EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The policy tennis match between biofuels supporters and opponents in the European Union has all but drawn to a close, with the backers of the controversial fuel source securing almost complete victory.

Representatives of EU members states, the European Parliament and the European Commission this week came to a back-room agreement that supports the sourcing of 10 percent of the EU's road transport fuel from renewable forms of energy by 2020 - the same target figure originally proposed by the EU executive in January of this year.

When the proposal was first unveiled, most policymakers assumed that biofuels would make up all or most of the 10 percent figure.

But in the wake of reports from the World Bank through to the UN saying that in many cases biofuels produced more greenhouse gases than fossil fuels and threatened global food supplies, EU lawmakers were under pressure to slim down or abandon the biofuels element of the 10 percent renewable transport fuel target.

In particular, scientists warned that "indirect land-use change" - the creation of new farmland on previous grassland or forest to compensate for farmland lost to biofuels - would put the value of even the "cleanest" biofuels in doubt.

While many in the European Parliament had been convinced of the dangers, the commission and member states remained adamant that the target go ahead largely unchanged.

Under this week's tri-partite agreement, consideration of problems caused by indirect land-use change has been completely junked, apart from a caveat that the European Commission will come up with a report by 2010 on how to minimise this process.

Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek successfully defended his party's leadership Sunday, Dec. 7 a sign of continuity for the European Union as the Czech Republic prepares to chair the bloc and vote on its reform treaty.

In a 284 -162 vote the Civic Democratic Party, which opposes deeper European integration, chose pragmatic treaty supporter Topolanek over his eurosceptic challenger, Prague Mayor Pavel Bem.

"Hopefully I will finally have a moment to prepare and gather strength for that half year, for which I feel great responsibility," Topolanek told reporters. The Czech Republic is set to take over at EU's helm from France on January 1.

But the premier still faces hurdles as his three-party center-right government has been significantly weakened.

Topolanek defeated Bem in a second blow to party's eurosceptic camp during this weekend's party congress.

On Saturday, President Vaclav Klaus, an outspoken EU critic and party's iconic founder, surprisingly cut his ties with the party he founded in 1991 and subsequently led for 12 years.

Dec. 5 (Bloomberg) -- At 4 a.m. on Sept. 30, as the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. was shaking up investors on six continents, President Nicolas Sarkozy convened an emergency meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris to broker the bailout of French-Belgian bank Dexia SA. For an hour, he grilled Finance Minister Christine Lagarde and Bank of France Governor Christian Noyer on the terms of the 6.4 billion euro rescue plan, says François Perol, Sarkozy's economic adviser.

One of his top requirements: Dexia Chief Executive Officer Axel Miller must leave and forfeit his 3.7 million euro severance paycheck.

With that gesture, Sarkozy, who took office pledging to instill a work-hard, get-rich ethos in a country known for its disdain for money, turned into something more familiar to the French: a politician who intervenes in private companies, subsidizes jobs and bashes the bosses.

"By conveying the message that the state can do better than free markets, Nicolas Sarkozy is appealing to the French's old instinct for protection," says Philippe Waechter, chief economist at Natixis Asset Management in Paris. "He seems to be turning his back on his reformist agenda meant to give the French economy more inner resilience."

Thousands of protesters have attacked banks and shops in Athens and Greece's northern city of Thessaloniki, angered by the police's killing of a teenager.

Demonstrators threw petrol bombs, rocks and other objects at the buildings and at police, who responded with tear gas.

Greek Interior Minister Prokopis Pavlopoulos has appealed for restraint.

The streets of the capital were already strewn with glass and rubble after a night of rioting sparked by Saturday's shooting, in the Exarchia district.

Police said Saturday's riots had left 24 police officers injured, one seriously, and 31 shops, nine banks and 25 cars damaged or burned.

Riots have broken out in several Greek cities after police shot dead a teenage boy in Athens.

Following the shooting in the central Exarchia district of the capital late yesterday, youths began throwing petrol bombs at police, burning cars and smashing windows.

Officers used teargas to try to disperse the crowds as hundreds of protesters marched on the police headquarters in Athens chanting "Murderers in uniforms".

The violence spread quickly to Greece's second largest city of Thessaloniki and to other towns in the north.

The circumstances surrounding the boy's death remain unclear. According to a statement issued by police and obtained by Reuters, the officers said their patrol car had been attacked by 30 youths throwing stones and other objects.

When they attempted to arrest the youths, they were attacked again and one of the officers fired three shots, killing the boy, the statement said.

"The two maintain that they were attacked again and responded, with one firing a stun grenade and the other, by shooting three times, resulting in the fatal wounding of the minor."

China has "lodged a strong protest" against France over Saturday's meeting between the French president and the Dalai Lama, Chinese state media report.

Deputy Foreign Minister He Yafei summoned the French ambassador to China to protest, Xinhua news agency said.

"This has undermined the political foundations of Sino-French and Sino-European ties," Mr He told the envoy.

The Tibetan spiritual leader was at a gathering of Nobel Peace Prize winners in Poland when he met Mr Sarkozy.

In protest at the meeting, Beijing cancelled an EU-China summit last week which France was to host early this week.

France currently hold the rotating presidency of the European Union.

Mr Sarkozy is in Poland for a meeting with nine EU eastern member states on the bloc's climate change plans.

The French president, who did not meet the Buddhist leader when he visited France in August, appealed for calm about Saturday's meeting.

"The world needs an open China that participates in global governance," said Mr Sarkozy. "China needs a powerful Europe that gives work to Chinese enterprise."

"The German Federal Archive has agreed to donate 100,000 images to Wikipedia under the German version of the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License. These pictures cover a period from 1860 to present. This is the largest picture donation ever to Wikipedia, and possibly the largest in the history of the free culture movement." Apparently, this is part of a project which will eventually make 11 million photos available for public use.

WASHINGTON, Dec 7 (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Barack Obama said on Sunday he would put strong new financial regulation at the center of his economic recovery program to force more accountability on the banking industry.

Obama again warned that the U.S. economic crisis, which saw the country lose more than half a million jobs in November alone, would worsen before it gets better.

"As part of our economic recovery package what you will see coming out of my administration, right at the center, is a strong set of financial regulations," Obama said in a taped appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" television show.

"Banks, ratings agencies, mortgage brokers, a whole bunch of folks (will) start having to be much more accountable and behave much more responsibly.

"We've got to have transparency, openness, fair dealing in our financial markets and that's an area where I think over the last eight years we've fallen short."

WASHINGTON, Dec 7 (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Banking Committee chairman Christopher Dodd said on Sunday General Motors Corp (GM.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) chief executive Rick Wagoner should resign to allow new leadership to restructure the faltering company.

"I think he has to move on," Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat who is leading efforts to craft legislation to bailout U.S. automakers, said on CBS's "Face the Nation."

U.S. lawmakers are close to a deal to provide $15 billion in emergency loans to help General Motors and Chrysler LLC avoid bankruptcy. Ford Motor Co (F.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), thought to be in best shape of any of the Big Three U.S. auto makers, is also seeking a line of credit from the U.S. government.

Dodd said the legislation would buy the U.S. auto industry time to work through structural and financial problems. He said industry restructuring should be done under new leadership. Asked about Wagoner, Dodd said he should step aside.

HSBC finds tidy profit in property slump

HSBC has emerged as an unlikely beneficiary of the property slump after banking £250m in an 11th-hour deal to take back the keys to its Canary Wharf headquarters from its Spanish owner.

Metrovacesa, the heavily indebted Spanish property company, bought the skyscraper, 8 Canada Square, from HSBC for £1.09bn last summer - using debt provided by HSBC. The deal, at the very peak of the market, was the UK's most expensive property transaction yet. The subsequent crash has eroded almost all the equity put in by Metrovacesa.

The sale and leaseback of the tower, the second-tallest in the UK, was funded by a bridging loan of £810m from the bank topped up by about £280m of equity from Metrovacesa. Metrovacesa and HSBC on Friday finalised the terms of a deal under which the bank will buy back the building for £838m, meaning a loss of more than £250m for Metrovacesa.

The Spanish company was left with few choices after finding it impossible to refinance the deal elsewhere. It also failed during the summer to find a buyer for the building or a stake in it.

I remember thinking (and maybe writing?) that HSBC was doing the smart thing then.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

Deepwater Rig Rates Jump as Shortage Trumps Oil Drop

Dec. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Rental rates for deepwater drilling rigs continue to surge as a worldwide shortage of vessels used to search the oceans for oil outweighs the biggest drop in crude prices in a quarter-century.

Transocean Inc., the world's largest offshore oil driller, agreed to lease its C. Kirk Rhein Jr. rig to Burgundy Global Exploration Corp. for $550,000 a day, a 52 percent increase from the previous rate, according to a public filing today.

Burgundy's lease commences in February, after South African energy producer Sasol Ltd.'s current contract to use the rig off the coast of Mozambique expires, Transocean said. Burgundy, based in Makati City, Philippines, plans to search for oil in Filipino waters.

"It is impressive," Brian Uhlmer, an analyst at Pritchard Capital Partners LLC in Houston, said today in a note to clients. The rate makes Uhlmer "more comfortable" about deepwater-rig operators' prospects for maintaining profits despite lower crude prices.

The global credit crunch is a boon for rig operators such as Transocean because the lack of financing is preventing smaller rivals from following through with plans to build new vessels. As many as one-fifth of the new deepwater rigs on order in shipyards from South Korea to Norway will be canceled or delayed because of capital constraints, Uhlmer said in October.

Demand for vessels that can explore more than 6 miles (9.7 kilometers) below the sea surface and hundreds of miles from shore has risen faster than the world's supply of the most- sophisticated drill ships, pushing day rates to a record.

High Seas

Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and other energy producers require rigs that can operate year-round in rough seas and shelter more than 100 employees for weeks at a time to find crude in places such as the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Angola and the Gulf of Mexico.

Offshore exploration yielded the Western Hemisphere's biggest discovery in three decades when Rio de Janeiro-based Petroleo Brasileiro SA in 2006 found the Tupi field, home to the equivalent of 5 billion to 8 billion barrels of oil.

Transocean also announced higher rental rates today for its GSF Adriatic VI rig off the coast of Gabon and the GSF 103 in Egyptian waters. Each $50,000 increase in daily rig rates adds $3.21 to Transocean's full-year per-share earnings, according to JPMorgan Securities Inc.

Transocean, which is based in the Cayman Islands and run from Houston, is expected to boost 2008 profit by 47 percent to $4.61 billion, based on the average estimate of 19 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

From bad to worse  

As Henry points out, there's no way around it: We've got to kick our addiction to debt if the world is to regain some semblance of financial sanity. On that score, we might interject, one can detect a kind of grim upside to the economic horror afflicting us: It's already done wonders in raising the consciousness of just plain folks -- if not necessarily that of Washington and Wall Street -- to the perils of sinking deep into debt.

Henry lays out with admirable coherence and relative brevity the various likely consequences of the hellish economic and financial bind we find ourselves in. We were particularly struck and disturbed by what he deems the most profound long-term effect of the credit crisis: The sharp acceleration in a trend that has already reached epic proportions -- the concentration that's radically changing finance as we've known it.

The mighty wave of acquisitions, shotgun mergers and the like that has swept over the field has greatly increased the domination of the top 15 institutions, which now hold over half the nonfinancial debt in this fair land. "These were the very firms," Henry reminds us, "that played a central role in creating debt on an unprecedented scale through a process of massive securitization via complex new credit instruments" and who "pushed for legal structures that made many aspects of the financial market opaque."

He warns that in the years ahead, these financial goliaths "will limit any chance for the U.S. to move toward greater economic democracy," and they are riddled with conflicts of interest springing from their multiple roles "in securities underwriting, in lending and investing, in the making of secondary markets and in the management of other people's money."

Henry also balefully predicts that "through their global reach, these sprawling firms will transmit financial contagion even more quickly," and "when the current crisis abates, the pricing power of these huge financial conglomerates will grow significantly, at the expense of borrowers and investors."

Trash has crashed.

The economic downturn has decimated the U.S. market for recycled materials like cardboard, plastic, newspaper and metals. Across the country, this junk is accumulating by the ton in the yards and warehouses of recycling contractors, which are unable to find buyers or are unwilling to sell at rock-bottom prices.

Ordinarily the material would be turned into products like car parts, book covers and boxes for electronics. But with the slump in the scrap market, a trickle is starting to head for landfills instead of a second life.

"It's awful," said Briana Sternberg, education and outreach coordinator for Sedona Recycles, a nonprofit group in Arizona that recently stopped taking certain types of cardboard, like old cereal, rice and pasta boxes. There is no market for these, and the organization's quarter-acre yard is already packed fence to fence.

"Either it goes to landfill or it begins to cost us money," Sternberg said.

Barack Obama's approach to foreign policy should be guided by three key insights.  

First, there are no military solutions to most of the nation's or the world's problems.  

Second, we will be welcomed as a good global partner or we will fail as a global bully.  The world has changed.  The United States has no capacity, and the Obama administration should make clear it no longer has any desire, to dominate the world.

Finally, the United States is economically weak due largely to excessive militarization.  Stated simply, living standards are declining for most Americans because our nation accounts for approximately half of world military expenditures. Although the present economic crisis is linked to casino capitalism and a deregulated market place, the nation's economic decline is best understood in relation to disastrous and costly wars, excessive military spending, and failed foreign policies.  

People throughout the nation and the world are hoping that under Obama's leadership the United States will choose new approaches and pathways to national and global security.  U.S. citizens
have spoken clearly.  We want disastrous wars to end.  We want our government to use its power and resources to help make the economy work for average citizens.  

Here are twenty practical changes to U.S. foreign policy that will help the Obama administration fruitfully reengage the world and fulfill promises to revitalize and promote greater justice in the U.S. economy:

Frank Delaney ~ Ireland

I do not think swedish banks are that much in the risk of collapsing but they are following the international trend and thus are tightening the credit market.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

Good Signs In The Downturn

These are good signs:

• Laid-Off Workers Occupy Chicago Factory
• Illegal Activism: Moving Homeless People Into Foreclosed Houses in Miami

I hope and expect to see more like this. Such activism is not only morally right, it is needed to change the direction of a capitalist system run wild back to a more social(ist) one.

WASHINGTON, Dec 7 (IPS) - If U.S. President-elect Barack Obama wants to begin dismantling Washington's nearly 50-year-old trade embargo against Cuba, it appears he will have widespread support for doing so.

Not only have some major foreign policy heavyweights recently called for ending the embargo if, for no other reason, than to create desperately needed goodwill elsewhere in the Americas and beyond.

But major U.S. business groups also appear more enthusiastic than ever for pushing the incoming administration and the most Democratic Congress in some 20 years in that direction, although they concede the process may be more gradual than they would like.

"We support the complete removal of all trade and travel restrictions on Cuba," a dozen such business associations, including the politically potent Business Roundtable, American Farm Bureau Federation, National Retail Federation, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wrote, in a letter addressed to Obama Thursday.

"We recognize that change may not come all at once, but it must start somewhere, and it must begin soon," they added, noting that Washington's trade embargo and its long-standing efforts to isolate Havana for national security reasons during the Cold War have "far outlasted (their) original purpose".

The letter, which was drafted by Jake Colvin, vice president for Global Trade Issues of the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC), is the latest in a series of public statements by prominent foreign policy figures and institutions in favour of easing, if not abandoning, Washington's efforts to isolate Havana.

KARACHI, Dec 7 (IPS) - A hoax phone call from India to Pakistan's President threatening military reprisals in the aftermath of the terrorist attack on Mumbai city, hyped up by media, brought the nuclear-armed neighbours close to conflict.

However, analysts believe that the hostilities arising from the attack and the media hype can still be contained.

The three-day standoff in Mumbai was barely over on Nov. 28 when the late-evening phone call was made, supposedly from India's External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, to Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari. Because of the heightened tensions, his staff bypassed routine procedures and transferred the call to Zardari.

The imposter "directly threatened to take military action if Islamabad failed to immediately act against the supposed perpetrators of the Mumbai killings" according to a report in the daily Dawn, Pakistan of Dec. 6, which reveals that the call was a hoax that sent Pakistan into a state of `high alert' last weekend, "eyeing India for possible signs of military aggression".

The "aggressive" call, as the news trickled out, created grounds for anger in Pakistan and was used to create public opinion against sending the chief of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to India as the Pakistan government had agreed to do.

A tussle over the issue between the Pakistan army and the civilian government ended with the government reneging on its promise and saying that only a `representative' of the ISI would be sent.

Presidential and parliamentary elections in Ghana have attracted a huge turnout with few reported problems, poll officials say.

President John Kufuor, stepping down after serving the maximum two terms, urged participants to accept the result peacefully and in good faith.

The race to succeed him is considered to be a tight one.

The main contenders are ex-foreign minister Nana Akufo-Addo and the opposition's John Atta Mills.

Mr Atta Mills, of the National Democratic Congress, is a candidate for the top office for a third time.

President Robert Mugabe's government cannot lead Zimbabwe out of its current humanitatian crisis, the Elders group of influential statesmen has said.

The group - which includes former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan - said there was "bitter disappointment" with the current leadership.

The group also called on the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to help contain a cholera outbreak.

Humanitarian agencies say the epidemic has claimed about 600 lives so far.

The Elders include former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, former US President Jimmy Carter and international advocate for women and children's rights Graca Machel.

"There is bitter disappointment in the current leadership. This government has not demonstrated the ability to lead the country out of its current crisis," said former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

The Sudanese army says it has sent more troops to the sensitive oil-rich South Kordofan state.

The army told state media that it had information that a Darfur rebel group planned to attack the area.

The main party in the south says the military build-up is a violation of a 2005 peace deal that ended civil war.

There has been speculation in Khartoum for weeks that large numbers of Darfur rebels had crossed into Kordofan, followed by northern soldiers.

Sudan's armed forces have now confirmed the military build-up.

An army spokesman said the aim was to prevent any effort by the Darfur rebel Justice and Equality Movement (Jem) to extend its activities into South Kordofan.

Opposition parties in Venezuela have formally rejected a plan by President Hugo Chavez to seek to stay in office as long as he keeps winning elections.

In a joint statement, the opposition said: "Fourteen years are sufficient."

Mr Chavez, marking 10 years since his first election as president, is seeking reforms that would let him stand again when his latest term ends in 2012.

Last year, he lost a referendum on the issue and opposition parties say it cannot be voted on again.

Thousands of supporters of the president gathered outside the presidential palace in Caracas on Saturday to mark the 10th anniversary of his first election victory in December 1998.

But opposition parties issued a joint statement saying the president's re-election proposals were "anti-democratic, unconstitutional and against the national interest".

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani militants attacked a parked convoy of trucks carrying military vehicles for Western forces in Afghanistan near Peshawar early on Sunday, destroying 96 trucks, police said.

Security guards said they were overpowered by more than 200 militants who attacked two terminals on the ring road round the northwestern city of Peshawar, where the trucks carrying Humvees and other military vehicles were parked.

"It happened at around 2.30 a.m. They fired rockets, hurled hand grenades and then set ablaze 96 trucks," senior police officer Azeem Khan told Reuters.

Most of the fuel and other supplies for U.S. and NATO forces in landlocked Afghanistan are trucked through Pakistan, much of it through the mountainous Khyber Pass between Peshawar, capital of North-West Frontier Province and the border town of Torkham.

Dec. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Algeria's local natural gas consumption will reach between 49.6 billion and 67.1 billion cubic meters in a decade, the Regulatory Commission for Electricity and Gas in the North African country said.

Consumption this year will be 27.4 billion cubic meters, 7 percent higher than a year earlier, as new projects requiring natural gas for fuel came on stream, the commission said in a statement today.

The oil and gas producer is targeting production of 86 billion cubic meters of gas by 2010.

FARGO, North Dakota -- Federal Customs and Border Protection authorities are preparing to launch unmanned aircraft patrols from this state, the first time such monitoring will occur along the nation's northern border.

A Predator B aircraft, delivered to Grand Forks on Saturday, will make runs along the northern edge of North Dakota using sensors that can provide video and detect heat and changes to landscape, Customs and Border Protection officials said.

The plane, which can go 260 miles per hour and fly as high as 50,000 feet, can stay aloft for 18 hours. The first missions, designed to help spot people crossing the border illegally or avoiding ports of entry, are expected to start next month.

Similar aircraft have patrolled the nation's southern border since 2005, where they have helped lead to the discovery of more than 18,000 pounds of marijuana and 4,000 illegal immigrants, a spokesman for the agency said. ...

43- Areas of Taliban presence in Afghanistan during 2007 - November 2008

A re-made map indicating where the Taliban used to have a 54% permanent presence in 2007.

45 - Areas of Taliban presence in Afghanistan plus fatal violent incidents in 2008 - November 2008

Map detailing provinces with permanent, substantial and light Taliban presence along with acts of violence that have resulted in a known civilian, military or insurgent fatality. Permanent Taliban presence now amounts to 72% of the total landmass.

... Indeed, Sarkozy had provoked the Chinese more than once. And, after some slight shows of regret, or perhaps ambiguous explanations, China continued to buy Airbuses.

That might exactly be why the French president was bold and assured in the face of Chinese anger, netizens argue. <...>

By the way, an advice for the surprised French - do not mistake spontaneous grassroots expressions of discontent for alleged government instigation. <...>

When President Sarkozy asked the Chinese to respect his loyalty to his own values and principles, he ignored the Chinese side's special sensitivities on matters of sovereignty.

He made reconciliatory gestures after the unpleasant pre-Olympic episodes, and was forgiven by the Chinese.

But there is a limit to everything. What happened Saturday calls into question all his previous efforts to repair ties, and his personal credibility as well.

If there is any dip in sales for LVMH, Carrefour, Renault, Peugeot-Citroën, etc. in China this week, it will be interesting to see how long it lasts.  I have a feeling that among the Chinese middle class, foreign brand names already achieved longer lasting power than patriotic indignation.

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

Pork from the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland should not be eaten due to contamination fears, the Food Standards Agency has said.

The advice follows the Irish government's recall of pork products made in the Republic since September.

Dioxins were found in pigs thought to have eaten contaminated feed on 56 farms - nine in Northern Ireland.

The UK's Food Standards Agency said it did not believe at this stage that UK consumers faced any "significant risk".

Why were Wall Street workers not asked for concessions?
Autoworkers stepped up to the plate to save the car industry. White-collar workers, on the other hand, weren't expected to do the same when financial firms went to Congress with hat in hand.

David Lazarus,  December 7   LA TIMES

Say what you will about the role of the union in exacerbating Detroit's financial troubles, one thing stands out: Blue-collar workers are taking it in the shorts as part of their employers' efforts to secure some bailout bucks from Uncle Sam.

I don't recall white-collar workers on Wall Street stepping up with similar concessions in return for their companies' receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer cash.

"There is absolutely no excuse for a bailout without significant sacrifices by all stakeholders," said Robert Reich, who served as Labor secretary under President Clinton and is now a professor of public policy at UC Berkeley.

-Skip-

"Most Americans don't understand -- or don't want to understand -- the complicated deal we made with Citigroup," Reich said. "But when you talk about General Motors, it's much more concrete. People know what a car is."

For that reason, he said, lawmakers in Washington have been more assertive about wringing concessions from the auto industry, whereas the heads of Wall Street firms essentially got by with slaps on the wrist.

... Anthropologists trace the acceptance of people of mixed gender to pre-Colombian Mexico, pointing to accounts of cross-dressing Aztec priests and Mayan gods who were male and female at the same time. Spanish colonizers wiped out most of those attitudes in the 1500s by forcing conversion to Catholicism. But mixed-gender identities managed to survive in the area around Juchitán, a place so traditional that many people speak ancient Zapotec instead of Spanish.

Not all muxes express their identities the same way. Some dress as women and take hormones to change their bodies. Others favor male clothes. What they share is that the community accepts them; many in it believe that muxes have special intellectual and artistic gifts.

Every November, muxes inundate the town for a grand ball that attracts local men, women and children as well as outsiders. A queen is selected; the mayor crowns her. "I don't care what people say," said Sebastian Sarmienta, the boyfriend of a muxe, Ninel Castillejo García. "There are some people who get uncomfortable. I don't see a problem. What is so bad about it?" ...

The male gender is in danger, with incalculable consequences for both humans and wildlife, startling scientific research from around the world reveals.

The research - to be detailed tomorrow in the most comprehensive report yet published - shows that a host of common chemicals is feminising males of every class of vertebrate animals, from fish to mammals, including people.

Backed by some of the world's leading scientists, who say that it "waves a red flag" for humanity and shows that evolution itself is being disrupted, the report comes out at a particularly sensitive time for ministers. On Wednesday, Britain will lead opposition to proposed new European controls on pesticides, many of which have been found to have "gender-bending" effects.

It also follows hard on the heels of new American research which shows that baby boys born to women exposed to widespread chemicals in pregnancy are born with smaller penises and feminised genitals.

"This research shows that the basic male tool kit is under threat," says Gwynne Lyons, a former government adviser on the health effects of chemicals, who wrote the report.

"For many who witnessed it," writes John Markoff in his book "What the Dormouse Said," about the development of the personal computer, "it was more than a bolt out of the blue: It was a religious experience."
.....
"A small box with a tail coming out - you might as well call it a mouse," said English, who figured out how to construct the device based on a sketch that Engelbart had drawn in 1961.

The mouse wasn't the automatic choice. It won out only after other approaches - a light pen, a joystick, even a knee-operated control - proved to be far less efficient, English said.

Many retrospective looks at the 1968 demonstration have highlighted the introduction of the mouse, which Engelbart patented under the name "X-Y Position Indicator for a Display System."

Steve Jobs was 13 years old; Stewart Brand (Whole Earth Catalog) was behind the camera as Engelbart communicated from the stage to his lab.

There's a fascinating memorial site here.  Complete with catalogued clips as well as the entire demo.  From this little creature evolved the 3-D trackpad, or touch sensitive screen; who'da thunk it?

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

Amid the tall citrus trees of Okinawa, Japan, Tsune Ganaha is busy picking fruit as she does eight hours every day.  It's not what she does, but who she is that's remarkable.

"I just turned ninety," she says.  Age ninety.  Climbing trees after tree, hauling down bags of fruit, and doesn't remember a day she's ever been sick in her nearly seventy years on this farm.

Ganaha's 54- and 61-year old daughters say good luck trying to get her to retire.  "We can't stop her," they say. And why would they?  She's the best climber in the family.  <...>

We met 96-year old Toyohide Taira who loves to flirt with the ladies, who tells young people: "Don't get married.  You'll be sick of your spouse when you're 90!" <...>

Gerontologist Craig Wilcox has been studying longevity  in Okinawa for fifteen years, an island that has the highest percentage of centenarians anywhere in the world.

He points to a number of factors:

• the Okinawan diet: very low in fat, salt and sugar: this traditional lunch plate is filled with papaya, tofu and dark leafy vegetables
  
• at this weekend event, they snack on citrus fruits and sip on unsweetened green tea
  
• they exercise and work well into old age
  
• there's a good, affordable healthcare system that focuses on prevention
  
• and a strong sense of sense of community that values optimism, where older people remain active and respected

Wilcox says any community can replicate this: "We still refer to these types of diseases as 'age-associated diseases' back in North America.  Well, people don't do that anymore here.  There's tremendous amount of control people have over these diseases if they live the right lifestyle." <...>

Tsune Ganaha's family swears by a daily dose of Okinawan citrus.  But more importantly, working and being close to family, a recipe she says will keep her hiking these hills for more years to come.

the report doesn't mention another possibility:  survival of the fittest  (only half-kidding)

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

BBC NEWS | England | Wiltshire | Christmas tree too big to put up

The lighting-up ceremony of a Christmas tree in Swindon has had to be postponed after the bigger-than-expected tree broke the base it was being mounted on.

Council officials had asked for a 40ft (12m) tree as the centrepiece for the town's "magic roundabout" but a 50ft tall (15m) tree was delivered instead.

When contractors tried to lift it on to the specially-made plinth for Monday's switch-on the base fractured.

It is believed the extra weight was to blame. The tree had to be taken away.

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

The annual Gifts for Guns program ended Sunday in Compton, a working class city south of Los Angeles that has long struggled with gun and gang violence. In a program similar to ones in New York and San Francisco, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department allows residents to anonymously relinquish firearms in return for $100 gift cards for Ralphs supermarkets, Target department stores or Best Buy electronics stores.