The EU's new ambassador to the US, Joao Vale de Almeida, has underlined the new powers conferred on EU envoys by the Lisbon Treaty while taking up his post in Washington.

In a series of interviews to US-based press on Tuesday (10 August), the ambassador noted that he is empowered to speak on behalf of EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy, EU Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso and EU member states.

An anti-terrorism radio ad calling on Britons to report their neighbours if they keep their curtains closed or pay for things in cash has been banned by the UK advertising watchdog.   The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said the ad would cause "serious offence" to ordinary law-abiding citizens.   The ad, which can still be heard on the Metropolitan Police website (mp3), describes a man who "likes to keep himself to himself", doesn't have a bank card and keeps his curtains closed.   At the end, the voice advises that "this may mean nothing, but together it could all add up to you having suspicions," before urging listeners to call the police if they have the slightest concern.

Germany's women's shelters have joined the country's largest single parents' organization in opposing increased rights for unmarried fathers.

Until now, the fathers of children born out of wedlock in Germany had no legally guaranteed custody rights. Mothers had the right to withhold joint custody, leaving the father to sue the mother for visitation rights.

But Edith Schwab, head of Germany's Association of Single Mothers and Fathers, says the Federal Constitutional Court's decision last week to grant custody rights to unwed fathers is bad news for single mothers, who themselves will now have to fight to keep unfit fathers from raising their children.

The German Interior Ministry has bought two full-body scanners to be used for tests at Hamburg airport in September. The devices come from a subsidiary of the US L3 Communications company, which according to a survey by the IKV PAX Christi aid organization, is one of seven firms that still produces cluster ammunition.

The deal has come under pressure because Germany is a signatory to the Convention of the Banning of Cluster Munitions which came into force on August 1. At a news conference in Berlin on Monday, ministry spokesman Philipp Spauschus had a hard time justifying the deal.

Belarus has traditionally been one of Russia's closest partners - indeed the two countries have flirted for years with the idea of forming a political union. But one wouldn't have known that necessarily in the summer of 2010, as squabbles broke out over natural gas, a customs union and the geopolitics of the Caucasus.

 

The sniping came to a head when Russian TV ran a documentary about President Alexander Lukashenko entitled "The Godfather," claiming to reveal criminal activities by the Belarusian leader.

(Reuters) - Britain's coalition sought to shift the blame for looming spending cuts to Labour Party on Wednesday, accusing the last government of "criminal" mishandling of the public finances.

Conservative Party Chairman Sayeeda Warsi said Labour was guilty of "wild and reckless" spending during 13 years in office that helped to create the biggest peacetime budget deficit.

The Labour Party, which says the coalition's cuts threaten the economic recovery, dismissed her comments as "posturing" during parliament's traditionally quiet summer break.

The threat of Tube travel chaos has increased after members of the RMT transport union voted overwhelmingly for industrial action in a row over jobs and safety.

Of those taking part in a ballot, 76% voted for strike action and 88% for action short of a strike.

The RMT will now liaise with sister transport union TSSA - which will announce its own ballot result next week - on the next course of action.

Both unions are upset at what they fear could be the loss of 800 jobs and the scrapping of around 140 ticket offices on London Underground (LU).

RMT general secretary Bob Crow said: "Less than two weeks after the Potters Bar (rail crash) inquest delivered the damning verdict that cuts to maintenance works, staffing and inspection frequencies create the lethal conditions that lead to avoidable loss of life, LU management have clearly learned nothing and are burning up safety agreements almost by the day in the dash for cuts.

Summer wildfires sweeping Portugal blazed in three natural parks Wednesday with around 1,500 firefighters called in to battle nearly 30 significant fires, the civil defence agency said.

Strong winds whipped up fires that have swept through Portugal since late July with two firefighters killed this week, including a 21-year-old woman who became encircled by flames.

By late Wednesday, 28 "significant" fires were burning, mostly in the north and centre of the country, and 1,500 firefighters were mobilised to put them out, the civil defence agency said on its website.

Racism in France is undergoing a "significant resurgence" and the authorities lack the political will to deal with the problem, according to a report by UN experts. The findings are part of a 90-page report on racism in France by 18 international experts.

The group of experts, named by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination, looked into how traveller communities are treated, including the Roma.

Last month, French President Nicolas Sarkozy ordered the evacuation of Roma communities in France following instances of urban violence. Critics called this move an official way to stigmatise the Roma community.

One of the UN committee members said that the attitudes and practices of the current French government is reminiscent of France's Vichy government, which collaborated with the Nazi German occupying forces during World War II.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Spain has come out in favour of direct EU taxation, one of the ideas being considered as part of a major review of European Union budgeting currently underway.

In a statement indicating the government of Jose Luis Rodrigues Zapatero is much more receptive to the idea than London, Paris or Berlin, which have come out sharply against such proposals in recent days, the prime minister said on Tuesday: "any consideration to strengthen economic and financial capabilities by the EU will be seen by the government with interest."

The Polish commissioner in charge of the EU budget, Janusz Lewandowski, has said an EU levy on the financial sector has the best chance of winning support after France joined the UK and Germany in opposition to plans for creating an EU tax.

"Talking about EU own resources and something with the shape of a European tax is extraordinarily unfashionable. But I see a tendency, that it is possible in terms of public opinion to defend a tax on financial transactions or another form of tax on the financial sector. It would even be popular," he told the Polish press agency, PAP, on Tuesday (10 August).

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has said the government may reintroduce investments in some of infrastructure projects suspended as a part of austerity measures announced in May.

"The cut in infrastructure has been very sharp," Mr Zapatero said at a widely reported news conference on Tuesday (10 August) after meeting King Juan Carlo in Palma de Mallorca. "[In] 10 to 15 days we will be able to give some positive news in relation to restoring investment activity in infrastructure."

The World Bank and Bulgaria on Tuesday signed an agreement to better cooperate on development projects for the country's outdated infrastructure.

The memorandum of understanding signed by World Bank President Robert Zoellick and Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov included "accelerating maintenance and investment in roads and railways," but did not specify the amount of aid the bank would provide.

The support is to come in conjunction with billions of euros from the European Union and development organizations.

Economists are suggesting the current heat wave in Russia could cost the economy between 5 and 12 billion euros ($7-15 billion) and undermine the current modest economic revival in the country.

The figure accounts for immediate losses in the agricultural, industrial and services sector, but does not factor in losses that stem from a spike in deaths and illnesses.

The heat wave has been accompanied by a persistent drought, and forest fires which have caused a thick smog to descend over the capital Moscow.

he Cologne Institute for Economic Research (IW) said that the government should consider raising the age for workers to receive pensions to 70.

The group's chief economist, Michael Huether, told the German daily newspaper Rheinische Post on Wednesday that current plans to raise the age to 67 might not go far enough.

"When we look at rising life expectancy and declining birth rates in Germany, a retirement age of 70 must be considered," said Huether.

"We should not stop raising the pension in 2029, but instead continue with it afterwards."

Fear returned to global markets with stocks sinking on Wednesday and the dollar making its biggest one-day gain in nearly two years against most major currencies on renewed worries of an economic slowdown in China and the United States.

Even as the dollar strengthened across the board, the Japanese yen hit a 15-year high against the greenback as the yield spreads of U.S. Treasury debt over those of Japanese government bonds narrowed.

Commodity prices fell, with oil prices sliding more than $2 to below $79 per barrel, on fears that a global economic slowdown would reduce demand for raw materials.

(Reuters) - The number of Britons claiming jobless benefit fell less than expected last month but growth in part-time employment drove the biggest rise in numbers of people in work since 1989 in the three months to June, official data showed on Wednesday.

The Office for National Statistics said numbers claiming jobless benefit fell by 3,800 in July, after a downwardly revised drop of 15,900 in June and significantly less than analysts' forecasts for a decline of 16,500.

However, the number of people without a job on the wider ILO measure fell by 49,000 in the three months to June, its biggest fall in three years and taking the total to 2.457 million. That took the jobless rate to 7.8 percent -- in line with forecasts.

US regulators have increased their scrutiny of the country's largest banks in recent months, digging deeper into riskier activities and pushing institutions to conduct more rigorous "stress tests" of their financial health.

Wall Street executives say that since the end of the financial crisis examiners from the Federal Reserve, the main banking watchdog, have become tougher and more detailed in their policing of large financial institutions.

"They are all over us," said a senior Wall Street banker. "They want to see a lot more detail and are demanding a lot more information."

MBIA says losses on its R.M.B.S. insurance portfolio are falling.  That, too, is good news.

Now for the bad news.

The company said it expected to have to pay out $230 million over time on insurance for C.M.B.S.'s  -- commercial mortgage-backed securities. As Rob Haines of CreditSights pointed out, the company in the past claimed that portfolio was "nearly bulletproof," although it did cite a $123 million number three months ago. But officials then played down that number, saying they still thought the most probable result was that, in the end, there would be no losses on C.M.B.S. exposure.
...
This is a company that took forever to admit it had problems in residential mortgage securities, and that vigorously argued with anyone who disagreed. Could this be history repeating itself?

A surge of imports from China helped push the US trade gap with the rest of the world to its highest level in almost two years in June, official figures showed on Wednesday

The trade deficit jumped by 18.8 per cent to $49.9bn, according to the commerce department. That easily surpassed economists' expectations and brought the deficit to its highest level since October 2008.

In June, US exports fell by 1.3 per cent to $150.5bn as international demand for industrial supplies, capital goods and food and beverages waned. Imports climbed by 3 per cent as America's appetite grew for consumer goods, cars and parts.

Since bottoming out last May at $24.8bn, America's trade deficit has more than doubled. The widening deficit hinders US output and in the second quarter the gap knocked nearly 3 percentage points off the growth rate.

China's economy continued to slow last month as efforts to cool the property market and reduce energy consumption began to bite, even as consumer price inflation rose further.

The rates of increase for industrial production, fixed asset investment and retail sales each fell last month, while new banks loans and money supply growth also slowed.

However, inflation jumped to 3.3 per cent, higher than the 3 per cent target the government has set for the year and up from 2.9 per cent the month before. In contrast, factory-gate inflation fell back from 6.4 per cent to 4.8 per cent.

The latest figures come a day after data showing a sharp decline in the pace of growth in imports in July, adding to signs that demand is waning.

Ukraine, one of the world's top grain exporters, said on Wednesday it was considering a cap on wheat exports, a move that would put more pressure on surging global grain prices.

The announcement was made after Russia had intro­duced a ban on grain exports until the end of the year following the devastation of its crops by the worst drought in a century. The World Bank has urged countries not to restrict trade in grain.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, managing director at the World Bank, said export bans threatened a repetition of the 2007-08 food crisis, when the cost of crops from corn to rice hit record highs and food riots broke out in countries from Bangladesh to Haiti.

WHY THE NBER HASN'T DECLARED "IT" TO BE OVER

"It", of course, is the recession that began in December 2007.
...
By now, if this was a normal recession followed by a normal recovery, as opposed to a debt-deleveraging-depression, real GDP would already be back at a new high. But here we are, 31 months after the recession began, and the level of real GDP is still -1.1% below its prior high.

There are two other critical factors preventing NBER from declaring the all-clear signal. First, despite the dramatic rebound in the equity market in 2009, personal income fell in 49 of the 52 U.S. cities of a million population or more.
...
Second... the rapid decline in the employment-to-population ratio. This is a far more informative measure regarding labour market performance than the traditional unemployment rate, especially at a time when discouraged workers are withdrawing from the labour force at such an alarming clip.

The employment rate has declined now for three months in a row, back to where it was at the start of the year, and smartalecks who see this recovery as anything but disturbing don't realize that this employment rate, at 58.4%, is down from 64.0% at the 2007 high. This was the largest drop in the post-war era and what it means is that the economy is 12 million jobs shy of being at full employment.

And so, Goldman, in 1991, came up with this idea of the commodity index fund, which really was a way for them to accumulate huge piles of cash for themselves. It wasn't really about the markets, anyway. The market was just an excuse. And so, the fact that they threw these wheat markets out of whack didn't really matter to them.

How did this work? Instead of a buy-and-sell order, like everybody does in these markets, they just started buying. It's called "going long." They started going long on wheat futures. OK? And every time one of these contracts came due, they would do something called "rolling it over" into the next contract. So they would take all those buy promises they had made and say, "OK, we still--we're just going to--we'll buy more later. And plus we're going to buy more now." And they kept on buying and buying and buying and buying and accumulating this unprecedented, this historically unprecedented pile of long-only wheat futures. And this accumulation created a very odd phenomenon in the market. It's called a "demand shock." Usually prices go up because supply is low, right? That's the idea. There's not a lot of supply, so the price goes up. In this case, Goldman and the other banks had introduced this completely unnatural and artificial demand to buy wheat, and that then set the price up. Now, a lot of people are saying, "Oh, it was biofuel production. It was drought in Australia. It was floods in Kazakhstan." Let me tell you, hard red wheat generally trades between $3 and $6 per sixty-pound bushel. It went up to $12, then $15, then $18. Then it broke $20. And on February 25th, 2008, hard red spring futures settled at $25 per bushel. This is completely beyond the pale, particularly at a--

JUAN GONZALEZ: Almost ten times its historic price.

FREDERICK KAUFMAN: Yeah. It was just completely out of control. And, of course, the irony here is that in 2008, it was the greatest wheat-producing year in world history. The world produced more wheat in 2008 than ever before.

India's central bank has launched a review of bank ownership regulation that is expected to lead to the re-entry into the banking sector of some of the country's largest industrial conglomerates, such as the Tata and Reliance groups.

The discussion paper from the Reserve Bank of India opens debate on whether large domestic industrial groups should be allowed to own banks again for the first time since the country's financial sector was nationalised in 1969.

But it also made clear that the licences would favour Indian groups by proposing tougher restrictions on investment in domestically incorporated banks by foreign companies.

Dr Clint Laurent of Global Demographics has consistently stated that China's statisticians have overstated the country's birth rates since 1990. This implied, as he said in a paper in 2005, that China's labour force would peak at 770 million in 2008, falling to 690 million by 2025. Another major consequence is that the important age group of 20-39 peaked in 2000 at 458 million and by this year will have fallen by 4%.

The consequences of these demographic changes are immense. First, wage inflation will be a given, not just in the private and foreign sectors but amongst the SOEs, as we mentioned earlier. Second, it means that manufacturers will introduce automated machinery to reduce the workforce (the new booming sector) and improve productivity. Third, rising wages lay the foundation for better consumer spending; though households, as in the past, will have to cover the losses racked up by local governments, according to Michael Pettis, a visiting professor in Beijing. Fourth, disposable income in the rural sector is improving.

U.S. life insurers have drawn fire from state and national elected officials since Bloomberg Markets magazine reported last month that more than 100 carriers profit by holding and investing $28 billion owed to life-insurance beneficiaries. Retained-asset Capital reserve accounts are backstopped by insurer guaranty associations in the event a carrier fails, according to MetLife Inc., the biggest U.S. life insurer, and the National Organization of Life & Health Insurance Guaranty Associations.

etc

True, a state's insurance commission determines minimum capital reserve requirements by periodic review of financial statements and assesses each admitted insurer to finance a jointly administered guaranty fund and other purposes. Producers in MD, for example, are however prohibited from making any statements of warrantee to policy owners or subscribers on such account or other document or verbal misrepresentation ("fraud") of coverage such as FDIC insurance "back-stop." Leaving one to wonder why VA MANAGERS would require ITS CONTRACTORS to disclose, ironically, that its sponsored plans are NOT FDIC insured: perhaps VA DEPENDENTS assumed that demonstrated federal policy employing TREASURY "back-stop" for certain commerical investment instruments and insurers over the past two years necessarily included VA-sponsored plans? The Bloomberg investigation of 100 insurers' financial records does not say.

Catalonia, which accounts for a fifth of Spanish gross domestic product, has been shut out of public bond markets since March and the extra yield it pays over national government debt has almost tripled this year. Galicia, in the northwest, has asked to freeze payments of debt it owes the central government and the Madrid region postponed a bond sale last month....

The regions' borrowing difficulties will likely complicate their relationship with the Madrid government. While Catalonia is pushing for more autonomy and Spanish law prevents the central government from bailing out the provinces, some investors expect it would do so if necessary.

"There's a certain perception that there's a big brother standing behind," said Diego Fernandez, a fund manager who helps oversee 240 million euros at Inverseguros in Madrid and is cutting holdings of regional debt. "There could be a region that has more difficulties and so would need some help, which wouldn't materialize as a bailout but as some kind of larger transfer."

lesen sie es...

During the great housing boom, homeowners nationwide borrowed a trillion dollars from banks, using the soaring value of their houses as security. Now the money has been spent and struggling borrowers are unable or unwilling to pay it back.

The delinquency rate on home equity loans is higher than all other types of consumer loans, including auto loans, boat loans, personal loans and even bank cards like Visa and MasterCard, according to the American Bankers Association.

Lenders say they are trying to recover some of that money but their success has been limited, in part because so many borrowers threaten bankruptcy and because the value of the homes, the collateral backing the loans, has often disappeared.

The result is one of the paradoxes of the recession: the more money you borrowed, the less likely you will have to pay up.

REUTERS - The United Nations appealed on Wednesday for $459 million in aid for flood-hit Pakistan, warning of a second wave of death among sick, hungry survivors unless help arrived quickly.
 Roiling floods triggered by unusually heavy monsoon rain have scoured Pakistan's Indus river basin, killing more than 1,600 people, forcing 2 million from their homes and disrupting the lives of about 14 million people, or 8 percent of the population.

AFP - Rescuers racing against a potential new deluge on Wednesday hurried to drain an unstable lake formed by China's worst mudslides in decades, as the death toll surged past 1,100.
   
More than 10,000 soldiers and rescuers combed through the mountains of mud that buried a remote area of the northwest province of Gansu at the weekend, killing 1,117 people by latest count and leaving more than 600 others missing.
   
But the window of survival was fast closing, with only one survivor found in a flooded hotel on Wednesday, so authorities have focused on averting further devastation in the form of new floods and possible disease outbreaks.

As Rwanda's president Paul Kagame heads for election victory, the government is reviewing its genocide ideology law. Rights groups have accused it of limiting freedom of speech but, Justice Minister Tharcisse Karugarama, insists that the changes are the cabinet's own idea.

Kagame, who is certain to secure a second seven-year mandate when full provisional results are released late Wednesday, has been criticised for gagging the opposition through the use of Rwanda's Law Relating to the punishment of the Crime of Genocide Ideology.

Ahead of Monday's election, two of Kagame's opponents were disqualified after being charged with genocide ideology, which is essentially ethnic hate speech.

AFP - Indonesian police said Tuesday top radical Islamist preacher Abu Bakar Bashir could face the death penalty over his alleged role in terror plots with Al-Qaeda-linked militants.
   
Bashir, who was arrested on Monday, is accused of funding and training extremists who were planning a wave of attacks in Jakarta.
   
"Our investigators found evidence that Abu Bakar Bashir had been actively involved in terror plots and activities including the training," National police spokesman Edward Aritonang said.

AFP - Iraq's top army officer on Wednesday warned that a pullout of all US soldiers by the end of 2011 was premature, after eight of his troops were killed in a brazen attack that exposed shaky security here.
   
Lieutenant General Babakar Zebari's remarks, which run counter to those of his political leaders, coincide with the exit of thousands of American soldiers under a US declaration to end combat operations in Iraq at the end of August.

(Reuters Life!) - An Australian state is using exotic jobs like koala catcher, shark tagger and even beer taster to try to lure young, bored British workers to head down under for some adventure and maybe a new life.

The South Australian government has launched a campaign to encourage 18 to 30-year-old Britons to come on a working-holiday visa with the chance of getting their dream role.

Other jobs advertised include a shark personality profiler at Port Lincoln, a Fairy Penguin home remodeler on Kangaroo Island, and a "roo poo" harvester.

"At this point, the withdrawal (of US forces) is going well, because they are still here," Zebari said.

SANTA MARTA, Colombia, Aug 11, 2010 (IPS) - "The Santa Marta breeze cools off any conflict, it calms tempers. The city is the ideal place for the Santos-Chávez summit," Colombian journalist Ernesto McCausland wrote on his Twitter blog ahead of Tuesday's meeting, which indeed patched up relations between Venezuela and Colombia.

Honduras Culture and Politics: Yesterday the Lobo Sosa government failed to close a deal with the International Monetary Fund for standby funding for the government of Honduras for the next 18 months. This was an important test of the government's political capital as well as its economic capital, and it failed.

Paraguay (Boz): This past weekend we learned that Paraguayan President Lugo has lymphoma. He'll be traveling to Sao Paulo, Brazil for tests and will need at least 18 weeks of chemo treatments. Cruel as it is, this brings up a number of political questions for Paraguay. With Lugo leaving the country and undergoing treatment, it is likely that Vice President Franco will assume the duties of president.

ASUNCIÓN, Aug 11, 2010 (IPS) - The Fourth Americas Social Forum kicks off Wednesday in the Paraguayan capital with a colourful march through the streets, as some 12,000 people prepare to take part in the activities organised by 50 local groups and 550 organisations from Argentina to Canada. (...) The personalities who plan to attend the Americas Social Forum include Bolivian President Evo Morales, Argentine political scientist Atilio Borón, the executive secretary of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) Emir Sader, and two Nobel Peace Prize-winners: Guatemalan indigenous activist Rigoberta Menchú and Argentine human rights activist Adolfo Pérez Esquivel.

MANAGUA, Nicaragua -- Over the past four years, entities controlled by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega have received at least $1 billion in no-strings-attached donations through an oil deal brokered by President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. The windfall has helped Ortega mount a vigorous campaign to fight rural poverty and generate electricity -- and to build political support for himself.

El Universal: The Government of Bolivia said on Wednesday that the silver, lead and zinc mine "San Cristobal", of the Japanese Sumitomo Group Corp, had to stop their operations as a result of peasant mobilization that threatened the power supply to industry.

(Reuters) - Surging Chinese investment in Brazil is reshaping ties between the countries as companies seek to secure resources and tap the rising consumer class in Latin America's largest economy.

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazil's biggest state-run bank and two other partners announced an expansion in Africa on Monday in the latest sign of growing financial links between emerging markets. Banco do Brasil, Latin America's largest bank by assets, said in a regulatory filing it will team with local private-sector giant Banco Bradesco and Portugal's Banco Espirito Santo (BES) to tap Africa's growing appetite for consumer loans, credit cards and other products.

Guantanamo court sentences Osama bin Laden's cook to 14 years in prison - Reuters

Six Greenpeace members from Austria, Finland, Hungary and Poland scaled Poland's environment ministry building in Warsaw on Wednesday with a giant banner saying "I love the forest." The stunt highlighted excessive logging and destruction of rare birds' habitat in the country's Bialowieza forest.

Russian forestry officials on Wednesday told the Interfax news agency there are 28 fires covering an area of 269 hectares in the Bryansk region, which was heavily polluted in the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, raising afresh fears that radioactive dust could be swirled up into the wind.

In the early morning of 23 January 2009, the most powerful hurricane-force storm to hit France in a decade came howling in from the Bay of Biscay.

With wind speeds of up to 125mph, cyclone Klaus struck land at the point of the estuary of the river Gironde, near Bordeaux, then charged south-east to Spain and across the Mediterranean to Italy. It left 26 people dead, flattened forests and power lines and caused massive destruction of buildings and roads.

But it also left behind an extraordinary creation at the very point where its devastation began, causing the townsfolk of Royan, a fishing port situated at the mouth of the Gironde, to rub their eyes in disbelief.

The beets Surendra Pradhan and Helvi Heinonen-Tanski grew were perfectly lovely: round and hefty; with their skin a rich burgundy; their flavor sweet and faintly earthy, like the dirt from which they came. Unless someone told you, you'd never know the beets were fertilized with human urine.

Pradhan and Heinonen-Tanski, environmental scientists at the University of Kuopio in Finland, grew the beets as an experiment in sustainable fertilization. They nourished the root vegetables with a combination of urine and wood ash, which they found worked as well as traditional mineral fertilizer.

"It is totally possible to use human urine as a fertilizer instead of industrial fertilizer," says Heinonen-Tanski, whose research group has also used urine to cultivate cucumbers, cabbage and tomatoes. Recycling urine as fertilizer could not only make agriculture and wastewater treatment more sustainable in industrialized countries, the researchers say, but also bolster food production and improve sanitation in developing countries.

Hat tip naked capitalism

"Ce qui vient au monde pour ne rien troubler ne mérite ni égards ni patience." René Char

Cameroon's environment minister on Wednesday accused a Dutch ship of dumping toxic waste off the Cameroonian coast. Environmentalists say western firms treat Africa as a "dustbin" for their dangerous waste.

A statement by Environment Minister Pierre Hélé said the government had information that a ship called the NV Nashville was dumping waste off the coast of west Africa, but provided no details of its location or movement.

The minister called on his counterparts in neighbouring countries to be on the lookout for any suspicious vessels.

"Our friends in the west are very dangerous people," ministry official Benoît Bitjocka told AFP news agency.

Anew peer-reviewed studyin the journalSciencehas concluded that world coal production will peak next year. The study finds that on a business-as-usual scenario of exploitation (i.e. without efforts to curb fossil fuel emissions), coal production from existing reserves "is predicted to occur close to the year 2011". After this year, the study warns, "production rates of coal" decline to 1990 levels by the year 2037, reaching "50% of the peak value in the year 2047." It's "unlikely" that any future discoveries of coal reserves will ameliorate this decline.
The Science projections are a major blow to advocates of 'clean coal' technology as a viable solution to cutting CO2 emissions, simply because there is not enough to come anywhere near meeting world energy demand.

British energy giant BP said Wednesday it will begin deep-water exploration drilling off the Libyan coast some time before the end of this year.

In late July, the company had said it would start drilling off the Libyan coast in a few weeks amid controversy over its 2007 deal with Tripoli and the oil firm's role in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

"We are working on the last details and we are talking now about the second half of the year," a BP spokesman said.

The 2007 accord allows BP to drill five wells in the Gulf of Sirte at depths of around 1,700 metres (5,500 feet), slightly deeper than the ruptured Gulf of Mexico well which BP has only just managed to seal.

The use of solar energy is still negligible, but the aim is for alternative power sources to expand significantly over the next decade.

"The final price of equipment and materials will drop 20 percent, not just 13 percent," Rodrigo Salazar, general manager of Energy Solutions, a company that sells solar heaters, told IPS. This additional cut in costs will come from the elimination of the import tax on renewable energy equipment purchased by the sector's companies.

Salazar believes the initiative will boost alternative energy equipment sales, which have been stagnant since the onset of the global financial crisis in 2008.

In the government's plans there is also room for another alternative source: bio-digesters. These are small plants that generate gas from cattle manure fermentation, and in addition to eliminating animal waste and generating energy, they produce bio-manure for use on crops.

Rural and low-income communities have benefited the most from certain pilot programmes that have been underway for a number of years. An estimated 1,400 bio-digesters have been installed in Costa Rica. Their low cost and the fact that they are easy to install and maintain make them an attractive alternative.

The village of Santa Fe, in Guatuso district, near the Nicaraguan border, has 10 bio-digesters, which were built four years ago at a cost of about 200 dollars each.

With that investment, users save 15 dollars a month in gas for cooking and heating water. "It's innovative and environmentally-friendly," because it curbs pollution, deforestation, and "gets rid of animal dung," Xinia Montero, head of the Santa Fe Women's Group, told IPS.

And it can also be considered a tourist attraction, as people "come from different countries to see how they work," Montero said.

The European Medicines Agency in London has agreed to give access to internal reports on the side effects of everyday medicines. The move, which will see the confidential information released in "the coming weeks," came after pressure from the Strasbourg-based EU Ombudsman's office.

"I saw that the weakness of the law was the 150-euro fine," he said recently. "I asked myself and my wife, can we pay it? The answer was yes, because this doesn't concern millions of people."

Indeed, estimates of those who regularly wear burkas in France range from 400 to 2,000.

Nekkaz, a businessman, whose parents immigrated to France from Algeria, and his Franco-American wife, Cecile Le Roux, have pledged a million euros of their own money to pay any fines that may arise from the law.

(Reuters) - A new superbug could spread around the world after reaching Britain from India -- in part because of medical tourism -- and scientists say there are almost no drugs to treat it.

Researchers said on Wednesday they had found a new gene called New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase, or NDM-1, in patients in South Asia and in Britain.

NDM-1 makes bacteria highly resistant to almost all antibiotics, including the most powerful class called carbapenems, and experts say there are no new drugs on the horizon to tackle it.

(Reuters) - As dozens of U.S. billionaires pledge their fortunes to charity and the country struggles to shake off recession, philanthropy is a growing status symbol of the rich, experts say.

Being wealthy may no longer be about how many properties or fast cars a millionaire owns -- it could be about how much money they are giving away -- bringing hope to charities that Warren Buffett and Bill Gates' philanthropic push inspires others.

"It will be something that's very important to the wealthy -- to be able to say: 'I give my money away as much as I spend it in all these other exciting ways,'" said Stacy Palmer, editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Five of the 15 experts that advised the World Health Organisation about swine flu pandemic alerts had received support from the drugs industry, including for flu vaccine research, the WHO revealed on Wednesday.

The agency released for the first time a list of the 15 members of the Emergency Committee headed by Australian tropical diseases professor John Mackenzie, who was the only member publicly named during the outbreak.

They came from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin and North America, the list posted on the WHO's website showed.

Most were scientific researchers and epidemiologists, along with a Senegalese diplomat, public health officials from Thailand and Chile as well as two specialists on international air travel and health. The list can be seen at http://www.who.int/ihr/emerg_comm_members_2009/en/index.html.

The British National Party is taking part in a week-long conference in Japan organised by Nippon Issuikai, an extreme-right group that denies Japanese wartime atrocities.

Adam Walker, the BNP's staff manager, is in Tokyo along with 20 MEPs and members of the Alliance of European National Movements, the "europarty" that brings together far-right parties from across Europe.

Walker arrived in Tokyo today where he will spend the next week attending a congress on "The Future of Nationalist Movements" .

According to the BNP, Walker has worked in Japan as a teacher and runs a martial arts academy.

Researchers working in the Black Sea have found currents of water 350 times greater than the River Thames flowing along the sea bed, carving out channels much like a river on the land.

The undersea river, which is up to 115ft deep in places, even has rapids and waterfalls much like its terrestrial equivalents.

If found on land, scientists estimate it would be the world's sixth largest river in terms of the amount of water flowing through it.

Sounds fammiliar:

According to Pausanias, [the river-god] Alpheius was a passionate hunter and fell in love with the nymph Arethusa, but she fled from him to the island of Ortygia near Syracuse, and metamorphosed herself into a well, after which Alpheius became a river, which flowing from Peloponnesus under the sea to Ortygia, there united its waters with those of the well Arethusa.

Greenland shed its largest chunk of ice in nearly half a century last week when the momentous break-up of the Petermann Glacier set a 100 sq mile chunk of ice drifting into the North Strait between Greenland and Canada. Scientists say Greenland is losing ice mass at an increasing rate, dumping more icebergs into the ocean because of warming temperatures

Mankind may be descended from apes but Australian scientists have found proof of links much closer to the sea floor, with a study revealing that sea sponges share almost 70 percent of human genes.

Genetic sequencing of sea sponges from the World Heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef showed the ancient marine animal shared many of its genes with humans, including a large number typically associated with disease and cancer.

Lead researcher Bernard Degnan, of the University of Queensland, said the findings "would shed light on a whole range of different things," and could lay the foundation for breakthroughs in cancer and stem cell research.

"Sponges have what's (considered) the 'Holy Grail' of stem cells," Degnan told AFP.

Exploring the genetic function of sponge stem cells could provide "deep and important connections" to the genes that influenced human stem cell biology, he said.

In what is believed to be a medical first, researchers have used stem cells from bone marrow to repair the skin of young patients with a painful and usually deadly skin disease, a study published Wednesday says.

Researchers led by University of Minnesota doctors John Wagner and Jakub Tolar in 2007 began treating children with a rare genetic skin disorder, called recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa (RDEB), with bone marrow stem cells that had been found in lab tests to repair skin in mice.

There is currently no cure or treatment for epidermolysis bullosa, which causes skin to blister and scrape off with the slightest rub or bump.

It can affect the lining of the mouth and esophagus as well as the skin, and makes activities that many children take for granted, such as eating, painful.

The trial was the first to use bone marrow stem cells to treat something other than diseased or damaged marrow, said Tolar, associate professor of pediatric transplantation at the University of Minnesota.

This year, Mexico City became the first capital in mainly Catholic Latin America to pass a law allowing gay couples the same marriage and adoption rights as heterosexuals.

But Calderon's government and his right-wing National Action Party, or PAN, argued the law was unconstitutional on grounds it would be destructive to families. The powerful Catholic hierarchy in Mexico calls gay marriage immoral.

While the supreme court decided gay marriage was constitutional, it will review the adoption clause on Monday.

"Kim Lemish, executive director of the East Point Housing Authority, said the event marked the first time the city has offered Section 8 housing applications since 2002. The waiting list that lasted eight years had depleted, she said, and the agency was beginning a new one. So people braved all the physical difficulties just to get on a waiting list that could keep them waiting for years....

"Only families with incomes no more than half the median income for the area qualify. The median income for the East Point area is less than $32,000, according to Census data. It is up to the renter to find a place that meets HUD standards, which includes being 90 percent to 110 percent of the 'local fair market rent.' "
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Personal point of reference: Transfer amounts do not obtain "90% - 110%" of fair market value. I looked into Sec. 8 the winter of 2008 a couple months after Dr MarketTrustee died. I needed to move immediately and was decidedly uncertain about my employment prospects. I found that the app window had already closed; it's opened once annually for 30 days. And the maximum benefit of $700 (xcounty) was insufficient for my purposes in Montgomery County where local median rent 2BR1BATH, by my xcounty search, was $1900. More important, the agency later announced at its web site FY enrollment was limited to 800 out of 27K apps received to the program.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

(Reuters) - Italian police seized a rare albino python in Rome Wednesday in a raid on a group of drug traffickers who used the snake to guard cocaine and intimidate customers who owed them money.

The three-meter (10-foot) long reptile attacked police when they burst into the dealers' apartment where they were preparing the cocaine for distribution. The specialist forest police had to be called in to capture the python.

"When we went in, we found the animal right behind the door waiting for us, just like a proper guard dog," said Lieutenant Luca Gelormino.

Detectives discovered the frozen corpse of Jean-Francois Poinard after his girlfriend Guylene Collober, 51, told her daughter "something unfortunate" had happened to him.

The 71-year-old's body is believed to have been secreted in a freezer at their home in Lyon for up to two years.

He was found in the foetal position and covered with plastic bags.

Ms Collober is said to have made the revelation to her daughter during a night out.

Her daughter told police, who found Mr Poinard's body at the flat.

However I'll need a) no comment upon smoking habits and b) a 24/7 taxi driver on stand-by with a citröen, boina and an aggressive poodle on the front passenger seat. But as long as I get good coffee and a decent Calvados, I'm a pussycat.

You can't be me, I'm taken

As today's Google doodle celebrates 71 years of The Wizard of Oz, we present 71 things you might not know about the musical classic starring Judy Garland

The jury in the Chicago corruption trial of Rod Blagojevich may be deadlocked on some of the counts against the former Illinois governor....

Zagel denied [!] the jury's request for transcripts of the lawyers' closing arguments at the outset [!] of deliberations.

On July 30, jurors asked if transcripts of testimony were available without specifying whose testimony they wanted to review. Zagel told the panel that, while it was possible to get such transcripts [!], it could take time to prepare them [!]. The jurors didn't submit a follow-up request.

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Rod to Reid: Say, Missssssstrial, mofo.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.