Ukraine election 'reversed democracy', says OSCE - UKRAINE - FRANCE 24

Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovich's party was on course on Monday to secure a parliamentary majority but international monitors said flaws in the way the election was conducted meant the country had taken a "step backwards".

Exit polls and first results from Sunday's vote showed Yanukovich's Party of the Regions would, with help from long-time allies, win more than half the seats in the 450-member assembly after boosting public sector wages and welfare handouts to win over disillusioned voters in its traditional power bases.

They will face, though, a revitalised opposition boosted by resurgent nationalists and a liberal party led by boxing champion Vitaly Klitschko.

But a team from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which sent more than 600 observers to monitor the election, criticised the way it had been conducted.

"The elections were characterised by the lack of a level playing field caused primarily by the abuse of administrative resources, lack of transparency of campaign and party financing and lack of balanced media coverage," the OSCE mission said in a statement.

Dutch parties to form pro-austerity coalition | World news | The Guardian

The Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte's Liberal party and the Labour party say they have reached a coalition deal, preparing for a pro-austerity, pro-European government to be sworn in next week.

Rutte, whose Liberals won the most seats in the election on 12 September, will remain prime minister, while the Labour MP Jeroen Dijsselbloem is tipped to replace Jan Kees de Jager as finance minister. Under Rutte and De Jager, a Christian Democrat whose party lost heavily in the election, the Netherlands has been at the forefront of calls for tight fiscal policies across the eurozone to tackle the region's debt crisis. The parliamentary election was held against the backdrop of the eurozone crisis, rising unemployment, lower housing prices and a stagnant economy.

Rutte and the Labour leader, Diederik Samsom, reached a deal more quickly than expected, underlining the urgency of the European crisis and the fragile state of the Dutch economy. Economists say the Netherlands must address structural reforms in housing, the labour market and welfare benefits. Already, the two party leaders have agreed to cut state spending by a further €16bn (£13bn) in the next four years, aiming to eliminate the budget deficit by 2017, newspapers reported last week.

"This is a balanced package, a package that will make the Netherlands emerge from the crisis stronger," Rutte said after talking to his party about the coalition deal.

The biggest spending cuts will be in healthcare, at €5bn, social security, at €3bn, and government overheads, at €2.5bn, the Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad reported, citing sources in The Hague.

The deal came quicker than expected. Austerity rules supreme.

Centre-right evicted in Lithuania elections - Europe - Al Jazeera English

Lithuania's left-wing and populist opposition are planning to form a coalition government after the austerity-weary Baltic state became the latest European nation to evict the centre-right at the ballot box.

But in a move apparently blocking the three-party coalition plans, President Dalia Grybauskaite said on Monday she did not want the Labour Party to be in the new government after allegations of vote buying and tax evasion.

Grybauskaite, who has the job of formally choosing a new prime minister, said that the party - the third biggest in parliament after the ballot - was not a suitable coalition candidate due to the allegations, which emerged after two rounds of voting.

"A party that during an election is suspected of being at the root of the largest number of cases of electoral fraud, which is suspected of tax fraud and the leaders of which have been charged in a criminal investigation cannot be involved in forming a government," Grybauskaite said.

"I will only back a political grouping that can form a majority government without Labour, which is in the dock."

Labour Party leader Viktor Uspaskich is on trial for alleged tax fraud by his party in 2004-2006, which he denies

The tree parties won a combined 79 seats in the country's 141-member parliament in Sunday's vote.

Algirdas Butkevicius, leader of Labour's allies the Social Democrats and the man widely tipped to become prime minister, said he was surprised by Grybauskaite's announcement.

BBC News - Sicily election deals Berlusconi new blow

The party of former Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi has suffered a major blow, apparently losing a regional election in its former stronghold of Sicily.

With half of the votes counted, centre-left candidate Renato Crocetta was on course to become the next governor.

The result follows Mr Berlusconi's conviction last week for tax fraud, and his threat to withdraw support and topple PM Mario Monti's government.

The vote has been seen as a test ahead of a general election due next year.

Mr Berlusconi has ruled out leading his centre-right People of Freedom (PDL) party into that election, but says he will remain in politics.

He has touted PDL party secretary Angelino Alfano as his successor, but the result in Sicily - Mr Alfano's native region - may undermine those hopes.

Sicily has long been a bastion of support for Mr Berlusconi. In 2001 his party won all 61 seats there in the general election.

European Commissioner Demands Improvements before Croatian Accession - SPIEGEL ONLINE

Croatia must do its homework before it can join the European Union next summer as planned, says European Enlargement Minister Stefan Füle. He told SPIEGEL that the progress report released this month was an effort to "wake up" Zagreb, and emphasized that the accession process can be stopped any time.

Croatia has some powerful backers when it comes to its ambition to become the latest country to join the European Union next year. Following a meeting on Monday morning between Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic and Pope Benedict XVI, the Vatican released a statement reading: "The Holy See reiterated its support for Croatia's legitimate aspirations to full European integration."

The papal support is not strictly necessary; few harbor serious doubts that Croatia will become the 28th member of the EU in the near future. Still, criticism of the country's progress towards fulfilling a number of accession requirements has been widespread this month after the European Commission released its monitoring report on Oct. 10. And the sharper tone, European Enlargement Commissioner Štefan Füle tells SPIEGEL in the magazine's latest issue, published on Monday, is largely what he had in mind.

"We wanted to wake up Croatia with our last report," he said. "Croatia has to do its homework in the areas of competition, the judiciary and fundamental rights."

Germany has led the charge in recent weeks when it comes to openly doubting whether Zagreb is indeed ready for membership. Most prominently, Norbert Lammert, president of German parliament and a senior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), has voiced skepticism.

"The examples of Romania and Bulgaria show that the expectation that problems are easier to solve once accession to the EU has been completed does not work in practice," he told SPIEGEL last week. "We can't make the same mistake twice." Several other German politicians have voiced similar concerns.

EUobserver.com / Opinion / Self-regulation not an option for EU lobbying

Two weeks after ex-health-commissioner John Dalli's resignation in what has become known as "Dalligate" - a scandal described by public health campaigners as the biggest interference of the tobacco lobby in European politics to date - Philip Sheppard's plea for self-regulation of the lobbyist profession published on 16 October appears delusional.

Sheppard, vice-president of Seap - one of three lobby groups representing corporate lobbyists active in Brussels (along with Epaca and Ecpa) - worries that the phrase "inside knowledge" in EUobserver's report Multi-million-euro market for inside EU knowledge might give readers the idea that there is something wrong with the lobby industry.

The line between lobbying and undue influence is thin.

The lobbyist at the heart of Dalligate, Silvio Zammit, claims that his practice, although not registered in the Transparency Register of the European Parliament and European Commission, "was above board and regular, in consonance with established practices."

In other words, he is self-regulated.

Self-regulation has not prevented this or other scandals. It harms citizens' trust in public policy-making and is ultimately at the expense of taxpayers.

Oh c'mon.
And who is going to observe USA election soon?
Last night David Letterman said something like this : On November 6 we will have election, on November 9 we will have recount and soon after High Court will pronounce Romney as president...
We have seen it so it's not exactly joke.
I am not saying that Ukraine's election is free and fair ...it was not so even when USA favorite has won. But I do not remember observes having complains when USA/EU favorite wins. So these observers...nobody takes them seriously.By now we all know that there is no such a thing as free and fair election...

http://www.b92.net/eng/insight/opinions.php?yyyy=2012&mm=10&nav_id=82824

Usually, asylum seekers in Germany are accommodated in collective centres and receive food and clothes in kind. In the past a family of four also received a stipend of €120 a month.

The July ruling has increased that stipend to at least €420 a month. If the family has to purchase its food and clothing itself, it will now receive more than €1,100 a month. This is many times the average monthly income in Serbia and Macedonia. In Germany, the basic asylum procedure for Balkan nationals takes at least two-and-a-half months. Then a rejected asylum seeker appeals, which means he or she can stay on average another five months.

To understand what Germany would actually need to do to reduce the number of Balkan asylum applications, just look at its neighbours.

Last year in Austria, which is even closer to the Balkans and also has large communities of Balkan people, only 380 Balkan nationals asked for asylum. Austria had put all Western Balkan states on a list of "countries of safe origin." Today it decides on asylum claims of Balkan citizens in a week.

Germany could also look to the Netherlands.  

Eurointelligence Daily Morning Newsbriefing: Austerity government set up in the Netherlands (30.10.2012)

Mark Rutte and Diederik Samsom agree a fiscal correction of 3% of GDP; the Dutch coalition agreement includes a reduction in mortgage tax relief, a material concession from Rutte's Liberals; other measures includes cuts to the length of unemployment, and cuts in basic scientific research; an offsetting measures has been a small cut in the top tax rate; new government may take office as early as next week; Greek coalition has not yet reached deal on labour reforms; Antonis Samaras aim is now to present structural reform coalition deal next week, and separate from austerity package; Le Monde writes there is no majority for the budget law in the French senate if Communists abstain; il Messagero says Silvio Berlusconi is facing isolation even within his own party, as senior PdL figures are considering a break-away group in support of Mario Monti; the Spanish parliament wants to invite Mario Draghi to explain the euro crisis to them; Stefano Lepri writes that Draghi will become the most important guardian of the euro in 2013, but this is premised on a meaningful banking union; Spain's bad bank lures private investors with by acquiring assets and loans at steep discounts, ranging from 32.4% for property loans to 79.5% for undeveloped land; Louis de Guindos promises to compensate for the deleveraging by Spain's four nationalised banks; there are tentative signs of a normalisation of the eurozone's money markets, as US money market funds have increased their exposures in the eurozone; absolute levels are still low, and they are still not in the periphery; Barack Obama says the eurozone must not allow Spain to become unravelled; Claus Hulverscheidt says Angela Merkel had miscalculated the eurozone crisis, and is now facing the inevitability of an official sector involvement; John McHale, meanwhile, says that even high highly indebted eurozone states can be solvent for as long as there is sufficient official sector support - and banks are separated from sovereigns.

I distribute. You re-distribute. He gives your hard-earned money to lazy scroungers. -- JakeS

The Swiss turn against foreign tax dodgers

Switzerland is frequently cited as the destination of choice for super-rich individuals fearful of possible checks on their wealth and power in the UK. But the Swiss public are just as angry about excessive pay and inequality as we are.
[...]
The cantons of Zurich, Schaffhausen and Appenzell have already chosen - via referendum - to scrap the preferential treatment for foreign tax exiles. A further referendum is planned in Bern.  The national Parliament has opted to increase the tax rate, amidst calls from the Social Democrat opposition to abolish the tax break altogether, in favour of a more substantive wealth or income tax.
[...]
Furthermore, foreign property investors could also drive house prices up beyond the reach of ordinary Swiss families. A similar problem is already emerging in the UK - 60% of properties sold in central London are bought by overseas investors, creating a knock-on effect on prices throughout the capital and making home ownership less and less affordable for the population of London as a whole.
[...]
Therefore, high earners must acknowledge the need for pay restraint. Threats to leave the country and the implied `race to the bottom' on policies to address inequality simply are not viable.

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sapere aude

Turkey's Dragnet

The Turkish government's strange reaction last week to a report released by the Committee to Protect Journalists reminded me of the waiter's words. The report condemns the Turkish government for restricting press freedoms and imprisoning journalists. The government's response: Sorry, we can't give normal freedoms to the press because then everyone else might expect them, too.
[...]
The government claims that the prisoners in question were not jailed for being journalists but for committing unrelated crimes. The CPJ counters this with documentation for at least 61 of the cases that shows the journalists are in the slammer for accusations "in direct relation to their work."
[...]
Antiterrorism legislation has been used to detain not only journalists, but also animal-rights sympathizers, members of the socialist far left, and even villagers demonstrating against the building of hydroelectric dam projects that would flood their own homes.

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sapere aude

Draghi backs Germany's call for 'currency commissioner' | EurActiv

European Central Bank Chief Mario Draghi backed a proposal by German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble to radically expand the powers of the European Union's monetary affairs commissioner, giving Brussels greater control over member states budgets.

Schäuble said earlier this month that the EU needed a commissioner who wielded power over member states' budgets together with reform of the European Parliament's decision-making process, changes he said could help ease the debt crisis.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was initially said to be more cautious on the issue, later backed Shaüble's proposals ahead of an EU summit on 18-19 October.

The commissioner, an expansion of the current monetary and economic affairs commissioner, should have the authority to veto budgets if they broke deficit rules, he argued, urging far-reaching reform and greater European integration.

Draghi's public support for the proposals is a boost for Schäuble's plan but such reform would require changes to EU treaties, something that would need Britain - which has been sceptical of greater European integration - to acquiesce to unless a separate euro zone treaty is drawn up.

"I explicitly support this proposal," Draghi told Der Spiegel magazine published on Sunday.

"I am certain: if we want to re-establish trust in the euro zone, countries must pass a part of their sovereignty to the European level," Draghi said.

Schäuble wants the role of the economic and monetary affairs commissioner, dubbed the "currency commissioner" in Germany, to be modelled along the lines of the EU's competition commissioner, the only commissioner who can make legally-binding decisions. His plan has received a mixed welcome.

EUobserver.com / Economic Affairs / Greek finance officials among suspected tax evaders

Greek magazine Hot Doc has published the names of 2,059 suspected tax evaders in a move likely to stoke social tension.

The roll call of people who held accounts at the HSBC bank in Geneva includes Stavros Papastavros, an aide to Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, and the wife of Georgios Voulgarakis, Samaras' former minister of culture and public order, as well as officials in the finance ministry, businessmen, doctors, housewives, lawyers, pensioners and students.

Hot Doc redacted the amounts of money held in the accounts, but said some of them contained as much as €500 million.

The journal's editor, Costas Vaxevanis, was briefly arrested after it went out on Saturday (27 October).

He is to face misdemeanour charges on violating privacy laws in court on Monday.

"I only did my job. I am a journalist and I did my job," he said in a video statement sent to Reuters.

"The important thing is that a group of people - when Greece is starving - make a profit ... Tomorrow in parliament they will vote to cut €100-200 in pay for the Greek civil servant, for the Greek worker while at the same time most of the 2,000 people on the list appear to be evading tax by secretly sending money to Switzerland," he added.

Members on guard ahead of EU budget - FT.com

A proliferation of competing national claims for rebates from Brussels is complicating efforts to broker a deal over the EU's next long-term budget.

As member states demand increasingly large refund cheques to compensate for what they believe are outsized contributions to the EU budget, they are leaving a bigger burden for others.

"We have now the proliferation of claims for rebates," Janusz Lewandowski, the budget commissioner, told journalists recently, warning that it should be opposed. "This is really making the system more costly," he said.

The issue came to the fore last week when Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Denmark's prime minister, threatened to veto any EU budget that does not deliver at least DKr1bn in rebates to Copenhagen.

"We are going to get our rebate, and if we don't get our rebate, then we will have to use the veto. It's very, very simple," Ms Thorning-Schmidt told a parliamentary committee on Thursday.

That same day, David Cameron, the UK prime minister, informed a visiting Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, that Britain's EU rebate - worth €3.6bn in 2011, by far the bloc's largest - was sacrosanct, and not open to discussion, according to people familiar with the meeting.

MEPs approve ban on ultrafast trading | EurActiv

Europe's first direct curbs on ultrafast trading and investors who take bets on commodity prices moved a step nearer on Friday (26 October) when the European Parliament backed new securities rules.

Lawmakers want to tighten regulations on so-called high-frequency trading (HFT), which uses computers to dart in and out of markets in milliseconds and exploit tiny price differences, because they fear it makes markets more volatile.

They are also cracking down on speculation in commodities markets in a bid to reduce big price swings.

Meeting in full session in Strasbourg, the Parliament voted by 495 to 15 in favour of MiFID II, a draft law that updates EU securities rules to reflect lessons from the financial crisis and rapid advances in trading technology.

But it threw out an attempt to ban financial advisors from pocketing commission on the products they sell to consumers, sticking instead to requirements for better disclosure.

Law set to apply from 2014

The new rules include the introduction a synchronised clock for trading shares, bonds, commodities and other instruments across the EU so regulators can spot abuses more easily in a market where many exchanges and platforms trade the same shares.

Share orders would have to remain in the market for at least 500 milliseconds, far longer than HFT traders stay at present.

"That way, purely speculative business with high-frequency transactions will become unattractive," German MEP Markus Ferber, the centre-right lawmaker who is steering MiFID through Parliament.

The Parliament will now sit down with EU states to agree a final text that will become law around 2014, and the broad majority reinforces the lawmakers' negotiating hand.

Supporters of HFT argue it brings welcome volume to markets, making it easier for buyers and sellers to find counterparties.

Consumer Spending in U.S. Increases 0.8% as Incomes Climb - Bloomberg

Consumer spending in the U.S. climbed more than forecast in September, a sign the biggest part of the economy was picking up as the quarter drew to a close.

Household purchases, which account for about 70 percent of gross domestic product, rose 0.8 percent, the most since February, after advancing 0.5 percent in August, a Commerce Department report showed today in Washington. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of 71 economists called for a 0.6 percent gain. Incomes climbed 0.4 percent, the most since March.

The acceleration in spending may help the world's largest economy overcome a slowdown in exports and business investment as global growth slackens and concern mounts about the so-called fiscal cliff. At the same time, a drop in saving to finance purchases indicates bigger gains in employment are required to provide the income needed to sustain spending.

Rajoy Faces Bailout Split With Monti at Madrid Meeting - Bloomberg

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti and his Spanish counterpart Mariano Rajoy tried to mask a growing divide over Europe's new bailout strategy by emphasizing their commitment to the timetable for banking union.

While both urged their European partners to meet a year-end deadline to establish a single banking supervisor, strains emerged when a Spanish reporter asked Monti whether he would request a bailout alongside Rajoy. The Italian premier pushed back against formalizing ties between the nations and signaled Spain will probably have to go it alone in negotiations with the gatekeepers of Europe's rescue money.

"The collaboration with Spain has been very useful, same as with France, but also with Germany," Monti said at a joint press conference in Madrid today. "Without prejudice to the decision of any other country, we don't believe Italy is in a condition to need to" ask for help.

European officials are waiting for Spain to trigger a bailout plan unveiled by European Central Bank President Mario Draghi last month and designed to draw a line under the region's debt crisis. Monti would probably benefit from lower borrowing costs if Spain brought the ECB into play, while leaving Rajoy to weather the political flak of seeking emergency funds.

Air strikes, car bombs wreck last day of Syria truce | Reuters

Syrian jets bombed parts of Damascus on Monday in what residents said were the capital's fiercest air raids yet, at the end of what was supposed to be a four-day truce.

"More than 100 buildings have been destroyed, some leveled to the ground," said opposition activist Moaz al-Shami. "Whole neighbourhoods are deserted."

Each side in the 19-month-old conflict between President Bashar al-Assad and rebels blamed the other for breaking the truce proposed by peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to mark a Muslim holiday. Two car bombs rocked the capital on Monday, state media reported.

"I am deeply disappointed that the parties failed to respect the call to suspend fighting," U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon said.

"This crisis cannot be solved with more weapons and bloodshed ... the guns must fall silent."

Although the military and several rebel groups accepted the plan to stop shooting over Eid al-Adha, which ends on Monday, 500 people have been killed since Friday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition organization.

Damascus residents said Monday's air raids were the heaviest since jets and helicopters first bombarded pro-opposition parts of the capital in August.

Syria Comment

Many Western journalists are based in Lebanon, few in Iraq. This explains why relatively small events in Lebanon get dramatic reporting and much larger increases of violence in Iraq, are largely overlooked or elicit little concern.

Already in response to the growing civil war in Syria, Iraqi violence has spiked and al-Qaida is resurgent there. Some days as many as 100 Iraqi Shiites are killed by al-Qaida bombings in Iraq.

The threat of spillover in Lebanon is minor compared to Iraq because the sects in Lebanon all acknowledge that none can rule the country without the others. Even the most powerful, the Shiites, readily confess that they have no chance of turning Lebanon into an Islamic republic because Lebanon has a form of democracy and the majority is against it. Not only do all the sects buy into the notion of power-sharing, they also know that in Lebanon it is impossible for one group to dominate on the others. They learned these simple truths from decades of barbaric fighting.

In Iraq, the sects have found no peace and little acceptance of the balance of power now being hammered out. Prime Minister Maliki is busy building a Shiite dictatorship and pushing out the remaining centers of Sunni power left behind by the Americans in their doomed attempt to promote power-sharing.

Al-Qaida is rebuilding in Iraq to contest Shiite power. It probably has the backing of a larger segment of the Sunni community that still chafes from its loss of fortune following the US destruction of Saddam Hussein's regime. Unlike Lebanon, the various sects of Iraq have not found a modus-vivendi. Relations between Kurds and Arabs in Iraq are becoming more vexed as Kurdistan takes ever more steps to assert its independence from Arab Iraq.

African migrants 'denied entry' to Israel - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

Israel has turned away dozens of African asylum-seekers, mostly Eritreans trying enter the country from Egypt, human rights groups have said.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) and two Israeli NGOs said that "since June, Israeli forces patrolling Israel's newly constructed border fence with Egypt's Sinai region have denied entry to dozens of Africans, mostly Eritreans".

The numbers of rejected asylum seekers from Africa has increased at the Egypt-Israel Sinai border since Israel started the construction of a 250km fence running the length of its border with Egypt. The fence is due for completion by year-end.

A report written by HRW, the Hotline for Migrant Workers and Physicians for Human Rights published on Sunday said Israeli soldiers allegedly denied food and water to migrants, beat them with fists and guns and pushed them across the Israel-Egypt border with long metal poles.

'Infiltration problem'

The report was published just as Interior Minister Eli Yishai wrote a letter calling on Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu and the justice ministry to allow for the resumption of arrests of African migrants in Israel.

Yishai, who only mentioned Sudanese migrants in the letter and not Eritreans, who make up the majority of the migrants in Israel, said, "as you know, the problem of infiltration to Israel is one of the most difficult and complicated problems which Israel has dealt with since the founding of the state, a problem which threatens our identity, character, and future".

It is estimated that more than 60,000 Africans are living in Israel illegally, most of them in run-down neighbourhoods of southern Tel Aviv.

EU Weighs Options for Helping Mali Fight Al-Qaida - SPIEGEL ONLINE

The European Union wants to help the Malian army recapture the renegade north from terrorists with a military mission. But the French and the Americans have already been operating in the region for years without success. Can EU intervention really make a difference?

When the French foreign minister talks about Africa in the European Council, his counterparts from other European capitals listen very carefully. Because of their colonial past, France's diplomats are viewed as experts on Africa.

This was also the case on Monday two weeks ago, when the foreign ministers of European Union member states came together in Luxembourg to discuss the division of the West African country of Mali. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius used drastic language to warn of the "terrorist threat" developing in the northern part of the country. He made the case for an EU military mission to the country, saying: "Europe cannot simply stand on the sidelines."

Previously, French President François Hollande had used similar arguments to persuade German Chancellor Angela Merkel. But what politicians in Paris glossed over is that France has been fighting Islamic fundamentalists in the Sahel for years -- with its own elite soldiers, with instructors for the Malian army, with money and equipment and, most of all, without success.

Last Monday, Merkel had hardly given marching orders of sorts to high-ranking officers in Strausberg, near Berlin, telling them that "Mali's armed forces need support," when the political debate began in Berlin. Economic Cooperation and Development Minister Dirk Niebel, a member of the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP), the junior partner in Merkel's center-right coalition government, warned that the country could turn into a "second Afghanistan," and said that he believed "Germany's fundamental interests" are in jeopardy in the Sahel. Defense Minister Thomas de Maizière, a member of Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), was more reserved, but did make it clear to his generals that even a training mission could last "a few years." Military officials like Harald Kujat, the former general inspector of the German armed forces, the Bundeswehr, expressed concerns that there is a great "risk that this could turn into an armed conflict."

Hurricane Sandy Predicted to Bring `Life-Threatening' Surge - NYTimes.com

Hurricane Sandy churned relentlessly through the Atlantic Ocean on Monday on the way to carving what forecasters agreed would be a devastating path on land that is expected to paralyze life for millions of people in more than a half-dozen states, with extensive evacuations, once-in-a-generation flooding, widespread power failures and disruptions of mass transit.

The huge storm, which picked up speed over the water on Monday morning, was producing sustained winds of 90 miles per hour by 11 a.m., up from 75 m.p.h. on Sunday night. The center of Hurricane Sandy made its expected turn toward the New Jersey coast early on Monday and was expected to make landfall earlier than expected, around 6 p.m. . The National Hurricane Center said the center of the storm was now moving north-northwest at 28 m.p.h. At 5 p.m., the center said that the center of the storm was about 40 miles from Atlantic City, where the boardwalk had been damaged and there were reports of widespread flooding.

More than 617,000 electric customers had lost power in New York City, New Jersey, Connecticut and Westchester County.

In Manhattan, the top section of a crane atop a luxury building under construction on West 57th Street near Central Park had toppled over and was dangling precariously about 80 stories above the ground. Several nearby buildings had been evacuated.

Even with landfall still hours away, there was no holding back flooding from the advance guard of the storm -- fast-moving bands of rain that lashed protective barriers in beachfront communities and then pushed inland.

Who's Winning The Presidential Race - Business Insider

Obama's odds of winning re-election continue to rise, according to New York Times polling guru Nate Silver.

Obama also continues to hold a commanding lead on betting markets Intrade and Betfair.

This despite the continued release of some national polls, namely Gallup, that continue to look good for Romney.

(The difference between the national polls and the betting markets, Silver says, is that the national polls focus on the popular vote, whereas Silver's odds focus on state-by-state polls aimed at determining the winner of the electoral college--and, with it, the Presidency.)

Let's go to the data...

First, Nate Silver now gives Obama 75% chance of reelection. That's up from a post-first-debate low of ~60% three weeks ago, and it's climbing back toward the 80% peak Obama hit just before the first debate.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Oct 29 (Reuters) - As Hurricane Sandy barreled toward the U.S. East Coast on Monday, the full extent of the storm's havoc on Haiti was just beginning to emerge. (...) Haiti reported the highest death toll in the Caribbean, as swollen rivers and landslides claimed at least 52 lives, according to the country's Civil Protection office. More than three days of constant rain left roads and bridges heavily damaged, cutting off access to several towns and a key border crossing with the Dominican Republic.

Bloomberg: Chilean President Sebastian Pinera's coalition suffered a defeat in local elections yesterday with the opposition winning key municipalities just one year before presidential elections. Pro-government candidates lost a net 23 of the 144 municipalities they controlled nationwide, including downtown Santiago and nearby Providencia. The two leading opposition groups, stretching from the Christian Democrats to the Communist Party, won 43.1 percent of the vote for mayors, according to the electoral service. With more than 95 percent of the votes counted, the ruling coalition had 37.5 percent.

.

BBC: The Panama Congress overturned Sunday in special session the controversial law that was enacted last week authorizing the sale of land in the Colon Free Port, Caribbean entrance to the Panama Canal.

.

Argentina, MercoPress: General Motors (GM) will invest 450m dollars to manufacture a new global Chevy vehicle at its Rosario Automotive Complex in Argentina. The investment will be made between 2013 and 2015 at the Rosario facility, which produced more than 136,000 vehicles in 2011.

Miami Herald: Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo, who fought against the Batista dictatorship, then spent 22 years in prison for opposing Fidel Castro's communist government and finally returned to Cuba as a peaceful dissident, died Friday in Havana.

WOLA/Colombia: Increasingly, Afro-Colombian communities are bearing the brunt of the U.S.-financed aerial fumigation efforts in Colombia. In 2011 and 2012, fumigations took place in the departments of Nariño, Valle del Cauca, and Choco--regions populated primarily by Afro-Colombians. The fumigations join the wealth of mining, industrial, and development projects that regularly violate these communities' right to free, prior, and informed consultation regarding actions taken on their lands.

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

Stephen Stills on Mitt Romney: 'I Never Thought I'd See a Creepier Politician Than Nixon'.

Let's take a look at recent history. When was Black Friday? When did the Dow drop 800 points? When was the big heist when all the bank stimulus money was given out with no accountability? Watching Mitt Romney and the Republicans campaigning right now, you'd never know all these things happened during the Bush administration. They speak as if the economy collapsed the day Obama was sworn into office.  
[...]
I feel like I'm watching a long, drawn-out version of Blazing Saddles - all of the characters are there. At last, Obama found the Waco Kid. That's Bill Clinton. Karl Rove is Hedley Lamarr, and the Republican caucus is the guys from the fire scene. They're all in there. I swear.
[...]
With only a few days left, there is very little opportunity for nuance, so I will just tell you from my gut. I never in my lifetime thought I would see a creepier politician than Richard Nixon, but in the last few days, it became clear that Willard Mitt Romney is really, really creepy.

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sapere aude

Environment ministers pour cold water on `hot air' proposal | EurActiv

EU environment ministers abandoned plans on Friday (26 October) to limit excess supply of Kyoto-era carbon credits on the world's markets after seven eastern European states backed Poland's opposition to the measure.

The Environment Council had been intended to forge a common EU position on Assigned Amount Unit carbon credits (AAUs) - disparagingly dubbed `hot air' credits - before the UN climate summit in Doha next month.

But "the fact that there hasn't been agreement within the EU block will only make expectations for the Doha conference on the carry-over of AAUs very low," said Jeff Swartz, the policy director for the International Emissions Trading Association.

"The EU will have a harder time getting other countries to support their position in Doha," he told EurActiv, "so the likelihood of an outcome for that agenda item would be less."

AAU credits were agreed for countries in the former Soviet bloc under the Kyoto Protocol's Joint Implementation scheme. But a collapse of heavy industry after the Soviet Union's implosion, reduced their value to less than a euro per tonne.

Russia and many eastern European nations want the credits to carry over into a second Kyoto commitment period after 2012, when the treaty expires. 

The European Commission fears this could compromise its Emissions Trading System (ETS), and prevent meaningful international agreement at the UNFCCC Doha Climate summit next month.

A proposal put to the EU's Climate Change Committee earlier this month called for a ban on non-EU countries' use of Emission Reduction Unit credits - which can be turned into AAUs, and traded on the ETS.

US shale gas drives up coal exports

A report by researchers at The University of Manchester has concluded that whilst the US is burning less coal due to shale gas production, millions of tonnes of unused coal are being exported to the UK, Europe and Asia. As a result, the emissions benefits of switching fuels are overstated.

US CO2 emissions from domestic energy have declined by 8.6% since a peak in 2005, the equivalent of 1.4% per year.

However, the researchers warn that more than half of the recent emissions reductions in the power sector may be displaced overseas by the trade in coal.

Dr John Broderick, lead author on the report from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, comments: "Research papers and newspaper column inches have focussed on the relative emissions from coal and gas.

"However, it is the total quantity of CO2 from the energy system that matters to the climate. Despite lower-carbon rhetoric, shale gas is still a carbon intensive energy source. We must seriously consider whether a so-called "golden age" would be little more than a gilded cage, locking us into a high-carbon future."

Professor Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre notes: "Since 2008 when the shale gas supply became significant, there has been a large increase in US coal exports. This increases global emissions as the UK, Europe and Asia are burning the coal instead. Earlier Tyndall analysis suggests that the role for gas in a low carbon transition is extremely limited, with shale gas potentially diverting substantial funds away from genuinely low and zero carbon alternatives"

Protests in China over chemical factory expansion - FRANCE 24

housands of demonstrators gathered in the streets of Ningbo in eastern China on Saturday chanting "protect Ningbo". Over the past week, residents have been protesting plans to expand a petrochemical factory in the port city.

The project has raised strong concerns among locals. Web users have taken to social networks to voice their fears over the impact it will have on the environment and on the health of people living in the vicinity, and are urging people to join the protests to demand local authorities abandon the plans.

The movement has been widely relayed on the web despite the censorship in place and the silence of local media. Numerous pieces of amateur footage of the rallies have been posted online in recent days, also bearing witness to the riots that broke out on Saturday when police intervened after 6 days of protests.

The city government has said however that it is prepared to enter into discussions with opponents of the project intent on having their demands met [update: local authorities have since promised to halt the project]. There have been growing environmental protests across China in recent months, some prompting the authorities to back track. Back in July for example, the city government in the south western city of Shifang axed plans to construct a copper alloy plant following anti-pollution protests by residents.

'Geneva hit by tsunami' -- 1,500 years ago - The Local

Nearly 1,500 years ago a tsunami triggered by a rockfall swept Lake Geneva, engulfing its shores with a wall of water up to 13 metres high, Swiss scientists reported on Sunday.

 The incident suggests Geneva and Lausanne remain vulnerable today, as do other cities on the edge of mountain lakes and high-sided fjords, they said.

"The risk is underestimated because most of the people just do not know that tsunamis can happen in lakes," Katrina Kremer, an Earth scientist at the University of Geneva, told AFP.

In a letter to the journal Nature Geoscience, Kremer's team said they delved into the "Tauredunum Event," an episode that occurred in AD 563.

A contemporary account by a French bishop, Gregory of Tours, described a catastrophe that was as bewildering as it was terrifying.

A giant wave charged down the lake, destroying villages and herds of animals, and then passed over the city walls of Geneva, on the western tip, where it drowned several people.

Was this a "lake tsunami"? Some experts have argued so.

They point to evidence that part of a mountain slipped into the River Rhone about five kilometres from where it flows into Lake Geneva at the lake's eastern point.

Keen to find out more, Kremer's team swept the deepest part of the lake with high-resolution radar.

They uncovered a huge, oval-shaped pile of sediment, more than ten kilometres long, five kilometres wide and five metres thick.

More here.

Scientists Move Closer to a Long-Lasting Flu Vaccine - NYTimes.com

As this year's flu season gathers steam, doctors and pharmacists have a fresh stock of vaccines to offer their patients. The vaccines usually provide strong protection against the virus, but only for a while. Vaccines for other diseases typically work for years or decades. With the flu, though, next fall it will be time to get another dose.

 "In the history of vaccinology, it's the only one we update year to year," said Gary J. Nabel, the director of the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

That has been the case ever since the flu vaccine was introduced in the 1950s. But a flurry of recent studies on the virus has brought some hope for a change. Dr. Nabel and other flu experts foresee a time when seasonal flu shots are a thing of the past, replaced by long-lasting vaccines.

"That's the goal: two shots when you're young, and then boosters later in life. That's where we'd like to go," Dr. Nabel said. He predicted that scientists would reach that goal before long -- "in our lifetime, for sure, unless you're 90 years old," he said.

Such a vaccine would be a great help in the fight against seasonal flu outbreaks, which kill an estimated 500,000 people a year. But in a review to be published in the journal Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses, Sarah Gilbert of Oxford University argues that they could potentially have an even greater benefit.

A Marlboro Vaccine? Maybe for China - WSJ.com

Marlboro is the world's top-selling cigarette, but it has a minuscule 0.3% share of the market in China, where more than a third of the world's cigarettes are smoked.

Now, Philip Morris International Inc., which makes and markets Marlboro outside the U.S., is trying to raise its profile in that enormous Asian nation by moving beyond simple smokes.

In one curious effort, it is setting out to develop flu vaccines derived from a type of tobacco plant. In another project, closer to its core business, it is developing less harmful cigarettes.

It would aim to sell these less-harmful cigarettes all over the globe, but especially in China, where a quarter of the population smokes but state-owned China National Tobacco Corp. enjoys a virtual monopoly.

In September, Philip Morris said it would be licensing rights from Medicago Inc.,  a small Canadian biopharmaceutical company, to develop vaccines for sale in China. The seemingly incongruous move is motivated by several different situations. Philip Morris already owns about 40% of Medicago. Philip Morris also has a goal of diversifying into different tobacco-related products.

Pedophiles: Can virtual porn help? | Radio Netherlands Worldwide

Should pedophiles be given "virtual" child pornography to help reduce their real life sexual urges? It may sound unsavory, but that's what two sexologists-- Erik van Beek and Rik van Lunsen--argue in Monday's Dutch newspaper Trouw.

"It is a safe way, for both pedophiles and children," van Lunsen is quoted as saying regarding the distribution of virtual porn that doesn't use real children subject to abuse.

"You offer it to the group that doesn't want to hurt kids and they don't hurt anyone with this stimulus. You let them play in their part of the garden of lust, to put it that way," he says.

"It is a small group convinced they shouldn't act and have enough control not to," counters Jules Mulder, a psychotherapist from Utrecht's de Waag outpatient clinic who, like van Beek and van Lunsen, works with pedophiles.

While virtual pornography may help them, he says, "it is quite difficult to find that group...and pornography is still part of the problem." In his work he focuses on adult relationships, not necessarily sexual ones, and on emotional loneliness.

Dark secrets

Serving up virtual pornography to those with pedophilic tendencies is no doubt controversial. But to van Beek and van Lunsen, it's all about giving such men a safe outlet for their desires, what van Beek calls "space for forbidden fantasies without it being hurtful for others."

"We tell people you are not responsible for your preference..., for the things you think or for your fantasies," van Lunsen told Trouw. "Take it from me, every person has sexual fantasies that he would never ever like to do. There's only one thing that you are responsible for we say: your behavior. And it is to up to you make sure that you don't damage kids."

Van Beek and van Lunsen say academic studies show that banning child pornography has led to an increase in abuse. They want the virtual porn to have a disclaimer saying no children were hurt in its production, and they're hoping that virtual pornography would make traditional child pornography less popular.

allAfrica.com: Uganda: Prostitution Soars Amid Weak Laws (Page 1 of 2)

The number of girls joining prostitution is increasing in the country.

Under the guise of offering them jobs in the city, unscrupulous people are taking young girls from their homes and forcing them into prostitution, according to a survey.

The survey which was released last year by the Uganda Youth Development Link (UYDEL), a non-government organisation, and commissioned by the Government, the number of girls ending up as young prostitutes has increased from 12,000 to 18,000 over the last seven years.

The study dubbed commercial sexual exploitation of children established that sexual exploitation is more prevalent in urban centres and affects girls more than boys.

The study also found that the age at which the children were getting involved in commercial sex was being lowered although most of the victims were between 14 and 17 years.

Hackers attack French Euromillions lottery site calling it 'devil's work' and posting verse from the Koran - Europe - World - The Independent

Hackers have attacked the French site of the Euromillions lottery, attacking it as the `devil's work' and posting Koranic verse in place of its homepage.

The messages warned people to quit gambling and consuming alcohol, saying that they were used by the devil, both of which are forbidden in Islam, to "sow hatred between yourselves and turn you away from God and prayer".

Posted in both French and Arabic, it read: "Oh you believers. Wine, games of chance, statues all augur impurity and are the work of the devil." A hacking group calling itself "Morrocanghosts" claimed responsibility for the attack.

Euromillions lottery operator La Francaise des jeux (FDJ) said that none of its other games were affected after the attack, which French media reports said happened yesterday morning. The Euromillions homepage was unavailable last night and is currently redirecting visitors to the FDJ page.

A statement on that site said that all pages hit by the hackers were in "the process of being put back up". The company added that no personal data was compromised during the attack.

The Twitter user MorrocanGhosts posted a message yesterday in Arabic which read: "After hours ... will penetrate the global gambling sites .. (O ye who believe alcohol and gambling ..."

France has a population of 65 million, including an estimated four million Muslims, the largest Islamic population in western Europe.

City banker who almost sunk UBS denies being a 'rogue trader' | Business | The Guardian

Kweku Adoboli, the investment banker accused of almost sinking Swiss bank UBS with illicit dealing, denied on Monday he was a rogue trader and said other members of his team knew about his "off book" activities.

Adoboli, 32, who is alleged to have cost the bank £1.4bn, said he ran up major losses only after giving in to pressure from senior colleagues to change his market position. Giving evidence at Southwark crown court for a second day, Adoboli, who repeatedly broke down on Friday as he described UBS as his "family", was close to tears again when asked by his barrister, Paul Garlick QC, about the term "rogue trader". After a pause he replied: "It doesn't feel fair."

The court has heard how Adoboli ran a series of trades which were not properly hedged - balanced by deals which would mitigate losses if the market moved unfavourably. These were initially very profitable, with the proceeds kept in a side account Adoboli called his "umbrella". But during the summer of 2011 Adoboli's non-hedged deals went badly wrong, at one point racking up potential liabilities to UBS of £7.5bn. The losses began, Adoboli told the court today, when senior traders persuaded him to switch his generally gloomy view of prospects for exchange traded funds (ETFs), his area of work, to a more bullish one, only for the market to head consistently downward. "My market view in July and August was guided, sometimes under considerable pressure, by senior traders around me," Adoboli said.

"At that point I should have held on to my conviction of fear of the market. At that very point I changed my position, that is why I don't believe I was a rogue trader. I wish I was a rogue trader. I wish I hadn't listened."

Zuma drops legal case over 'rape' cartoon - Africa - Al Jazeera English

South African President Jacob Zuma has dropped a four-year-old legal case claiming nearly $600,000 in damages from a cartoonist who depicted him poised to rape "Lady Justice", his office said.

Britain's Sunday Times, named as a defendant in the case, also said on Sunday it had reached agreement with Zuma's lawyers for the suit and all claims to be ended.

"The president ... would like to avoid setting a legal precedent that may have the effect of limiting the public
exercise of free speech, with the unforeseen consequences this may have on our media, public commentators and citizens," Mac Maharaj, a presidential spokesman, said in a statement.

"It is the president's view that a legal battle against individuals and institutions will be an unnecessary diversion," the statement read. 

It added that it still saw the cartoon as an affront to the dignity of the president.

Maharaj said Zuma's decision to withdraw the lawsuit was informed by a series of considerations.

"Whereas the president believes that in an open and democratic society, a fine and sensitive balance needs to be maintained between the exercise of civil rights such as freedom of speech, and the dignity and privacy of others, that balance should be struck in favour of constitutional freedoms," he said.

Heh. The controversial cartoon is this one:

And appeared also in this diary - although it was there merely a byline.

And well, the outcome was hardly unexpected.
Nomad:

Zuma has sued Shapiro close to ten times now, and many cases against him have been dropped one after the other by the Zuma team in covert silence. Not one case against Shapiro has actually gone to court.

It's mostly about Zuma getting into the limelight - another chance to be portrayed as "I'm unfairly being picked upon". Then drop the case silently, and sue Shapiro for another of his more outrageous cartoons.

That next one would probably be this one.