Gordon Brown and other European leaders are secretly preparing an unprecedented campaign to spread GM crops and foods in Britain and throughout the continent, confidential documents obtained by The Independent on Sunday reveal.

The documents - minutes of a series of private meetings of representatives of 27 governments - disclose plans to "speed up" the introduction of the modified crops and foods and to "deal with" public resistance to them.

And they show that the leaders want "agricultural representatives" and "industry" - presumably including giant biotech firms such as Monsanto - to be more vocal to counteract the "vested interests" of environmentalists.

News of the secret plans is bound to create a storm of protest at a time when popular concern about GM technology is increasing, even in countries that have so far accepted it.

Businesses brace for recession but Brown insists the UK is better prepared than other countries

Almost four in five British businesses are cutting back on everything from hiring new staff to paying for the office Christmas party, as they batten down the hatches for a deep recession.

Even before Friday's official figures revealed that the economy had swung into reverse for the first time since 1992, bosses had begun a series of austerity measures, according to a survey of more than 1,000 firms by the Institute of Directors.

Gordon Brown and Bank of England governor Mervyn King both conceded last week that a recession was in store. 'After 15 years of economic growth the party is over,' said Graeme Leach, the IoD's chief economist. 'The pressure on the corporate sector to do something to cut costs is now really starting to come through - but I think people need to be prepared for a lot more bad news over the next 12 to 18 months.'

Four out of 10 businesses said they had cut back on recruitment; 27 per cent had reduced pay or bonuses; and another 27 per cent said they were squeezing the entertainment budget, including the Christmas party fund. Only 22 per cent had taken no cost-cutting measures in response to the credit crunch, suggesting its effects are now spreading beyond the banking and housebuilding industries.

Barcelona has paid homage to the last few survivors of the International Brigades volunteers who fought to defend Spain against the fascist-backed General Francisco Franco during the 1936-39 civil war.

At ceremonies across the city yesterday the handful of survivors, now mostly in their nineties, were fêted to mark the 70th anniversary of the brigades' departure from Spain. They were reminded that at their official send-off from Barcelona in 1938 they had been told: 'You are history. You are legend ... We will not forget you.'

'They've stuck to that. It's a hero's return,' said Jack Edwards, aged 94, who travelled to Spain as a 21-year-old in 1936. 'I was sad when I left, because I had made so many friends.'

Four of the 23 surviving brigade members who made it to Barcelona yesterday were British, including the former Transport and General Workers Union leader Jack Jones.

ROME: In desperation to try to mend its image with Italians weary of mass immigration, Romania seems to have borrowed a line from Donald O'Connor in "Singin' in the Rain" - "make 'em laugh!"

Nelu, an artist who lives in Milan, opens a documentary about Romanians living in Italy with a joke that plays easily with Italian audiences.

The son of Dracula asks his father what he does for a living. Dracula answers: "It's simple, I suck people's blood." The son: "You mean like politicians?" And Dracula says: "Hey, let's not exaggerate."

That touch is at the core of a €4.2 million campaign sponsored by the Romanian government and introduced last month to counter lurid media accounts of crimes said to be committed by Romanians. Branded "Romania, pleased to meet you!" the campaign has taken out ads in print and on television.

In a globalized world, it seems somewhat unreal that one European people should have to spend money like this to introduce itself to another. After all, both are among the 27 nations in the European Union, and the Romanians are proud of their Roman heritage.

Germany is to oppose European Union plans to install full-body scanners at airports as protection against hijackers, a government spokesman said Friday.

The devices have been described as "strip scanners" because they construct an image of each traveller's body without clothing in an attempt to reveal any concealed weapons.

"I can tell you with complete clarity that we are not going to cooperate in this mischief," an Interior Ministry spokeswoman said Friday at a government news conference.

Nonetheless, German federal police said Thursday they would seek to commission an engineering study of the devices.

Full-body scanners are already in use at some US airports, as well as at London's Heathrow and Amsterdam's Schiphol airports, to speed up security checks and to avoid the hand-frisking of passengers.

Romania is open to investing in the Gazprom pipeline South Stream, not just the EU Nabucco project, designed to reduce energy dependency on Russia, Romanian minister of economy Varujan Vosganian said on Thursday, contrary to the president's statements.

A Gazprom delegation is expected in Bucharest next week, just a month ahead of general elections.

Russian gas is currently imported and at a price of €418 per thousand cubic meters, is almost double the price a  - year ago

"Romania is ready to support any EU project, both Nabucco and South Stream," the liberal minister, whose party is at odds with the country's conservative President Traian Basescu, said, newswires report.

Only a day before, Mr Basescu renewed his calls on the European Commission and EU member states to "accelerate Nabucco," in order to decrease the EU's energy dependency on Russia.

The divergent remarks come a few days after Romanian gas officials went to Moscow, with Russian newspaper Kommersant claiming Gazprom is considering re-routing South Stream through Romania.

TSKHINVALI, Georgia: On a clearing in this disputed city, where enemy homes were bulldozed after the conflict in August, Mayor Yuri Luzhkov promised this month to build a new neighborhood for the South Ossetian separatists here.

Grinning widely before a boisterous crowd, which hailed him as a liberator, Luzhkov said he would spend more than $100 million on houses, schools and shopping centers. "We are celebrating a great victory - a victory for freedom and independence," he declared.

The pledge was notable for its cost - a sizable sum in this impoverished breakaway enclave of 70,000 - but also because Luzhkov is the mayor of Moscow, not Tskhinvali. The money is to come from Moscow's city budget.

Yuri Luzhkov is a mayor with a foreign policy. A former Soviet apparatchik who yearns to restore Russia's regional hegemony, he has supported ethnic Russians and stoked separatism in nations along the country's borders. He has championed a new Russian nationalism that the Kremlin effectively backed with force when it wrested South Ossetia from neighboring Georgia this summer.

Peter Mandelson's last act as European Trade Commissioner was to advocate new trade rules that will directly benefit the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

Less than a month ago, in one of his final speeches before being recalled to the Cabinet and after he accepted hospitality on the Russian's yacht, Lord Mandelson announced a new EU trade strategy giving multinational companies freer access to raw materials, including scrap aluminium and natural minerals used in the production of the metal.

Mr Deripaska owns Rusal, the world's largest aluminium producer, which has subsidiaries in Europe. The companies import both scrap aluminium and aluminium-containing minerals from Africa and India. The new rules would exempt such companies from paying expensive export duties, to the anger of development charities.

The Secretary of State for Business promised yesterday to be more careful in his contacts with wealthy businessmen after he became embroiled in allegations of a conflict of interest for staying on Mr Deripaska's yacht.

Lithuanians are voting in the second round of general elections in which the main conservative opposition hopes to build on gains made two weeks ago.

The Homeland Union led after the first round on 12 October, while the governing Social Democrats were fourth.

After casting his vote on Sunday, Homeland Union leader Andrius Kubilius said he expected on Monday to "take the initiative" to form a coalition.

Mr Kubilius, 51, served as Lithunainan prime minister during 1999-2000.

The second round will decide 68 seats of the 141-seat parliament.

Every police force in the UK is to be equipped with mobile fingerprint scanners - handheld devices that allow police to carry out identity checks on people in the street.

The new technology, which ultimately may be able to receive pictures of suspects, is likely to be in widespread use within 18 months. Tens of thousands of sets - as compact as BlackBerry smartphones - are expected to be distributed.

The police claim the scheme, called Project Midas, will transform the speed of criminal investigations. A similar, heavier machine has been tested during limited trials with motorway patrols.

To address fears about mass surveillance and random searches, the police insist fingerprints taken by the scanners will not be stored or added to databases.

Liberty, the civil rights group, cautioned that the law required fingerprints taken in such circumstances to be deleted after use. Gareth Crossman, Liberty's policy director, said: "Saving time with new technology could help police performance but officers must make absolutely certain that they take fingerprints only when they suspect an individual of an offence and can't establish his identity."

Asian and European Union leaders on Saturday called for the international community to act quickly and decisively at a conference on responses to the global financial crisis next month in Washington.

"We have all understood that it would not be possible simply to meet and have a conversation," French President Nicolas Sarkozy said of the planned summit on the crisis on November 15.

  

Speaking for the EU's rotating presidency, currently held by France, Sarkozy said a pointed discussion and decisive action were needed on detailed financial issues, including global currency markets.

  

"We need to discuss these problems and we need to come up with solutions," he told reporters at the close of the seventh biannual Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM).

  

Sarkozy said he expected Asian nations such as China, India, Japan, Indonesia and South Korea to play a "very important role" at the Washington summit.

Funding shortages and recession fears should not be used as excuses for shying away from tackling climate change, while governments have a key role to play by setting the right carbon price on polluters, according to a new report by Deutsche Bank.

"The current economic downturn presents governments with an historic opportunity to 'climate proof' their economies as they upgrade infrastructure as a core response to the economic downturn," argues Mark Fulton, head of climate change investment research at Deutsche Bank, in the report, entitled 'Investing in Climate Change 2009 - Necessity and Opportunity in Turbulent Times'.

The report argues that, as a sector, climate change has 'built-in advantages' for investors, assuming governments are able to set up a functioning carbon market with some level of predictability concerning future prices of emitting CO2.

"The debate around climate change is shifting away from costs and risk towards the question of how to capitalise on exciting opportunities," states Fulton.

Banks and credit card companies are exploiting obscure legal powers to seize the homes of thousands of people who cannot pay their credit card bills.

In some cases, people owing as little as £1,000 have been served with charging orders - the legal instrument enabling a creditor to order the sale of a property.

The practice has emerged days after Yvette Cooper, chief secretary to the Treasury, called on banks to do more to allow people to keep their homes.

According to the Ministry of Justice, 97,026 charging orders were granted by courts in England and Wales last year, a tenfold increase since 2000.

KUWAIT CITY --Kuwait's Central Bank stepped in Sunday to prop up one of the country's biggest banks and said it was considering guaranteeing deposits in domestic banks - in one of the first concrete signs that the global financial crisis may next hit the oil-rich Gulf.

In Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, the government said it would deposit $2.7 billion into the Saudi Credit Bank to help lower-income citizens deal with financial difficulties, the country's Al-Ektisadiya newspaper reported.

The two moves came just a day after finance ministers from the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council held an emergency meeting to echo assurances, which they have repeatedly voiced over the past few weeks, that the region's banks face no liquidity crisis.

Kuwait's decision to stop trading in shares of Gulf Bank sent a shock wave through the country's bourse, which closed down almost 3.5 percent and brought its year-to-date losses to over 19 percent.

"The halting of Gulf Bank shares spread panic in the bourse today, because the government has been saying banks are safe from (global financial crisis) losses," said investor Ahmed al-Fadhli in a telephone interview.

While not driven by my recommendation to declare all Credit Default Swaps null and void the general idea seem to get a bit of traction.

At The Agonist Sean-Paul Kelly asks:

It seems to me that one of the most significant problems we face right now (and going into the future) is CDSs. What would happen if the Federal Government simply said: "they are all dead trades. if you sold protection you are off the hook, if you bought it, too bad"?

He points to a NYT piece which includes this:

Janet Tavakoli, a finance industry consultant who is president of Tavakoli Structured Finance, said the stock market's gyrations are a result of a severe lack of confidence in the very officials who are charged with cleaning up the nation's mess.
...
She also suggests that financial regulators impose a form of martial law, allowing them to rewrite derivatives contracts that bind counterparties to terms they may not even comprehend.

Chua Soon Hook who runs a profitable billion dollar fund for Asia Genesis Asset Management explained on Bloomberg TV how CDS are now used to raid leveraged companies and even  countries.

"I haven't forgotten history," says Gert Heinz, a tax adviser in Munich. "If you depend on paper money you can lose everything. We've learned that the hard way after two world wars."

So when Chancellor Angela Merkel went on television recently to tell Germans that their bank accounts were safe, Heinz, who at 68 still remembers the rows of canned food that his mother hoarded in the attic, decided he would rather be safe than sorry.

He converted another chunk of his savings into gold and stocked up on a six-month supply of rice, sugar, flour and a special brand of milk powder that lasts for half a century.

Heinz may be an extreme example, but he is not alone among Europeans who are looking for ways to protect themselves in the face of a financial storm that - at least so far - has affected them much less directly than it has many Americans. Indeed, his reaction reflects the history of a Continent that has weathered wars, revolutions and financial crises over the centuries, burnishing national convictions that are very different from those in the United States.

German luxury carmakers Daimler and BMW will temporarily close factories as a result of the current economic crisis, according to reports that surfaced over the weekend. And they're not the only ones.

Daimler is to idle factories for five weeks because world sales of its Mercedes cars have slumped, a newspaper reported on Sunday, quoting a company spokesman.

  

The report came as Germany's other main premium car manufacturer, BMW, announced a four-day standstill at one of its car plants, in Leipzig, eastern Germany, amid signs that the world recession will be worse than so far feared.

  

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung said the Mercedes closure would begin in mid-December, but gave no precise date. It said stocktaking would take place on Dec. 12 and plants would not re-open before an annual holiday break at Christmas. Plants re-open on Jan. 12. Approached by DPA news agency, a spokesman declined comment.

After Britain used anti-terror laws to freeze Icelandic assets, the people of a proud island nation hit back...

Standing in front of her net curtains, a half-eaten pancake on one side and a bottle of washing-up liquid on the other, no one could possibly confuse the bespectacled Icelandic lady with Osama bin Laden. But just to ram the point home, she brandishes a handmade sign: "I'm not a terrorist!"

After Gordon Brown used anti-terror laws to freeze the assets of an Icelandic bank, the Land of the Midnight Sun is fighting back. Given Iceland does not have an army, the uprising is less Viking warrior and more citizen's revolt. Yesterday, more than 35,000 people - a ninth of the population - signed an online petition to let the world know that Icelanders are not terrorists. "Gordon Brown unjustifiably used the Anti-Terrorism Act against the people of Iceland for his own short-term political gain," the petition says. "This has turned a grave situation into a national disaster... hour by hour and day by day the actions of the British Government are indiscriminately obliterating Icelandic interests."

Accompanying the petition is a series of portraits of Icelanders holding up their own protestations of innocence. There is the family posing in front of their skiing photos in matching brown and cream knitted jumpers, reassuring "Darling Brown. We are not terrorists but terribly nice and friendly". And there's the blonde toddler. "What did you call me?" she asks, midway through devouring a bowl of ice cream.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is to offer a $16.5bn (£10.4bn) loan to Ukraine to help it "maintain confidence and economic and financial stability".

The country has been badly shaken by the global credit crunch, with stock markets and the Ukrainian currency tumbling and banks needing propping up.

Internal political turmoil has also delayed economic development.

The loan depends on Ukraine being able to balance its budget and make reforms to its banking sector.

The financial crisis spreading like wildfire across the former Soviet bloc threatens to set off a second and more dangerous banking crisis in Western Europe, tipping the whole Continent into a fully-fledged economic slump.

"The system is paralysed, and it is starting to look like Black Wednesday in 1992. I'm afraid this is going to have a very deflationary effect on the economy of Western Europe. It is almost guaranteed that euroland money supply is about to implode," he said.

I've been reading reports from Stephen Jen, a former student of mine who's now the chief currency strategist at Morgan Stanley. He points out that since the fall of Lehman, we've been seeing clear signs of currency crises throughout the world of emerging markets, including Eastern Europe. This time, it's not an Asian crisis or a Latin American crisis, it's a global crisis. He adds,

So far,the US financial sector has been the epicentre of the global crisis. I fear that a hard landing in EM assets and economies will become the second epicentre in the coming months, with very damaging feedback effects on the developed world.

Right now I feel like the guy who was told, "Cheer up -- things could be worse!" So he cheered up, and sure enough, things got worse.

Many world stock markets now off 50% or more from peaks

2:21 PM, October 24, 2008 MONEY & CO. blog, LA TIMES

Here's a club no country wants to join, yet its ranks are swelling: The 50%-Off (Or Worse) Stock Market Club.  Here's a sampling (not meant to be all-inclusive):

Markets down more than 70%: Vietnam (-70.5%), Peru (-73.2%), Ireland (-73.4%), Russia (-73.9%), Iceland (-88.7%).

Markets down between 60% and 70%: Hong Kong (-60.1%), Poland (-62.6%), China (-69.8%).

Markets down between 50% and 60%: South Korea (-54.5%), Italy (-55.2%), Egypt (-56.9%), Brazil (-57.2%), Japan (-58.1%), Singapore (-58.2%), Turkey (-58.5%), India (-58.3%).

Markets down between 40% and 50%: Great Britain (-42.3%), Australia (-43.3%), U.S.-S&P 500 (-44.0%), Spain (-46.4%), Germany (-47.0%), Mexico (-48.3%).

Note that, for U.S. investors who own foreign stocks, the losses in many cases are worse because the dollar has rallied against most foreign currencies in recent months. A strong dollar means stocks denominated in foreign currencies have even less value when translated into dollars.

TOKYO (Reuters) - The Group of Seven warned on Monday the yen's wild swings threatened financial stability, fanning speculation central banks may intervene to halt a rally in the currency driven by a Japanese exodus from emerging markets.

G7 finance ministers and central bank governors said they were prepared to act, if necessary, but market reaction was muted, reflecting doubts over the will for co-ordinated action and whether Tokyo could succeed acting on its own.

"We are concerned about the recent excessive volatility in the exchange rate of the yen and its possible adverse implications for economic and financial stability," the brief statement said.

"We continue to monitor markets closely, and cooperate as appropriate," the group, comprising the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada, said.

Some analysts took the statement as a code for a possible currency intervention, especially after the Australian central bank stepped into the market for a second day to support its dollar near record lows against the yen.

Sterling plunged again against the dollar this morning, having fallen through $1.60 for the first time in five years on Friday. The pound lost a further 3 cents to $1.542 amid mounting fears of a prolonged UK recession.

The same fears forced down the FTSE 100, which plunged 185 points, or 4.7 per cent, after the opening with banks and insurance companies leading the way. European stock markets were also down around 5 per cent, following big falls in Asia with Hong Kong's Hang Seng down more than 10 per cent and the Nikkei in Tokyo losing 6 per cent.

Friday's GDP figures showed that the British economy shrank by 0.5 per cent in the three months to the end of September, the first time quarterly GDP has fallen in more than 16 years.

Sterling has fallen 12 per cent from $1.72 in a week and was put under pressure when Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, admitted it was likely that the country was heading for a prolonged and painful recession.

...

"Our banker, State Bank of India, issued a letter of credit (LC) to the exporter's bank in South America, but the bank refused to negotiate the LC and pay the exporter. We will now have to negotiate with another banker to get the consignment totalling 1.5 million tonne of de-gummed soybean oil," said a [South Indian importing] company source.

...

"The effects of the seizure of the interbanking system are spilling over to the real economy. This problem is gradually being felt by a number of commodity importers in the country, which imports nearly half of the 13 MT edible oil requirements it consumes annually," said Gnansekar Thiagarjan, head of Mumbai-based Commtrendz, which provides advisory services to commodity traders across the country.

...

"Curiously, banks are unwilling to lend, particularly for short-term trade transactions, including under letters of credit, which have traditionally been considered a self-liquidating advance and very safe. Banks have stopped this funding not merely to their customers but also to other banks to whom they used to lend under interbank lines of credit arrangement. This is impacting adversely operations of Indian branches abroad," said the [internal banker's] note.

Question:  Why isn't EVERYONE expressing a sigh of relief?  Remember how traumatic the presentation was as the prices rose over the last year? So where is the "relief" over the decline?  

I get the feeling I'm being played for a sucker, a rube.

Let's start there.

They tried to assimilate me. They failed.

Kuwaiti traders staged another walkout on Sunday and protested outside the stock market as shares in the oil-rich Gulf region plunged amid growing expectations of a global recession.

The traders, who deserted the stock market on Thursday, the business week's final day, left the trading chamber again after the index dived more than 300 points a few minutes after the opening.
[...]
"We want the government to buy stocks. This month, I have already lost half of my investments in the bourse," one of the protesters, Hussein Tubayekh, told AFP.

Tzipi Livni abandons efforts to form government, making early elections likely and dashing hopes of peace with Palestinians

The Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, today abandoned her efforts to form a government, putting Israel on course for early elections and dashing any remaining hopes of a peace deal with Palestinians before the end of the year.

Livni had been trying to secure a governing coalition since September when she was elected head of the ruling Kadima party to replace the prime minister, Ehud Olmert, who resigned his leadership this year amid a fraud investigation.

But partners in the current coalition, which took power in May 2006, used the changing of the guard to press new demands.

In a statement today, Livni said she was willing to make concessions but had to draw the line at "impossible" demands.

"When I had to decide between continued extortion and bringing forward elections, I preferred elections," she said.

On one bank of the Truc Bach lake a small electricity sub-station is plastered with flyers touting a local plumber. Along the road is an aerobics studio where youngsters lazily sip coffee and browse the papers. Thirty yards out across the water - rancid and bobbing with dead fish - is moored a handful of pedal boats shaped like swans.

It was within this unlikely triangle of landmarks - exactly 41 years ago this Sunday - that John McCain crash-landed and, say his captors, began his run for the United States presidency.

For even if the cold, barely conscious US Navy officer did not know it at the time, says Le Van Lua and the other Vietnamese whose lives entwined with Mr McCain's that day, this little spot of Hanoi is undoubtedly where pilot turned politician. If fury had prevailed, it is a transformation that might never have happened, says Mr Lua, 61, a factory worker who was the first on the scene after the crash and swam out to retrieve the battered, politically valuable prize.

He mimes clutching Mr McCain's hair in one hand and a kitchen knife in the other: "I didn't care about the politics, I just saw a man who had killed so many Vietnamese that I longed to kill him. He was injured badly and at the time I was desperate to finish him off. We only stopped because we were told he was more valuable alive. Now I'm glad I did stop: that day was truly the turning point in his life."

The European Union has officially renewed ties with Cuba after a five-year freeze in relations and announced it will deliver millions of euros in aid to the Communist-led island.

Development commissioner Louis Michel and Cuban foreign minister Felipe Perez Roque signed a joint declaration in Havana on Thursday (23 October) that restores bilateral co-operation between the EU and Cuba and recognises the country's political independence and the principle of non-intervention in its domestic affairs.

Millions of euros of aid are to be delivered to Cuba to help reconstruction after two hurricanes hit the island in the summer

Havana has also agreed to a political dialogue with Brussels "without taboo," according to Mr Michel.

"We have stated the will to deepen a constructive and respectful dialogue that must be based on strict respect, without taboo," said Mr Michel after signing the declaration, newswires report.

The commissioner added that the occasion marks the renewal of "strong, strategic, useful, positive and respectful relations" with Havana.

BEIRUT: For years, the Lebanese military was ridiculed as the least effective armed group in a country that was full of them. After the army splintered during the 15-year civil war, its arsenal slowly rotted into a museum of obsolete tanks and grounded aircraft.

That is starting to change. At the gates of the military base in Karantina, just north of Beirut, groups of soldiers drive in and out all day in new American Humvees and trucks, some of them toting gleaming new U.S. rifles and grenade launchers.

The weapons are the leading edge of a new American commitment to resupply the military of this small but pivotal Middle Eastern country, which emerged three years ago from decades of Syrian domination.

The new wave of aid, the first major American military assistance to Lebanon since the 1980s, is meant to build an armed force that could help stabilize Lebanon's perpetually fractured state, fight a rising terrorist threat and provide a legitimate alternative to the Shiite militant group Hezbollah. That organization, which controls southern Lebanon, has refused to disarm, arguing that it is the only force capable of defending the country against Israel.

If Barack Obama wins the American presidential election in nine days' time, it will be because he has beaten the Republicans at their own game, according to Karl Rove, the noted "architect" of President George W Bush's two victories.

The Democrats have copied Rove's formidable tactics and ground operation, pumping out a disciplined message, assembling a broad-based coalition which includes young first-time voters and African-Americans, and drowning their Republican opponents with money.

"I've got to tell you, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery," Rove said in an interview. "I can say, I'm deeply flattered."

Rove recalled how Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, outlined their electoral strategy at the Democratic convention in August: "He explicitly said we have deliberately copied the army of persuasion of the Republicans."

American military chiefs are to send up to 9,000 troops to Helmand next year, potentially sidelining the UK's 5,000-strong force in the southern Afghanistan province. The first of three US brigade combat teams is expected to be operational by the spring. Their main base is under construction alongside the British headquarters at Camp Bastion.

The move comes amid US frustration that the British have insufficient soldiers and helicopters to maintain security and reconstruct Helmand, with the Taliban acting freely in large tracts of the province.

President George W Bush is expected to announce a surge of US troops into southern Afghanistan after next month's White House election.

General David McKiernan, the US commander of all allied forces in Afghanistan, has asked for at least four brigade combat teams for Afghanistan, but most will go into Helmand.

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has fallen sick from exhaustion but the illness is not as serious as political opponents suggest, an Ahmadinejad ally told Iran's Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during a recent meeting with Iraq's former prime minister Ibrahim al-Jafari.

"The president will eventually fully recover and will continue with his work, but the shame of this thing will be left forever for some people," Mohammad Esmail Kowsari said in the IRNA report.

The rumor that Ahmadinejad is seriously ill "is an old ploy aimed at influencing the elections" which are set for next June, Kowsari -- a member of Iran's parliament -- was quoted as saying.

Kowsari called it "psychological warfare" aimed at creating division among fundamentalists who make up Ahmadinejad's political base.

Another IRNA report said President Ahmadinejad missed several events in recent days because of his illness.

It quoted Mansour Borghei, an official at the president's office, saying Ahmadinejad "was feeling ill because of being overworked."

US helicopter-borne troops have carried out a raid inside Syria along the Iraqi border, killing eight people including a woman, Syrian authorities say.

The official Syrian news agency Sana said the raid took place in the Abu Kamal border area, in eastern Syria.

It said that American soldiers on four helicopters had stormed a building under construction on Sunday night.

The US says it is investigating. It has previously accused Syria of allowing foreign militants into Iraq.

"Four American helicopters violated Syrian airspace around 16:45 local time (1345 GMT) on Sunday," state television and Sana news agency said.

It said that "American soldiers" who had emerged from helicopters "attacked a civilian building under construction and fired at workmen inside, causing eight deaths".

 Syria claims US helicopters attacked village

By Our Foreign Staff
Last Updated: 7:07PM GMT 26 Oct 2008
Media reports gave conflicting accounts of the incident, which they said had involved an air strike on civilians.
State television, quoting unnamed officials, said that an attack took place near the Syrian border town of Abu Kamal. It gave no further details on the incident.
The private television channel al-Dunia said that nine people had been killed when an unknown number of American helicopters attacked the village of Al-Sukkiraya.

Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan, who angered many Republicans earlier this year with a memoir criticizing President Bush, said today that he's voting for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

McClellan told CNN that Obama's message "is very similar to the one that Governor Bush ran on in 2000," apparently referring to the current president's early pitch as a reformer and a moderate.

"From the very beginning I have said I am going to support the candidate that has the best chance for changing the way Washington works and getting things done and I will be voting for Barack Obama," McClellan said during the interview, which was taped for the Saturday broadcast of a new CNN show, "D.L. Hughley Breaks the News."

Next?

USAns for Obama, just please don't get cocky.

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

Minority Leader Fights for Survival

Democrats aiming for a 60-seat, filibuster-proof Senate majority are targeting Mitch McConnell.

By Perry Bacon Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 27, 2008; Page A01

PADUCAH, Ky. -- If Barack Obama wins the presidency on Nov. 4, Mitch McConnell, the Senate's minority leader, could be one of the few obstacles confronting Democrats as they seek to enact a sweeping agenda and roll back eight years of Bush administration initiatives.

The architect of the revival of the Republican Party in this state, McConnell is fighting for his political survival and to avoid the fate of former senator Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), who was ousted in 2004 by voters who rejected the argument that his position as his party's leader in the Senate gave him an unparalleled ability to deliver for his state.

With polls showing Democrat Bruce Lunsford trailing McConnell by only a few points, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee pumped money into advertising attacking McConnell earlier this month. Former president Bill Clinton campaigned alongside Lunsford on Friday in this western Kentucky city along the state's border with Illinois.

Democrats, already favored to win the presidency and hold both houses of Congress, have set their sights on controlling 60 seats in the Senate, which would give them a filibuster-proof majority. To get there, they'll need an upset or two in a deep-red state such as Georgia, Mississippi or Kentucky, where Bush won by 20 points in 2004.

"You cannot pass a single bill in the U.S. Congress outside of the budget with just a majority vote if 41 senators decide to filibuster and shut you down," Clinton told a crowd of more than 500 here. "And the man who was the leader of implementing President Bush's policies, if you leave him there, will be the leader of stopping a new direction for America every time they can muster 41 votes. That's why this Mitch McConnell seat is so important."

Half of all American doctors responding to a nationwide survey say they regularly prescribe placebos to patients. The results trouble medical ethicists, who say more research is needed to determine whether doctors must deceive patients in order for placebos to work.

The study involved 679 internists and rheumatologists chosen randomly from a national list of such doctors. In response to three questions included as part of the larger survey, about half reported recommending placebos regularly. Surveys in Denmark, Israel, Britain, Sweden and New Zealand have found similar results.

The most common placebos the American doctors reported using were headache pills and vitamins, but a significant number also reported prescribing antibiotics and sedatives. Although these drugs, contrary to the usual definition of placebos, are not inert, doctors reported using them for their effect on patients' psyches, not their bodies.

In most cases, doctors who recommended placebos described them to patients as "a medicine not typically used for your condition but might benefit you," the survey found. Only 5 percent described the treatment to patients as "a placebo."

It is a classic Berlin faceoff: the squatters against the investors. Usually the latter win, but property at the landmark Berlin art squat Tacheles is under receivership and the fate of the site is uncertain.

The future of the Tacheles squat in central Berlin is uncertain. The artists at Tacheles, an iconic squat in central Berlin, have been waiting for the other shoe to drop for a decade.

"We knew the lease would be up. It was hardly a surprise," says Martin Reiter, the long-haired Austrian who heads the co-op that runs Tacheles. After all, the existence of the bombed-out warren of 31 ateliers, a cinema, theater, bar, restaurant and back garden, has always felt a bit tenuous. And with their current deal set to expire at the end of December, anxiety about the future of Tacheles, Yiddish for "straight talk," is growing.

Reiter and a group of fellow artists moved into the building, just down the street from Berlin's iconic New Synagogue, after the Berlin Wall came down 19 years ago and turned it into one of the best-known exhibition spaces in the city. An investment fund called Fundus Group bought the complex and neighboring properties in the early 1990s and negotiated a 10-year lease with the artists in 1998. Rent is a symbolic one deutsche mark, or 50 euro cents per year.

Want to rent a Smart car for 19 cents a minute? Just flash your driver's licence at a device by the windshield, and off you go. That's the essence of a pilot project starting in the German city of Ulm on Friday.

Rain is crashing down and you are late for work. The bus is late and there's no taxi in sight. Why not rent a car? It sounds insane, but it will soon be possible for citizens of Ulm, the focus of a pilot project by Daimler, which wants to make car rental as "easy as using a mobile phone."

The company plans to make a fleet of 50 blue-striped Smart cars available in Ulm to customers who sign up for the project. It will work like car-sharing in Europe and North America, but without the designated parking spots: Customers can unlock a car using a driver's license outfitted with an electronic chip, then type in a PIN code, and drive off. When they're finished, the car can be almost left anywhere in Ulm, waiting for the next driver.

NEW DELHI, India (AP) -- The Vatican has suspended a Roman Catholic bishop in southern India after he adopted a 26-year-old woman, a senior church official said Saturday.

Bishop John Thattungal's conduct will be investigated by a three-member committee of bishops.

Bishop John Thattungal, 58, will be barred from performing any religious or administrative duties until a formal inquiry into his conduct is completed, said the Rev. Stephen Alathara, a spokesman for the Kerala Catholic Bishops' Council, in a telephone interview from the southern Indian city of Kochi.

Alathara said the bishop's adoption of the woman earlier this year had upset other priests in the Kochi diocese.

"The majority of the priests were unhappy and asked for his resignation," he said, adding that the Vatican ordered the suspension on Thursday.

He said there are questions surrounding the legality of the adoption because the woman is not a minor.

Thattungal could not be reached for comment, but news reports in Kerala have quoted him as saying, "I have only fatherly love toward the woman who has spiritual powers. This relation is giving me spiritual refreshment."

Global warming was a sore subject in Italy this week. (Phoebe Natanson/ABC)

First Italy squashed Europe's hope to push through a climate package that would show the world Europe was serious about halting global warming.

Then the European Environment Agency announced that Italy, Denmark and Spain were still "off their Kyoto track" and would not meet their individual countries' targets for cutting emissions under the Kyoto Accord.

But in all this gloom, there was a bright spot in Umbria, the "green heart "of Italy.

A small Italian olive and wine producer has decided it's his task to make a big example and has decided to show the way.

Meet Lorenzo Fasola-Bologna, a dashing 37-year-old with a winning smile, big ideas and lots of energy. He calls his project "the 360 degree Green Revolution." He has set himself a challenge: to cut his family farm's CO2 emissions to zero by the end of 2009.

Italian police unveiled the latest weapon in their war on speeding motorists yesterday - a muscular, blue and white Lamborghini capable of travelling at 200 miles per hour.

The new Gallardo, which boasts a 560-horsepower engine, will prowl Italy's autostradas in search of the country's notoriously lead-footed drivers.

The custom made sports car is equipped with a specially designed mini fridge, which will be used to transport organs and plasma to help save the lives of traffic accident victims. It also comes with a defibrillator for use in emergencies.

It will be based in the Lazio region around Rome but will be deployed all over Italy. Its formidable speed will ensure nervous glances in rear view mirrors from drivers across the country.

An elite team of 30 police officers will be trained in how to handle it by Lamborghini. "Our best test drivers will give the selected policemen a special course," said a company spokeswoman.

The Gallardo, which costs £140,000, will replace an older Lamborghini which the police have been using since 2004.

A multigenerational living project aimed at gays and lesbians got one step closer to being realized when organizers laid a ground stone for the building this week.

Organizers of the building project Villa Anders -- which translates in English as 'A Different Kind of Villa' -- say it is a unique pioneer project in Germany.

Under a rainbow-colored logo and the motto "Better living -- we just went ahead and did it," the project is realizing its plan to build multigenerational, mixed-income living spaces for gay, lesbian and transgender singles, couples and "rainbow" families.

[...]

The project is selective in terms of sexual identity, with living space available for gays, lesbians, transgenders -- and a 15 percent quota of straight people who may be part of an otherwise gay or lesbian family constellation.

[...]

Should it succeed, Villa Anders would be Germany's first such center for gay living, a fact that even Juengst acknowledges is surprising.

"There have been many attempts but they all failed," Juengst said. There was the community in Hamburg that failed because the neighborhood rejected it, and one in Frankfurt that didn't get off the ground because it was too complicated, involving a care center and an old age home. Currently, Berlin is working on a project similar to Villa Anders, but it is also different -- aimed only at homosexual men, and leaning more toward the old-age home model.

"To my knowledge, we are the only one for both gays and lesbians," Juengst said.

From earlier this month. I didn't find anything about it already here using the search function.

(10-05) 04:00 PDT Yreka, Siskiyou County -- Some folks around here think the economic sky is falling and state lawmakers in Sacramento and Salem are ignoring their constituents in the hinterlands.

Guess the time is ripe to create a whole new state.

That's the thinking up here along the border between California and Oregon, where 12 sparsely populated, thickly forested counties in both states want to break away and generate the 51st star on the nation's flag - the state of Jefferson.

You can see the signs of discontent from Klamath Falls to Dunsmuir, where green double-X "Jefferson State" flags hang in scores of businesses. You can hear the talk of revolution at lunch counters and grocery lines, where people grumble that politicians to the north and south don't care.

You can even hear the dissent on the radio, where 21 area FM stations broadcast from Oregon into California under the banner of "Jefferson Public Radio."

"We have nothing in common with you people down south. Nothing," said Randy Bashaw, manager of the Jefferson State Forest Products lumber mill in the Trinity County hamlet of Hayfork. "The sooner we're done with all you people, the better."

Talking about secession has been a quasi-joking conversational saw since 1941, when five counties in the area started things by actually declaring themselves - briefly - to be the state of Jefferson. But now, with the economy in trouble and unemployment soaring, the idea of greater independence is getting its most serious consideration since World War II.

Just as the world at large is experiencing an unprecedented collapse of demography, the UN Population Division reports a sharp decline of fertility rates (number of births per woman) in Muslim and Arab countries, excluding Afghanistan and Yemen.

The myth of "doubling population every 20 years" has been shattered against the cliffs of demography... [The] UN Population Division has reduced its 2050 population projections by 25 percent, from 12 billion to 9 billion, possibly shrinking to 7.4 billion.

For instance, the fertility rate in Iran [has] declined from nine births per woman, 30 years ago, to 1.8 births in 2007. The Muslim religious establishment has also played a key role in decreasing fertility rates in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, from eight and seven births per woman 30 years ago, to less than four and less than 2.5 respectively in 2007. [...]

Demographic precedents suggest only a very slight probability of resurrecting high fertility rates following a sustained period of significant reduction.

Booo... even Muslims are going to die out because of low fertility. We forecast with demographic precedents we have...

As a new warts-and-all exhibition demonstrates, France has rediscovered its affection for Serge Gainsbourg, the anti-hero who came up with the sexiest pop record ever. John Lichfield reports

To the British, Serge Gainsbourg was once the ugly, pouting, unshaven French bloke who sang with the fresh, English rose, Jane Birkin, on the rudest pop record ever, "Je t'aime ... Moi Non Plus". To the French, he was either a pop intellectual rebel or a drunken, pretentious, unpatriotic bore.

In the past decade, Gainsbourg, born 80 years ago this year, has become a cult hero and inspiration to British bands from Portishead to Placebo. A young, fast-rising London band has named itself after one of Gainsbourg's best-loved, and strangest, albums, Melody Nelson.

Serge Gainsbourg has also been rediscovered by young people in his home country as one of the few truly original musicians that France produced in the classic years of pop and rock. He is now seen as a precursor of Queen or David Bowie, as someone who successfully spliced rock and classical music and a writer who produced poetic rather than crass pop lyrics (although he also wrote plenty of those).

Gainsbourg, whose first album appeared a half-century ago, is the subject of an ambitious, hi-tech exhibition which began this week at the Musée de Musique in Paris. There is also a series of tribute concerts at the Cité de Musique, to which the museum belongs, including one next Tuesday by Jane Birkin, now a fresh, 61-year-old English rose and the most popular Briton living in France.

WASHINGTON: The International Monetary Fund said over the weekend that it would stand by its managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, despite concluding that he had shown poor judgment in a sexual affair with a subordinate.

After receiving a report from an outside law firm, the executive board of the fund said Saturday that there was no evidence that Strauss-Kahn had abused his power or shown favoritism in his brief relationship with a senior official at the fund, who later resigned to take a job in London.

Still, the longest-serving member of the board, A. Shakour Shaalan, described the affair as a "serious error of judgment" on the part of Strauss-Kahn, 59, a former French finance minister who took charge a year ago and is now steering the fund through the most serious global financial crisis in decades.

In a statement, Strauss-Kahn said, "I am grateful that the board has confirmed that there was no abuse of authority on my part, but I accept that this incident represents a serious error of judgment."