Domestic interests are beginning to set policy as German Chancellor Angela Merkel positions herself to vie for re-election in September. That means disappointments for some of Germany's international partners. 

Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, together with their preferred coalition partner the Free Democrats, may be attracting a solid majority in recent public-opinion polls. But Merkel is surely aware of how volatile the political situation is in these economically troubled times.

 

So the chancellor, experts say, is already realigning her government's policies to appeal to the home-front. The most recent example came last weekend, when Merkel led opposition to a proposed 180 billion euro ($226 billion) aid package for eastern European economies at an EU summit in Brussels.

 

"The concerns in the German population about jobs and the economic outlook are huge," Klaus-Peter Schoeppner, the head of polling group Emnid, told Reuters news agency. "Against that backdrop, I really don't see a way for Merkel to explain to the voters that Germany must help out other countries, whether they are in the euro bloc or outside."

The EU could soon be off limits for seal products. European parliamentarians have voted to outlaw these goods, with the exception of traditional Inuit hunting. Opponents say the ban may break international trade rules. 

The European Parliament's internal market committee has voted to strictly ban trading throughout the EU in products derived from seals. A report approved by the committee on Tuesday, March 3, said the ban would cover seal products, as well as meat, oil, blubber, organs and fur skins.

 

The parliament said in a statement that it had reacted to concerns by non-governmental organizations and public opinion in most member states about seal killings.

 

"A clear majority of citizens across the European Union are horrified by the cruel clubbing to death of thousands of seals every year," said Arlene McCarthy, the committee's chair. "They do not want these products on sale in the EU and today, the internal market committee has backed citizens' demands for a ban."

 

EUOBSERVER/BRUSSELS - US secretary of state Hillary Clinton will meet her European counterparts in Brussels this evening for a "transatlantic dinner" ahead of the Nato ministerial meeting on Thursday set to focus on Afghanistan, Eastern Europe and Russia.

"She will convey on behalf of the Obama administration our commitment to revitalising Nato, listening to our allies and consulting, hearing their views and building strategies together," Kurt Volker, the US permanent representative to Nato told EUobserver.

Hillary Clinton is set to ask for a greater European commitment in Afghanistan

The informal get-to-know-each-other meeting will also see non-Nato foreign ministers from Finland, Sweden and non-EU nation Switzerland attend.

Renewed commitment to the Nato operation in Afghanistan, which the Obama administration has put high on its agenda, is set to dominate the talks.

Ms Clinton will likely also be faced with questions regarding the planned US missile defence shield in Poland and the Czech Republic after reports that President Barack Obama sent a secret letter to Moscow offering to back down from the project in return for Russian support against Iran's nuclear programme.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Women earn an average of 17.4 percent less than men across the EU's 27 member states, with the greatest gender pay difference seen in Estonia, EU statistics released ahead of international women's day show.

Part of a campaign to raise awareness of a situation that has changed little in recent years, EU studies show the discrepancy is largely due to an undervaluation of women's work, stereotyping and problems with balancing work and private life.

Women account for just a quarter of government ministers in the EU

The situation is most acute in Estonia, where men on average earn almost a third (30.3%) more, followed by Austria, Slovakia, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Cyprus and Germany.

At the other end of the scale, the pay gap is lowest in Italy (4.4%), Malta (5.2%) and Poland (7.5%). However, these countries also show relatively low participation of women in the workforce.

"Tackling [the situation] requires action at all levels and a commitment from everyone concerned, from employers and trade unions to national authorities and every citizen," said EU social affairs commissioner Vladimir Spidla.

When Thomas and Zibi came to Britain, jobs were easy to come by. Now they are sleeping in a tent, victims of a recession that has destroyed the livelihoods of thousands of migrant workers

Thomas and his brother Zibi were trying to keep themselves warm at their riverbank home yesterday by huddling round a small, smoky fire built from green sticks. A pot of water bubbled away and all around the trees and undergrowth, which only partially concealed their makeshift shelters from curious passers-by, were festooned with clothes and plastic bags.

National security services have raided the headquarters of Naftogaz, Ukraine's state energy company, in what they said was part of a criminal investigation.

The agents, who were armed and wore masks, were searching for documents in connection with an investigation into an alleged diversion of gas worth $900m, a spokeswoman for the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said.

Marina Ostapenko said Naftogaz knew that the SBU would be taking documents from its headquarters in Kiev, Ukraine's capital, adding that the raid was "within the framework of the law".

Naftogaz was involved in a gas pricing dispute with Gazprom, Russia's state energy company, in January, which led to severe energy shortages across Europe for two weeks.

Fresh charges of money laundering and fraud against former oligarch

The Russian former oligarch Mik-hail Khodorkovsky appeared in court in Moscow yesterday at the start of hearings in a new criminal case that could send him back to prison for 20 more years. The former chief of the Yukos oil company, Mr Khodorkovsky was Russia's richest man until his arrest in 2003.

Dressed in jeans and a black sweater, with his grey hair cropped short, he made his first public appearance in the Russian capital since being sentenced to eight years in prison in 2005. Alongside him was his former business partner, Platon Lebedev, who is also serving an eight-year sentence. Both face new charges of money-laundering and embezzlement.

Security was tight at the Khamovnichesky Court, a scruffy building overlooking the Moscow River in the centre of the capital. The road had been closed to pedestrians and police patrolled the street with sniffer dogs ahead of Mr Khodorkovsky's arrival. The initial hearings were closed to the press, with television cameras allowed into the main courtroom for just a few minutes before proceedings started at midday. There were chaotic scenes outside the court during the hour before, with journalists jostling for admission, and lawyers for the defence elbowing their way through to get into the court.

TATARSZENTGYORGY, Hungary: Thousands of people, mostly Roma, joined the funeral procession Tuesday of a young boy and his father who were shot dead last week in the latest in a series of attacks on Roma in Hungary.

A crowd of about 5,000, which also included politicians from parliamentary parties and civil rights activists, gathered around the graves of the two victims in the village of Tatarszentgyorgy, 65 kilometers, or 40 miles, southeast of Budapest.

Black-clad mourners wept and when the coffin was lowered into the grave in the small hillside cemetery, the world-famous 100-member Gypsy Symphony Orchestra started to play.

"We seek the forgiveness of the mourning family and...our Gypsy brethren whom for 500 years we have owed an embrace," the Hungarian Methodist pastor Gabor Ivanyi, who is not Roma, said as he addressed the gathering. "We are a deeply moved and ashamed people."

The killings last Monday were the latest in a series of more than a dozen attacks on Roma in Hungary in which seven people have died over the past year.

EU governments Tuesday agreed to slap tariffs on US biodiesel, the International Herald Tribune reports diplomats as saying. Europe has repeatedly complained that American biodiesel is subsidised twice, both by the US and EU states. The EU commission is to set the tariff level some time next week.

Statement by Terry Davis, Secretary General of the Council of Europe

Strasbourg, 03.03.2009 - "Italy has today ratified Protocol 13 to the European Convention on Human Rights. This Protocol bans the death penalty in all circumstances, and Italy is the 41^st European country to take this important step which consolidates the death penalty-free zone throughout Europe."

Council of Europe Directorate of Communication

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - After waiting for the Obama administration to take office, European states have started floating names for the next NATO secretary general to replace Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, whose mandate ends on 31 July.

Although there is less than a month to go until the 60th anniversary NATO summit in Strasbourg/Kehl, member states are still in the early stage regarding the nomination of the next NATO chief, Herman Schaper, the Dutch ambassador to the alliance, told EUobserver.

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer's (r) mandate is associated with George W. Bush's (l) presidency

"We waited for the Obama administration and only started two to three weeks ago to invite countries to present their candidate. At this moment there is no official candidate," Mr Schaper explained.

Asked about the chances for an Eastern European secretary general, Mr Schaper said that there were already two names floated from Poland and Bulgaria - foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski and former top diplomat Solomon Passy, respectively.

Protests seems to have an effect tough.

Enquête après une plainte d'Aurélie Filippetti pour violences conjugales

PARIS (AFP) -- Une enquête préliminaire a été ouverte à Paris à la suite d'une plainte déposée par la députée socialiste de Moselle Aurélie Filippetti à l'encontre de son compagnon pour violences entre conjoints, a-t-on appris mardi de source proche du dossier.

Cette plainte a été déposée le 6 février par la porte-parole du groupe PS à l'Assemblée nationale à l'encontre de son conjoint, l'économiste Thomas Piketty, selon cette source, confirmant une information du Figaro.

(...)

Agée de 35 ans, Aurélie Filippetti figure en troisième position sur la liste du PS pour les élections européennes de juin dans la région Est.

Filipetty, a socialist MP, and the third in the Socialist list for the Euroepan elections in the Eastern region, has filed suit against her partner, Thomas Piketty, for domestic violence.

We've quoted Piketty rather often on ET (see this most recent storyby afew); his best know work is his study on income inequality ovr the century, using tax returns, which has been quoted widely - and he is now the boss of the Paris School of Economics - so it was a surprise for me to see his name pop up in this story. I've actually met Aurélie Filipetti in 2007, during the 2007 presidential campaign, when I was invited as a blogger on Europe 1 - she was invited to the same show, and we ended up sitting at the same table in th studio.

Weird. And sad, as conjugal violence is a rather big black mark in my mind.

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

Swedish conservatives and social democrats stands to gain in June's European Parliament elections. A new Skop-poll in Dagens Nyheter predicts they are to win respectively 35.6% and 31.7% of votes (up 11% and 13.4% on the 2004 elections). The EU-critical Junelist is in for 3.5%, down from 14.5%.

A 100 jours des élections européennes, EurActiv.fr fait le point sur les têtes de liste pour le scrutin des 6 et 7 juin prochain, parti par parti, région par région. Ce tableau sera régulièrement remis à jour.

In a move that surprised and infuriated some, the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF) suddenly decided to switch candidates at the top of its party list for the EU elections last week. Without consulting the party's only MEP, Péter Olajos, who had been considered favourite to head the list, the MDF leadership decided to nominate former finance minister Lajos Bokros instead, a member of the Socialist cabinet in the 1990s.

"The controversies and the internal struggles for power which shadowed the life of the MDF have now entered a stage where they can lead to irreversible changes," Olajos said, objecting to the fact that the decision was taken while he was at an ACP-EU meeting in Guyana. 

The main Czech political parties are gearing up for the EU elections by loading their electoral narratives with negative attacks against adversaries, neglecting to take a stance on European issues.

The governing right-wing Civic Democratic Party (ODS) and the left-wing Social Democratic Party (CSSD) have initiated largely negative campaigns for the next elections to the European Parliament, set to take place on 4-7 June. 

Internal rather than pan-European issues are largely expected to dominate debates during the pre-election period. The opposition CSSD is widely expected to win the elections and will consider the ballot successful if it gains eight to ten of the 22 seats reserved for Czech MEPs. 

This is all tentative, since a new law in the making has yet to be passed. It will determine strategies and tactics that may alter the present situation. But then the majority's bill is also tactical, very much a part of the process, just as the Porcellum electoral law was in 2006. However, it is unlikely to greatly alter the weight of the two blocks: a solid rightwing sweep with a fragmented left bleating about local victories in far-flung corners.

The party's 2009 European Elections poster shows a nostalgic picture of a Second World War fighter plane under the slogan "Battle for Britain".

But RAF history experts have identified the iconic Romeo Foxtrot Delta Plane as belonging not to Britons but to a group of Polish pilots instead.

The plane was actually flown by the celebrated 303 Squadron of the RAF - made up of Polish airmen rescued from France shortly before Nazi occupation.

American, Detroit-based car manufacturer General Motors has asked EU governments to come to its rescue as the company struggles with a major cash-flow problem that threatens thousands of jobs in Europe.

Speaking at the Geneva motor show on Tuesday (3 March), the company's chief operating officer, Fritz Henderson, said the company could run out of cash supplies by as early as next month, reports the Financial Times.

GM currently provides direct employment to over 50,000 people in the EU

"We would try to stay alive, but there's no guarantee we could stay alive," he told reporters at the motor show. "We would become insolvent at that point."

GM provides direct employment for over 50,000 people in Europe, with major plants located in Germany, Spain, Poland, Belgium and the UK.

About 25,000 of these jobs are in Germany, 7,000 in Spain and close to 5,000 in Britain. Another 5,000 jobs are located in Sweden, mainly at carmaker Saab, which is owned by GM.

March 4 (Bloomberg) -- UBS AG, Switzerland's largest bank, nominated former Finance Minister Kaspar Villiger as chairman of its board of directors, replacing Peter Kurer after one year amid a probe into whether it helped wealthy Americans evade taxes.

Kurer's departure comes less than a week after UBS called former Credit Suisse Group AG Chief Executive Officer Oswald Gruebel, 65, out of retirement to replace CEO Marcel Rohner. Villiger, 68, will step down from board positions at Swiss Reinsurance Co, Nestle SA and Neue Zuercher Zeitung if elected by shareholders on April 15, the Zurich-based bank said today.

UBS is being sued by the U.S. over the names of as many as 52,000 clients, after agreeing last month to hand out details of a few hundred customers to avoid prosecution on a charge that it helped rich Americans evade taxes. The bank is cutting 11,000 jobs after more than $50 billion in losses from the credit crisis, and clients withdrew $195 billion of assets last year.

"This is a clean slate," said Christian Stark, an analyst at Credit Agricole Cheuvreux in Zurich who has an "underperform" rating on the stock. "Villiger hasn't got the banking experience, but his political background may be useful in dealing with the U.S. and European Union."

A plan to make Opel largely independent of General Motors, and save the German carmaker from failure, will cost at least 3,500 jobs, says the head of GM Europe. The Detroit automaker hopes to free Opel to win financing from a skeptical German government.

German carmarker Opel said Wednesday it expected to slash at least 3,500 jobs as part of its plan to re-establish the General Motors subsidiary as a largely independent operating unit. The layoffs are part of a rescue plan the company has submitted to the German government in the hope of obtaining federal financial aid for ailing Opel.

We are in the midst of a global recession.  All kinds of experts are beavering away writing deep and impenetrable analyses about financial regulation. Government leaders meet, making one pronouncement after another, in an attempt to shore up an ever tightening spiral of decline.  Each day almost brings news of some other catastrophe or business failure.  Massive amounts of money are being thrown at the stumbling economy. Where, when will it end?

We all assume that it will end.  That the efforts now being made on our behalf will succeed and that our economic jumbo will pull out of its nosedive and begin climbing again. But what I want to ask is this:  where are we trying to get to?

Let me explain. Let's jump forward a few years (and it seems unlikely we shall be again in any routine market situation anytime soon) and ask what we want post-recessionary Europe to look like?

Is all the current activity directed simply at recreating 2006 - the last year before the financial cracks began to be noticeable?  Having skidded off the road, is the extent of our ambition just to get back on tarmac again and to carry on speeding as before?

Certainly we shall repair the car, fit better brakes and steering; we shall stand less chance of coming off the road; but is it the intention that by 2012, say, we shall all be rolling along, as before?  The container ships brimming once again with Chinese manufactures, shops full, lights on, a new car every three years?  Is this the vision?

BERLIN:

In the past when the European Union was paralyzed by a crisis, France and Germany would come to the rescue. Their leaders have not always seen eye to eye, but over the decades they have generally found compromises that have kept the European integration project alive.

Now, with the financial crisis showing no signs of bottoming out, the opportunity for Paris and Berlin to promote unity should have been ideal. Instead, they have adopted opposing approaches over how Europe should respond to the global meltdown.

Chancellor Angela Merkel wants to prevent Europe from attempting to spend its way out of the crisis. Her big concern is the explosion of public debt and the ensuing specter of inflation. Ever since the 1920s, when galloping prices wiped out Germany's wealth, inflation has been the bête noire of the German psyche.

President Nicolas Sarkozy, in contrast, has been advocating both protectionist policies and big spending programs, much to the exasperation of Merkel's economic advisers. In order to counter Sarkozy's ideas, Merkel has begun forging alliances with small and medium-sized countries, something which another conservative chancellor, Helmut Kohl, was adept at.

Issuing joint EU bonds, or EU-backed government debt, to raise money for troubled member states is "possible and reasonable" but unrealistic in the short run, EU Economic Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said yesterday (3 March). For the first time, he also hinted that the EU has a strategy for rescuing insolvent eurozone members.
In a landmark speech in Brussels, Almunia shed light on two of the most controversial issues debated in Europe over the past months.
"If you are asking me whether a common issuance of bonds is reasonable, I will tell you that it is. But it is up to member states to decide, and many of them oppose the idea," he said during a conference organised by the European Policy Centre (EPC).
The commissioner has so far always avoided making clear comments on the common issuance of government bonds by a group of member states, hiding behind fierce opposition from Germany and the Netherlands.

MOSCOW -- If you're inclined to believe Igor Panarin, and the Kremlin wouldn't mind if you did, then President Barack Obama will order martial law this year, the U.S. will split into six rump-states before 2011, and Russia and China will become the backbones of a new world order.

Panarin might be easy to ignore but for the fact that he is a dean at the Foreign Ministry's school for future diplomats and a regular on Russia's state-guided TV channels. And his predictions fit into the anti-American story line of the Kremlin leadership.

"There is a high probability that the collapse of the United States will occur by 2010," Panarin told dozens of students, professors and diplomats Tuesday at the Diplomatic Academy _ a lecture the ministry pointedly invited The Associated Press and other foreign media to attend.

GE Shares Fall to 18-Year Lows

Shares of General Electric Corp. fell for the fourth straight trading session Wednesday to levels not seen since 1991 as the cost of protecting the debt of its ailing financing arm continues to soar.

Shares ended down 4.5% and fell as much as 18% to $5.73 at one point Wednesday amid concerns about its liquidity position and whether it would need to raise capital. Shares have now lost more than 25% since its opening last Friday, the day it cut its dividend in a move meant to alleviate those very same concerns.

GE reiterated Wednesday that it has no need to raise additional capital, saying it has "stressed" its big financial-services portfolio to prove it.

Credit default swaps -- a key gauge of creditworthiness -- on General Electric Capital Corp. continued to show levels indicative of distressed companies. Traders are willing to spend $1.45 million, plus an annual fee of $500,000, to protect $10 million of the financing arm's senior bonds against default for five years, according to broker Phoenix Partners Group. CDS were quoted at 13.5 points up front Tuesday, and 10.75 points up front Monday.

The stock has been pounded this week as investors grew nervous of a potential need for equity, though GE has said it doesn't anticipate raising equity.

[Jerome's WEEEEEE™ Technology]

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

Toy retailer ToysRUs has paid $5.1m (£3.6m) for the Toys.com domain name.

The amount has surprised onlookers and hints at a deeper commitment to online retailing for the toy giant.

It is believed to be the biggest payout for a domain this year but has some way to go to beat the $14m paid for sex.com in 2007 or the $9.5m paid for porn.com.

UK domain name seller Sedo said it had seen prices halved for .co.uk domain names since the economic downturn started to take hold.

CALABASAS, Calif. -- Fairly or not, Countrywide Financial and its top executives would be on most lists of those who share blame for the nation's economic crisis. After all, the banking behemoth made risky loans to tens of thousands of Americans, helping set off a chain of events that has the economy staggering.

So it may come as a surprise that a dozen former top Countrywide executives now stand to make millions from the home mortgage mess.  Stanford L. Kurland, Countrywide's former president, and his team have been buying up delinquent home mortgages that the government took over from other failed banks, sometimes for pennies on the dollar. They get a piece of what they can collect.

"It has been very successful -- very strong," John Lawrence, the company's head of loan servicing, told Mr. Kurland one recent morning in a glass-walled boardroom here at PennyMac's spacious headquarters, opened last year in the same Los Angeles suburb where Countrywide once flourished.

"In fact, it's off-the-charts good," he told Mr. Kurland, who was leaning back comfortably in his leather boardroom chair, even as the financial markets in New York were plunging.

As hundreds of billions of dollars flow from Washington to jump-start the nation's staggering banks, automakers and other industries, a new economy is emerging of businesses that hope to make money from the various government programs that make up the largest economic rescue in history.

WSJ | Bear Stearns' Jimmy Cayne's Profane Tirade Against Treasury's Geithner

"The audacity of that p--k in front of the American people announcing he was deciding whether or not a firm of this stature and this whatever was good enough to get a loan," he said. "Like he was the determining factor, and it's like a flea on his back, floating down underneath the Golden Gate Bridge, getting a h-d-on, saying, `Raise the bridge.' This guy thinks he's got a big d-k. He's got nothing, except maybe a boyfriend. I'm not a good enemy. I'm a very bad enemy. But certain things really--that bothered me plenty. It's just that for some clerk to make a decision based on what, your own personal feeling about whether or not they're a good credit? Who the f-k asked you? You're not an elected officer. You're a clerk. Believe me, you're a clerk. I want to open up on this f---r, that's all I can tell you."

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!

[Drew's WHEEEEE™ Technology]

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

V: I heard this yesterday: The top five U.K. banks have $10 trillion of assets and their GDP is only $2.13 trillion. The whole country could fall into the ocean.

Sales of new cars in February were 22% lower than a year earlier, the latest industry figures have shown.

The number of new UK registrations in February was 54,359, down from 69,610 the year before, said the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT).

A group called Wall Street Watch is out with a report that finds that "Wall Street investment firms, commercial banks, hedge funds, real estate companies and insurance conglomerates made $1.7 billion in political contributions and spent another $3.4 billion on lobbyists" between 1998 and 2008.

The report, "Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America," concludes that the contributions were "aimed at undercutting federal regulation" and ultimately "led directly to the current financial collapse."

The five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany on Tuesday offered direct dialogue with Iran to solve the ongoing nuclear standoff with the Islamic Republic. 

A joint statement from the six nations -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the US plus Germany -- called on Iran to "take this opportunity for engagement with us and thereby maximize opportunities for a negotiated way forward.

"We remain firmly committed to a comprehensive diplomatic solution, including through direct dialogue," the so-called P5+1 nations said in a statement read to a closed-door meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board of governors in Vienna.

The six voiced serious concern at Iran's atomic advances and increasing restrictions on UN inspectors trying to keep track of them, but did not mention toughening sanctions as a way to rein in Iran.

Sanctions threats have been common in statements by Western members at earlier IAEA meetings. But Russia and China oppose further punitive steps.

RAMALLAH, West Bank:

The U.S. secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, held talks on Wednesday with Palestinian leaders over whether Israel's next government would commit to a U.S.-backed peace process leading to a Palestinian state.

A day after pledging that the Obama administration would always protect Israel's security, Clinton visited the Israeli-occupied West Bank to deliver a message of support for President Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority.

"We are very committed to your efforts in this leadership of President Abbas," Clinton told Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, the point man in Western-backed reconstruction plans for the Gaza Strip that freeze out the territory's Hamas  rulers.

Hamas, which won a parliamentary election in 2006, violently wrested control of the Gaza Strip from Abbas's Fatah faction in 2007. The West shuns Hamas over its refusal to recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept existing interim peace deals.

Addressing congress Gordon Brown hailed the special relationship saying, "There is no power on Earth that can drive us apart."

He also issued a call for America to take a lead in the world's battle against recession and climate change.

In a speech to both houses of Congress, the Prime Minister urged the US political elite to "seize the moment" by joining Britain and the rest of the world in international cooperation to tackle the economic crisis and "build tomorrow today".

The International Criminal Court at the Hague issued an arrest warrant Wednesday for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for a five-year campaign of violence in Darfur.

It is the first arrest warrant ever issued for a sitting head of state by the world's only permanent war crimes tribunal.

Bashir is charged with seven counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes. The warrant does not mention genocide, but the court may issue an amended warrant to include that charge later, ICC spokeswoman Laurence Blairon said.

China's national Legislature begins its tightly scripted annual meeting on Thursday with an agenda dominated by the ruling Communist Party's two overriding concerns: riding out the global economic crisis and keeping citizens' unhappiness with their lot from boiling over into public unrest.

In the nine-day session of the National People's Congress, about the only suspense involves whether the government will propose to add still more stimulus spending to the $584 billion that China's leaders already have pledged to help the slumping economy. On Wednesday, Asian and European stocks rose in part on hopes that it would.

Prime Minister Wen Jiabao is to speak early on Thursday to the 3,000-odd delegates, and is expected by many analysts to set a target for 8 percent growth of China's gross domestic product in 2009, the same as in previous years. The government has long said that that rate is needed to hold down unemployment and the potential for social unrest. The economy logged a 9 percent rate last year, even after a sharp slowdown in the last quarter.

But a number of experts believe that a 2009 growth rate of 6.5 percent or 7 percent, meager by recent Chinese standards, is increasingly likely. Some financial analysts predicted this week that the government will propose spending vast new amounts to head off a sharper decline, although the consensus view is that new spending, if any, will be more modest.

Business owners, law enforcement officers, journalists and other professionals are among those seeking asylum in the U.S. -- even when it means sitting in jail...

The number of asylum requests filed at U.S. border entries by Mexican nationals nearly doubled to almost 200 in the last fiscal year, and the pace has increased this year. Seventy Mexican asylum-seekers filed petitions in the first quarter, most of them in El Paso and San Diego. The figures are small compared with the vast scale of illegal immigration, but many fear explosive growth if the bloodshed worsens.

Drug violence in Mexico has claimed at least 7,000 lives in little more than a year, most of them along the border and many carried out to maximize their gruesome effect. Mass killings and beheadings have had a terrorizing effect on border towns from Texas to Tijuana...

Asylum-seekers are among the most desperate people confronting immigration officials. Deporting them to their homeland can be a death sentence. But under U.S. law, fear of criminal violence is not recognized as grounds for asylum.

Feb. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Baxter International Inc. in Austria unintentionally contaminated samples with the bird flu virus that were used in laboratories in three neighboring countries, raising concern about the potential spread of the deadly disease.

The contamination was discovered when ferrets at a laboratory in the Czech Republic died after being inoculated with vaccine made from the samples early this month. The material came from Deerfield, Illinois-based Baxter, which reported the incident to the Austrian Ministry of Health, Sigrid Rosenberger, a ministry spokeswoman, said today in a telephone interview.

"This was infected with a bird flu virus," Rosenberger said. "There were some people from the company who handled it."

Two illegal loggers were the latest to be killed, bringing the toll to eight in the last five weeks.

The loggers were attacked in their forest hut on Sunday night in the third such incident since late January, according to a conservation official in Jambi province on the island of Sumatra.

"They were playing guitar and singing in their temporary hut in the forest when a tiger suddenly attacked one of them," said the official, Didi Wuryanto.

"After having paralysed the first victim, it ran after another man and mauled his head and chest while his friends were watching."

Human-animal conflicts are a rising problem as people encroach on wildlife habitats in Indonesia, an archipelagic nation with some of the world's largest remaining tropical forests.

A plug-in car capable of going 100 miles on a single charge is to be unveiled by Nissan later this year.

With a top speed of around 70 mph, the Japanese manufacturer claims that the new - and as yet unnamed - car will go faster than any other purely electric vehicle.

However the car will be made in Japan and America, rather than in Sunderland. It will, however be sold in Europe from 2011.

It is the latest in a series of electric cars being announced by manufacturers.

Unlike the Vauxhall Ampera, which was announced at the Geneva motor show, the Nissan will not have an additional petrol engine.

A man who lost his sight 30 years ago says he can now see flashes of light after being fitted with a bionic eye.

Ron, 73, had the experimental surgery seven months ago at London's Moorfield's eye hospital.

He says he can now follow white lines on the road, and even sort socks, using the bionic eye, known as Argus II.

It uses a camera and video processor mounted on sunglasses to send captured images wirelessly to a tiny receiver on the outside of the eye.

Scientists believe they have solved the mystery of why some chimpanzees are so good at catching termites.

A team working in the Republic of Congo discovered that the chimps are crafting brush-tipped "fishing rods" to scoop the insects out of their nests.

They filmed the wild primates using their teeth to fashion the tools.

Writing in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters, the researchers said the probes' frayed ends helped the chimpanzees to collect more termites.

Lead researcher Crickette Sanz, from the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, said: "They have invented a way to improve their termite-fishing technique."

Climate change is already having an impact on European bird species, according to British scientists.

Details of the study by an international team of researchers have been published in the journal Plos One.

Some birds are expected to do well as temperatures rise, but these are in the minority, the researchers write.

"Overall, the trend is towards net loss," said a spokesman for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), which contributed to the study.

During World War II, industries big and small all over Germany became part of Hitler's massive war machine. The change even affected the predecessor of footwear legends Adidas and Puma, which -- oddly enough -- manufactured Germany's version of the bazooka.

When the starting shot rang out, the athletes surged forward. Jesse Owens dug his spikes deep into the racing track of Berlin's Olympic Stadium -- and the best sprinter of his day dominated the 100 meters race to win a gold medal at the 1936 Olympic Games. America's black superstar took home a total of four gold medals. And each of his victories represented minor triumphs for two German brothers as well -- Adolf ("Adi") and Rudolf Dassler -- the manufacturers of the sprinting shoes that carried the sprinter of the century from victory to victory.

"What this seems to imply is that, even from fairly early in their history, dinosaurs were entirely bipedal and weren't using their forearms to support themselves in any way," said paleontologist Tom Holtz of the University of Maryland, who was not involved in the research.

"Because of that, the hands could specialize as weapons, to grab on to a struggling animal or to fight with other dinosaurs," he said.

The handprints are among more than 1,200 dinosaur tracks deposited in mud along the shores of an ancient lake, then buried and fossilized. Most of the tracks are similar to ones found at other sites, said paleontologist Andrew Milner, lead author of the report published Tuesday in the online journal PLoS One.

But one set of tracks shows the trail of a carnivore called a theropod leaving the water and climbing up a low hill on the shore.

The tracks clearly show the hind feet and, occasionally, the dragging tail. But at one point, Milner said, the theropod apparently stopped and crouched to rest.

At that point, between the footprints, is the clear circular impression of the ischium or pelvis, "basically a butt print," Milner said.

And to each side of the tracks are the handprints, which are mirror images of each other. They clearly show the third digit pressed into the ground and traces of the second digit, with the claw curling inward.

The hands were positioned as they would be for "holding on to a basketball rather than dribbling it," Holtz said.

Three years ago, Mr. Fulton got a call from a deep-voiced stranger who wanted to sign up for his women-only gym. Two days later, he got a visit: The stranger turned out to be a preoperative transsexual. Mr. Fulton, perhaps with his female clients' reactions in mind, hesitated. A week later, he received a lawyer's letter demanding an apology and a cash settlement. He refused, and now is trapped in human-rights commission hell.

"I'm probably screwed here," he said last week after a mediation session proved unsuccessful. He's right. Here's why. The offended party gets a free lawyer. Win or lose, he pays nothing. But the defendant always pays. If he decides to put up a fight, he might have to spend $100,000, maybe more, even if he wins. The case could drag on for years. Related Articles

Lawyers who act for people such as Mr. Fulton usually advise them to settle. That typically entails a modest sum of money paid to the complainant, an abject letter of apology, and an agreement to post a prominent sign guaranteeing (for example) equal treatment for all self-identified women, regardless of the configuration of their private parts. They must also agree never to disclose the settlement or any of the details.

LONDON -- The city of Liverpool already has a Beatles museum and its airport is named after John Lennon. Now a local university says it rolling out a graduate program entirely devoted to the Fab Four.

Liverpool Hope University said Tuesday that its new master's program, "The Beatles, Popular Music and Society," would give students the opportunity to analyze music and culture through the band's work.

Senator Edward Kennedy, patriarch of one of America's most fabled political families, has been awarded a honorary knighthood, it was announced today.

The award, in recognition of Kennedy's service to the US-UK relationship and to Northern Ireland, comes as Prime Minister Gordon Brown visits Washington to meet with President Barack Obama and address the US Congress today.

Here in the U.S. Pacific NW, it is still rainy but getting warmer. The trees are budding, but no leaves yet.

A Dalek from Dr Who was found submerged in a pond by volunteers enlisted to clear it of rubbish...

Sales executive Marc Oakland was pushing a rake around the bed of the shallow pool when he found the object with its distinctive eye stalk.

The 42-year-old said: "I'd just shifted a tree branch with my foot when I noticed something dark and round slowly coming up to the surface.

"I got the shock of my life when a Dalek head bobbed up right in front of me...

Pond warden Tony Brown, 70, was leading the volunteer squad clearing dumped rubbish from the pond, near Beaulieu, Hants.

He said: "We made a very thorough search of the rest of the bottom of the pond and there were definitely no alien remnants lurking.

"We've all agreed it best to keep the pond's exact location under wraps.

"The last thing we want are sci-fi fans descending on the pond frantically seraching for other Dalek parts."