rules announced Monday.

The decision to allow the practice commonly known as "jailbreaking" is one of a handful of new exemptions from a federal law that prohibits the circumvention of technical measures that control access to copyrighted works. Every three years, the Library of Congress authorizes such exemptions to ensure that existing law does not prevent non-infringing use of copyrighted material.

(Reuters) - BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward will collect a pay and pension package worth at least 11.8 million pounds ($18.03 million) when he steps down from his role at the company, the Times newspaper reported on Sunday.

The Times said Hayward will be giving up 546,000 share options and a maximum of 2 million shares in the company under a long-term incentive plan, now worth an estimated 8 million pounds.