The head of Italy's disaster body, Luciano Maiani, has resigned in protest at prison sentences passed on seven colleagues over the 2009 earthquake in L'Aquila.

Six scientists and an ex-official were convicted of multiple manslaughter for giving a falsely reassuring statement.

Prof Maiani, a physicist, said the Serious Risks Commission could not work "in such difficult conditions".

(Reuters) - The head of the BBC denied on Tuesday helping to cover up sexual abuse by one of its former stars but accepted the broadcaster had been damaged by a scandal that has shaken public trust in a national institution.

George Entwistle, who was announced as the 90-year-old media organisation's new boss in August, told hostile MPs that failures at the BBC had allowed Jimmy Savile, once one of Britain's top TV presenters, to prey on young girls for years.

He added he could not rule out suggestions that a paedophile ring might have existed at the state-funded BBC during the height of Savile's fame in the 1970s and 80s.

But Entwistle rejected claims that BBC bosses had tried to hide allegations against Savile, who died last year, or suppressed an inquiry by one of their own news programmes.

BRUSSELS - Disagreement among top officials and legal worries have come close to killing a high-profile EU gender quota law.

The latest version of the bill - drafted by justice commissioner Vivianne Reding - is to force publicly-listed EU firms to have at least 40 percent women in non-executive posts on their boards by 2020.

It is also more "subsidiarity-friendly" than earlier drafts - it gives more leeway for national authorities on implementation.

But when Reding presented her paper to the college of commissioners in Strasbourg on Tuesday (23 October), her boss, Jose Manuel Barroso, saw enough opposition around the table to decline calling a simple majority vote.

If the vote had said No the law would have gone in the bin.

BRUSSELS - EU leaders are stalling "irresponsibly" and even rolling back some decisions on banking union and further integration of the eurozone, MEPs said on Tuesday (23 October) in a debate on the outcome of last week's summit.

The two-day summit, which saw 10 hours of debates and disagreements among EU leaders on Thursday night, was defended by EU council chief Herman Van Rompuy and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso as an "intermediate" one, aimed at "reconfirming" earlier decisions and paving the way for more "substantial" decisions in the coming months.

Van Rompuy acknowledged that the EU may have "underestimated the breadth and depth of the crisis in some member states."

But he insisted that changes were coming, even if in small steps. Transforming the eurozone into a closer political and economic union - as markets expect - will need some "excruciating work," he said.

"What we're getting at now is the crux, the hard core of sovereignty and solidarity. There are number of taboos that have to be touched."

Leading members of the European Parliament were not impressed.

BRUSSELS - British foreign minister William Hague on Monday (22 October) made the case for a politically minimalist European Union, saying that to be more effective it needs neither to be more expensive or more centralised.

Speaking in Berlin, Hague spelled out that through London's eyes, the EU is primarily good for the single market and for a few foreign policy objectives, such as tackling piracy and "squeezing the Iranian nuclear programme."

Further enlargement, particularly to include Turkey, is also to be supported.

But notions of speaking with one voice on the global stage or furthering political union remain an anathema to the UK, where, Hague told the audience at the pro-democracy Koerber foundation, "public disillusionment with the EU in Britain is the deepest it has ever been."

"People feel that in too many ways the EU is something that is done to them, not something over which they have a say."

He said this why the government will over the next two years review "what the EU does and how it affects us."

The French government said it "regrets" the European Commission's decision to turn down a request by France to monitor South Korea car imports, after a bilateral trade deal entered into force in July 2011.

France had in August called on the Commission to require South Korea to give advance notice of planned car exports to the European Union. Since a free trade agreement (FTA) entered force in July 2011 a surge of auto shipments to the EU from South Korea has taken place.

Korean car imports into the EU rose by 41% in the year to the end of June 2012. During the same period, the increase in France was 24%, Eurostat data show.

In July, France's biggest carmaker, PSA Peugeot Citroën, announced plans to close a plant near Paris and cut 8,000 jobs. French carmakers are in general losing market share and struggling due to rising competition from, among other producers, Korea's Hyundai and Kia.

The surveillance France sought would have meant authorities could have demanded a document to accompany products scheduled for export to the EU.

The French government reiterated a call for an overhaul of EU procedures for approving GM varieties and pesticides, and also reaffirmed its ban on growing GM crops.

The Caen researchers argued that their lifetime testing of rats were more pertinent than the 90-day feeding trials that form the basis of GM crop approvals, since three months is only the equivalent of early adulthood in rats.

The unpopularity of GM food in Europe has repeatedly held up their approval at EU level and only one GM crop, Monsanto's MON 810 maize, is currently grown on a commercial scale in Europe.

However, the bloc imports millions of tonnes of GM corn and soybeans each year from major growers including the United States, Argentina and Brazil to help feed the EU's livestock.

In the latest example, the EU's executive has just authorised the import of Syngenta's MIR 162 maize.

Suddeutsche Zeitung has seen the new memorandum for Greece, according to which the programme has been extended from 2014 to 2016; this includes a postponement for the 3% deficit target, and lower privatisation targets; there are stills gaps in the proposals on how to fund the budget deficit; the Greek government has reacted with outrage to reports that Germany wants to place the money into an escrow account; Evangelos Venezelos warns the troika against treating Greece like a protectorate; in Athens there is still no agreement on the austerity and reform plan, as the Democratic Left and Pasok continue to oppose the labour market reform plans; Antonis Samaras now proposes to lump all the reform measures into a single bill, thus forcing his coalition partners to accept, or reject the entire package; a first opinion poll puts a Steinbrück coalition ahead of Merkel; French conservatives say Hollande's tax increases mostly affect the middle classes; European Commission backs the enhanced cooperation proposals for a financial transaction tax among ten member states; the Portuguese government is now so desperate that it is cutting the minimum income for the unemployed, pensioners and low income families; Portuguese tax revenues fall 4.9% in the January-September period; the Bank of Portugal has made a proposal for the securitisation of mortgages; the Belgian government said it "found" some savings for this year, but needs to find a lot more in 2013; there are further signs of an improvement in the eurozone's inter-banking market, especially for Italian banks; the Bundesbank expects a German GDP contraction in Q4; the Spanish parliament is reviewing, before rubberstamping, the 2013 budget;  Spain expects size social security deficit for this year; a report says crisis has increased inequality in Spain; the Spanish government is also making a number of changes to the bad bank, allowing the possibility for it to be put under administration; Klaus Regling says it will take 2 or 3 years for Italy's reforms to bear fruit; a draft has surfaced of how to solve the legal mess surrounding the SSM; Wolfgang Munchau says if this a solvency crisis, there is no cause for optimism now, but if it is a liquidity crisis, there was no cause for pessimism during the summer; Barry Eichengreen and Kevin O'Rourke, meanwhile, are shocked, shocked by that multiplication is going on.

Here is my counter argument. The European financial sector financed investments in a way that created tens and hundreds of billions of euros worth in non-performing loans (mostly to finance real estate in Ireland and Spain). Now in a capitalist system if you invest and your investment fails to perform you are bankrupt. However, banks used their political influence and had its debt socialized. This happened in Ireland, and it will happen in Spain, it seems. As a result, government debt explodes.

In the United States this kind of behavior used to be unacceptable, but the latest policies did their best to protect banks from bankruptcy and government interference no matter how reckless their business model was. However, the government does not care about the fact that most of the banks that are in trouble are from New York. The Fed provides financial help even though you could argue that the financial problems from the sub-prime mess are local. No US citizen has any doubts about the banking union that exists in the US. Of course, New York-based banks will be saved, and so will banks from other states be saved.

So, Hans-Werner Sinn is wrong in arguing that the United States of Europe would need powers that even the United States of American doesn't give to its central government. The banking union exists, and it is enforced. Paul Krugman wrote about another example. As a result of the savings & loans crisis in the US in the 1980s, taxpayers were chipping in more than $100 billion (in aid to banks, not in loans). 60% of the losses were in Texas. A banking union is enough to stop the financial crisis in Texas and ensure that the Lone Star State does not suffer through a prolonged depression (and ignite calls for secession?). In Europe, the victims of financial bonanzas are the people in those countries in which the money was invested. Innocent bystanders now have to deal with unemployment rates of 25% as they are portrayed as restless lenders and inefficient soon-to-be-pensioners. None of this drama influenced policy in the US during the ongoing Great Financial Crisis or the savings&loans debacle.

(Reuters) - Faced with weakening revenue, two of the largest U.S. companies warned on Tuesday that they would cut jobs to protect profits.

DuPont Co (DD.N) said it planned to lay off about 1,500 workers - roughly 2 percent of its global headcount - as the chemical company grapples with weakening demand from the construction and renewable energy sectors.

United Technologies Corp (UTX.N) did not specify the magnitude of the cuts it was considering but said it would raise its full-year, restructuring budget by 20 percent to $600 million as demand for its military equipment declines.

Both companies, components of the widely watched Dow Jones industrial average .DJI, reported weaker-than-expected sales for the third quarter, following an overall trend. Of the companies in the broad Standard & Poor's 500 index .SPX that have reported results, 63 percent came in below analysts' revenue forecasts, well above the 38 percent sales-miss rate in a typical earnings season, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Offshore funds flowing from crisis-hit Cyprus have helped boost bank deposits in Latvia, strengthening the small Baltic state's position as an offshore banking centre for neighbouring Russia and other ex-Soviet states, recent data reveal.

Non-resident deposits are near 50% of total bank deposits, a record high, with Latvia's location next to Russia its key advantage. It has drawn funds from both businesses and rich individuals, who see it is as a stable proxy for Western banks, with the added attraction that Russian is widely spoken.

Regulators are keeping a wary eye on the development as Latvia, which aims to join the eurozone in 2014, suffered a deep crisis after the crash of a bank with heavy non-resident business in 2008, and some of its banks have been implicated in alleged money laundering.

"The same way as we export logistics services, we also export financial services," Kristaps Zakulis, chairman of the FKTK banking sector regulator, told Reuters in an interview, referring to ports, railways and transit traffic.

"We are close to that eastern market. We can speak the same language with them, not to mention all the historical nostalgia," he added.

A European Union source said Latvia had improved supervision of its banks after a crisis that lopped 25% off its output over 2008-2010, and the country was now attracting funds as a gateway to the EU, and, potentially to the eurozone, which Latvia wants to join in 2014.

Seems to come down to what you mean by "fundamental value."
Which as Noah points out, no one seems to be able to or want to define.

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sapere aude

(Reuters) - A warm autumn day in the Syrian village of Qardaha and a man walks in to a cafe where two customers are arguing. He pulls a gun; shots are fired. The newcomer is wounded and one of the other men killed.

But this is no obscure local feud; it reveals frictions among President Bashar al-Assad's core supporters. For Qardaha is the ancestral home of the ruling dynasty. And the man who strode in with a pistol was the beleaguered president's cousin.

Accounts vary of what happened next. But the cafe gunfight and subsequent bloodshed in the village involved only Alawites, the religious minority on which Assad has depended in his civil war against mainly Sunni rebels. The violence shows that fear and anger over his policies may be eroding that support.

Some locals say Mohammed al-Assad, known as the "Mountain Sheikh" for his powerful family ties, argued in the cafe about smuggling and other rackets that underpin the economy of the Alawite hill towns around the port of Latakia; others believe he took exception to complaints about his cousin's conduct of the war and about the rising death toll the community is suffering.

Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the emir of Qatar, has arrived in the Gaza Strip to inaugurate a Qatari investment project worth hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild the impoverished and overcrowded coastal enclave.

The leader of the Gulf nation is the first head of state to visit Gaza since the imposition of a widespread international boycott of the Palestinian territory, spurred, in part, by the 2006 popular election of Hamas, considered by powers such as the United States, United Kingdom, European Union and Japan to be "a terrorist organisation". Internecine fighting followed in 2007, leading to a rift between Hamas and Fatah - a group supported by many Western powers.

"This visit has great political significance," said Hamas government spokesman Taher al-Nunu.

"He is the first Arab leader to break the political siege."

The investment project seeks to build 1,000 homes for poor families in the devastated Khan Younis area in the south of the Strip.

Laying the foundation stone of the project, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh thanked the emir "for his brave decision to visit Gaza".

Western officials say a planned military push to reclaim northern Mali from armed rebel groups is unlikely to begin before next year - despite concerns about an escalating "terrorist" threat posed by the fighters there.

Proposals for an offensive by Mali's forces, supported by troops from neighbouring nations and other African Union states - but not Western countries - are to be discussed at a meeting of African officials in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, on Wednesday.

An international plan is being finalised to help Mali's weak interim government take on the groups, including armed Islamist groups and Tuareg rebels, that have become the de facto rulers of the country's north following chaos prompted by a military coup in March.

However, diplomats expect that the preparations and moves to secure a UN Security Council resolution to authorise the action could take months.

At least three people have been killed and seven more injured in fighting in the northern Libyan town of Bani Walid.

The casualties come as clashes continue in the town of 85,000 residents, a former stronghold of ousted leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Libyan soldiers have been fighting Gaddafi loyalists in the beseiged town for more than three weeks. But troops blame officials for not providing enough equipment or supplies to win the battle.

"We have nothing," Field Commander Mohamed Hetwash told Al Jazeera.

"We don't know why. The problem is all the people here are under the administration of the minister of defence - and we buy the weapons, we buy the water, we buy the food, by ourselves. Rich people in Tripoli buy the food for us - the minister is absent."

The shortages are worse inside the city, say families fleeing the violence, which comes exactly a year after Libya was declared "liberated" by armed fighters and opposition politicians.

Both food and water are scarce commodities, and the town's hospital has come under fire, residents told reporters.

What remains is all the footage recording Gaddafi's forty year career as a global weirdo. But the closer you look at the footage and what lies behind it - you begin to discover an odd story that casts a rather unflattering light on many of the elites in both the British and American establishments.

Because over those forty years all sorts of people from the west got mixed up with Gaddafi. Some were simply after his money and they flattered and crept to him because they wanted to be his friend. But for many others he was more useful as an enemy and they helped to turn Gaddafi into a two-dimensional cartoon-like global villain.

Among the highlights:

The Libyan Chemical Weapons program...had involved fewer than a dozen chemists and chemical engineers.

Von überall könnte das Volk, Urbrut alles Undemokratischen, Zelle des Terrors, über die gewählten Hüter von Wachstum und Wohlstand® kommen. - flatter

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 23 2012 (IPS) - The United States endured its hottest summer in history this year, with droughts and wildfires ravaging the country. And according to a new report from the global reinsurance giant Munich Re, insurance losses related to extreme weather have nearly quadrupled in the U.S. since 1980.

So one might expect that climate change would be a hot topic in the debates being held ahead of the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 6.

But during the four nationally televised debates held so far - three presidential and one vice presidential - neither Democratic incumbent Barack Obama nor his Republican challenger Mitt Romney has even mentioned the subject of climate change.

"It is a missed opportunity to talk about one of the most serious challenges that we face," Bob Deans, senior advisor for the Natural Resources Defence Council Action Fund, told IPS.

YAOUNDE/ROME, Oct 23 2012 (IPS) - "One in eight people goes to sleep hungry every day," according to the `State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012', a document released annually by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

The report goes on to state that 870 million people worldwide are starving, a decrease of 130 million since 1992 but still a far cry from the Millennium Development Goal of halving the world's hungry people by 2015.

As the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) wrapped up its 39^th session in Rome on Saturday with the promise to begin a two-year consultation process to "develop principles for responsible investment in agriculture that respect rights, livelihoods and resources", hopes were high that local and international efforts could really begin to tackle chronic hunger.

Meanwhile, amid fears of rising prices on the grain market, the FAO dedicated this year's World Food Day, celebrated on Oct. 16, to `Agricultural cooperatives: key to feeding the world'.

Millions of small-scale producers, particularly in the developing world, are responding to the triple crises of climate change, food price fluctuations and market instability by organising themselves into cooperatives to join forces and collectively tackle national and international policy constraints.

The FAO sees cooperatives as a major way to lift small-scale farmers out of poverty and hunger, and help them to access markets to sell their products, buy inputs at better prices and obtain financial services.

By tailoring geoengineering efforts by region and by need, a new model promises to maximize the effectiveness of solar radiation management while mitigating its potential side effects and risks. Developed by a team of leading researchers, the study was published in the November issue of Nature Climate Change.

Solar geoengineering, the goal of which is to offset the global warming caused by greenhouse gases, involves reflecting sunlight back into space.

By increasing the concentrations of aerosols in the stratosphere or by creating low-altitude marine clouds, the as-yet hypothetical solar geoengineering projects would scatter incoming solar heat away from the Earth's surface.

Critics of geoengineering have long warned that such a global intervention would have unequal effects around the world and could result in unforeseen consequences. They argue that the potential gains may not be worth the risk.

Chronic exposure to pesticides has a bigger knock-on effect on bees than conventional probes suggest, according to a new study on Sunday touching on the mysterious collapse of bee colonies.

Biologists at the University of London carried out an exceptional field study into bumblebees exposed to two commonly used agricultural insecticides.

They sought to mimic what happens in a real-life setting, where different crops are sprayed with different pesticides at different dosages and times.

Because bees get their food both from sprayed crops and wild plants, such variations make it hard to calculate the insects' total exposure to the chemicals.

In addition, very little is known about what happens to bees once they return to the colony after foraging, possibly passing on pesticide-laden food to larvae.

A team led by Richard Gill monitored 40 bumblebee colonies, tagging 259 bees with radio frequency identification (RFID) to time exactly when the insects left home or returned.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) is hitting the old campaign trail, the high pope of denial anointing candidates with the black mark of coal dust.

From The Hill:

Inhofe began his tour in Montana, where he touted Rep. Denny Rehberg's (R-Mont.) coal credentials. Inhofe said the Montana Senate candidate would fight to keep the Corette power plant in Billings, Mont., open, while incumbent Sen. Jon Tester's (D) support of the administration's air pollution rules put the plant's future in jeopardy. ...

Montana was Inhofe's first stop on a three-state swing in which he will stump for candidates who want to repeal environmental rules the Oklahoman opposes.

The Corette plant's upcoming closure, announced in September, was blamed on EPA regulations. However:

David Hoffman, PPL spokesman, said Thursday that the Corette plant has been off line "a substantial period of time" this year because of the oversupply of power in the Northwest markets, including power from wind energy, and a flat or lower demand for electricity.

The price for electricity is also low because natural gas is so cheap, Hoffman said.

So, you know, it's the EPA's fault that we can no longer use this coal plant that we weren't using much because of the market.

Still, when I look at those arrays after seeing the huge ones in fields in Bavaria, they seem extraordinarily tiny.

'tis strange I should be old and neither wise nor valiant. From "The Maid's Tragedy" by Beaumont & Fletcher

(Reuters) - The pharmacy tied to a deadly U.S. meningitis outbreak escaped harsh punishment from health regulators several times in the years leading up to the health crisis that has raised questions about oversight of the customized drug mixing industry, newly released state records show.

Problems at the New England Compounding Center (NECC) in Framingham, Massachusetts, date as far back as 1999, the year after it began operations, according to hundreds of pages of documents obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request.

And the documents show regulators refraining from the harshest sanctions available to them, even as the list of complaints against NECC continued to grow.

(Reuters) - Apple Inc took the wraps off an 8-inch tablet on Tuesday in its biggest product move since the debut of the iPad two years ago, launching a smaller version of the gadget into a market staked out by Amazon.com Inc and Google Inc.

The 7.9 inch "iPad mini" marks Apple's first foray into the smaller-tablet segment. Apple also announced a fourth-generation full-sized iPad with improvements in graphics and processing speeds, just two days before Microsoft is due to show off its own "Surface" tablet.

Apple hopes to beat back their charge onto its home turf of consumer electronics hardware, while safeguarding its lead in the larger 10-inch tablet space that even deep-pocketed rivals like Samsung Electronics have found tough to penetrate.

From: UN) SECRETARY GENERA" <payment@un.org>
UNITED NATIONS SCAM VICTIMS COMPENSATIONS PAYMENTS DEPARTMENT.
ATTENTION: BENEFACTOR,
SCAMMED VICTIM
[...]
I write to bring to your notice that I am one of the official delegate from the
United Nations to BARCLAY'S BANK PLC to pay 300 (Three Hundred) scam victims
$950,000.00 USD (Nine Hundred and Fifty Thousand United States Dollars Only) each.
[...]
As a result of this laudable recommendations, it is imperative to bring to your notice that during the last U.N. meetings held at New York, United States of America by all the Minister Of Finance Of All Countries, it was alarmed so much by the rest of the world in the meetings on the loose of funds by various foreigners to the scams artists
[...]

See, that's why nothing is being done about the Euro. All the Minister Of Finance Of All Countries have been tied up with this.
The loose of funds is worrying.

Bless you, internet.

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sapere aude

The Singing D is currently one of a US/Finnish group working on songs for Rihanna, among others. I think, from what she's said, that she is more interested in cooperating with top music pros than the Eldorado of having a hit single. It's tough. At that level the ratio of demos to final recording is around 60:1.

Proud father - now increasingly superfluous to requirements, which is entirely natural. You try to put as much good stuff in the black box as possible, but the outcome is utterly unpredictable.

You can't be me, I'm taken