Critics of the Government's work capability assessments (WCA) - which sees private firm Atos administer the medical side of the 'fit for work' tests - wasted no time in grilling new employment minister Mark Hoban about the urgent need for reform.

The tests - and the Government's contract with Atos - came under close scrutiny in Westminster Hall last week in a debate called by Labour MP Tom Greatrex.

He urged the Government to get tough with Atos and revealed that the cost of appeals relating to the WCA was nearly 50% of the total yearly value of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) contract with the French firm.

Chilling cases provided by MPs revealed that people with motor neurone disease, serious heart disease and even somebody with a broken back had been passed fit for work.

Later this week the Trades Union Congress is likely to consider the practicalities of organising a general strike against the austerity measures adopted by the government. Unlike their counterparts in other EU member states, British trade unions have so far avoided a general strike, preferring instead large-scale demonstrations that have succeeded in bringing hundreds of thousands of workers on to the streets. These have taken place at the weekend, minimising disruption to the economy and public services.

But what if trade unions decide to step up a gear? One of the considerations for the TUC will be the tight legal restrictions on the right to strike that operate in this country.

Today at Labour's Shadow Cabinet meeting, Dame Tessa Jowell MP told colleagues that she would be standing down from the Shadow Cabinet following the culmination of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Pupils in England who took the disputed GCSE English exam could end up with a lower grade for exactly the same work as their counterparts in Wales.

This follows an order from the Welsh government to regrade GCSEs in Wales.

The WJEC exam board says it is being told to raise GCSE grades in Wales while keeping them down in England.

The exam board says it wants conflicting regulators, Ofqual and the Welsh government, to find a more "coherent and rational way forward".

Campaigning in the Dutch general election is into its final hours with the centre-left and centre-right pushing for votes from the margins.

Opinion polls suggest that outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte's liberal VVD party and Diederik Samsom's Labour Party are neck-and-neck.

Analysts say the outcome will be crucial to Germany's campaign for fiscal discipline in the eurozone.

Whichever party wins, a new coalition is the likely result.

Police in Paris are questioning former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin over an embezzlement case involving a friend.

Mr de Villepin has been placed under pre-arranged police custody for the interrogation, a source told AFP news agency.

He is being asked about an alleged intervention in the Relais & Chateaux fraud inquiry, Le Monde reports.

The former prime minister has denied involvement in the case.

A Ukrainian court on Tuesday postponed the tax evasion and embezzlement trial of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko until Oct. 15, citing her health problems.

The trial in the eastern city of Kharkov for has been adjourned several times as she refused to attend due to back pain for which she is receiving treatment at a health center

Mariano Rajoy admits for the first time that he is now considering tapping the ECB's OMT facility; rejects a full bailout programme with troika supervision; wording suggests that Spain is likely to apply for an enhanced conditions credit line, which would not require any new austerity measures for now; the interviews came on the occasion of Jyrki Katainen's visit, who said that Spain's interest rates were unfairly high; Germany's constitutional court rejects the emergency case brought by German MP Peter Gauweiler, raising expectations of a Yes vote today; German newspapers report overwhelmingly that the court will approve the ESM; Kurt Kister writes that the political needs stemming from Germany's participation in international organisation has made German constitutional law more flexible; an estimated 1.5m people took to the streets in Barcelona on Catalonia's national day, in an insurrectional and separatist mood; the independence movement has been fuelled by Catalonia's fiscal crisis, and central government imposed austerity; Catalonia's leader Arthur Mas yesterday demanded fiscal sovereignty; the polls ahead of today's Dutch elections show that the contest between the liberal VVD and the labour party PdvA is too close to call; Francois Hollande imposes taxes on capital gains, and removes  tax privileges for dividends; the measures affect the richest 10% of the population; Le Monde questions whether the government should pursue a 3% deficit target in the middle of a recession, and advocates the use of structural deficits, as demanded by the fiscal compact; the troika has rejected €2.2bn of the cuts proposed by the Greek government; Antonis Samaras will hold another meeting with coalition today to reach an agreements; Samaras will also meet with Mario Draghi to discuss a restructuring of ECB-held bonds to provide the necessary relief that would allow Greece to stretch its austerity programme over a longer period; Mario Monti warns Italian unions that they have to accept lower wages for the country to become more competitive; admits that his policies reduced growth in the short-term but that this was necessary to improve growth in the long-term; a small business organisation warns that Italian small and medium sized companies cannot withstand the tax burden, and are in danger of cutting 200,000 jobs during the recession; Beppe Grillo's five star movement has firmly entrenched itself as Italy's third largest party; Martin Wolf, meanwhile, says the ECB cannot solve the eurozone crisis on its own, and against Germany.

Meanwhile, Europe's so-called periphery is getting more and more desperate as society turns into something dysfunctional, at least from the perspective of enlightened self-interest. Recent news include the looting of super markets in Spain by normal people out of a job (source: Guardian), the return of beggars to Cyprus (source: philenews) and following quotes from Wolfgang Schäuble as of this morning at the Bundestag:

The causes lie in the mistakes of the financial and economic policies which member states have pursued and (the crisis) can only be solved via these.

There is no comfortable way out of that, neither through pooling debt nor by casually using the bank's printing presses.

Schäuble, of course, is wrong on both the ethical and the technical side. The euro zone problems have originated in the banking system, which built up a portfolio of non-performing loans in the years following the introduction of the euro. The design of the ECB has been faulty, letting the loan portfolio of some countries balloon to obscene size even though real estate bubbles (Ireland, Spain) were clearly in the making. Since member state policies are not the cause of the crisis they cannot be counted on to remedy the situation. (What does "solving" the crisis mean here in Germany? I have the feeling that to politicians it means that all creditors get repaid regardless of how badly they have invested the money.)

Following his last speech to the Trades Union Congress annual conference this year, Brendan Barber claimed that almost two million of us are living with an illness thanks to our work, and that a further 20,000 die every year due to the workplace. But where are these estimates from?

US tax authorities have awarded $104m (£65m) to an ex-banker who handed over details about overseas tax cheats.

Bradley Birkenfeld is said to have exposed tax evasion at UBS AG, a prominent Swiss bank, passing details to the US officials probing the bank.

In 2009, the bank paid a $780m fine in the case and agreed to turn over the names of thousands of Americans suspected of cheating on their taxes.

Birkenfeld also served prison time for fraud conspiracy in the same cas

The U.S. Gallup Economic Confidence Index surged to -18 for the week ending Sept. 9, up 11 points from -29 the prior week. This puts the index near the high point for the year after 2 ½ months when, weighed down by continued high unemployment, the index had languished well below -20.

Just two years ago few economists would have predicted that the intra-eurozone payment system, Target2, would be elevated to the centre of attention in the discussions about the eurozone crisis. This remarkable feat owes much to a series of publications by Sinn and Wollmershäuser, who revealed how large `imbalances' have emerged in the Target2 payment system in recent years whereby some countries, in particular Germany, have become large creditors in the system, while others, mainly peripheral countries, have become large debtors (see Sinn & Wollmershäuser, 2012). These two authors have made two important claims:

• First, the target system has been used to support unsustainable current account deficits of Southern European countries. As a result, these countries have been allowed to escape the salutary discipline of the market, and have avoided taking the painful but necessary adjustment policies.
  
• Secondly, Germany and a few other Northern European countries have been dragged into this scheme and been forced to provide credit to the deficit countries. The financial claims on Southern European countries that Germany has accumulated through the Target system have created unacceptably large risks for Germany if the eurozone were to disintegrate.

These claims have been widely advertised in Germany and have contributed to creating a view in that country that the German taxpayer is likely to become the victim of a money machine that rewards the profligacy of Southern European countries. This view has led to strong negative emotions vis-à-vis the eurozone. It is therefore important to ask the question whether these claims are correct. It is our ambition to show that these claims are unfounded.

...

Let us take an example to make this point clear. Suppose Spanish holders of euro deposits in Spanish banks feared an exit of Spain from the eurozone and decided to hold their euro deposits in a German bank. The result of this speculative flow is two-fold.

• First, it sets in motion the Target2 payment system. The transfer of deposits from a Spanish to a German bank has the effect that the Banco de España (which makes the transfer) increases its Target2 liabilities in the Eurosystem, while the Bundesbank (which receives the transfer) increases its Target2 claims in the Eurosystem.
  
• Second, the German bank (which acquires a reserve position at the Bundesbank) has an outstanding liability vis-à-vis a Spanish resident (a deposit). As a result, the net foreign claims of Germany are not affected by this speculative flow. The higher Target2 claim of the Bundesbank is offset by a higher liability of a German bank vis-à-vis a foreigner. Thus the increase in the Target2 claims of the Bundesbank should not be interpreted as an increase of foreign claims of Germany , and thus as an increase of risk from higher foreign exposure.

Using the Target claims as a measure of risk incurred by the German population is therefore erroneous. As we have seen earlier, after 2010, the Target claims of Germany (and other Northern countries) increased dramatically and much more than the current account surpluses during this period. This increase in Target2 claims cannot be interpreted as an increase in the foreign exposure (net foreign claims) of Germany, except to the extent that they were the result of current account surpluses. What changed dramatically is the nature of these claims. Prior to 2010, these claims were mainly claims held by private German agents (mainly financial institutions). Similarly the liabilities of the peripheral countries were held by private agents (financial institutions). The eurozone crisis led to a dramatic shift. As a result of the breakdown of the interbank market, a large part of these private claims and liabilities were transformed into (public) Target claims and liabilities (Buiter et al., 2011), without however changing the total net foreign claims and liabilities of these countries. Thus, the explosion of the Target claims of Germany since 2010 cannot be interpreted as an explosion of the risk of foreign exposure for Germany. This risk increased moderately in this period because Germany continued to accumulate current account surpluses. It could have decided to reduce its current account surpluses but did not do so. As a result, the increase in the risk of foreign exposure was entirely the country's own decision. It cannot be blamed on the Target system.

...

The failure to understand the basics of central banking in a fiat money system is influenced by the fact that many economists still use the gold standard or a fixed exchange rate regime as the benchmark model of central banks. In these regimes the central bank promises to convert its liabilities into gold (in the gold standard model) or into foreign exchange (in the fixed exchange rate system) at a fixed price. Clearly such a promise can only be maintained if the relevant assets are on the balance sheet of the central bank. The ECB (and most central banks of large developed countries), however, has made no such promise. The value of its liabilities therefore is not dependent on the value of the assets it holds.

Finally, there is nothing that prevents the German state from discriminating on the basis of residence (not nationality) - I.e., German residents of non-German nationality could have their German deposits guaranteed, whereas nonresidents (even if of German nationality) might not. In that case, the purpose of intra-Eurozone capital flight would be defeated.

Let us apply these principles to a scenario of a break-up of the eurozone. If the eurozone ends, central banks will have to convert the outstanding euros into the new national currency. Let us consider here the problem of the Bundesbank since, as many German economists now fear, this conversion will lead to large losses for the Bundesbank and thus for the German taxpayer. This fear is misplaced. Suppose the Bundesbank announces that it will convert euro banknotes into new German marks at the rate of 1 to 2 (1 euro for 2 German marks, which was the conversion rate at the start of the eurozone). It can do this perfectly, regardless of what is on its balance sheet. The only risk is that many non-residents may try to convert their euro banknotes in Germany, profiting from a conversion rate that is more attractive than the one on offer in their own countries. This risk could create a situation in which the Bundesbank is forced to convert so many euros into marks that the amount of marks in circulation after the conversion is too large to maintain price stability in Germany. In fact this is the only risk the Bundesbank faces, i.e. it may be put in a situation that it loses control over the issue of German marks. If that happens, inflation would set in and German residents would suffer losses.

The Bundesbank, however, can avoid this risk by restricting the conversion of euros into marks to German residents. In doing so, it can be sure that the amount of marks created as a result of the conversion is such as to keep prices in Germany stable. Under those conditions, German taxpayers will not suffer one pfennig of losses.

Israel's prime minister, ratcheting up a public feud with the U.S. over Iran, made it clear Tuesday that he was dissatisfied with Washington's refusal to spell out what would provoke a U.S.-led military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities.

Washington wants to give diplomacy and bruising sanctions more time to try to pressure Tehran to abandon its suspect nuclear work. In a message aimed at Israel, it said several times this week that deadlines or "red lines" are counterproductive.

But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says peaceful methods are not working, and has warned repeatedly that Iran is getting perilously close to acquiring a nuclear bomb. His remarks have generated speculation Israel is readying to strike on its own to prevent that from happening.

Firebrand politician Julius Malema has called for a national strike in South Africa's mines.

"They have been stealing this gold from you," Mr Malema told cheering miners on strike at a gold mine west of Johannesburg, "now it's your turn."

Strikes have already halted production at several gold and platinum mines in the resource-rich country.

Two Chinese patrol ships have been sent to islands disputed with Japan, which has sealed a deal to purchase the territory, Chinese state media say.

The ships had reached waters near the islands - known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China - to "assert the country's sovereignty", Xinhua said.

Japan confirmed on Tuesday it had signed a contract to buy three of the islands from their private owner.

Campaign group Survival International, which had urged Venezuela to investigate reports of a massacre of Yanomami people in the Amazon, says it now believes no attack took place.

Survival reached this view after speaking to its own sources, the group said.

Reports emerged in August that illegal gold miners had killed up to 80 people.

Venezuelan officials said a team sent to the area had found no bodies and no evidence of an attack.

Protesters have breached the wall of the US embassy in Cairo and torn down a US flag over a US-made film which they say is insulting to the Prophet Muhammad.

The flag, which was flying at half mast to mark the 9/11 attacks, was replaced by an Islamist banner.

Thousands of protesters had gathered outside the embassy.

Among the film's producers is said to be a pastor who burnt copies of the Koran earlier this year.

Chinese micro-bloggers and overseas websites are agog with all kinds of speculation as to why Xi Jinping, the current vice-president and president-in-waiting, has gone unseen for more than a week.

During that span, Xi cancelled meetings with visiting foreign dignitaries including US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and Singapore prime minister Lee Hsien Loong. On Monday, it was the Danish prime minister's turn.

A scheduled photo session with visiting Danish prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, which the media were asked to cover, was taken off the programme.

The reputation of the US in Europe risks sinking back to Bush-era levels of unpopularity if Mitt Romney becomes president, according to new international polling published on Tuesday.

Only around one in 20 of those surveyed in Britain, France and Germany by YouGov held a positive view of the Republican presidential nominee.

The poll of more than 12,000 people across Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan and China was prepared for the YouGov-Cambridge forum this week at which the Guardian is a media partner.

The death toll of a car bomb attack earlier Tuesday targeting the motorcade of Yemeni defense minister in central Sanaa rose to 12, seven of whom were bodyguards of the minister, said Yemen's interior ministry.

"Defense Minister Mohammed Nasser Ahmed survived the terrorist attack as his car was armored, but he was critically injured in his chest and the attack bruised his face," the Interior Ministry said in a brief statement two hours after the bombing attack.

"His health condition is stable and doctors said he would recover very soon," said the Ministry.

Exactly 11 years ago today after the deadly attacks on the twin towers in New York on Sept. 11, 2001 and a year after al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. special forces in Pakistan, the al-Qaida-backed Taliban militants are still staging attacks in Afghanistan, targeting Afghan as well as NATO forces.

The continued failure of the U.S. military and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to wipe out armed fighters loyal to the Taliban and al-Qaida network has dented the trust of Afghans in the ability and credibility of the military alliance in bringing the war on terror to final victory.

"The U.S.-led Coalition has poured thousands of troops to Afghanistan as part of its so-called war on terror but for the past 11 years it has failed in its avowed mission," Faizullah Jalal, a political observer here, told Xinhua.

Thousands of school teachers in the US city of Chicago have gone on strike for a second day, putting pressure on Rahm Emanuel, the city's Democratic mayor who formerly served as chief aide to President Barack Obama.

Up to 26,000 teachers and their supporters took to the streets during the Monday evening rush hour after failing to reach a settlement demanding better pay, health benefits and more resources to serve students.

The strike in a district where the vast majority of students are poor and minority put Chicago at the epicenter of a struggle between big cities and teachers unions for control of schools.

Two weeks ago Defense Minister Ehud Barak asked the Israel Defense Forces to consider leasing or buying a Greek island to use as a training area for the navy. But the IDF decided not to pursue the project, citing doubts about its economic viability, defense officials say.

According to Barak's office, "Defense Minister Barak sent the subject for review, and the assessment concluded that there was no need [to lease or purchase a Greek island]. So the matter is void."

Neither the General Staff's planning division nor the navy have been enthusiastic about the idea, preferring instead to tighten security cooperation with Greece.

Even and Kama wed in Canada in 2004, and upon returning to Israel asked the state to recognize their marriage. While the Interior Ministry initially refused their request, the state was forced by the High Court of Justice to register the couple in 2006, after a lengthy legal battle.

Three years later, the couple decided to part ways, but then the legal difficulties arose. While Canada allows non-citizens to marry in the country, divorces can only be registered for Canadian nationals. In Israel, all matters of marriage and divorce are by law entrusted to the religious courts, and Jews must apply through the rabbinical courts.

But Even and Kama couldn't get divorced in the rabbinical court, because it had never recognized their marriage. So they turned to a lawyer, who drafted an agreement to part ways. The agreement was approved by the Ramat Gan Family Court, which recommended that the state recognize it as an official divorce.

The state refused, however, citing the law that gave the rabbinical court system sole power over such matters.

Writer and director Sam Bacile spoke on the phone Tuesday from an unidentified location. He remained defiant, saying Islam is a cancer and he wanted his film to make a political statement.

The 56-year-old identifies himself as an Israeli Jew and says he believes his video will help his native land by exposing Islam's flaws to the world. Excerpts dubbed into Arabic were posted on YouTube.

...

Bacile says he's sorry for the person who died, but lax embassy security is to blame.

What's the number one reason we riot? The plausible, justifiable motivations of trampled-upon humanfolk to fight back are many--poverty, oppression, disenfranchisement, etc--but the big one is more primal than any of the above. It's hunger, plain and simple. If there's a single factor that reliably sparks social unrest, it's food becoming too scarce or too expensive. So argues a group of complex systems theorists in Cambridge, and it makes sense.

In a 2011 paper, researchers at the Complex Systems Institute unveiled a model that accurately explained why the waves of unrest that swept the world in 2008 and 2011 crashed when they did. The number one determinant was soaring food prices. Their model identified a precise threshold for global food prices that, if breached, would lead to worldwide unrest.

According to the China CDC on Monday, a Chinese researcher involved in the controversial testing of GM rice has been suspended from his work and been placed under investigation.

China CDC is investigating whether dozens of children in central China's Hunan Province were used as test subjects in a U.S.-China joint research project in 2008 that included Golden Rice, a GM food.

Greenpeace broke the news on the controversial test in late August, saying the joint research involved feeding Golden Rice, which is genetically modified to be rich in beta carotene, to 24 children aged between six and eight years old in Hunan.

It cited a paper published in the August edition of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Pollinating insects contribute to agricultural production in 150 (84%) European crops. These crops depend partly or entirely upon insects for their pollination and yield. The value of insect pollinators is estimated to be euros 22 billion a year in Europe. Declines in managed pollinators, such as honeybees, and wild pollinator such bumblebees, solitary bees and hoverflies, are therefore of growing concern as we need to protect food production and the maintain wildflower diversity.

Scientists involved in STEP, a large-scale project funded by the 7th Framework Program (FP7) of the European Union, have therefore taken an inclusive approach looking at the status and trends of all Europe's pollinators.

New findings have been presented at a dedicated STEP symposium at the 5th EurBee meeting held in Halle, Germany on 3-6 September 2012. Prof Simon Potts from the University of Reading, UK and coordinator of STEP opened the discussion: "To help Europe secure sustainable food production and conserve its biodiversity we need to provide policy makers with clear evidence of who pollinates our crops and flowers and what are the best options to safeguard pollination services in a changing world."

Feed-in Tariffs Do More for Wind at Less Cost to Ratepayers than RPS, Says German Agency

In a recent report, the German Renewable Energy Agency says that across Europe countries using feed-in tariffs develop more wind energy and pay less for it than countries using quota systems.
....
Italian wind generation has fallen behind electricity generation from solar photovoltaics for the first time in an industrialized country. Italy uses feed-in tariffs to pay for solar energy instead of a trading system in green certificates, one of the hallmarks of a quota system.

Great Britain, which also uses a quota system for large-scale wind energy and has the best wind resources in Europe, pays 20% more for wind energy than Germany: €0.108/kWh ($0.135/kWh). More than half of German wind capacity is now installed in lower wind areas of mid-Germany and yet Germany still pays less than Great Britain for wind energy.

Payments for wind energy normally reflect the costs of wind energy and costs are substantially less where the wind resources are greater. Thus, it is unusual that Britain pays more for wind energy than Germany even though its wind resource is so much better.

Paul will be honored by officially opening the Husum Wind Fair next week, together with the German excuse for an environment minister.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

Two people were arrested Tuesday in the sprawling police inquiries probing alleged misconduct by the media, public officials and others in the wake of Britain's tabloid phone hacking scandal.

Scotland Yard said a 31-year-old prison officer has been arrested at his home in Northampton, central England, by officers investigating alleged bribes paid to public officials by reporters.

The man was detained on suspicion of conspiracy to corrupt and a second alleged offense of misconduct in a public office.

White, male, middle class and Oxbridge educated. It's the traditional makeup of this country's political arena and one that, depressingly, became more entrenched after last week's cabinet reshuffle.

David Cameron had five female cabinet ministers before the reshuffle, four afterwards, and two more (white) men. It was described as a "bad day for women" , but at least this was commented upon. The complete absence of disabled people didn't get a mention. A group truly knows they are marginalised when their absence from power isn't even noticed.

I am aware of only four MPs with a physical disability: Anne Begg, David Blunkett, Gordon Brown and Paul Maynard. No one knows the exact number because the data has never been collected. Forget a place around the cabinet table; disabled people are barely getting in the building.

A Japanese mathematician claims to have the proof for the ABC conjecture, a statement about the relationship between prime numbers that has been called the most important unsolved problem in number theory.

If Shinichi Mochizuki's 500-page proof stands up to scrutiny, mathematicians say it will represent one of the most astounding achievements of mathematics of the twenty-first century. The proof will also have ramifications all over mathematics, and even in the real-world field of data encryption.

This is the shot we've all been waiting for: the first time that our robot on Mars would rotate its camera and snap an image of its Short Circuit-like head.

Brad Pitt says the days of actors getting multi-million dollar salaries are over.

"Yeah, that thing died," Pitt laughed when asked if it was possible for stars to still command a price tag upwards of $10m (£6.2m) per movie.

"That arithmetic doesn't really work right now... that deal's not flying these days."

Pitt has been a familiar fixture on lists detailing the highest paid actors.