Voters are going to the polls in Spain's north-west region of Galicia in an election seen as a key test of the government's economic policy.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's centre-right People's Party has ruled the region for 24 of the past 31 years.

Polls suggest Mr Rajoy, a native of Galicia, has lost support nationally because of austerity measures.

A regional vote will also be held in the Basque Country, where separatist parties are expected to do well.

(Reuters) - Prime Minister David Cameron is under pressure to reassert his authority over a Conservative Party reeling after a week which saw the resignation of a senior minister and claims of incompetence and elitism at the heart of his government.

After one of the most bruising weeks for the centre-right party since it took power in a coalition in 2010, the Conservatives have slipped further behind their Labour rivals, polls showed on Sunday. The next election is due in 2015.

Cameron will try to regain the initiative on Monday with a speech setting out a tougher stance on crime after a series of policy missteps, U-turns and embarrassments since an unpopular budget in March.

Veteran Conservative member of the Lords Norman Tebbit, one of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher's closest allies, attacked what he called "this dog of a government".

"The abiding sin of the government is not that some ministers are rich, but that it seems unable to manage its affairs competently," he wrote in the Observer newspaper.

(Reuters) - A left-wing leader takes office in a troubled European nation. Company bankruptcies are piling up and unemployment is on the rise. His pledge to pull off long-overdue economic reforms is greeted with weary scepticism.

The scene that played out in Germany a decade ago is being repeated in France today.

But whereas Gerhard Schroeder in 2003 launched deep labour reforms that helped revive a moribund German economy, Francois Hollande will find his room for manoeuvre hemmed in by the global slowdown and France's prickly industrial relations.

"This is not about copying someone else's model - just improving our own," said Lionel Fontagne, an economics professor at Paris's Sorbonne university who has tracked France's gradual decline as a global economic force.

"But it is very difficult to discuss the real issues."

Since 2007, the EU executive has been committed to ensuring that biofuels power 10% of all road journeys in the Union by 2020.  The Commission has stuck by that target, even as the World Bank and World Food Programme amassed evidence that the use of agricultural crops to fill petrol tanks was exacerbating global hunger. 

It is only now that the goal is finally being revised. Over the coming days, the Commission will formally announce plans that the proportion of road journeys fuelled by food crops should be no higher than 5%. The Wall Street Journal has described this as a "radical change" of policy. That is nonsense. Far from being radical, it is a belated and inadequate gesture. 

A truly radical change of policy would involve ditching the clique of advisers which advocated that the disastrous 10% objective be set in the first place. Yet a look at a related initiative - known as CARS 21 - shows that the Commission is still relying on the same clique. 

CARS 21 is a "high level group" originally assembled by Günter Verheugen, then the EU's enterprise commissioner, in 2005. Dominated by corporations, it pushed for the greater use of biofuels from an early stage, arguing that they offered much potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Two years ago, the group was relaunched by Verheugen's successor Antonio Tajani. He is currently putting the final touches to an "action plan" guided by its recommendations. Almost certainly, the plan will accord a higher priority to the narrow desires of vehicle makers than to the future of the planet. The group has advocated, for example, that the EU should take a more bellicose line towards "emerging economies". Regulations perceived as hostile to Europe's vehicle-makers should be scrapped as a result of any new free trade agreements that the EU signs, the group has argued. It also wants African and Asian countries to be told that their natural resources must be placed at the disposal of major corporations. Heaven forbid that the resources could benefit anyone else. 

Examining recent comments from Europe's car manufacturers, one could be forgiven for thinking they are in danger of extinction.

Mariano Rajoy has grasped that the bailout card does gives him some wriggle room, but before showing his hand he has to force the other players to reveal their own: the European banking union, the new rescue fund, intervention by the ECB, or supervisory power over national budgets.

Germany does not want to play the banking union card (possibly because its banks are like Swiss cheese) and prefers to play the card of Europe-wide supervision of national budgets by a European Union super-minister. France opposes that, as it has no desire for German hegemony and is demanding that the banking union be in place first. In this new Franco-Prussian war, the kicks the combatants are meting out to each other are falling on Spain's behind.

In fact, the high premium on Spanish debt, i.e. the additional costs that the Spanish Treasury has to pay to finance itself, are not down solely to the Spanish disease, but to the Franco-Prussian tiff that is threatening the euro. Part of this excessive cost is caused by the fears of investors that the euro will end up collapsing. As we have seen, ever since Mario Draghi declared that the ECB would do everything it took to save the euro the Spanish premium has been going down, which is a clear sign of the contagion effect of the euro.

"There should be no giving in just to raise hope," the chairman of the Bundestag Foreign Affairs Committee, Ruprecht Polenz of the Christian Democratic Union, told Der Spiegel. He said that the planned accession of Croatia to the European Union on July 1 next year was possible only if the next European Commission progress report was positive.

Michael Roth, member of the opposition Social Democratic Party in charge of European affairs, was even harsher. "We must, when it comes to Croatia, give an intimidating example to others," he said.

Croatia must overcome the objections raised by the European Commission, such as drawn-out court proceedings, "otherwise the Bundestag will not ratify its accession treaty," Roth concluded.

Jean-Louis Borloo has launched the UDI, a federation of small centre-right parties, clearly in the tradition of the old UDF (and with the patronage of Giscard and Simone Veil, to underline the point).

Defections from the UMP will follow, especially if Copé beats Fillon for the leadership of the UMP.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}

"There is already civil war," says Ilias Panagiotaros. If so, the shop he owns is set to do a roaring trade.

...

"Greek society is ready - even though no-one likes this - to have a fight: a new type of civil war," he says.

"On the one side there will be nationalists like us, and Greeks who want our country to be as it used to be, and on the other side illegal immigrants, anarchists and all those who have destroyed Athens several times," he adds.

Mariano Rajoy's PP wins in Galicia, but separatists and nationalists prevail in the Basque country elections; victory in Galicia comes as a big political relief to Rajoy; two more Spanish regions are to tap the Spanish liquidity fund; non-performing loans rose to 10% in August; Spanish cement production has fallen to the level of 1967, down one third from the same period in 2011; at the summit press conference, Angela Merkel had it explicitly clear that "there will not be any retroactive recapitalisation"; but she seems ready to make a compromise with the Irish, as she considers Ireland to be a special case; as negotiations with the troika continue, Greece is now pushing for an extra €5bn on top of the agreed tranche of €31.5bn; there are reports from Germany according to which Wolfgang Schauble is actively considering releasing funds for a Greek bond repurchase scheme; after her visits to Athens, Merkel now plans a visit to Lisbon; the IMF's mission chief to Portugal defends austerity - in contradiction with the IMF's view s expressed in the WEO; Hans-Werner Sinn is now in favour of eurobonds; the French parliament has voted in favour of the tax increases, as part of the overall budget legislation; the European Commission is happy about Italy's budgetary policies; Fabrizio Goria says Italy is likely to request an ESM/OMT programme in 2013; Giannangelo Marchegiani says the OMT is good, but not good enough; Charles Goodhart says there is no point to a banking union without resolution powers; Wolfgang Munchau says the EU will push for a big banking union, but it won't contribute to crisis resolution; Eugenio Scalfari, meanwhile, warns the Italian Democrats not to focus on the leadership question, but on policy.

A FLURRY of phone calls between Dublin and Berlin all weekend led last night to a joint statement that brought a significant political victory for Taoiseach Enda Kenny.

Mr Kenny secured a commitment from the German chancellor Angela Merkel that the Irish case for relief on our gigantic bank debt was indeed a "special" case.

The statement proved Mr Kenny enjoys direct access to Ms Merkel and holds enough sway to get her to agree to the issuing of the Sunday night statement.

While it does not bring a bank debt deal tangibly closer, it shows he has influence at the highest level in Berlin -- which will be hugely significant in the coming weeks and months.

It also comes as Mr Kenny travels to Paris in a bid to get President Hollande's support for more favourable terms on the mountain of debt. At around 5pm yesterday, Mr Kenny secured a personal assurance from Ms Merkel that Ireland was a "special case" for a bank debt deal.

... and playing brinksmanship with Cameron : "I'll see your veto, and raise you a shut-out"

Eurozone crisis live: Merkel offers Ireland hope, and threatens Cameron over veto threat | Business | guardian.co.uk

Angela Merkel has also threatened to cancel the next big European Summit unless David Cameron, the UK prime minister, drops his threat to veto the next EU budget.

Tension between the German and British governments are rising, following Friday's EU summit -- where Cameron pledged to block any new deal on the EU budget that did not include a freeze on spending.

Merkel is not amused. The chancellor is now threatening to cancel the entire EC summit scheduled for November if the British insist on taking such as hard line.

The Financial Times reports:

Angela Merkel, Germany's chancellor, does not believe there is any point in holding the budget summit to agree on a seven-year framework for EU spending if Britain intends to veto any deal, say people close to the negotiations.

Merkel hopes to get Cameron to agree to her compromise of a budget of just 1% of EU GDP (less than the 1.1% of GDP that the Commission is eying up).

Drastic fiscal tightening in a string of interlinked countries does two to three times more damage than assumed, especially if there is no offsetting monetary stimulus.

Pushed beyond the therapeutic dose, it is self-defeating. At a certain point it becomes pain for pain's sake.

The model constructed over the long boom years -- and largely drawn from isolated cases, each able to export its way out of trouble -- is dangerously wrong in a 1930s-style excess savings crisis with much of the world is slump.

One might expect a flicker of recognition from Germany's Wolfgang Schauble that something must change. But no, with half Europe sliding into a second and more menacing leg of depression, and with unemployment already at 25.1pc in Greece and Spain, and 15.9pc in Portugal, he refuses to brook deviation.

[...] there will be no change in policy. "Europe is on the way to solving its problems," insists Mr Schauble.

The Latins will have to bear the full burden of adjustment. They alone must continue closing the North-South chasm in competiveness through an "internal devaluation", a posh term for a policy that works chiefly by throwing enough people onto the dole to break labour resistance to pay cuts. It redoubles the contractionary bias of the whole EMU system in the process.

Sell.

That's the message from some financial advisers, who are telling wealthy clients that the remainder of 2012 amounts to a last-chance sale on federal tax rates. Taxes are set to rise in January in the U.S., pushing the top rate on dividends to 43.4 percent from 15 percent and the top rate on capital gains to 23.8 percent from 15 percent.

Even if Congress averts the so-called fiscal cliff of tax increases on investments, income and estates, pressure to reduce budget deficits will mean higher taxes eventually, said Ron Florance of Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) The answer is to take advantage of historically low rates and move taxable income and investment gains into this year, said Florance, managing director of investment strategy at the company's private bank.

Argentina has announced the immediate evacuation of around 300 crew members from the ARA Libertad, a navy
training ship seized in Ghana nearly three weeks ago as collateral for unpaid bonds dating from the South American nation's economic crisis a decade ago.

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez decided to pull out the crew on Saturday after failing to persuade authorities in Ghana to reverse a judge's decision to seize the ship.

The judge also refused to allow the ship to be refuelled, leaving it without power to maintain essentials and respond to any on board emergencies, the foreign ministry said.

"That made clear the judge's intention to obligate a sovereign nation to negotiate with an entity dedicated to financial piracy from its fiscal hideaway in the Caribbean. This is the only unacceptable option for Argentina,'' Hector Timerman, Argentina's foreign minister, said.

(...) The Ghanaian judge acted on a claim by NML Capital Limited, which is based in the Cayman Islands.

Japanese Economy Minister Seiji Maehara said the country needs more monetary easing and policy efforts to encourage growth as the government prepares for election against an opposition that has stronger public support.

The government plans to inject about 200 billion yen ($2.5 billion) into the economy, Maehara said yesterday on a Fuji Television program, without giving details on the source of those funds. Spending this fiscal year includes 910 billion yen of stimulus programs requiring parliament's approval, 400 billion yen for earthquake recovery and a further 347.8 billion yen, he said.

"There are fiscal-easing moves worldwide, but on a monetary basis Japan is falling short," Maehara said. While "easing is not a panacea," without that and policy moves "Japan's sovereign credit rating may face a downgrade."

WASHINGTON, Oct 19 2012 (IPS) - In the aftermath of last week's elections to the International Monetary Fund (IMF)'s executive board, Brazil and others are expressing frustration that a reforms process aimed at increasing the representation of developing countries is being stymied by European countries.

"There was some movement, but in my opinion this so-called reduction in the number of European chairs has petered out into a reshuffling that is largely cosmetic in nature," Paulo Nogueira Batista, the IMF executive director for Brazil and several other Latin American and Caribbean countries, told IPS. "The Europeans have cleverly upgraded the representation of the emerging markets of the E.U., such as Turkey and Poland."

The IMF's executive board, based at the institution's Washington headquarters, consists of 24 members, most of which represent shifting constituencies of the Fund's 188 members. In 2010, a package of reforms was agreed to, aimed at rectifying longstanding concerns over the IMF's governance imbalance.

Amazon is forcing British publishers to cover the cost of a 20% VAT charge on ebook sales - even though the true VAT cost to the online retailer is only a fraction of that amount under its generous Luxembourg-based tax regime.

The firm is able to wield such power over publishers because it has a near monopoly of the UK digital book publishing market. According to reliable estimates, it sells nine out of 10 ebooks in the UK, while using its Luxembourg tax status to wring more profitable terms from publishers.

Companies such as Amazon collect the VAT levy from consumers before passing it on to governments. In the case of Amazon's UK ebook sales, it only has to pass 3% to Luxembourg. If it was based in the UK it would have to hand over 20%.

Today's mid-year economic update shows lower commodity prices and falling tax receipts have trimmed the projected 2012-13 budget surplus to just $1.1 billion, down from the $1.5 billion predicted in May.
...
There has also been a further write down in tax revenue over the forward estimates of almost $22 billion, including $4 billion in the current financial year.

As a result, Mr Swan has revealed spending cuts and extra charges worth $16 billion over four years, including:

    Limiting increases in the private health insurance rebate to inflation, saving $710 million over four years.
    A jump in visa application fees, forecast to raise $520 million over four years.
    The baby bonus payment for the second and subsequent children will be reduced to $3,000, saving $505 million over forward estimates.
    Delaying funds for Labor's trades training centres program, saving $305 million.
    Saving $513 million by shutting down the Medicare teen dental program
...
From the start of 2014, companies with an annual turnover of more than $1 billion will begin paying tax in monthly instalments, rather than quarterly.

And this is less evil...imagine what conservatives would do to us...

Reuters interviewed five policy advisers involved in drawing up the reform proposals. They said the order for the agenda came from members of the State Council, or cabinet, although they declined to give specifics for fear of repercussions.

Significantly, planning sources said cabinet members had signaled an interest in seeing proposals from policy advisers outside Beijing, in the provincial hinterland, implying that a nationwide consensus is being sought on the content and timetable for painful structural reform.

High on the list drawn up by the advisers is how to contain the government's meddling in the economy and clip the wings of more than 100,000 state-owned enterprises (SOEs) which enjoy enormous privileges, including preferential access to bank lending and government contracts.

Other reforms include allowing the market to set the cost of bank credit, land and various natural resources.

Credit is currently basically allocated by the central government. It tells state-backed banks how much to lend and when - mainly to other big state-controlled businesses and projects. Meanwhile all land and basic resources are owned by the state, with private ownership limited to temporary leased rights to usage.

Analysts say reform of these two areas would bring fundamental change to China's economic structure, even more so than making the yuan currency more convertible - also on the table as part of a package of proposals to liberalize capital markets and boost the yuan's use in global trade settlement.

Specifically, it means an assault on "fractional reserve banking". If lenders are forced to put up 100pc reserve backing for deposits, they lose the exorbitant privilege of creating money out of thin air.

...

[An IMF working paper] Entitled "The Chicago Plan Revisited", it revives the scheme first put forward by professors Henry Simons and Irving Fisher in 1936 during the ferment of creative thinking in the late Depression.

...

The original authors of the Chicago Plan were responding to the Great Depression. They believed it was possible to prevent the social havoc caused by wild swings from boom to bust, and to do so without crimping economic dynamism.

The benign side-effect of their proposals would be a switch from national debt to national surplus, as if by magic. "Because under the Chicago Plan banks have to borrow reserves from the treasury to fully back liabilities, the government acquires a very large asset vis-à-vis banks. Our analysis finds that the government is left with a much lower, in fact negative, net debt burden."

...

 Simons and Fisher were flying blind in the 1930s. They lacked the modern instruments needed to crunch the numbers, so the IMF team has now done it for them -- using the `DSGE' stochastic model now de rigueur in high economics, loved and hated in equal measure.

The finding is startling. Simons and Fisher understated their claims. It is perhaps possible to confront the banking plutocracy head without endangering the economy.

Benes and Kumhof make large claims. They leave me baffled, to be honest. Readers who want the technical details can make their own judgement by studying the text...

And got a Nobel Prize for that?

Yes, along with designing algorithms to match students with schools and kidney donors with recipients. And he deserves it. Prof Roth does three things that are far too rare in economics. First, he really engages with the anthropological reality of how individual markets work, rather than immediately leaping to an abstract model. Second, he recognises ethical or cultural constraints - we don't like the idea of buying and selling kidneys, for instance. Too many economists have simply argued that the constraints make no sense, shrugged and walked away. Prof Roth accepted them as a fact of life and worked around them.

He's almost human.

(Reuters) - Suddenly, Republican Mitt Romney has a viable path to victory in the tight battle for the White House.

Democratic President Barack Obama still appears to have the upper hand in the state-by-state fight to cobble together the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency in the November 6 election.

But Romney's recent surge in the polls after his strong performance in his first debate with Obama on October 3 has propelled the Republican into the lead or within striking distance in enough states to give him a reasonable chance of beating Obama to the finish line.

Ohio, long seen as the key to unlocking the White House, looms large in every victory scenario for either candidate - particularly Romney. Until the last two weeks, polls did not show Romney with enough support in other crucial states to give him a clear path even if he won Ohio.

Clashes have erupted outside government offices in the Lebanese capital Beirut after thousands attended the funeral of security chief Wissam al-Hassan who was killed by a car bomb on Friday.

A group of protesters tried to storm the HQ, after a new call for Prime Minister Najib Mikati to resign. Police fired warning shots and tear gas.

Friday's attack also killed one of Mr Hassan's bodyguards and a woman nearby.

Opposition figures have blamed neighbouring Syria for the attack.

Many have protested against Syria and its Lebanese allies amid fears the Syrian conflict could spill over.

The White House hasn't agreed to direct one-on-one talks with Iran's government over its nuclear program, even as it remains open to such negotiations, National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said.

Responding to a New York Times report, Vietor also said there was no deal to meet with Iranian officials after the Nov. 6 U.S. presidential election. Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi today also said there are no plans for direct talks.

(Reuters) - On a rooftop terrace blocks from the White House, a collection of former soldiers and intelligence officers, executives and contractors drink to the international private security industry.

The past decade - particularly the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - provided rich pickings for firms providing private armed guards, drivers and other services that would once have been performed by uniformed soldiers.

But as the conflicts that helped create the modern industry wind down, firms are having to adapt to survive. They must also, industry insiders say, work to banish the controversial image of mercenary "dogs of war" that bedevil many firms, particularly in Iraq.

As a bastion of foreign-policy realism, the Center for the National Interest (CNI), formerly the Nixon Center, is known around Washington for hosting very lively discussions among experts, and Friday's session, entitled "War With Iran: Economic and Military Considerations", was particularly engaging, and virtually unanimous -- and almost unanimously scary -- in its conclusions.

The three presenters were Adm. Mark Fitzgerald, who served as deputy commander of U.S. Naval Forces, Central Command and commander of U.S. Naval Forces Europe, among many other posts; Geoffrey Kemp, a CNI fellow who served as a Gulf expert on Reagan's National Security Council; and J. Robinson West, the chairman and founder of PFC Energy who has also held senior positions in the White House, the Energy Department, and the Pentagon under various Republican administrations. Kemp, it should be noted, is working on a major study, due to be released in January, on the issue that was under discussion.

Of the three, West's assessment was particularly grim. He asserted that Iran, with its arsenal of ballistic and shorter-range missiles and the Revolutionary Guards' (IRGC) elite Qods Force, could without much difficulty take more than eight million barrels of oil a day off the market -- specifically 5 million barrels from Saudi Aramco's Abqaiq facility and the pipelines that run to the Ras Tannurah terminal on the Gulf just across from Iran (the missiles, he said, may not be too accurate, but "something is going to hit something); another 2.5 million barrels that run through southern Iraq where "the Iranians have a lot of agents" who could presumably wreak havoc on the pipelines; and as much as another one million more barrels that are pumped from the Caspian Sea to Ceyhan, Turkey, on the Mediterranean. ("If Iranians have agents on the ground, these pipelines are very vulnerable," he said.)

Egypt increasingly views Ethiopia's plan to build a massive 6,000-megawatt hydroelectric dam on the Nile River as a threat to its national security because it will seriously cut the Arab state's water supplies.

Egypt depends on the Nile for virtually all of its water and is mounting a major diplomatic and economic campaign to scupper the plan. "Even direct military action by Egypt cannot be ruled out," observed the U.S. global security consultancy Stratfor.

Both countries have undergone major political upheavals recently, which have added to the tension in a long-running battle for control of the world's longest river which rises in the Ethiopian highlands.

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood now controls the presidency and Parliament following the February 2001 downfall of longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak and is locked in a struggle for supremacy with the military.

Longtime Ethiopian ruler, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, as harsh a dictator as Mubarak and whose ethnic Tigray group has long dominated the military, died Aug. 20, leaving a leadership vacuum and internal rivalries.

To state what should be obvious to anyone with a basic understanding of macroeconomics, and yet seems to elude most politicians: there is no such thing as "energy independence." Commodities such as oil can be used in China just as easily as Ohio. Therefore, the price is set by the equilibrium between global supply and global demand. Unless we nationalize the oil companies, American consumers will be bidding for gasoline against drivers in other countries. This is how markets work.

That, in turn, means that increased U.S. production of oil will only reduce prices insofar as it increases global supply vis-a-vis global demand. An Associated Press study of 36 years of statistics found, "more U.S. drilling has not changed how deeply the gas pump drills into your wallet.... That's because oil is a global commodity and U.S. production has only a tiny influence on supply. Factors far beyond the control of a nation or a president dictate the price of gasoline."

As long as we rely on huge amounts of oil to power our transportation and heat our homes, we will be susceptible to price shocks. Even if we produced exactly the same amount of oil that we burn, a supply disruption in other oil producing countries would still cause prices to spike. As Brad Plumer pointed out in the Washington Post, "Canada is a net oil exporter, a bona fide oil-independent nation. But gasoline prices in Canada still rise and fall in accordance with world events, just as they do in the United States or Japan or Europe." Gas prices recently spiked in Canada to $5.83 U.S. dollars per gallon.

As long as we drive everywhere, and use an internal combustion engine, the Middle East is going to have priority in our foreign policy.

Europe's food and drink industry risks becoming a "food museum" unless it becomes more competitive.

That was the stark warning from a keynote speaker at the 'Food Drink Europe' congress in Brussels on Wednesday.

The conference, attended by scores of high profile figures in the food and drink industry, heard that Europe "needs to focus on innovation and boosting its competitive advantage".

Experts also said it must ensure that science "remains at the heart" of business and regulation.

Participants focused on the current challenges and global trends affecting Europe's food and drink sector and the needs of the industry.

Maurice House, minister counsellor on food and agriculture for the US mission to the EU, issued a blunt warning, saying, "In an era of globalisation, Europe is in danger of becoming a food museum.

"Europe's food industry clearly needs standards based on science and not on culture alone because the latter are not standards, simply preferences. This is particularly true in a world where Europe will no longer be the sole global standard setter."

Q: Can you briefly talk about the report "Americans Eat Their Weight in Genetically Engineered Food"? Now that the report is out, what you expect the government to do?

A: Americans are eating their weight in genetically engineered (GE) food each year. Environmental Working Group's calculations show that, on average, people eat an estimated 193 pounds of genetically engineered food annually. Yet the typical adult weighs 179 pounds.

These figures beg the question, if you were planning on eating your body weight of anything every year, wouldn't you want to make sure it was safe to eat?

Shockingly, there are virtually no long-term health studies that have been conducted on the consumption of genetically engineered food. We want to see the government conduct these tests, and allow independent scientists the power to do the same - power they don't have now because the companies making the genetically engineered seeds control what studies are conducted.

When Indian icon Mahatma Gandhi took up the baton for home-grown cotton a century ago, he may not have realised the devastating impact its cultivation would have on the land he so loved.

Cotton is a thirsty plant and parts of India drought-prone. But the intensive farming process for cotton leaches the soil and requires high pesticide and fertiliser use that pollutes further downstream.

Now in the southeastern district of Warangal, dotted with statues to the independence leader in his trademark cotton dhoti, a project to grow the fibre in a way that causes less harm to the land is taking root.

An initiative of green group WWF, the project in an area covering 103 villages seeks to help struggling farmers reduce input costs, improve yields, and lessen their environmental footprint by cutting the use of chemicals and water.

"It works better," 63-year-old Karra Adireddy, a cotton farmer for two decades who has been in the project from the start, told AFP at the village of Nurjahanpally in Andhra Pradesh state.

The campaigner behind the groundbreaking Pig Business documentary is now taking her message global, encouraging people to take action against industrial farming methods which degrade the environment and subject animals to a life of misery

Pig Business charts the rise of Smithfield Foods, now the world's biggest pork producer, and its expansion into Poland and Romania where it dominates the industry, taking advantage of low capital costs, cheap labour and unenforced regulations. Both countries, expecting employment and the benefits of inward investment have woken up too late to the aggressive and predatory nature of a business whose profits go to global investors while stench, pollution, disease and bankruptcies are the costs paid by local communities.

In the film, the author and environmental lawyer Robert Kennedy Jnr explains that these are `externalised' costs are borne all of us. "Smithfield Foods cannot produce a pork chop more cheaply than a family farmer without breaking the law", he says.

Pesticides kill bumblebees and make colonies vital for pollination likely to fail, a study has found. Scientists have been baffled by the plummeting numbers of bees, mainly in North America and Europe, in recent years.

Over a period of four weeks, scientists led by Richard Gill exposed colonies of 40 bumblebees to neonicotinoid and pyrethroid, nicotinelike chemicals used to protect various crops from locusts, aphids and other pests. The United Nations estimates that one-third of plant-based foods depend on pollination.

"Chronic exposure ... impairs natural foraging behavior and increases worker mortality, leading to significant reductions in brood development and colony success," the scientists wrote in the report, for the journal Nature.

Exposure to the pesticides "increases the propensity of colonies to fail," the researchers found. A 2011 UN report estimated that the efforts of bees and other pollinators such as butterflies, beetles and birds are worth 153 billion euros ($200 billion) a year to the human economy, but are in decline in many nations.

The annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca will not be affected by events in Syria and elsewhere across the region, Saudi Arabia's interior minister has said.

"I don't expect pilgrims or the pilgrimage to be affected by what is taking place elsewhere, whether Syria or any other place," Prince Ahmad bin Abdul Aziz told reporters on Saturday.

Prince Ahmad said that "those coming to Hajj are Muslims and Muslims would not hurt one another, especially not during Hajj".

However, such an act "would have very bad effects," he warned, adding that "whoever tries to use Hajj for political aims will be sent back home."

(Reuters) - Marissa Mayer, who earned a reputation for decisive action and intensity during her 13-year stint at Google Inc, has spent her first months as Yahoo Inc CEO quietly moving the Internet pioneer back to its roots in technology.

Long torn between whether it should focus on media content or on tools and technologies, Yahoo under Mayer is being positioned firmly in the latter camp, according to sources inside and outside the company.

Her hires, acquisition musings, and other early moves hint at an ambitious, technology-driven comeback plan designed to revitalize aging but well-trafficked properties such as Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Sports.

Yahoo has been criticized for allowing these sites to stagnate - they look very much like they did five years ago, and do not have many bells and whistles to encourage users to spend more time on them.

FRANCE 24 journalist Sonia Dridi filed a police complaint with Egyptian police on Saturday, a day after she was assaulted while reporting on a protest in the capital Cairo's Tahrir Square.

Dridi had just finished giving a live news report at around 10:30pm on Friday for FRANCE 24's French language television when a crowd of men teemed around her, shoving and grabbing at her body.

"I was surrounded by my team, so I didn't feel like I was in any particular danger," Dridi told FRANCE 24 in a televised interview, saying that the camera crew had attracted a crowd of curious bystanders. "I was able to do my live report but at the end of it the atmosphere was really tense."

"The crowd encircled us...It was mostly young men, but not only. They started to touch me and I held onto my colleague, who tried to reassure me and hold my attention so we could get out of the crowd as fast as possible," Dridi added.

After a tense few moments, Ashraf Khalil, a correspondent for FRANCE 24's English language television, was eventually able to rescue Dridi from the crowd.

(...) It is far from the first time that a female journalist has been sexually assaulted while working in Cairo.

Putting up a website for your research group? Providing excursions for students? Spontaneously inviting high profile scholars to give a lecture, because they happen to be in the country? Streaming a symposium to the web? Setting up a rather spontaneous conference that responds to urgent trends in your respective field of research? Every scholar noticed that all those things need time if played by the official infrastructure. And often they are expensive, too expensive (just think of that hefty fee the catering service charged for the lousy coffee they served at your last symposium).

That's why the rogue scholars don't bother, and fix the streaming service themselves with a free web service. They also prefer their own websites over the standardised and unfindable websites the in-house service has to offer. Realizing a conference? Well, the official way is time-consuming and requires countless meetings, letters, spreadsheets, budgets etc. The rogue scholars just look for financing partners outside the university, bypass the crippling and overly expensive in-house services and have things done their way. Students help out in producing flyers, posters and website and someone does the catering. And the international scholars show up at their own expenses because they are interested in debating current issues not dated ones.

...

Academia is a highly complex ecosystem that does not easily fit into the technocrat's Sim Sity. And not all processes, activities, networks and flows of collaboration and communication can be mapped out, formalized and controlled. Innovation, dedication and enthusiasm thrive within the informal structures; they feed fruitfully back into the official infrastructures of the university. University managers are well advised not to micromanage all aspects of academic life, but to ensure first and foremost autonomy and academic freedom. If we can not become shareholders at our university, as I have suggested in my column The Crowdfunded University, we can at least be rogue scholars. Let's share tactics and let's participate in expanding those informal structures that might have become the last resort of academic freedom.

(Reuters) - Former U.S. Senator George McGovern, a liberal Democrat and fierce opponent of the Vietnam War whose 1972 presidential race against Richard Nixon led to one of the worst electoral defeats in U.S. history, died on Sunday at the age of 90, his family said.

The McGovern family said he died Sunday morning at Dougherty Hospice House in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, surrounded by family and friends. He had suffered from a combination of medical conditions due to age that had worsened in recent months.

Luxembourg is celebrating the marriage of its Crown Prince Guillaume, 30, to 28-year-old Belgian Countess Stephanie de Lannoy - the biggest royal event in decades in the tiny Grand Duchy.

Europe's royalty as well as ordinary citizens attended a service at Notre Dame cathedral, a day after the couple tied the knot in a civil ceremony.

The festivities will culminate in a pop concert later in the day.

Crown Prince Guillaume is first in line to Luxembourg's throne.

Limited-edition champagne, chocolates and china have filled the shop windows around the city of Luxembourg, with postcards and pins showing the smiling engagement photo of the couple, the BBC's Maddy Savage reports.

1797 - One thousand meters (3,200 feet) above Paris, André-Jacques Garnerin makes the first recorded parachute jump.

Garnerin regularly staged [balloon] tests and demonstrations at Parc Monceau, Paris from 1797, but these became a cause célèbre when he announced in 1798 that his next flight would include a woman as a passenger. Although the public and press were in favour, he was forced to appear in front of officials of the Central Bureau of Police to justify his project. They were concerned about the effect that reduced air pressure might have on the organs of the delicate female body and loss of consciousness, plus the moral implications of flying in such close proximity. Unsatisfied with Garnerin's responses, the police issued an injunction against him, forbidding the ascent on the grounds that the young woman was committing herself to the venture without any idea of the possible outcome. After further consultation with both the Minister of the Interior and the Minister of the Police the injunction was overturned on the grounds that "there was no more scandal in seeing two people of different sexes ascend in a balloon than it is to see them jump into a carriage." They also agreed that the decision of the woman showed proof of her confidence in the experiment and a degree of personal intrepidity.

Lance Armstrong "has no place in cycling" and has been stripped of his seven Tour de France titles after the sport's world governing body, the UCI accepted the findings of the United States Anti-Doping Agency's investigation.

Talking about biting the hand that feeds you. Lance has been very generous with the UCI over the years, and they have been very understanding with him.

Time to open Miguel Indurain's coffin? (only joking!)

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}