Who'd want to host the Olympics? | The Great Debate

Londoners are greeting the Olympics with all the enthusiasm of a child awaiting a root canal. The government has warned those unable to book coinciding holidays not to travel anywhere beyond walking distance of home as Communist-style "Olympic lanes" whisk dignitaries past the interminable traffic the Games cause. During the Olympics, London will be run under a curious kind of corporate martial law. Thousands of troops will handle security to make up for private contractor G4S's staffing "shambles"; missiles have been placed atop public housing; an Orwellian "brand police" is sweeping the city to ensure no businesses other than 11 official sponsors use words like "gold," "silver," "bronze" and even "London."

Putting up with this misery is supposedly justified by the commercial windfall, tourist bonanza and enhanced prestige the Olympics create. One Tube station poster depicts a man who, having identified alternative transport routes, is jauntily reading a newspaper as he whizzes past an escalator logjammed with athletes: The headline is "London 2012 Games a huge success, save British economy."

But as Wednesday's woeful economic data confirmed Britain's slide into a double-dip recession, it's worth questioning whether hosting the Olympics is worth the $14.5 billion cost.

France forgives Ivory Coast's debt worth $4bn - Europe - Al Jazeera English

Ivory Coast's president says France's decision to forgive $4.67bn in debt will help his impoverished country develop.

Alassane Ouattara was in Paris on Thursday, meeting with Francois Hollande, France's president, two days after the agreement to cancel the debt by the former colonial master.

That deal stems from an earlier decision by a group of Western creditor nations called the Paris Club.

Ouattara took office after disputed November 2010 elections that left thousands dead in post-vote violence. His pedecessor, Laurent Gbagbo, is now facing international charges of crimes against humanity.

France's decision prompted pro-Gbagbo supporters in Paris on Monday to protest against French backing of the ousting of the former president, who they see as the country's rightful leader.

France picks up fight on 'own resources' for EU budget | EurActiv

France has taken the lead in demanding new "own resources" for the European Union's upcoming long-term budget for 2014-2020, placing Paris firmly on a collision course with Berlin, which wants to retain national contributions as the biggest share.

Bernard Cazeneuve, French minister-delegate for European affairs, said Paris wants to open a serious discussion about the EU's future finances, spearheading a campaign for Brussels to be allowed to raise its own taxes to win additional sources of revenue.

Plans to increase the EU's so-called "own-resources" were put forward by the European Commission in June 2011, when it tabled its budget proposal for the 2014-2020 period.

Suggestions include a tax on financial transactions, an EU VAT, a charge related to air transport and a share of auctioning revenue derived from the bloc's CO2 emissions trading scheme.

These ideas were immediately rejected by Britain as "unrealistic".

Euribor cuts Libor adrift in scandal storm | EurActiv

Brussels-based interest rate index Euribor has distanced itself from its beleaguered London counterpart Libor, saying it could not have been rigged like its British equivalent, EurActiv can reveal.

Both inter-bank interest rate setters are subject to an antitrust investigation by the European Commission to examine whether there was collusion amongst member banks in an attempt to rig rates.

Barclays Bank was fined €373 million last month in separate UK proceedings after admitting that it attempted to manipulate the Libor and Euribor rates between 2005 and 2009.

The European Commission warned yesterday (25 July) that the EU could take over supervision of benchmarks such as Libor as it launched new market rules to clamp down on rate-fixing.

Commissioner heralds introduction of new EU-wide succession law: theparliament.com

New EU rules designed to ease cross-border successions have finally become law.

The rules aim to reduce legal headaches when a family member with property in another EU country passes away.

The new regulation on cross-border successions were proposed by the commission and formally adopted by member states last month.

It will make it easier for European citizens to handle the legal side of an international will or succession.

A German pensioner living in Portugal could, for example, choose to apply German law when planning his or her succession.

The rules will bring legal certainty to the estimated 450,000 European families dealing with an international succession each year.

An unsourced and speculative story from Le Monde: Plan concerté entre les Etats et la BCE pour sauver l'euro (27.07.2012)

Même s'il faudra encore quelques jours, voire quelques semaines, pour finaliser le dispositif en question, la BCE préparerait une opération concertée avec les Etats susceptible de limiter l'envolée des taux d'intérêt de l'Espagne, mais aussi de l'Italie.

Le président de la BCE et les principaux dirigeants de la zone euro ont multiplié les contacts ces derniers jours. Les tractations devaient se poursuivre dans la journée de vendredi. Un entretien téléphonique entre François Hollande et la chancelière allemande, Angela Merkel, n'était, à ce sujet, pas exclu dans l'après midi.

It appears the problem is actually getting Spain to ask for help. See here on Rajoy's mindset.

Reste un écueil : convaincre l'Espagne de faire appel à l'aide des fonds européens. Une option que Mariano Rajoy, le chef de gouvernement espagnol, a jusqu'ici refusée, de peur de voir son pays basculer sous la tutelle de ses bailleurs de fonds. Un programme intermédiaire, avec une surveillance allégée et contraintes d'assainissement budgétaires plus souples pourrait être envisagé en bonne entente avec l'Espagne, glisse-t-on à Bruxelles.

Dans un second temps, l'action de la BCE et des Etats pourrait prendre une forme plus spectaculaire. ll serait alors question d'accorder une licence bancaire aux fonds de secours européens. Et ainsi de leur faire bénéficier d'une sorte de garantie auprès de la BCE permettant d'augmenter leur puissance de feu. Avec cette option, les Etats en difficultés auraient accès à un robinet quasi intarissable de liquidités.

Because of the political dimension of this, I put it under Europe. See this under Economy and Finance.

If you are not convinced, try it on someone who has not been entirely debauched by economics. — Piero Sraffa

Nomura CEO quits as insider trading scandal widens | Reuters

(Reuters) - Nomura Holdings Inc (8604.T) CEO Kenichi Watanabe resigned on Thursday over a widening insider trading scandal and will be replaced by company veteran Koji Nagai, as Japan's top investment bank warned additional cases could come to light.

The management shake-up was confirmed in a news conference at the end of a dramatic day in Tokyo that also saw Watanabe's top lieutenant, Takumi Shibata, resign over leaks of insider information to clients of its securities unit in 2010.

Watanabe is the second global bank boss to resign this month - Barclays (BARC.L) chief Bob Diamond stood down over the Libor rate-rigging scandal on July 3 - as the industry finds itself under huge political and regulatory pressure.

Austerity's Big Winners Prove To Be Wall Street And The Wealthy

WASHINGTON -- The poor and middle classes have shouldered by far the heaviest burdens of the global political obsession with austerity policies over the past three years. In the United States, budget cuts have forced states to reduce education, public transportation, affordable housing and other social services. In Europe, welfare cuts have driven some severely disabled individuals to fear for their lives.

But the austerity game also has winners. Cutting or eliminating government programs that benefit the less advantaged has long been an ideological goal of conservatives. Doing so also generates a tidy windfall for the corporate class, as government services are privatized and savings from austerity pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest citizens.

U.S. financial interests that stand to gain from Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security cutbacks "have been the core of the big con," the "propaganda," that those programs are in crisis and must be slashed, said James Galbraith, an economist at the University of Texas.

Advocates of austerity measures have sold their proposals as a means to improve the economy.

"It is an error to think that fiscal austerity is a threat to growth and job creation," declared European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet in July 2010.

HSBC fined $27.5m for 'money laundering' - Business - Al Jazeera English

HSBC, Europe's largest bank, has been fined $27.5m in Mexico for lax controls in its anti-money laundering systems, a week after a scathing US Senate report slammed the bank for letting clients shift funds from dangerous and secretive countries.

It is the biggest fine ever charged against a bank by the Mexico's National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV), the Mexican regulator said on Thursday.

CNBV levied the fine against the British banking giant due to its "non-compliance with anti-money laundering systems and controls" as well as its late reporting of 1,729 unusual transactions, failing to report 39 unusual transactions, and 21 administrative failures.

The Mexican fine is separate from any settlement the bank might reach with the US department of justice. That could run to as much as $1bn, analysts have estimated, based on a record $619m fine that ING bank agreed in June to pay to settle similar claims.

Last week, a US Senate panel alleged that HSBC acted as a financier to clients routing funds from the world's most dangerous places, including Mexico, Iran and Syria, doing regular business in areas tied to drug cartels, terrorist funding and tax cheats.

The report slammed a "pervasively polluted" culture at the bank and said between 2007 and 2008, HSBC's Mexican operations moved $7bn into the bank's US operations.

HSBC ignored risks in doing business in countries like Mexico, where drug trafficking is rife, the report said.

EUobserver.com / Economic Affairs / 'Banksters' could face criminal sanctions under EU rate fixing rules

BRUSSELS - Bankers caught fixing the inter-bank lending rate Libor could in future face criminal charges after the European Commission announced plans on Wednesday (25 July) to widen the scope of the ongoing legislation on Market Abuse to include rate fixing.

Unveiling the proposals, which have been added to the Market Abuse legislation aimed at combating insider dealing and market manipulation, Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding accused those involved as acting as though they were "more banksters than bankers. Public confidence in banks have "taken a nosedive with the latest scandal," she said.

Among the changes to the legislative package, which was tabled by the EU executive last October and is currently being debated in the European Parliament, are amendments to include the manipulation of interest rates and other financial sector benchmarks.

Internal market commissioner Michel Barnier told reporters he would come forward with EU regulation specifically looking at the calculation of interest rates by the end of 2012.

So Yesterday Draghi said the ECB would do whatever it took to save the Euro. Today Weidmann of the Bundesbank said that

• The ESM shouldn't have a banking licence
  
• The ECB shouldn't buy bonds because it sets the wrong incentives
  
• The BuBa is not opposed to the EFSF buying bonds

So the Spanish markets had a strong rally yesterday, and a drop today.

If you are not convinced, try it on someone who has not been entirely debauched by economics. — Piero Sraffa

Syrian army 'readies for assault on Aleppo' - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

Fighting has continued in Syria's commercial capital, Aleppo, as a pro-regime newspaper warned of a looming "battle of all battles".

Opposition activists said government forces shelled two rebel strongholds in the city on Thursday, and bombardment was also reported in the capital, Damascus.

The newspaper Al-Watan, which is close to the regime, led on Thursday with the headline "Aleppo, the mother of all battles". Citing an Arab diplomatic source, it said: "Aleppo will be the last battle waged by the Syrian army to crush the terrorists and after that Syria will emerge from the crisis."

Fighting has flared in some parts of Aleppo since fighters on July 20 launched an assault to to take control of the regime power base.

A security source told the AFP news agency that the army was preparing for an all-out assault on rebel-held districts.

BBC News - Mandela plot: South African convicted of treason

The mastermind of a white supremacist plot to kill Nelson Mandela, South Africa's first black president, has been convicted of treason.

A Pretoria court ruled that Boeremag group leader Mike du Toit was behind the nine bombings in Johannesburg's Soweto township in 2002.

He is the first person to be convicted of treason in South Africa since white minority rule ended in 1994.

Analysts say race relations in South Africa are still tense.

However, white extremist groups like Boeremag, which means Afrikaner Power in Afrikaans, have very little support, they say.

BBC News - Bo Xilai scandal: Gu Kailai charged with Heywood murder

The wife of disgraced Chinese political leader Bo Xilai has been charged with the murder of UK businessman Neil Heywood, state news agency Xinhua says.

Gu Kailai and Zhang Xiaojun, employed at Mr Bo's home, were "recently" prosecuted by a Chinese court, Xinhua said, without giving further details.

Mr Heywood was found dead in a hotel in Chongqing on 15 November 2011.

The apparent murder of Mr Heywood triggered Mr Bo's downfall in a scandal that has rocked Chinese politics.

Local officials initially said Mr Heywood died of excessive drinking, but the government announced in April it was investigating Mr Bo's wife in connection with the case.

Rise in temperatures and CO2 follow each other closely in climate change

The greatest climate change the world has seen in the last 100,000 years was the transition from the ice age to the warm interglacial period. New research from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen indicates that, contrary to previous opinion, the rise in temperature and the rise in the atmospheric CO2 follow each other closely in terms of time. The results have been published in the scientific journal, Climate of the Past.

In the warmer climate the atmospheric content of CO2 is naturally higher. The gas CO2 (carbon dioxide) is a green-house gas that absorbs heat radiation from the Earth and thus keeps the Earth warm. In the shift between ice ages and interglacial periods the atmospheric content of CO2 helps to intensify the natural climate variations.

It had previously been thought that as the temperature began to rise at the end of the ice age approximately 19,000 years ago, an increase in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere followed with a delay of up to 1,000 years.

Southern French worms wriggle as far north as Ireland

A community of French earthworms has been discovered stealthily colonising a farm in Ireland, possibly aided by global warming to thrive so far north of their natural habitat, a study said.

No clash seems to be looming as the French worms prefer to eat a different part of the soil as their Irish cousins, according to a report Wednesday in the Royal Society Journal Biology Letters.

But their picky palate may hold another danger -- possibly unleashing Earth-warming carbon dioxide left hitherto undisturbed by the native worms.

Scientists studying earthworms on a farm in Dublin last year, discovered "abundant populations" of a species endemic to France's Aquitaine region more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) to the south.

Some also live naturally in northern Spain, Sardinia and parts of northern Africa.

Super Bags to thwart rice wastage now available to Filipino farmers

An airtight, reusable plastic bag that protects stored rice from moisture, pests, and rats, and keeps rice seeds viable, is now available to Filipino farmers in almost 200 retail stores nationwide. IRRI Super Bags reduce losses incurred after harvest that usually stem from poor storage conditions - helping prevent physical postharvest losses that can be around 15%. On top of these losses, farmers also experience loss in quality.

Developed by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI)'s postharvest experts in collaboration with GrainPro Inc., the IRRI Super Bag is meant for small-scale rice farmers to protect the viability and quality of rice stored in their homes.

Memoirs of a top Chinese gymnast | Olympics 2012

BEIJING, July 26 (Reuters) - All but a handful of China's 396 Olympians competing in London have qualified for the Games under the patronage of the country's monolithic Soviet-style sports system.

Many will have been identified as potential elite athletes from a very young age by scouts and directed into special schools to train in sports assumed to match their physical attributes and aerobic results.

Most could share tales of childhoods sacrificed to gruelling training regimes in elite institutes often thousands of miles away from their home-towns and with little prospect of seeing their families more than once or twice a year.

A high-flying graduate of the regime, former world champion gymnast Fan Ye experienced the highs and lows of China's "juguo tizhi" - literally 'whole nation system' - starting from her entry into a sports kindergarten at the age of six to her retirement at 20 in 2008, when she missed out on qualifying for her second Games at Beijing.

Special Report: Obama's struggle to mend veterans' safety net | Reuters

(Reuters) - On a blistering June afternoon, President Barack Obama slipped into Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to spend time with soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was the most recent of his nearly weekly gestures intended to reinforce his commitment to America's troops and veterans.

Across town that day, hundreds of unemployed veterans shuffled through a wing of the Washington Nationals baseball stadium, many hoping that at this job fair they would catch a break. Among them was Nick Tivas, a 23-year-old Iraq war veteran with a buzz cut and a grievance against the Department of Veterans Affairs.

A collection agency has come after the former infantryman, he said, and he's looking for work because he thinks he'll have to drop out of community college after a dispute with the VA over education benefits. He also complained that it had been nearly a year since he filed a disability claim for a knee injury, with no word from the VA.

"I have a feeling I'll have gray hair and grandchildren and still be dealing with some kind of problem from the VA," he said.

A bit lite tonite, please excuse.

It's a fine line between homage, parody, and consumer opportunism. Jess Walter

The Archdruid Report

The irony here is that the ancestors of these same aristocrats had been as hard-bitten a collection of ruthless pragmatists as history has on display. The medieval barons whose progeny were on their way to an appointment with Madame Guillotine not long after 1789 resembled nothing so much as old-fashioned Sicilian mafiosi, complete with the Mafia's devotion to the Catholic church, its code of honor, and its readiness to slaughter people en masse whenever the situation seemed to warrant it. Like every other feudal elite in history, the old French aristocracy emerged in a time of chaos, when the last scraps of central government had gone missing in action, and local landowners smart and strong enough to gather a band of armed followers and lead them into battle could impose their own rough justice on as large a domain as they could seize and hold.
Such times do not favor cluelessness.  Even after the feudal system formalized itself, the heir to a barony who was too detached from the hard realities of the time could count on being removed from his position by the business end of a battle-axe.  It was only after warfare became a monopoly of the French king, and aristocrats no longer had to risk their lives regularly leading their vassals on the battlefield, that it was possible for the French upper classes to isolate themselves in a bubble of their own creation and start drifting toward their wretched destiny.
It's of interest to note that this process took a great deal longer in two other European nations, Britain and Prussia--those of my readers who got an American public school education, and so know nothing about history, will probably need to be told that Prussia was the nucleus of the German Empire, and what's left of it is now part of Germany. In Britain until after the Napoleonic Wars, and in Prussia right up through the Second World War, it was common for the sons of aristocrats to join the military.  Since Britain and Prussia both spent most of the 18th century at war, clueless young aristocrats tended to be removed from the gene pool via the helpful Darwinian selection pressures of early modern warfare. It's worth noting also that British noble families drifted out of the habit in the 19th century, and the stereotype of the blithering aristocratic idiot entered British popular culture not long thereafter.

It's a fine line between homage, parody, and consumer opportunism. Jess Walter