Talks on forming a new government in Belgium collapsed over the weekend leading a series of French-speaking politicians to raise the normally-taboo subject of a possible break-up of the country.

King Albert on Saturday (4 September) accepted the resignation of French-speaking Socialist leader Elio Di Rupo as lead negotiator after he failed to bring the seven-party talks to an agreement on reforming the state, a precondition for establishing a coalition government.

EUOBSERVER /BRUSSELS - Belarus opposition leader Jaroslav Romanchuk has called for EU support in the run-up to presidential elections following the death of a reporter in suspicious circumstances.

Mr Romanchuk, who is to run for president in the upcoming vote, told EUobserver by phone from Minsk on Sunday (5 September) that the death of internet journalist Aleh Byabenin, who was found hanged on Friday, looks like foul play.

Nearly a year after Dominik Brunner died after being beaten at train station, a Munich court sentenced 19-year-old Markus S. to nine years and 10 months for murder, just below the maximum sentence of 10 years for youth offenders. His friend Sebastian L., who is now 18 years of age, got seven years for assault resulting in death.

Spain has dismissed as insufficient a ceasefire offer by the Basque separatist organization ETA, insisting that ETA had to "renounce violence completely, forever," according to Spain's Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba

"We are not going to change a dot or a comma in our antiterrorist policy," he said on Monday. What we want is for ETA to renounce violence, so long as it does not break with violence it will not be admitted into institutions," he added.

The Moldovan government's hopes of breaking political the deadlock with legislation to directly elect the country's president have been dealt a terminal blow.

Low voter turnout in a referendum on the matter means that the government could not obtain a mandate for the change to be enacted. 

Just over 29 percent of the electorate voted in the poll. The figure falls short of the 33 percent required for it to be binding, according to Central Election Commission head Yuri Cocan.

France will forge ahead with legislation to strip immigrants of their French citizenship if they are convicted of killing or attempting to kill police officers or public officials.
  A statement from President Nicolas Sarkozy's office on Monday said the government would draft a law "as soon as possible".
  The legislation would apply to immigrants who have been French for less than 10 years, and signals Sarkozy's determination to continue his widely criticised crackdown on criminals of foreign origin.

Sarkozy has been accused of pandering to the far-right with hard line policies ahead of the 2012 presidential elections.

During August, security forces dismantled hundreds of Roma (gypsy) camps across France and "repatriated" their inhabitants, mostly to Romania and Bulgaria.

One week after the opening of the school year, college and high school teachers across France stayed at home on Monday as part of a one-day strike to protest against working conditions. The move by the country's two largest teachers' unions opens what is expected to be a volatile week ahead of Tuesday's national strike organised by French labour unions. Union organisers hope to mobilize millions of people at rallies across the country to protest against the government's proposed pension reforms. The new plan is to be submitted to Parliament on Tuesday by embattled Labour Minister Eric Woerth, who has been tarnished by his involvement with the L'Oreal heiress scandal.

REUTERS - Gianfranco Fini, the former ally of Silvio Berlusconi turned bitter rival, made a fierce attack on the Italian prime minister on Sunday but said he would avoid steps that could trigger an early election. Fini, the speaker of the lower house of parliament, was expelled in July from the People of Freedom (PDL) party he set up with Berlusconi, leaving the government without a secure majority after months of increasing friction between the two. Denouncing his expulsion as an act of "Stalinism" by the prime minister's allies, he called for constitutional reform and urged the government to focus on economic issues and social justice, but rejected charges of disloyalty.

(Reuters) - Immigration Minister Damian Green is calling for tougher rules for non-EU students seeking to enrol on courses in Britain, after research found a fifth were still in the country five years after being granted visas.

In a major speech on immigration, which the coalition government has vowed to reduce, Green will say current foreign student numbers are "unsustainable."

He is expected to outline plans for new measures that ensure only the "brightest and best" migrants enter the country to study and work.

The stricter controls are part of a strategy to slash net migration figures which ballooned under Labour.

The Downing Street communications chief, Andy Coulson, told police today that he would be happy to meet them voluntarily to discuss fresh phone-hacking allegations, as Scotland Yard said it was considering whether to reopen the investigation.

John Yates, the assistant Metropolitan police commissioner, said detectives were studying new allegations published by the New York Times last week.

Coulson, who is David Cameron's PR chief, has denied claims in the New York Times that he freely discussed the use of unlawful news-gathering techniques when he was editor of the News of the World. He responded today by saying he was willing to meet police to discuss the allegations.

Russia's next presidential election is not until 2012, but speculation is already rife about whether Dmitry Medvedev will try for a second term or whether his predecessor, Vladimir Putin, will want to reclaim his old job. The one thing almost everyone can agree on is that they will not stand against each other. But there might just be a third way, and that third way could give Russia its very own Margaret Thatcher or Angela Merkel.

Britain's €3 billion rebate from the EU budget is "no longer justified," EU budget commissioner Janusz Lewandowski has said.

"The British rebate has lost its original justification," Mr Lewandowski told the leading German daily Handelsblatt in an interview published on Monday (6 September). "The structure of the EU budget has changed substantially. Farm subsidies - the main reason for the rebate - have decreased, while the per-capita income of the UK has increased substantially since the 1980s."

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - As EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy's economic governance task force reconvenes on Monday (6 September), the fiscal situation of many in the bloc remains parlous.

Concerns of a double-dip recession echo across the Atlantic, and bond yields for the EU's more troubled countries stubbornly keep rising as if the promise made in May of a €750-billion eurozone bail-out should things go truly wrong had never been made.

"By the end of the year it ought to become clear that the Bundeswehr will become smaller, but better." This is how German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg framed his plans to cut the German army by around a third last month.

A similar refrain has been taken up throughout the NATO alliance, where growing state debts are putting increasing pressure on defense budgets, but defense ministers are at pains to ensure that security is not impaired.

British Defense Secretary Liam Fox said in July that possible cuts to the country's nuclear deterrent are being considered, but insisted that any budget trimming must not put Britain at risk by weakening its armed forces.

REUTERS - U.S. President Barack Obama will announce on Monday a six-year plan to revamp the United States' road, railways and runways with a $50 billion up-front investment to jump-start job creation, the White House said. The plan is one of several several economic initiatives that Obama is due to unveil this week aimed at generating some desperately needed U.S. job growth and limiting predicted Democratic losses in Nov. 2 congressional elections.   Struggling to persuade Americans that his economic policies are working, Obama will use appearances in Milwaukee and Cleveland this week to set the tone for the fall campaign.

REUTERS - As commuters prepared for travel chaos on Monday at the start of a series of strikes on the London Underground, management and unions traded blows over new safety claims.

About 200 Alstom-Metro maintenance workers on the Jubilee and Northern lines began industrial action over pay on Sunday evening, with other 24-hour strikes due to take place on Oct. 2, Nov. 1 and Nov. 27.

On Monday, up to 10,000 members of the Rail Maritime and Transport and white collar TSSA union, ranging from station employees to drivers, will put down their tools late afternoon at the start of four one-day strikes to protest 800 ticket-office job cuts.

(Reuters) - European Union finance ministers will try on Monday to agree more details of how to penalise EU budget rule breakers and underline the importance of keeping debt levels low.

The ministers from the 27-nation bloc will meet in Brussels in what is known as the Task Force to discuss changes to EU budget rules, the Stability and Growth Pact, to prevent another sovereign debt crisis like the one triggered by Greece.

But despite several meetings since talks began on toughening the budget rules in May, there have been few concrete results and frustration is growing over the lack of progress.

Investment banks have reined in their worst pay excesses. But inconsistent enforcement of bonus rules in the United States and Europe means some are still getting away with bad behaviour. If banks and regulators can't agree common standards, they risk another political backlash.

It's almost 18 months since the world's regulators agreed a common set of principles for bank pay. But the interpretation of those standards has been far from consistent. While the U.S. Federal Reserve has issued the institutions it regulates with broad guidelines, the European Union has passed a detailed directive, including a requirement that a proportion of any bonus should be paid in the form of contingent capital. Add in one-off levies like the UK bank payroll tax, and it's not hard to see why banks are struggling for a common approach.

Investment banks have cleaned up their act to some extent. Most bonuses now include some deferred payment, often in the form of stock. This aligns bankers' incentives with those of shareholders, and discourages them from taking short-term risks that may blow up in a year or two. Multi-year guaranteed bonuses have almost entirely disappeared.

However, there are plenty of signs that some banks are still ignoring the spirit of the new rules.

Ireland's finance minister, Brian Lenihan, was in Brussels tonight in an effort to clinch a deal over the toxic Anglo Irish Bank while trying to calm financial markets' fears that the government bailout could bankrupt the country.

After "constructive" talks with the EU competition commissioner Joaquín Almunia today he heads into a conference of European finance ministers tomorrow aware that Ireland's financial system has come under intense scrutiny from the financial markets.

In a rare interview on the subject of the bank, Lenihan said he was confident that the €25bn (£21bn) already pumped into the bank could be absorbed by the public purse.

For the past few years (and, in reality, for decades before that), the government has tried to improve the nation's housing market by artificially inflating house prices. The mortgage-mod programs, the back-door bank bailouts, the Fed-subsidized mortgage rates, the $150 billion flushed down the Fannie and Freddie rat-hole--all these tactics and more have been designed to reduce monthly payments for mortgage holders and  keep house prices high.

....

But three years into the bailouts, people are finally throwing up their hands. As the administration tries to figure out what to do to save the Democrats in November, calls for a new form of housing action are emerging: STOP trying to keep house prices artificially high and just let prices fall.  (See this article by David Streitfeld in the New York Times.)

....

And what would this do?

Well, in the short-term, if house prices fell to fair value (5% to 10% below today's level--see chart below), it would certainly lead to more folks walking away from their mortgages. It would also, thereby, lead to more bank writeoffs.  But that's only fair. And the banks now have enough capital (and enough access to capital), so they'll be able to survive.

Importantly, it would also allow a new generation of home buyers to step into the market and buy with the confidence that they won't get screwed if the government ever does decide to stop pumping up prices. (This is a big and justifiable fear.)  Instead, new buyers will be able to look at long-term price-to-income and price-to-rent ratios and observe that they are buying houses at fair value or below--instead of at levels that are still artificially inflated relative to almost all non-bubble history.

....

Here's a larger version of Robert Shiller's long-term house price chart. Note that prices (blue line) are still modestly above the long-term average:

Modestly!  For the national median home price, perhaps. But for markets such as Los Angeles it could be another 20% or more. But the government can't levitate all prices forever  ---   I don't think.

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

Calling it a "milestone" in the fight against corruption worldwide, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon opened what is being billed as the world's first anti-corruption academy late last week, promising that it will train a new generation of law enforcers and focus on new types of graft, especially in the financial and business arenas.

AFP - Seven armed Slovaks arrested in the Central African Republic over an alleged coup plot have been freed after proving they were tourists on a safari hunt, the foreign ministry in Bratislava said Monday.

"There was a misunderstanding. The Slovaks were not plotting, they were hunters on a safari in the Central African Republic with legally-owned guns," ministry spokesman Lubos Schwarzbacher said.

AFP - At least 19 people were killed and 45 wounded when a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden car into a police station in northwest Pakistan on Monday, destroying the building, police said.
   
Nine policemen and four schoolchildren were among those killed by the attack in Lakki Marwat in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, not far from tribal areas that are a stronghold of the Taliban, police said.
   
At least 110 people have been killed over the past week as militants step up their attacks across the country.

AFP - Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom declared a "national tragedy" on Sunday after landslides killed at least 38 people and left rescuers digging in the mud for nearly two dozen still missing.

Colom declared a state of emergency as fears grew the eventual toll from scores of landslides across the country set off by weeks of torrential rain could be far higher.

"It's a national tragedy," Colom said as he visited a site where up to 40 people were feared to have been buried alive in a mudslide.

"This weekend alone we have seen damage comparable to what we experienced with Agatha," he said, referring to a tropical storm in May that killed 165 Guatemalans and left thousands homeless.

AFP - At least 10 African heads of state and tens of thousands of Rwandans gathered Monday for the swearing in of Paul Kagame, who won a landslide victory in last month's presidential elections.

Kigali's Amahoro stadium was packed to capacity, with an estimated 40,000 people inside and thousands of others set to follow the event on giant screens outside the stadium.

Among the attending dignitaries is President Joseph Kabila whose Democratic Republic of Congo is the focus of a leaked UN report alleging that the Rwandan army committed widespread atrocities, possibly amounting to genocide, there between 1996-98.

Kigali rejected the charges and threatened to withdraw its peacekeeping troops from Sudan if the UN goes ahead and publishes the report.

AFP - Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri said in comments published on Monday that he erred in accusing Syria of the murder of his father, ex-premier Rafiq Hariri, in a 2005 bombing in Beirut.
   
"At some point, we made a mistake," Hariri told the Saudi-owned daily Asharq Al-Awsat. "At one stage, we accused Syria of assassinating the martyred premier.
   
"That was a political accusation, and that political accusation is over," Hariri told the London-based newspaper.

MANAGUA, Sep 6, 2010 (IPS) - An independent study has confirmed that extreme poverty in Nicaragua fell by 7.5 percentage points between 2005 and 2009, an achievement clouded by criticism of the environmental costs, a supposed lack of transparency and the paternalism of the country's social programmes.

Some news items from El Salvador this week.

Bolivia: Quiroga Conviction Controversy

Guatemala

"Beware of the man who does not talk, and the dog that does not bark." Cheyenne

"Support for flights without movies" is the name of a small group that several years ago encouraged Haredi travelers not to take regular flights unless they had cardboard that could cover the movie screens on the airplane seats in front of them.

This year the idea caught on that immodest sights may also be a threat outside the airplane - in the airport terminal, for example. So pilgrims are being encouraged to bring scarves along.

"In any cloth shop, ask for a thin lycra cloth 70 cm wide (blue, brown or black ) costing about 20 NIS," reads one instruction. "It needs to be about 1.5 meters long ... which is necessary so it will sit well and not flow in the wind."

The leaflet notes that even if people laugh at someone wearing the scarf on his face, those covering their eyes "will be rewarded a thousand fold."

Third party intervention is clearly indispensable. To put it more simply, there can be no settlement unless America pushes Israel into a settlement. Playing the honest broker will not do the trick. In the first place, most Arabs regard the United States as a dishonest broker on account of its palpable partisanship on behalf of Israel. Moreover, honest brokerage is not enough. In order to bridge the huge gap separating the two sides, America must first redress the balance of power by putting most of its weight on the side of the weaker party.

The German government has embarked on a charm offensive, seeking to defend its decision to extend the lifespan of the country's nuclear power plants by an average of 12 years.

"I think it's fair to say that our energy supply scheme will become the world's most efficient and environmentally friendly," Chancellor Angela Merkel said in Berlin, referring to her center-right coalition's overall plan to support the introduction of renewable energies by using more old-fashioned, established sources of power in the meantime.

"The agreement will maintain affordable energy prices both for private consumers and businesses. Our aim is to further promote renewables, and we see nuclear and coal-fired power plants as an indispensible bridge towards this goal."

By 2050, Merkel said, 80 percent of Germany's electricity should be harvested from renewable sources.

Tropical Storm Hermine formed in the southwest Gulf of Mexico today and strengthened slightly as it moved towards the coast of northeast Mexico and southern Texas, the US National Hurricane Centre said.

Tropical storm warnings were in effect from Tampico, Mexico to the south Texas coast from the Rio Grande River to Baffin Bay, the Miami-based centre said.

On its current track, Hermine does not threaten the main concentration of US oil and gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.

Hermine, the eighth tropical storm of the 2010 Atlantic Hurricane season, was at 7am located about 185 miles southeast of Tampico, Mexico and about 280 miles southeast of Brownsville, Texas.

They are laying waste to crops in record numbers and their snouts are seriously damaging the autumn harvest. But soon the rampaging wild boar that have been causing havoc in rural areas of Germany could be gunned down by army marksmen, if farmers get their way.

The call for a military response comes from landowners in the wine and crop-growing western Rhineland-Palatinate region, where boar have destroyed hundreds of hectares of maize and torn up the earth so badly with their snouts that combine harvesters have been brought to a standstill. "The farmers are boiling with rage yet the problem can't be solved by using regular hunters anymore," said Norbert Schindler, the president of the regional farmers' union. "They are trying hard but they just can't cope. Why can't the army be drafted in to help?"

ScienceDaily (Sep. 5, 2010) -- Widespread reports of a decline in the population of bees and other flower-visiting animals have aroused fear and speculation that pollination is also likely on the decline. A recent University of Toronto study provides the first long-term evidence of a downward trend in pollination, while also pointing to climate change as a possible contributor.

"Bee numbers may have declined at our research site, but we suspect that a climate-driven mismatch between the times when flowers open and when bees emerge from hibernation is a more important factor," says James Thomson, a scientist with U of T's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

Thomson's 17-year examination of the wild lily in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado is one of the longest-term studies of pollination ever done. It reveals a progressive decline in pollination over the years, with particularly noteworthy pollination deficits early in the season. The study will be published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Science

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The EU's Nabucco gas pipeline received a boost on Monday as the European Investment Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank made a first written commitment that may lend the project up to €4 billion, half of its total cost.

"International financing institutions are very conservative in their assessments, so if they indicate they are ready to commit funding, they usually end up doing it," Thomas Barrett from the EIB said during a joint press briefing in Brussels.

The potential financing package, pending approval of the environmental and social feasibility studies, will consist of up to €2 billion from the EIB, €1.2 billion from the EBRD and around €800 million from the World Bank. The European Commission has already earmarked €200 million for the project, provided the green light from investors is given by the end of this year or beginning of 2011. The total cost of the project is estimated at €7.9 billion.

The financial commitment from international banks is aimed at alleviating fears in supplier countries - notably Azerbaijan and Iraq - that the consortium lacks the proper funding for the 3,300 to 4,000 km long pipeline aimed at breaking the Russian monopoly on gas exports from the Caspian Sea region via an alternative route.

"Construction will start in 2012, operation of the pipeline is expected to start in 2015, " Nabucco managing director Reinhard Mitschek said during the same briefing, while also signalling "flexibility" on the date of one year earlier or later, depending on the customers' needs.

AP - The Vatican on Sunday raised the possibility of using behind-the-scenes diplomacy to try to spare the life of an Iranian widow sentenced to be stoned for adultery. In its first public statement on the case, which has attracted worldwide attention, the Vatican also decried stoning as a particularly "brutal" form of capital punishment.   Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said the Catholic church opposes the death penalty in general.   Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani was convicted in 2006 of adultery. In July, Iranian authorities said they would not carry out the stoning sentence for the time being, but the mother of two could still face execution by hanging for adultery and other offenses.

AFP - Kevin Pietersen was fined an "undisclosed amount" for his foul-mouthed Twitter tirade after being dropped from the England squad, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) announced Monday.

Pietersen, never before axed when fit from England duty in a four-year international career, pre-empted last Tuesday's announcement by several hours that he'd been left out for the upcoming Twenty20 and limited overs matches against Pakistan with a post on social networking site Twitter.

The South Africa-born batsman would have been in trouble for that act alone.

(Reuters) - Former Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Monday he had cancelled a book-signing in London this week to mark the launch of his memoirs, over fears the event would be hit by protests.

Three people were arrested after eggs and shoes were thrown at Blair, 57, as he arrived to sign copies of "A Journey" at a bookshop in Dublin on Saturday and some of the 200 protesters clashed with police.

No injuries were reported and the missiles did not hit Blair.

Anti-war campaigners and the far-right British National Party had said they would protest on Wednesday at the Waterstone's branch in Piccadilly in central London over Blair's decision to join the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Natascha Kampusch, the Austrian woman who was kidnapped and held captive for more than eight years, has told of how she tried to kill herself after being beaten up to 200 times a week by her captor.

In her forthcoming autobiography Kampusch, 22, said Wolfgang Priklopil called her "my slave" and demanded she perform household tasks semi-naked after he kidnapped her as a 10-year-old in 1998.

Kampusch escaped from Priklopil's house in August 2006 and became a talk show host in Austria less than two years later, although a year ago she spoke of having almost reverted back to the life she had as a prisoner - suffering from anxiety attacks and spending most of her time in her Vienna flat.

Priklopil killed himself hours after Kampusch managed to escape while he was cleaning his car.

A founding member of ELO has been killed in a freak accident when a giant hay bale rolled out of a field and landed on his van.

Cellist Mike Edwards died instantly when the 50-stone cylindrical bale careered down a slope, flipped 15ft over a hedge and smashed on to the roof of his van.

Mr Edwards, 62, was known for unconventional cello playing including plucking the strings with an orange or grapefruit and his bizarre customs which became a major ingredient of ELO, the Electric Light Orchestra.

I've got a few Moon stories I'm saving up for the book, but here's one: The guys were at Olympic studios in London (can't remember what they were working on) with Glyn Johns producing and engineering. (Helios desk). It was the first time I had seen Mr Johns angry (livid) because for the 3rd time Keith had surreptitiously removed Mr J's tiny foldback mic from the gooseneck at his position at the desk. So he's giving complicated instructions to some session musicians in the studio - but to them he looked like a goldfish mouthing in the aquarium. Very annoying, but quite funny.

Keith topped the day by requesting to perform an additional percussion track on one of the songs. He disappeared into the booth out of sight of the control room window, and as the track played we heard this amazing sniffing beat (which I believe was a reference to partaking in Peruvian cocoa). It was great - but then in the second chorus it stopped. Roadies, who could see him in the booth, rushed over to find that the Moon had hyperventilated and was now unconscious among the cables on the floor.

I was in the car park when Glyn strode out angrily toward his Maribou chocolate-coloured Lincoln Continental. "That F*cking Moon! That's the last time. F*ck! AAAAaaaargggghhh". And slammed the car door behind him.

Never saw the chap again.

You can't be me, I'm taken