European Union leaders have agreed plans to complete the European banking union by January 2014, after the general elections in Germany. The concession was made to Angela Merkel who argued for "quality" over "speed" in putting in place the new supervisory system.After a night of discussions, EU leaders made some advancement towards establishing a single banking supervisor for the eurozone as the first of the three pillars of the banking union, agreeing it would start phasing-in as of next year and become operational "probably" in the course of 2013.

...French and EU officials said all 6,000 banks in the single currency area would gradually come under the supervision of the European Central Bank by 2014, starting with banks receiving state aid, then large cross-border institutions. Most day-to-day oversight would be delegated to national bodies.

The agreement appeared to be a defeat for German Finance Minister Wolfgang  Schäuble's efforts to delay and limit the scope of European banking supervision.

In the Romanian parliament building, leaders of the European People's Party (EPP), including the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, made speeches in the presence of Romanian President Traian Băsescu and members of his right-wing coalition ARD.

Meanwhile, in the National Stadium, the president of the Alliance of Democrats and Liberals for Europe, Guy Verfostadt and the head of the European Liberal, Democrat and Reform Party, Graham Watson as well as Bulgarian Socialist Sergueï Stanichev addressed a crowd of 70,000 supporters of the USL, the centre-left coalition of Prime Minister Victor Ponta.

On October 17, Bucharest was, for the day, the capital of European politics. The events were organised in conjunction with general elections scheduled for December 9. It was a day on which "the ARD and the USL struggled to obtain a European legitimacy," sums up Romanian daily România Liberă.

A remote-control roadside bomb ripped through a military vehicle today (19 October) near Agri, an eastern province of Turkey, according to reports in the Turkish press.

Agri Governor Mehmet Tekinarslan described it as a terrorist attack targeted at the gas pipeline. The governor said that 28 soldiers were wounded, one seriously.

The incident is the latest in a series of explosions that hit gas pipelines in Turkey this month. On 8 October, Turkish authorities blamed the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) separatist group for a blast on a pipeline in Turkey's southeast that halted the Iranian gas flow to the region.

But at the CSU's annual congress in Munich on Friday and Saturday, the Bavarians joked they were behaving like "purring kittens" instead, sounding a more conciliatory tone towards twice bailed-out Greece than as recently as a month ago.

"If we turned a blind eye when Greece adopted the euro, it's now time to turn another blind eye," said Hannelore Gabor, mayor of Garching, a town of 16,000 inhabitants north of Munich.

"The costs would be much higher if we didn't," said the local politician, sporting a traditional Bavarian dirndl dress.

Spain's main trade unions on Friday called a general strike for Nov. 14, coinciding with similar protests in Portugal and Greece.

The Workers' Commissions and General Workers' unions called the strike - the second to be held in Spain this year - to protest the conservative government's austerity measures and labor reforms. A partially successful stoppage was held March 29.

Workers' Commissions spokesman Fernando Lezcano said it would be the first ever joint general strike in Iberian neighbors Spain and Portugal.

The General Workers' union in a statement said the strike was called to press for a change in government policy because "cuts are strangling the economy and dismantling our social model."

Paris-based German fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld has slammed the French president as "an imbecile" whose "disastrous" policies "will drive the rich out of France".

The comments were made in an interview for the Spanish edition of Marie Claire magazine, extracts of which were published on the website of Spanish daily El Mundo on Friday.

"This imbecile, he'll be just as disastrous as [former Spanish premier José Luis] Zapatero," he told the magazine, which he is guest editing for its 25th anniversary.

"Hollande hates the rich. He clearly wants to punish them -- they'll leave [the country] and nobody will invest," he said. "Foreigners won't invest, and things will stop working.

Imbecile.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

In his widely discussed National Bureau of Economic Research paper, "Is U.S. Economic Growth Over?" Gordon predicts a dark future of "epochal decline in growth from the U.S. record of the last 150 years.” The greatest innovations, Gordon argues, are behind us, with little prospect for transformative change along the lines of the three previous industrial revolutions:

... For Obama, the argument that America has run out of string is politically untouchable. In the case of Romney and the Republican Party, something very different appears to be taking place.

... Affluent Republicans - the donor and policy base of the conservative movement -- are on red alert. They want to protect and enhance their position in a future of diminished resources. What really provokes the ferocity with which the right currently fights for regressive tax and spending policies is a deeply pessimistic vision premised on a future of hard times.

Eight people have been killed and more than 78 injured after a massive car bomb tore through a middle-class largely Christian neighbourhood of Beirut.

One of the dead - apparently the target of the attack - was a senior internal security official, Major General Wissam al-Hassan. Hassan had been behind the break up of an alleged pro-Syrian network that had been smuggling explosives into Lebanon for a bombing campaign.

The death of Hassan, who reportedly had concerns he had become a target for assassination, is bound to lead to speculation that Syria, or its allies were behind the attack despite the quick condemnation by Damascus of the attack.

...Hassan also led the investigation that implicated Syria and its ally Hezbollah in the killing of the former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri a Lebanese, official said.

Ten people were killed and dozens wounded as Libyan militias operating alongside the defence ministry shelled the former Gaddafi stronghold of Bani Walid and faced counter-attacks, a resident and medical source said on Wednesday.

The hilltop town was one of the last to surrender last year to the rebels who overthrew dictator Muammar Gaddafi. It has come back into focus with the death last month of rebel fighter Omran Shaban after two months of detention in Bani Walid.

Shaban, from nearby Misrata, was the man who found Gaddafi hiding in a drain pipe in Sirte on Oct. 20, 2011.

Libya's ruling national congress had ordered the defence and interior ministries to find those who abducted Shaban and were suspected of torturing him to death. It also gave Bani Walid a deadline to hand them over.

Air strikes on the rebel-held town of Maaret al-Numan buried at least 43 people alive on Thursday after bombs turned three buildings to rubble. There has been heavy fighting in and around the town since rebels captured it last week.

US officials arrested a Bangladeshi immigrant on Wednesday for attempting to detonate a fake car bomb outside the Federal Reserve building in New York, the latest in a series of FBI sting operations that critics say lure vulnerable people into fictitious terror plots.

Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, a 21-year-old Bangladeshi who was in the United States on a student visa, was arrested after he attempted to detonate what he thought was a 1,000-pound bomb.

The explosives material was inert and the mobile phone that he believed served as a detonator had, in fact, been rigged by US authorities.

..."The big question is, would these people have been able to do these plots without the help of the FBI? Some have even been calling it entrapment," said FRANCE 24's Nathan King, reporting from New York. This could even be seen as "creating terrorism", King said, quoting a judge from a 2009 case in which two men were convicted of trying to blow up synagogues.

US drone attacks: CIA chiefs face arrest over horrific evidence of bloody 'video-game' sorties | Mail Online

The Mail on Sunday today reveals shocking new evidence of the full horrific impact of US drone attacks in Pakistan.

A damning dossier assembled from exhaustive research into  the strikes' targets sets out in heartbreaking detail the deaths of teachers, students and Pakistani policemen. It also describes how bereaved relatives are forced to gather their loved ones' dismembered body parts in the aftermath of strikes.

The dossier has been assembled by human rights lawyer Shahzad Akbar, who works for Pakistan's Foundation for Fundamental Rights and the British human rights charity Reprieve.

A small British company has produced the first "petrol from air" using a revolutionary technology that promises to solve the energy crisis as well as helping to curb global warming by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Air Fuel Synthesis in Stockton-on-Tees has produced five litres of petrol since August when it switched on a small refinery that manufactures gasoline from carbon dioxide and water vapour.

The company hopes that within two years it will build a larger, commercial-scale plant capable of producing a ton of petrol a day. It also plans to produce green aviation fuel to make airline travel more carbon-neutral.

...Although the process is still in the early developmental stages and needs to take electricity from the national grid to work, the company believes it will eventually be possible to use power from renewable sources such as wind farms or tidal barrages.

A group of European MPs called on Thursday for a controversial EU-wide ban on the production and sale of foie gras. The famous French delicacy is made by force-feeding ducks and geese, a process described by animal rights groups as "torture".

...French authorities were not amused when California set a precedent by becoming the first state to forbid the consumption of foie gras in July this year.

...Currently, farming of animals to produce foie gras is banned in 22 EU nations - excluding Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Hungary and Spain - but not the import or sale of what campaigners dub as "torture in a tin".

Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil producer, has plans to become 100% powered by renewable and low-carbon forms of energy, according to an influential member of the royal family.

But the process is likely to take decades, and some observers are sceptical as to whether it is any more than window-dressing.

Prince Turki Al Faisal Al Saud, founder of the King Faisal Foundation and one of the state's top spokesmen, told the Global Economic Symposium in Brazil that he hoped the kingdom might be powered entirely by low-carbon energy within his lifetime - he is 67 - but that he thought it was likely to take longer.

However, he insisted Saudi was moving ahead with investment in renewable energy, nuclear power and other alternatives to fossil fuels and that it could use its vast oil reserves for other goods, such as plastics and polymers.

Russ George, who told the Globe and Mail that he is the world's leading "champion" of geoengineering, says he has been under a "dark cloud of vilification" since the Guardian broke news of an ocean fertilisation scheme, funded by an indigenous village on the Haida Gwaii islands, that aimed to make money in offset markets by sequestering carbon through artificial plankton blooms.

"I'm not a rich, scheming businessman, right," he said. "That's not who I am ... This is my heart's work, not my hip pocket work, right?"

A US agency that loaned George's company 20 expensive ocean buoys said they had been "misled," and the Canadian National Research Council that provided funding said they "were not made aware" of plans for ocean fertilisation.

The Council of the Haida Nation, which represents all Haida, issued a statement condemning George.

"The consequences of tampering with nature at this scale are not predictable and pose unacceptable risks to the marine environment," it read. "Our people along with the rest of humanity depend on the oceans and cannot leave the fate of the oceans to the whim of the few."

Although the bankers made a lot of money from the deal making and a handful of energy companies made fortunes by exiting at the market's peak, most of the industry has been bloodied -- forced to sell assets, take huge write-offs and shift as many drill rigs as possible from gas exploration to oil, whose price has held up much better.

Rex W. Tillerson, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, which spent $41 billion to buy XTO Energy, a giant natural gas company, in 2010, when gas prices were almost double what they are today, minced no words about the industry's plight during an appearance in New York this summer.

"We are all losing our shirts today," Mr. Tillerson said. "We're making no money. It's all in the red."

... Mr. Pickens was furious. "We are stupid to drill these wells," he said in a recent interview.

Naked penises are a bit too much for Vienna residents. Placards promoting a major exhibition on the male nude in art history caused such a stir in the Austrian capital that the critical parts have been covered up.

Vienna's Leopold Museum has denied that it was out to shock the city when it chose a full-frontal photo montage of three footballers by French artists Pierre & Gilles to draw crowds to its major exhibition "Nude Men - From 1800 to Today," which opens Friday, October 19.

But it has shocked the conservative Austrian capital, which casts a hint of doubt on the museum's true intentions. Whatever the merits of the exhibition - and there are many - the appendages on placards around the city have garnered publicity that can't be bought. Even the obscuring of the three penises with a red band has only brought extra attention.

No, Vienna is NOT conservative, certainly not compared to the rest of Austria. I have noted the libertine style of Austrian billboards before; but it seems there are still limits.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

The ruins of the ancient city of Petra lay hidden until 1812, when a Swiss explorer stumbled upon them in modern-day Jordan. Two centuries later, a new exhibition in Basel brings together some 150 artifacts that shed light on how this mysterious culture of spice traders carved a luxurious oasis into the rocks of the desert.

East German art is a little loved chapter of art history. But from the first room of a new exhibit at the Neues Museum in Weimar, Germany, it's clear that the intention is to prove that this low opinion was a misunderstanding, and in fact things in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) were very different than what those from West Germany have always claimed.

...It could well become one of the most important exhibitions of the year, thanks to the great effort it puts into attempting to reevaluate the controversial legacy of East German art. The central thesis presented by the exhibition's curators is that within just a few decades, the initial spirit of optimism in the GDR transformed into a kind of melancholy over the loss of the utopian ideal that had bound the country together -- and that art in particular addresses this failure in a recognizable way. In fact, the curators suggest, artists even played their part in chipping away at the system.

The Dutch banking group Rabobank is to pull out of the sport in the wake of the Lance Armstrong doping revelations after almost 30 years of continuous involvement, saying it is "no longer convinced" professional cycling can be realistically viewed as clean.

The surprise announcement will see Rabobank's distinctive orange and blue jerseys disappear from its men's and women's professional teams at the end of the year, though the financial support, worth more than £12m a year, will continue for a period.

Feverishly hot ocean surface waters potentially reaching more than 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) may have helped cause the greatest mass extinction in Earth's history, researchers say.

"We may have found the hottest time the world has ever had," researcher Paul Wignall, a geologist at the University of Leeds in England, told LiveScience.

The mass extinction at the end of the Permian Era about 250 million years ago was the greatest die-off in Earth's history. The cataclysm killed as much as 95 percent of the planet's species. One key factor behind this disaster was probably catastrophic volcanic activity in what is now Siberia that spewed out as much as 2.7 million square miles (7 million square kilometers) of lava, an area nearly as large as Australia. These eruptions might have released gases that damaged Earth's protective ozone layer.

Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories tell tales not so much of evolution, but of the magic and wonder of the animal world. He describes the wizard who gave the camel a hump for its laziness, and the alligator who snapped and stretched the nose of a naïve young elephant to its current lengthy proportion. Those delightful fables, published some 70 years after Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's death, provide entertaining explanations for such evolved traits, and were clearly inspired by Lamarck's description of adaptive change, not Charles Darwin's. In his 1809 publication Philosophie Zoologique, Lamarck wrote of the giraffe, from whose habit of reaching for the green leaves of tall trees "it has resulted . . . that the animal's forelegs have become longer than its hind legs, and that its neck is lengthened to such a degree that the giraffe, without rearing up on its hind legs . . . attains a height of six meters."

Although biologists have generally considered Lamarck's ideas to contain as much truth as Kipling's fables, the burgeoning field of epigenetics has made some of us reconsider our ridicule. While no biologist believes that organisms can willfully change their physiology in response to their environment and pass those changes on to their offspring, some evidence suggests that the environment can make lasting changes to the genome via epigenetic mechanisms--changes that may be passed on to future generations. Epigenetics: genome gatekeeper

Epigenetic changes can range from chemical modifications of histone proteins--such as acetylation and methylation--to modifications made to the DNA itself. Such changes usually cause chromatin compaction, which limits the ability of the RNA polymerase II transcription complex to access DNA, ultimately resulting in reduced messenger RNA (mRNA) and protein output. Many view epigenetics as an annotation or editing of the genome that defines which genes will be silenced in order to streamline protein production or squelch unnecessary redundancy. That annotation, they say, does not and cannot permanently change the original manuscript (i.e., DNA), but merely access to the manuscript.

George Clooney has been called as a witness in Silvio's Berlusconi's trial in Milan for paying an underage prostitute for sex.

Berlusconi is accused of paying cash and jewels to Karima el-Mahroug, the dancer known as Ruby the Heartstealer when she attended his so-called "Bunga Bunga" parties in 2010, aged 17.

Mahroug has denied she slept with Berlusconi, but has told prosecutors of risqué scenes at Berlusconi's mansion outside Milan. She also claimed she saw Clooney at one of the parties.

The actor has previously denied being present and has been called to appear next Friday as a witness by the former prime minister's lawyers in an attempt to discredit Mahroug.

As the Washington Post's Dylan Matthews explained last month, the baffling fact that 15 per cent of Ohio Republicans believe Mitt Romney deserves more credit than Barack Obama for killing Osama bin Laden may have as much to do with polling psychology and sampling error as with self-delusion or ignorance. But here are some other statistics that may surprise you:

...

* 73 per cent of Americans could not identify communism as America's main concern during the Cold War, according to Newsweek, which administered an official citizenship test in 2011.

...

* Nearly 25 per cent of Americans don't know that the United States declared its independence from Great Britain, according to a 2011 Marist poll.

* 71 per cent of Americans believe Iran already has nuclear weapons, according to a 2010 CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll (Israel, the United States, and the International Atomic Energy Agency would beg to differ).

Danke.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

Fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld was in hot water on Friday after calling French President Francois Hollande an "idiot" over his plans to impose huge taxes on the rich.

Hollande's former companion and a one-time presidential contender Segolene Royal led the charge, saying the Paris-based German designer must apologise immediately.

"There is no place for insults, especially from a designer who benefits from the image and prestige of France," Royal said on RTL radio.

"When one is working in the French luxury sector, one enjoys the collective backing of the entire nation and these insults are absolutely misplaced," she said.

If the past year's media coverage of Romney tells us anything, it's that the electorate is attempting to reconcile conflicting impressions of the man. Romney is defined by two, now-familiar narratives. One focuses on the candidate's naturally presidential demeanor. The other examines his decidedly unnatural comportment in the presence of ordinary people. For the most part, Team Romney has successfully ignored the tension arising from these contradictory signals. But the style problem is one they'll have to face sooner or later -- particularly if Romney wins the GOP nomination, as he trails Obama on likeability and in fact tends to become less liked the more exposure he gets.

How a candidate of Romney's pedigree could cut such an unsympathetic figure has become a minor obsession in the media. Explanations range from his association with the corporate one percent to his willingness to contradict himself on key issues. All these are true, but the underlying dynamic governing our reaction to his controversial affiliations and positions is a completely natural psychological response to competing stimuli -- one that's best summed up with a technological metaphor.

In robotics, researchers have observed that as an object acquires human-like properties, people respond to the object with more positive feelings. The less anthropomorphized an object, the less empathy. What's cognitively demanding about this formulation is that engineers are beginning to create robots that approximate human behavior so closely that the mind interprets the robot in human terms even if the machine lacks distinguishing anthropomorphic features, like a face. The result is an unsettling feeling that borders on anxiety or revulsion. When a robot inspires such emotions, it's said to have fallen into the uncanny valley of a conceptual graph that charts fluctuations in our empathetic capacity.