The German Interior Ministry has officially launched a national database with information on suspected neo-Nazi extremists. It is meant to improve cooperation between security agencies and prevent right-wing attacks.

The new database links the findings of 36 German police and intelligence agencies on the federal and state level with information about violent right-wing extremists and their contacts.

Authorities hope this information will help prevent serious margins of error as seen in the case of the neo-Nazi terror cell, the National Socialist Underground (NSU).

Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich described the new database as "a milestone in improving the cooperation between German security agencies.

"I believe that this is the correct course of action in light of the NSU murders, because the impression we gain is that at some point or another communication between the authorities was in need of improvement," he said.

Russia has accused the US of using its aid agency in Moscow to covertly influence the country's politics and elections, explaining its decision to expel the mission amid a wider crackdown on the opposition movement.

The Russian government has given the US agency for international development (USAid) until 1 October to cease all operations in the country. The agency helps fund a number of pro-democracy and human rights groups that have provoked the Kremlin's wrath amid an unprecedented opposition movement against the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

In an uncharacteristically blunt statement, the Russian foreign ministry said that the decision to shut USAid was taken primarily because the agency's work "does not always correspond to [its] stated goals".

"This means attempts to exert influence, via the distribution of grants, upon political processes, including elections of various levels and institutions of civil society," it said.

Security at French embassies around the world has been reinforced after the Paris-based satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo published cartoons mocking the prophet Muhammad.

Amid continuing protests by Muslims around the globe over a controversial anti-Islam film, French ministers and religious leaders called for restraint, and riot police were posted outside the magazine's offices.

French embassies and schools in 20 countries will be temporarily closed on Friday, as a precautionary measure in case of fresh protests after prayers, the foreign ministry said.

The offices of Charlie Hebdo were firebombed last November after it published an edition entitled Charia Hebdo, supposedly guest-edited by Muhammad.

A second man has been arrested in connection with the deaths of two unarmed police officers in a grenade and gun attack.

Greater Manchester Chief Constable Sir Peter Fahy said a 28-year-old man was detained in Hattersley on suspicion of conspiracy to murder.

Dale Cregan, 29, is also being questioned over the officers' deaths and the killings of father and son David and Mark Short.

The home secretary, Theresa May, flew into Manchester earlier on Wednesday as the family of one of the two unarmed police officers killed in an apparent ambush spoke of their loss.

May broke short her holiday to join Fahy in the city as the investigation into the double murder of the officers Nicola Hughes, 23, and Fiona Bone, 32, continued.

ISTANBUL, Sept. 19 (Xinhua) -- Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili said here Wednesday that Iran and the European Union (EU) have agreed to hold a new round of nuclear talks in the near future.

Jalili made the statement at a press conference after he had talks with EU foreign affairs representative Catherine Ashton in Istanbul on Tuesday.

The Iranian official said the time for the upcoming nuclear talks will be decided when Ashton goes back and submit report to the P5+1 -- the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany.

An Iranian diplomat told Xinhua that it would take at least one month to start the new round of nuclear talks.

Damian Collins MP. Education: Oxford, St Benet's Hall  - "the only constituent body of the University admitting men alone". (For the past century and until this year, the Master has always been an actual Benedictine. Neat!)

Plus ca change ... except for the "change" part.

-----
sapere aude

Mariano Rajoy will meet with Catalan leader Artur Mas to discuss Catalan demands for autonomy over tax policy; Mas may announce early elections for November ahead of the meeting, according to one press report - something Rajoy does not want to happen; Rajoy opposes autonomy but may be open to a compromise, and has warned the Catalans that he will not accept any attempt of a secession; the King posts an open letter in defence of Spanish unity - which went down like a lead balloon in Catalonia; Catalonia's economy minister Andreu Mas-Collel says Catalonia's businesses would be better off if Catalonia had the instruments of a state; he blames the lack of liquidity on the lack of a fiscal authority; Christian Noyer says the OMT may not need to be in place for a long, as it already has an effect even if it is never used; coalition MPs in the Bundestag are ready to sabotage banking union, with a proposal that leaves all powers in the member states; the French prime minister cools down expectations of a turnaround in unemployment as promised by Francois Hollande during the election campaign; the Greek coalition is moving to a High Noon moment to agree a package of cuts demanded by the troika; Moody's says one in five Irish mortgages will end up defaulting; the Netherlands, too, has to tackle a hidden, but massive mortgage crisis; Portugal's Social Democratic want to mend relations with small their coalition partner; James Mackintosh says a sense of normality has returned to Europe's money and capital markets; the crisis has reinforced the trend among Italians to live with their mothers; Italian parties are now facing the prospect of subjecting their party accounts to an external audit; Silvio Berlusconi's party is most opposed to this measure; FT Alphaville has dug up a Merrill Lynch report warning about how the rise in the euro is self-defeating; Anatole Kaletsky says QE3 and OMT mark the official end of the monetarist era; Richard Koo, meanwhile, is less impressed, and says none of this can end a balance-sheet recession.

An accelerating flight of deposits from banks in four European countries is jeopardizing the renewal of economic growth and undermining a main tenet of the common currency: an integrated financial system.

A total of 326 billion euros ($425 billion) was pulled from banks in Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Greece in the 12 months ended July 31, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The plight of Irish and Greek lenders, which were bleeding cash in 2010, spread to Spain and Portugal last year.

The flight of deposits from the four countries coincides with an increase of about 300 billion euros at lenders in seven nations considered the core of the euro zone, including Germany and France, almost matching the outflow. That's leading to a fragmentation of credit and a two-tiered banking system blocking economic recovery and blunting European Central Bank policy in the third year of a sovereign-debt crisis.

"Capital flight is leading to the disintegration of the euro zone and divergence between the periphery and the core," said Alberto Gallo, the London-based head of European credit research at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc. "Companies pay 1 to 2 percentage points more to borrow in the periphery. You can't get growth to resume with such divergence."

The ruble weakened for a third day, as crude oil, Russia's main export earner, fell and investors began to close long positions on the currency.

The ruble depreciated 0.8 percent to 31.2125 as of 7 p.m. in Moscow. It lost 0.8 percent against the euro and the central bank's target euro-dollar basket to 40.4650 and 35.5043, respectively.

The Russian currency strengthened as much as 0.5 percent in intraday trading as oil advanced on bets Japan's expanded program of monetary easing will bolster fuel demand. Oil slid more than 3 percent to $92.36 per barrel in New York following a U.S. Energy Department report that showed inventories surged the most since March and on speculation Saudi Arabia is taking action to reduce oil prices. Oil and gas contribute about 50 percent of Russia's state revenue.

"The drop in oil prices is significant and the ruble is naturally taking a cue from the oil price movements," Ivan Tchakarov, chief economist at Moscow-based Renaissance Capital. Market players continue to "lock in profits on the back of the very fast ruble appreciation we had seen recently on the back of Fed's QE3," he said.

Perverse as it may seem, all the talk in the eurozone is not only of shrinkage. Greece's single currency days may be numbered. The jury is out on Portugal. The main narrative is of a leaner and meaner currency area emerging from the crisis.

But if Latvia has its way, the eurozone will have grown to 18 members within 18 months.

From boom to bust to booming again in the space of five years, Latvia is knocking on the doors in Brussels and Frankfurt asking to come in.

"We don't think it's a sinking ship. We still see more positives than negatives," Valdis Dombrovskis, the Latvian prime minister, told the Guardian in an interview.

Early next year, he said, his government will ask the European Central Bank and the European commission for their assessment of Latvia's fitness to join the single currency, apply for membership, and hope to join neighbouring Estonia in the euro by the beginning of 2014.

Tom Enders, chief executive of EADS, told staff on Wednesday that he would "soon" be in a position to make public details of its proposed £38bn combination with BAE Systems which he called "a perfect fit" in his first public statement since news of the deal leaked last week.

In a letter to the aerospace group's employees, Mr Enders said the deal was essential for the "internationalisation" of EADS and would allow it to meet its plans for long-term growth, seven years earlier than the current 2020 target date.

BAE would bring "key assets which complement our portfolio and our geographical spread", he said.

Mr Enders added: "The strategic purpose of this combination is not size. The purpose is to lay the foundation for our long-term competitiveness in the rapidly changing landscape of the aerospace and defence industry."

A German court has rejected claims for damages against German sports carmaker Porsche resulting from its failed bid to take over Volkswagen. The ruling was the first in a raft of lawsuits for billions in damages.

The district court in Braunschweig turned down two damages claims for 3.1 million euros ($4.05 million) and 1.5 million euros respectively on Wednesday, following Porsche's argument that the investors' losses were the result of "normal financial market risks."

The plaintiffs had claimed the management of the German sports car manufacturer had "misinformed" them about plans to take over much bigger German car group Volkswagen (VW) in 2008, "enticing" them into buying shares in Volkswagen.

In 2008, Stuttgart-based Porsche staged a hostile takeover bid to acquire VW, in the course of which VW share prices fluctuated wildly, luring many speculators into making an investment.

Shareholders in Rupert Murdoch's News Corp are asking a US court for permission to sue the firm's board for failing to stop the phone hacking scandal.

The shareholders asked Delaware judge John Noble on Wednesday to proceed with their case against Murdoch, his sons Lachlan and James and the rest of the company's board. News Corp is attempting to have the case dismissed.

In all, 50 people have been arrested in connection with the scandal, News Corp has closed its most profitable newspaper, the News of the World newspaper, and lost a deal to take over the BSkyB satellite broadcast business.

The shareholders, including America's Amalgamated Bank and Central Laborers' Pension Funds, charge the company's executives put their own interests ahead shareholders and treated the firm as a "family candy jar".

A total of more than 500 mining licenses have been awarded by the Sudanese government to companies interested in producing chrome in the border state of Blue Nile close to South Sudan's border; despite the persisting violence within the two neighboring countries which has led to the fleeing of people living within the area. The United Nations puts the figure at 600,000 taking in to consideration the displacement of citizens from both countries.
The mining ministry has however ignored the circumstances surrounding the Blue Nile and more than 55 firms have shown their interest to the chrome production offer. Kamal Abdellatif, Sudan's Mining Minister, confirmed the handing out of the licenses but didn't mention anything related to the validity period of these licenses. The minister added that there are also plans to build a chrome processing refinery in order to improve the value of local production.

WASHINGTON -- Mitt Romney's controversial claim that 47 percent of Americans "pay no taxes" and are "dependent upon government" is an overstatement that put his presidential campaign on the defensive Tuesday as it scrambled to explain what he meant.

His comments came to light this week in a secretly recorded video of the Republican nominee speaking at a fundraiser in May. He made the comments while explaining how his campaign would not try to win over staunch supporters of President Barack Obama.

After media outlets began talking about the comments, Romney hurriedly held a press briefing Monday night. He said that his words "were not elegantly stated," but he refused to back away from them.

"I'm sure I can state it more clearly and in a more effective way than I did in a setting like that, and so I'm sure I'll point that out as time goes on," he said.

The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman

Iran's foreign minister has met embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and called for a solution to the ongoing civil war, as a rights group accused Damascus of waging "relentless, indiscriminate" attacks against its own people.

Speaking in Damascus on Wednesday, Ali Akbar Salehi said the solution to the 18-month conflict lies "only in Syria and within the Syrian family".

Salehi, who called this week for a simultaneous halt to the fighting by both regime and rebel forces, added that ending the conflict should be done in "partnership with international and regional organisations".

Following their meeting, Assad said the war engulfing Syria was targeting not only it but the "axis of resistance," a term Syria, Iran and Lebanon's Shia movement Hezbollah use to refer to their common opposition to Israel.

Leon Panetta, the US defence secretary, has met Chinese leader-in-waiting Xi Jinping, who just days ago reappeared after a puzzling two-week disappearance.

The meeting on Wednesday was part of Panetta's weeklong trip through the Asia Pacific, in a campaign to pursue the US military's increased focus on the region.

Xi, who is tipped to succeed President Hu Jintao as leader of the Communist Party, stood to greet the US delegation in a lavish room in the Great Hall of the People and energetically shook Panetta's hand.

Once seated, he said Panetta's visit "will be very helpful in further advancing the state-to-state and military-to-military relations between our two countries".

The Chinese leader recently reappeared after not been seen since September 1. During his absence, he had cancelled meetings with dignitaries, including Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state.

The countries bordering the Caspian Sea are increasingly flexing their military muscles. The Iran crisis and unresolved conflicts over natural resources have added to the tensions in the region.

In early September 2012, Turkmenistan conducted its first military maneuver on the Caspian Sea since gaining independence. Taking part in the maneuver were armed forces on sea and in the air, as well as ground troops and special units of the Ministry for Security and Interior Affairs.

In 1995, Turkmenistan declared its own "everlasting neutrality." The country has since actively taken part in the growing militarization of the Caspian region, say observers. The coordinator of the Joint Eurasian Expert Network "Jeen," Natalia Charitonova, pointed out that in spring 2012, neighboring Kazakhstan took its very first domestically-produced artillery vessel into operation on the Caspian Sea. Kazakhstan plans to expand its fleet by two additional such ships by 2013.

Colombian drug lord Daniel `Crazy' Barrera was arrested during an international sting in Venezuela on Tuesday. Colombian officials are hailing the arrest as one of the most important captures in recent history.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said Tuesday that Daniel "Crazy" Barrera, alleged to be the country's last major drug lord, had been caught in neighbouring Venezuela in an international sting

"The last of the great capos has fallen," Santos announced on national television and radio, declaring that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Britain's MI6 foreign intelligence service had provided support.

Barrera, whose outfit is estimated to have sent more than 900 tons of cocaine to the United States and Europe, was caught in the Venezuelan city of San Cristobal, said Santos. Barrera is also believed to have criminal ties to FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) rebels and paramilitaries

Headline: Romney was absolutely right

Subhead: Republicans counterattack on the 47% not paying taxes....Commentators think the controversy will help him

Israel Hayom has the highest readership in Israel. It is a free newspaper, owned by Sheldon Adelson. Most of the article is based on Ann Coulter. Israelis are sure in for a surprise in November.

Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has stepped down as co-chair of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign to become chief executive of the Financial Services Roundtable, a major Wall Street lobbying group.

Pawlenty joined the Romney campaign in September 2011 after abandoning his own White House bid, following a poor showing in the Iowa straw poll a month earlier. He was considered a possible running mate for Romney before the GOP nominee tapped Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

Pawlenty will not step into his new role until Nov. 1, but he left the Romney campaign immediately because the Financial Services Roundtable is a bipartisan organization.

In other words, he could have held off for six weeks but didn't.

SIDNEY, Mont -- . Politicians are quick to extol the virtues of domestic oil drilling while ignoring the tradeoffs. Here in this fast-developing Western oil patch, the gritty side of America's new oil boom is on display with rising crime, a slain schoolteacher, rents that have tripled and public resources stretched thin.

That's just the half of it. Some area high schools are at historic low attendance levels, students dropping out to work the oilfields. Menial service jobs go unfilled despite high wages, and most everyone worries that the boom is transforming small-town values into something new and unpredictable.

"It's just happened so fast, and many small communities just didn't have time to plan," said Mike Coryell, executive director of the Area Economic Development Council of Miles City, a town just south of the oil boom that struggles with spillover effects. "The impacts hit but you don't have the resources to attack it.

ScienceDaily (Sep. 19, 2012) -- Fast-flowing and narrow glaciers have the potential to trigger massive changes in the Antarctic ice sheet and contribute to rapid ice-sheet decay and sea-level rise, a new study has found.

Research results published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveal in more detail than ever before how warming waters in the Southern Ocean are connected intimately with the movement of massive ice-sheets deep in the Antarctic interior.

"It has long been known that narrow glaciers on the edge of the Antarctica act as discrete arteries termed ice streams, draining the interior of the ice sheet," says Dr Chris Fogwill, an author of the study and an ARC Future Fellow with the UNSW Climate Change Research Centre.

"However, our results have confirmed recent observations suggesting that ocean warming can trigger increased flow of ice through these narrow corridors. This can cause inland sectors of the ice-sheet -- some larger than the state of Victoria -- to become thinner and flow faster."

ScienceDaily (Sep. 19, 2012) -- When a huge meteor collided with Earth about 2.5 million years ago and fell into the southern Pacific Ocean it not only could have generated a massive tsunami but also may have plunged the world into the Ice Ages, a new study suggests.

A team of Australian researchers says that because the Eltanin meteor -- which was up to two kilometres across -- crashed into deep water, most scientists have not adequately considered either its potential for immediate catastrophic impacts on coastlines around the Pacific rim or its capacity to destabilise the entire planet's climate system.

"This is the only known deep-ocean impact event on the planet and it's largely been forgotten because there's no obvious giant crater to investigate, as there would have been if it had hit a landmass," says Professor James Goff, lead author of a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Quaternary Science. Goff is co-director of UNSW's Australia-Pacific Tsunami Research Centre and Natural Hazards Research Laboratory.

"But consider that we're talking about something the size of a small mountain crashing at very high speed into very deep ocean, between Chile and Antarctica. Unlike a land impact, where the energy of the collision is largely absorbed locally, this would have generated an incredible splash with waves literally hundreds of metres high near the impact site.

Farmers who cannot afford feed `liquidating' pig and cattle herds will drive food inflation to record high, says Rabobank report

The mass slaughter of millions of farm animals across the world is expected to push food prices to their highest ever levels.

As well as hitting consumers' pockets, the predicted 14% jump in food prices will also dash the Bank of England's hopes of pushing inflation down to 2% by next year.

Farmers across the world have begun a mass slaughter of their pig and cattle herds because they cannot afford the cost of feed, which has soared following the worst US drought in living memory, according to a report published on Wednesday.

Experts at investment bank Rabobank warn that the mass "herd liquidation" will contribute to a 14% jump in the price of the average basket of food by next summer.

The world's best-selling weedkiller, and a genetically modified maize resistant to it, can cause tumours, multiple organ damage and lead to premature death, new research published today reveals.

In the first ever study to examine the long-term effects of Monsanto's Roundup weedkiller, or the NK603 Roundup-resistant GM maize also developed by Monsanto, scientists found that rats exposed to even the smallest amounts, developed mammary tumours and severe liver and kidney damage as early as four months in males, and seven months for females, compared with 23 and 14 months respectively for a control group.

"This research shows an extraordinary number of tumours developing earlier and more aggressively - particularly in female animals. I am shocked by the extreme negative health impacts," said Dr Michael Antoniou, molecular biologist at King's College London, and a member of CRIIGEN, the independent scientific council which supported the research.

CNBC: ECB Bond Buying Likened to Work of the Devil (19 Sep 2012)

After weeks of macro-economic sniping following his isolation at the European Central Bank over its new bond-buying policy, Jens Weidmann, on Tuesday resorted to Goethe's Faust to make his point. The classic play highlighted, he argued, "the core problem of today's paper money-based monetary policy" and the "potentially dangerous correlation of paper money creation, state financing and inflation".

In early scenes from Goethe's tragedy, Mephistopheles persuades the heavily indebted Holy Roman Emperor to print paper money - notionally backed by gold that had not yet been mined - to solve an economic crisis, with initially happy results until more and more money is printed and rampant inflation ensues.

While he did not make the comparison from Faust Part Two explicit, for Mr Weidmann there are clearly parallels with the performance of the ECB in trying to save the euro.

The lives of human beings and rivers have been intertwined since the beginning of mankind, but modern society rarely affords waterways significant protection. Which is what makes a decision by officials in New Zealand to grant the Whanganui River legal personhood status--with its own "rights and interests"--such a intriguing milestone.

thanks bill and melinda, and of course special praise to monsanto for this creativity

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

You may not believe me, but I have news about global warming: Good news, and better news.
[...]
 A technology is in the pipeline that has the potential to eliminate CO2 emissions entirely. Solar power, long believed to be unworkably expensive, has actually been falling in cost at a steady exponential rate of 7 percent per year for the last three decades straight. Because of this "Moore's Law for solar", electricity from solar panels now costs less than twice as much as electricity from coal, and only about three times as much as electricity from gas. Furthermore, technologies now in the pipeline seem to ensure that the cost drop will continue.

Within the decade, solar could be cheaper than coal. Within two decades, cheaper than gas. When that happens, assuming we also have electric cars, it is game over for carbon emissions.

Big scoops come in small increments. It takes some luck and some connections, some phone calls and e-mails, and the time to build a relationship. Just ask David Corn.

Corn, the Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones magazine, on Monday wrote one of the most-talked-about stories of the 2012 presidential campaign about a video of Mitt Romney telling Republican donors at a May 17 fundraiser, among other things, that President Obama's supporters constitute the "47 percent" of the nation who are "dependent upon the government, who believe that they are victims."

Corn, 53, spent about four weeks coaxing the person who had surreptitiously shot the footage to hand over the full, undoctored video. It was recorded, apparently without Romney's knowledge and via an unknown device, at the fundraiser at the home of a wealthy private-equity investor in Boca Raton, Fla.

In the end, Corn said, getting the story came down to trust.

"It takes time and a number of conversations between two people," he said Tuesday, in one of a nearly nonstop series of interviews ("Dutch TV is waiting for me in my office!"). "As a journalist, you're always worried about losing a scoop, by the fear that [a source] is talking to 25 other people. But you have to give it time and let the relationship develop."

ScienceDaily (Sep. 18, 2012) -- A University of Nebraska-Lincoln archaeological team has uncovered a massive Roman mosaic in southern Turkey -- a meticulously crafted, 1,600-square-foot work of decorative handiwork built during the region's imperial zenith.

It's believed to be the largest mosaic of its type in the region and demonstrates the reach and cultural influence of the Roman Empire in the area in the third and fourth centuries A.D., said Michael Hoff, Hixson-Lied professor of art history at UNL and the director of the excavation.

"Its large size signals, in no small part, that the outward signs of the empire were very strong in this far-flung area," Hoff said. "We were surprised to have found a mosaic of such size and of such caliber in this region -- it's an area that had usually been off the radar screens of most ancient historians and archeologists, and suddenly this mosaic comes into view and causes us to change our focus about what we think (the region) was like in antiquity."

Since 2005, Hoff's team has been excavating the remains of the ancient city of Antiochia ad Cragum on the southern Turkish coast. Antiochus of Commagene, a client-king of Rome, founded the city in the middle of the first century.

The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman

Things have been very hush-hush over at Modern Meadow since it was disclosed in August that the company had received funding from PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel's foundation to 3-D bioprint meat and leather.

But in an exclusive interview with Txchnologist, company cofounder and CEO Andras Forgacs has broken the silence and revealed some details about Modern Meadow's goals. Their first project? In vitro leather production.

"Our emphasis first is not on meat, it's on leather," Forgacs says. "The main reason is that, technically, skin is a simpler structure than meat, making it easier to produce."

The company also needs to acclimate potential customers to the idea of tissue-engineering products. It turns out that, initially at least, many consumers might not want to eat a modern technological marvel. "Anecdotally, we've found that around 40 percent of people would be willing to try cultured meat," he says. "There's much less controversy around using leather that doesn't involve killing animals."

Three separate experiments - two with college-aged students and one with 6 to 7-year-old boys - revealed that those who reported using pacifiers found it harder to mimic emotional expressions or scored lower on emotional intelligence tests. The study is the first to connect pacifiers with psychological effects.

"That work got us thinking about critical periods of emotional development, like infancy," lead author Dr. Paula Niedenthal, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisc., said in the press release. "What if you always had something in your mouth that prevented you from mimicking and resonating with the facial expression of somebody?"

...

"By reflecting what another person is doing, you create some part of the feeling yourself," Niedenthal said. "That's one of the ways we understand what someone is feeling - especially if they seem angry, but they're saying they're not; or they're smiling, but the context isn't right for happiness."

The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman

An anticipated future in retrospect:

The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman