BRUSSELS - Cyprus is reportedly seeking a €11.5 billion credit line from member states using the euro to help bailout its troubled banks and close its budget gaps.

The island-nation's bank exposure to Greek debt restructuring already cost it some €4 billion earlier this year.

The exposure compelled Nicosia in June to request an EU-IMF bailout after its two largest banks, Bank of Cyprus and Cyprus Popular Bank, revealed massive fiscal holes due to Greek debt exposure.

Finance Minister Vassos Shiarly reportedly said on Thursday (4 October) the banks will need another €5 billion in new capital, reports Bloomberg. The troika of the European Commission, IMF and European Central Bank however put the figure closer to €10 billion.

BRUSSELS - MEPs defied calls by national governments to rein in EU budget spending on Thursday (4 October), instead restoring most of the €138 billion settlement proposed by the European Commission for the 2013 budget.

The European Commission's budget proposal had called for a €9 billion increase on the 2012 budget, equivalent to an additional 6.8 percent.

Goran Farm, the Swedish deputy who leads for the Socialist group on the Budget committee, described the parliament's position as "very modest, with a clear focus on jobs and growth."

Member states had agreed to a 2.8 percent increase but the EU's seven net-contributing countries, which include Germany, France and the UK, insist that they will not cede more ground at a time when governments are imposing national austerity plans. Critics of the council position say that governments are trying to block funding to pay for projects they have already agreed to.

A Belgian spokesman told EUobserver on Friday (5 October): "We can confirm that an official from our ministry was suspended from his functions a bit over one year ago following indications of a security breach. The ministry of foreign affairs has filed a complaint with Belgian prosecutors and an inquiry is ongoing."

Belgian magazine MO broke the story earlier the same day in an article citing sources in the Belgian state security service, the VSSE.

It said he is suspected of helping Russian intelligences services, the FSB and SVR, to set up false identities for spies in Belgium, the home of the EU institutions and Nato headquarters.

Five men accused of terrorism charges - including the hook handed preacher Abu Hamza and the controversially detained suspects Babar Ahmad and Talha Ahsan - lost their last minute appeal to stop their imminent extradition to the United States today.

The decision by two High Court judges to proceed with the extradition was welcomed by the Government but was greeted with consternation by those who had campaigned for Ahsan and Ahmad to be tried in the UK.

The five men are all wanted by American prosecutors on a variety of unrelated terror charges.  Abu Hamza, a firebrand jihadist preacher who once turned Finsbury Park mosque into his personal fiefdom, is accused of trying to set up a terrorist training camp in Oregan and helping Islamists take and kill hostages in the Yemen. Khalid al-Fawwaz and Adel Abdul Bary, who have been held without charge since the late 1990s, are accused of being members of Al-Qa'ida in London who helped the group take responsibility for the 1998 United States embassy bombings in East Africa.

Babar Ahmad and Talha Ahsan are alleged to have set up and run a number of pro-jihadi websites that operated under the banner Azzam Publications and encouraged a US Navy sailor to leak them classified information.

Greece has tabled a draft memorandum of understanding apparently aimed at seeking a solution to its long-standing name dispute with EU candidate Macedonia. But EU diplomats expressed disappointment at its content, which doesn't appear to make new proposals.

The draft memorandum, published Thursday (4 October) on the Greek foreign ministry website, repeats diplomatic language already used in bilateral documents, stressing that both sides would commit to respecting each other's national sovereignty and territorial integrity, and renounce any present or future territorial claims.

In a direct reference to what is widely seen as appropriation of ancient Greek history by Macedonia (see background), it calls for both sides to agree that they would refrain from actions or statements that risk undermining the negotiations, "including through the use of symbols constituting part of the historical or cultural patrimony of the other."

Serbia's decision to ban this weekend's gay pride march because of security concerns has prompted criticism from EU officials who warn the the move undermines Serbia's potential accession to the European Union.

After the meeting between Dr Gonzi and Mr Hollande, another meeting was held between Dr Gonzi, Mr Hollande, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy Brey, the Prime Minister of Portugal Pedro Passos Coelho and EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.

The leaders called for the next meeting of the region's leaders in October to make progress toward setting up a single banking regulator by the end of the year so that it can be running in 2013.

They agreed that the next European Council must pave the way towards the establishment of a single European banking supervision system, to be decided before the end of the year and operational by January.

France's national statistics institute INSEE on Thursday halved its 2012 growth forecast to 0.2 percent, predicting zero growth in the third and fourth quarters and claiming "The French economy is stuck in neutral."

Firefighters from the Pas-de-Calais brigade are set to be replaced by private security guards to monitor the Channel tunnel, according to France Info radio station.

The private company operating the cross-Channel service, Eurotunnel, and the French fire service have failed to an agreement to renew their €2,7 million contract to provide primary emergency cover for the tunnel.

Employees from private security firm Onet will take over the Pas-de-Calais firefighters from the end of November. According to the report, Onet is recruiting applicants armed with first aid certificates, "composure", and - "ideally" - some experience as volunteer firefighters. The new security teams will be in charge of "preventing fires" and "monitoring rescue equipments" but not putting fires out. Actual firefighting will continue to be carried out by the French and British fire authorities.

Poland sent a clear message of moving away from its dependence to Russia on Thursday (4 October), when it secured the final investments needed to start construction of its first liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal, expected to start importing gas from Qatar in 2014.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) said it gave a €75-million, 12-year loan to Polish gas grid operator Gaz-System to begin building the terminal. The rest of the financing for the total cost of €660 million will come from the European Commission via grants, European Investment Bank and the company, from its own revenues.

"What this project really represents is a choice for Poland to receive one third of its gas from a country other than Russia for the first time," EBRD Managing Director for Energy and Natural Resources Ricardo Puliti said.

Tensions between mine owners and workers in South Africa heightened on Friday when 12,000 staff were sacked for taking part in an illegal strike.

The world's biggest platinum producer, Anglo American Platinum, said it had fired the workers after reporting their walkout had cost the company around $82 million in lost output.

..."This country is quite used to large figures like this, even if 12,000 seems shocking by European standards," the Independent's Cape Town correspondent Alex Duval Smith told FRANCE 24. "There are 125,000 people employed in the industry."

"Essentially the mining industry says it is overstaffed, it needs to get rid of people, the strikes are illegal and if they continue we are going to do what we intended to do, which is fire people," Duval Smith added.

The U.N. Security Council overcame deep divisions on Thursday to unanimously approve a statement condemning "in the strongest terms" Syria's shelling of a Turkish town that killed five women and children.

Council members managed to bridge differences between the strong statement demanded by the United States and its Western supporters and backed by their NATO ally Turkey, and a weaker text pushed by Russia, Syria's most important ally, after negotiations that began late Wednesday and continued through Thursday.

Thousands of Islamists demonstrated in central Amman to call for reforms on Friday, just hours after King Abdullah II dissolved parliament and called early polls without any major political change.

"We demand constitutional reform before the people revolt. The people want to reform the regime," they chanted in the demonstration held outside Al-Husseini mosque in downtown Amman.

"Democratic electoral law, constitutional changes, parliamentary governments, independent judiciary, constitutional court, effective anti-corruption efforts and preventing security services from interfering in political life," read a large banner carried by protesters spelling out their demands.

Romney's interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity was the first time he completely disavowed remarks he made at a private fundraiser in May and which have emerged as a major stumbling block in his campaign against Democratic President Barack Obama.

The "47 percent" videotape did not come up in his Wednesday night debate with Obama, although the Obama campaign has used his remarks in a television ad.

Asked what he would have said if the issue had come up in the Denver debate, Romney said he would have said that after thousands of speeches as a presidential candidate, "now and then you're going to say something that doesn't come out right."

"In this case, I said something that was just completely wrong," he said.

Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum got philosophical on CNN Thursday night when asked about Mitt Romney's pledge to cut off PBS funding.

"I've voted to kill Big Bird in the past," Romney's ex-primary rival said. "I have a record there that I have to disclose. That doesn't mean I don't like Big Bird. You can kill things and still like them, maybe to eat them, I don't know. That's probably that. Can we -- can we go back on that one?"

Imran Khan led hundreds of cars, buses and trucks out of Pakistan's capital Islamabad on Saturday in a peace convoy to one of the country's militant-infested tribal regions.

He was joined by activists from America, Clive Stafford Smith, of the death penalty campaign group Reprieve, and Lauren Booth, Cherie Blair's half sister, to highlight the plight of hundreds of people killed by CIA drones.

Hundreds more vehicles joined the convoy along the road, ahead of a rally planned in South Waziristan on Sunday.

They must still navigate Taliban threats and fears the Pakistan government may prevent the rally from going ahead.

Mr Khan, who formed a political party 16 years ago after retiring from cricket, has emerged as an outspoken critic of drones.

EU ministers yesterday (4 October) placed the last piece of the 20-20-20 climate puzzle, agreed in 2007, by throwing their weight behind the EU's Energy Efficiency Directive.

The directive is the last piece of legislation out of a suite of three which came as a result of the March 2007 EU summit, when member states had struck an agreement on a 20% energy efficiency target by 2020, together with a 20% renewable energy target and a 20% CO2 reduction target.

Despite the European Parliament giving an overwhelmingly positive vote on the directive in the plenary on 11 September, EU officials were still not celebrating its adoption until this final Council vote, EurActiv understands.

This is because the 'tough' talks which delayed the legislation have previously been described by key negotiators as the 'most complicated' of the past few years, with tight political battles threatening its adoption several times before the initial agreement in June 2012.

...despite the directive setting only 'indicative' and not binding targets, the investments needed to implement the law average €40 billion to €50 billion.

Jean Ziegler was until recently (2000-2008) the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, and subsequently, in a similar function, he served on the Advisory Committee to the UN Human Rights Council. He is also a vocal critic of global capitalism's effects on the developing world, especially Africa.

The last few days he has been doing the media circuit promoting his new book, "Mass Destruction: The Geopolitics of Hunger" (the French title) or "We Let Them Starve: The Mass Destruction in The Third World" (the German title). There's no English title available yet.

...>While his fighting spirit, his relentless engagement for justice across the world, and his international standing have earned him respect, he has remained a thorn in the side of Switzerland-based businesses (such as Nestlé) who he has accused of active participation in practices that kept developing countries poor and dependent.

With this in mind, it is then quite understandable that business journalist Philip Löpfe's interview with Ziegler for newsnet, the online presence of the Swiss newspapers Basler Zeitung and the Zürich-based Tagesanzeiger, would be a challenging affair. And yet, the combative and perhaps provocative personality of Ziegler and his engagement with poor countries alone do not fully explain the nature of the questions he faced. Rather, Löpfe's questions seem to reflect the same strained arrogance as those whose profiteering from global misery was usually explained away as natural and which has now, as global neoliberalism struggles and inequalities become more glaring, been opened up to closer scrutiny and contestation.

Russia and Ukraine began yesterday (4 October) the construction on a nuclear fuel plant. Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said the plant will contribute to the country's energy independence and experts commented that the new facility was good news for East European countries with Russia-built nuclear reactors.

A major producer of uranium, Ukraine has in the past bought processed nuclear fuel from Russia and the United States.

The plant, near the Ukrainian town of Smolino, some 300 kilometres south-east of the capital Kiev, will provide to the country by 2020 with all of its nuclear fuel needs, Azarov said at the ceremony of turning the first sod. Ukraine has 15 nuclear reactors in operation and plans to complete two more, at the Hmelnitski nuclear central, by 2015.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the attacker stole a gun from a hotel security guard and fired a number of shots at the Leonardo Club hotel in the Red Sea resort city, killing one person.

Police anti-terror units stormed the hotel, and the gunman fired back from the hotel kitchen, Rosenfeld said. Police returned fire, killing the attacker, he said.

Dana Zinati, a spokeswoman for the Eilat municipality, told Israel's Channel 2 that the man is an American Jewish man in his 20s who came to Israel on a program that brings American Jews to Israel.

A French fashion boss who said his exclusive new Paris hotel "won't be open to Chinese tourists" has apologised for his gaffe after a storm of Internet criticism.

Thierry Gillier, the founder of fashion giant Zadig & Voltaire, told industry journal Women's Wear Daily late last month: "We are going to select guests. It won't be open to Chinese tourists, for example."

And after an avalanche of outraged comments on social media networks, particularly in China, the article has since been ammended, referring instead to "busloads of tourists".

...Gillier said in a statement that he admitted expressing himself in an "inappropriate way to explain that his hotel was not suited to mass tourism".

James Marsh's Shadow Dancer won the Golden Hitchcock Award as this year's Dinard British Film Festival came to a close.

A star-studded jury including Celia Imrie, Stephen Dillane and jury president Patrick Bruel under the watchful eye of this year's 'hommage' recipient, Brit acting legend Tom Courtenay, plumped for Marsh's film starring Clive Owen and Andrea Riseborough.

France coach Didier Deschamps has overlooked Samir Nasri for the upcoming World Cup qualifier against Spain, even though the Manchester City midfielder is available for selection again after serving a three-match ban.

Nasri was banned for three matches by the French Football Federation for his behavior at the European Championship, where he aimed an expletive-laced tirade at a journalist after the quarterfinal loss to Spain.

"I didn't think it was the right time to call him back," Deschamps said. "I prefer to wait a while."

...Deschamps also gave Arsene Wenger a stern reminder that he was the only France coach after the Arsenal manager said Abou Diaby should not have been picked for previous international matches.

Apple iOS platform should be more open, says Wozniak - uSwitch.com

The famously loose-lipped Wozniak issued his call for a more free and easy approach to iOS and applications for iPhones and iPads at a conference in sunny Brighton.

While praising current-gen iKit as "unbelievable", the bearded wonder mooted that he feels that "Apple could be more open and not lose sales".

Wozniak, who co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs back in 1976 but whose role at the tech giant is now ceremonial, also went on to disclose that he would consider a return to a full time position at Cupertino if the call came from upstairs.

Talk about coming full circle. OTOH

"Would consider a return to a full time position (at Apple) ..." is somewhat surprising, since just recently it was reported that (he had said) he planned to ditch his long-time digs in Los Gatos and move to Australia where he hoped to gain citizenship. Who knows?

Well Margaret, once again I am going to say what the media won't. Mitt Romney is a lying sack of shit and he wouldn't know a middle class tax cut if it bit him in the middle of his gold plated ass. Evidently the media seems to think that the person who slings the bullshit the farthest wins the debate. Well if that ain't the damnest thing.

Who exactly was that man debating the President last night? Clearly somebody finally decided to shake the Etch A Sketch and now Romney is against lowering taxes for the wealthy. He's also pro choice and for entitlement programs. But what the hell he has against Big Bird is beyond me.

If lying whenever your mouth moves is what they mean by style points then, yes, I would definitely have to say that Romney won the debate. He had to temporarily become a Democrat to do it, but yes he won. And it was clear that even the President didn't see that one coming.

Indeed the "modest'' and prudent "bicycle-rider'' image that pope-to-be, now 85, fostered for years has all but evaporated since his 2005 inauguration, according to Küng.

"He has developed a peculiar pomposity that doesn't fit the man I and others knew, who once walked around in a Basque-style cap and was relatively modest. Now he's frequently to be seen wrapped in golden splendour and swank. By his own volition he wears the crown of a 19th-century pope, and has even had the garments of the Medici pope Leo X remade for him."

That "pomposity", he said, manifested itself most fully in the regular audiences who gather on St Peter's Square in Rome. "What happens has Potemkin village dimensions," he said. "Fanatical people go there to celebrate the pope, and tell him how wonderful he is, while meanwhile at home their own parishes are in a lamentable state, with a lack of priests, a far higher number than ever before of people who are leaving than are being baptised and now Vatileaks, which indicates just what a poor state the Vatican administration is in," he said, referring to the scandal over leaked documents uncovering power struggles within the Vatican which has seen the pope's former butler appear in court.

Not quite sure what measles has to do with the number of priests in the US however if Google says so, there must be a connection.

Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere