Angela Merkel's coalition of conservatives and the pro-business FDP is looking unhappy and brittle after three months of infighting. Merkel is responding by sounding out future alliances with the Greens. A major state election in May could provide the chance for a major new experiment in German politics.

It's been a disappointing few weeks for German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, the leader of the pro-business Free Democrats. Chancellor Angela Merkel, with whom he shares power in a center-right coalition, told him off publicly for ranting about supposedly excessive welfare benefits last week. Furthermore, leading members of her conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) are pouring cold water on his pet policies, especially tax cuts. The CDU is also openly flirting with the opposition Greens party as an alternative to the FDP in future governments. And to cap it all, a veteran CDU member, Heiner Geissler, called him a "donkey" for his rhetoric about unemployment benefits.

This was hardly the scenario Westerwelle had in mind when his party moved into government last autumn following 11 years in opposition. Indeed, both he and Merkel followed a campaign script saying that the CDU and the FDP were natural political partners, and that they wanted a repeat of the center-right pairing that has governed Germany so often in the past. But now, hardly a day goes by without heated policy disputes between the two parties -- and the coalition agreement designed to set the course has done little to bind Merkel's conservatives and Westerwelle's FDP together.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission on Monday (15 February) deplored Libya's "unilateral and disproportionate" decision to deny entry to the country to almost all EU citizens - the latest move in a diplomatic row with Switzerland over the brief arrest of Muammar Gaddafi's troublemaker son, Hannibal.

The Libyan dictator is upset with Switzerland over the treatment of his son

Tripoli's blockade affects all travelers from countries in Europe's "Schengen" visa-free area, which includes Switzerland, Iceland and Norway, though they remain outside the European Union. Great Britain, Ireland, Romania and Bulgaria, which are in the EU, are not however part of this arrangement.

The issue will be discussed before the end of the week by the countries involved, together with the EU executive, in order to "consider the appropriate reaction," home affairs commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said in a statement.

The diplomatic row between Libya and Switzerland started in July 2008, when Swiss authorities in Geneva arrested the son of the Libyan leader, Hannibal Gaddafi, following a complaint of assault from two of his staff. He was released on bail after two days in custody, but Tripoli subsequently placed a boycott on Swiss imports, forced its companies out of the country and stopped issuing visas for its citizens.

Bern retaliated and blacklisted him and his family, along with other Libyan officials.

Facing two trials and a dirty divorce, Silvio Berlusconi should be fighting for his career - but he's riding high. Why? It's because he looks the other way while millions fiddle their taxes, argues Peter Popham

They must be among the harshest claims ever lodged against a European prime minister, and this month they were made in public, before Sicilian public prosecutors, and backed by documentary evidence. The cornerstone of the fortune of the tycoon who has ruled Italy for most of the past 15 years was money from the Mafia, which Silvio Berlusconi used to build his first housing estate, the project which made him rich and famous. And when, in 1993, after the meltdown of Italy's major political parties in a corruption scandal, Berlusconi decided to launch himself into politics, it was with the support of Bernardo Provenzano, the capo di capi of the Cosa Nostra who, 13 years later, was finally arrested after many years on the run on the very day that Berlusconi lost the general election.

If these charges sound familiar, it is because they have been doing the rounds for years, always fiercely denied by Berlusconi's people, never irrefutably proved but never going away because they helped to explain what was otherwise inexplicable: Berlusconi's dramatic ascent in the mid-Seventies from small-time property speculation in the suburbs of Milan to the ranks of the nation's richest; and the equally dramatic success of his first political party, Forza Italia (FI), founded amid widespread derision in 1993, after the meltdown of the existing parties in a bribery scandal.

Abkhazia, the Georgian breakaway region, is to conclude a deal with Russia to build a military base on its soil for land troops.

The move strengthens Abkhazia's dependence on Moscow and will provoke ire from Tbilisi.

Sergei Bagapsh, Abkhazia's leader, will sign the agreement with Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, at the Kremlin on Wednesday, Abkhaz officials said.

Russia recognised the Black Sea territory in August 2008 after crushing an assault by US-ally Georgia on the other pro-Russian breakaway region of South Ossetia in a five-day war.

"The agreement on Wednesday will allow for one, united military base on Abkhaz territory, for Russian land troops," said Garri Kupalba, the rebel region's deputy defence minister.

The Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) has been brought in to investigate the use of British passports in the assassination of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.

Senior Whitehall sources said Soca, set up in 2004, had taken the lead in the investigation to discover how British documents had been involved in the operation believed to have been carried out by Mossad, the Israeli secret service.

One Whitehall official told The Times: "The evidence so far makes very bad reading but until we can get all the facts about exactly what happened, we won't be in a position to decide what action to take. We have to be clear about the facts before we slag people off."

If the evidence incriminated Israel, the official said it would be up to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to summon the Israeli ambassador and demand an explanation.

European countries on the whole are still reluctant to take in detainees from Guantanamo Bay despite the best persuasive efforts of the United States. While some have grudgingly agreed to help, others still resist. 

Despite missing his self-imposed original deadline, US President Barack Obama still aims to shut down the US prison in Guantanamo Bay during his first term, according to sources in Washington. But one of the major obstacles in finally closing the book on the military prison in Cuba is the White House's struggle to convince foreign governments to accept detainees.

 

Obama had promised to close the facility during his first year in office but that deadline passed in January. At the time of the deadline passing, 192 detainees remained at the much-criticized camp, with fewer than 50 inmates having left Cuba since Obama took office.

 

While canvassing for host nations has been worldwide, the Obama administration has specifically concentrated its powers of persuasion on its allies in Europe. However, Obama has yet to charm many in Europe into accepting detainees.

 

A court in Ukraine has suspended the results of presidential elections after a complaint of electoral fraud. A decision on the validity of the poll is expected within days, ahead of a planned inauguration ceremony. 

Ukraine's administrative court has put the results of presidential elections on hold while it rules on the validity of a narrow win by Viktor Yanukovych.

The decision follows an appeal by Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who was also a candidate for the presidency. The court is set make a ruling by the end of the week, with Yanukovych due to be inaugurated on February 25.

Yanukovych defeated Tymoshenko by a slender 3.5 percent margin, just under 890,000 votes, according to official results published on Sunday.

The lower house of the French parliament has approved a draft bill that will allow the state unprecedented control over the Internet. Although the government says it will improve security for ordinary citizens, civil rights activists are warning of a "new level" of censorship and surveillance.

For members of the French administration, it is a law against digital crime. For civil rights activists and politicians from opposition parties, it is a plan for censorship that excites fear and loathing -- and even conjures up the specter of Big Brother and the surveillance state.

The lower house of the French parliament, the National Assembly, passed the first draft of the bill, known as "Loppsi 2," on Tuesday. It will now go on for a second reading in the Senate, where it seems likely to pass, thanks to the government's majority. If the Senate approves the bill, the new law could come into force as early as this summer. The legislation could have far-reaching consequences: Loppsi 2 contains rules that would make France the European country where the Internet is subject to the most censorship, regulation, control and surveillance.

The new legislation could in the future force Internet service providers (ISPs) to shut off access to criminal sites, should they be officially instructed to do so. According to the draft legislation, the law "makes it the responsibility of each Internet service provider to ensure that users don't have access to unsuitable content."

Employees of oil giant Total's beleaguered Dunkirk refinery stormed the administrative building and occupied offices to protest a possible closure. Total workers across France will stage a 48-hour strike in solidarity beginning on Wednesday.

REUTERS - Workers at Total's troubled Dunkirk refinery stormed its administrative building and occupied management offices to protest against a possible closure, Total and a trade union source told Reuters on Tuesday.   Workers in all Total refineries across France will begin a 48 hour strike from Feb. 17 to back their Dunkirk colleagues, two Total trade union spokesmen told Reuters on Monday. Unions held a strike in early January but this did not impact supply.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission on Wednesday (17 February) nominated Joao Vale de Almeida, a close aide of Mr Barroso, as the EU's new ambassador in Washington, after a gap of over three months in which the executive had no representative in the US capital.

Mr de Almeida, 53, served as head of cabinet of commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso and was his personal envoy to the so-called G8 and G20 summits of the most industrialised countries. In June last year, the Portuguese was appointed head of the commission's external relations unit which is about to be bolstered in the form of a diplomatic service under the EU's new rulebook, the Lisbon Treaty.

Mr Almeida (r) was Mr Barroso's head of cabinet in the former commission

The Washington post had been vacant since end of October 2009 when former ambassador John Bruton ended his five-year mandate. The EU commission was unable to appoint anyone else since, because it was in caretaker mode after its own mandate expired at the same time.

Stockholm - Sweden remains committed to enlargement of the European Union and to keeping its military forces in Afghanistan, Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said Wednesday.

'Only by successfully completing our mission in Afghanistan can we show that the losses (we) suffer are not in vain,' Bildt said, referring to the recent deaths of two Swedish soldiers in Afghanistan.

Bildt's remarks were made during the presentation of the government's foreign policy statement that also touched on free trade, disarmament, climate change and global poverty reduction.

AMSTERDAM - The Dutch Cabinet was deadlocked Wednesday over extending the Netherlands' mission with NATO in Afghanistan, and it appears likely to reduce its 1,600 troop presence there.

Deputy Prime Minister Wouter Bos said his Labor Party will oppose a formal NATO request to remain in the restive southern province of Uruzgan. The Dutch mission ends in August.

The departure of the Netherlands would be a blow to hopes that NATO's European members will expand operations in Afghanistan before beginning to withdraw in 2011.

Swiftly following on from the announcement that the BNP is changing its constitution to 'allow' non-whites to join the ranks of anti-semites, Islamophobics, nazis and racists in the party, a black face appeared in among the site members, claiming to be one Daniel Muranbuti.

Daniel included a brief note about himself:

'I am a young and laid-back kinda guy, I like reggae and poetry, and I fully support your aim to keep Britain British, now I know you ain't racist and against my People. We're all on the same side, and I just know it won't be long before we can celebrate together like the Americans do with their black president.

Fair enough. If Daniel (pictured, left) is stupid enough to join a notoriously racist party that's packed with nazis and has a leadership that almost entirely consists of ex-National Front activists, that's his problem. Or rather, it isn't. Because there's no such person as Daniel Muranbuti.

The picture that the mythical Daniel supplied is actually that of Oscar Grant, a young father who was killed by a police officer on a crowded BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) train returning from San Francisco after a New Year's Eve party.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/7252288/Greece-loses-EU-voting-powe r-in-blow-to-sovereignty.html

The European Union has shown its righteous wrath by stripping Greece of its vote at a crucial meeting next month, the worst humiliation ever suffered by an EU member state.
The council of EU finance ministers said Athens must comply with austerity demands by March 16 or lose control over its own tax and spend policies altogether. It if fails to do so, the EU will itself impose cuts under the draconian Article 126.9 of the Lisbon Treaty in what would amount to economic suzerainty.

While the symbolic move to suspend Greece of its voting rights at one meeting makes no practical difference, it marks a constitutional watershed and represents a crushing loss of sovereignty.

WTF is this?

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind...Albert Einstein

Da mag sich mancher wundern: Ausgerechnet Lidl macht sich stark für die Einführung von Mindestlöhnen im Einzelhandel. Dabei ist der viel gescholtene Discounter nicht gerade bekannt für seine arbeitnehmerfreundliche Haltung. Soll das vielleicht eine neue Kampagne sein, um das Image aufzupolieren? Keinesfalls. Der Vorstoß des Billiganbieters, der vor zwei Jahren durch Datenmissbrauch und die Bespitzelung seiner Mitarbeiter in die Schlagzeilen geriet, hat durchaus einen ernsten Hintergrund.

Denn es gibt den klaren Trend im Einzelhandel, Mitarbeiter schlechter zu bezahlen.

Portugal's Vitor Constancio is set to become the European Central Bank's next vice president after EU finance ministers nominated him Tuesday. That may be good news for Germany's Axel Weber, who hopes to make president. 

European Union finance ministers on Tuesday unanimously recommended Portugal's Vitor Constancio to be the next vice president of the European Central Bank (ECB), an EU statement said.

If confirmed by the European Parliament next month, Constancio will succeed Greece's Lucas Papdemos in May.

"It was a unanimous choice," said Italian Economics Minister Giulio Tremonti. "He is a very qualified and technically experienced person, so I think that he was the right choice for Europe."

Constancio, 66, is a former socialist lawmaker and party leader. He has governed Portugal's central bank since 2000 after an earlier appointment from 1985 to 1986.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission has said it will widen its investigation into complex currency transactions, used to hide the true extent of national debt levels, if evidence suggests they were deployed in more than one member state.

The EU's statistics office, Eurostat, launched an investigation into Greece over the weekend, following recent reports that Wall Street investment banks provided Athens with swaps and other financial instruments throughout the last decade.

Speaking after a meeting of EU finance ministers in Brussels on Tuesday (16 February), EU economy commissioner Olli Rehn said Greece has until 19 February to justify their legitimacy, adding that the net could be widened to other capitals.

"In case there is reason to expect that these kind of techniques have been used by other member states, not only Greece, then we will request information from other member states," said Mr Rehn.

The Finnish politician said Eurostat had no evidence of other capitals using the swaps, but the statistics agency was also unaware of Athens' activities until very recently.

Portugal, along with the other so-called "PIGS" (English acronym for the economic laggards Portugal, Ireland - or Italy -, Greece, Spain), is in a tight spot. But its modest dynamism appears to have shielded it from the worst effects of the economic crisis.

Last week, while prime minister Jose Socrates was busy trying to convince the markets that Lisbon would cut public spending to bring its runaway deficit back in line with Maastricht parameters within four years, the Portuguese parliament was doubling funding for the country's autonomous archipelagos: Madeira and the Azores. The expense involved was negligible: €50 million.

But it was a very bad signal to the international financial markets: viz. evidence that the Socialist government, now that it has lost its absolute majority in last September's elections, is now exposed to sudden attacks orchestrated by the centre-right and extreme left -- a mixed-bag opposition, but one that can generally agree on putting their own interests and those of their constituencies before national ones. So it is now clear that Portugal is going to have to pay not only for the structural limitations of an insufficiently competitive economy, but also for certain failings in its political establishment

Greece has been hit by a fresh wave of strikes as European Union ministers put pressure on the debt-ridden nation to toughen its deficit-reduction plan.

Customs officials and finance ministry employees began a walkout on Tuesday to protest against measures taken by the government in an attempt to pull the country out of its economic crisis.

"The government measures will further cut our salaries, we have already lost 10 per cent of our income in the past two years due to wages freezes," Apostolos Papantonis, treasurer at Greece's customs employees federation, said.

The European Union has shown its righteous wrath by stripping Greece of its vote at a crucial meeting next month, the worst humiliation ever suffered by an EU member state.

The council of EU finance ministers said Athens must comply with austerity demands by March 16 or lose control over its own tax and spend policies altogether. It if fails to do so, the EU will itself impose cuts under the draconian Article 126.9 of the Lisbon Treaty in what would amount to economic suzerainty.

While the symbolic move to suspend Greece of its voting rights at one meeting makes no practical difference, it marks a constitutional watershed and represents a crushing loss of sovereignty.

There is a social theory called reflexivity which refers to the circular relationship between cause and effect. A reflexive relationship is bidirectional where both the cause and the effect affect one another in a situation that renders both functions causes and effects.

The principle of reflexivity was first introduced by the sociologist William Thomas as the Thomas theorem, but more importantly it was later popularized and applied to the financial markets by George Soros.  Soros restated the social theory of reflexivity eloquently and simply, as follows:

"markets influence events they anticipate" - George Soros

This theorem has become a basic tenant of modern central banking. The idea is that manipulation of the psychology of market participants affects the markets themselves. Therefore, if you artificially suppress the price of gold, you reduce inflationary expectations and reduce inflation itself...so the theory goes.

This same idea is applied to other markets as well. In 2010 the Federal Reserve is printing money...monetizing debt; selling debt and then buying it themselves. This has the effect of reducing long term interest rates to levels lower than they would otherwise be, leading market participants to believe that the currency is sound when it isn't. "How can we be printing too much money if interest rates are low and the price of gold is not soaring?". The answer is of course, they are manipulating both markets. When combined with government data showing a rate of inflation substantially lower than the real increase in the cost of living, this presents a plausible explanation to a casual observer.

You could further distill this entire idea down to lying in order to achieve a policy objective. The worlds central banks routinely manipulate markets, from the equity markets to the interest rate markets to the currency markets to the physical markets in order to influence investor psychology and achieve policy goals.

The capture of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban's top strategist, deals a psychological blow to the insurgents currently fighting British troops in southern Afghanistan.

As the right-hand man of the reclusive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, Mr Baradar takes responsibility for day-to-day campaigning and is the most senior Taliban member to travel inside Afghanistan regularly.

Yet, unprecedented as the incident is, observers are cautious about extrapolating too much from the reports of his arrest. "It's impossible to be specific about the way this will develop," said a security analyst in Kabul. "It's wait-and-see time."

It's a propaganda war. Whoever killed the Hamas official in Dubai - let's speak frankly - it's part of an old, dirty war between the Israelis and the Palestinians in which they have been murdering their secret police antagonists for decades. Whose were the passports? Or should we say "passports". So here's a moment to reflect on realities.

Many Dubaians believe that the collapse of the emirate's economy last year was the revenge of Western banks - spurred on, of course, by the Americans - to punish them for allowing Iranian shell companies to use Dubai as a sanctions-busting base during the cold-hot war between the US-Israeli alliance and Iran. Now the Americans (or the Israelis - you can take your pick) want to turn Dubai into the Beirut of the Gulf. That was actually a headline last week - in The Jerusalem Post, of course - which painted Dubai as dangerous as it was economically calamitous.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy unveiled an aid package of 270 million euros over the next two years for the reconstruction of quake-stricken Haiti during a brief visit to Port-au-Prince. He also cancelled the island's debt worth 56 million euros.

REUTERS - France will provide 270 million euros over two years to Haiti to help the Caribbean nation's economy recover from a devastating Jan. 12 earthquake, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Wednesday.

Announcing the assistance at a news conference with Haitian President Rene Preval, Sarkozy said France had already decided to forgive its 56 million euros of debt to his country in the wake of the quake.
 

Sarkozy spoke after arriving in the capital Port-au-Prince on the first visit by a French head of state to the former French Caribbean colony.
 

"I have come to tell the Haitian people that they are not alone," he said.

The Great Recession may be over, but this era of high joblessness is probably just beginning. Before it ends, it will likely change the life course and character of a generation of young adults. It will leave an indelible imprint on many blue-collar men. It could cripple marriage as an institution in many communities. It may already be plunging many inner cities into a despair not seen for decades. Ultimately, it is likely to warp our politics, our culture, and the character of our society for years to come.
by Don Peck

EUOBSERVER / HEALTH FOCUS - Vladimir appears as an unwrapped mummy, a skeleton of a man whose paper skin pulls taught over his Siberian bones. Top off, in stocking feet and navy Adidas track bottoms, he lies on his side as a nurse sponges the wounds left from the surgery he's had to remove some ribs to let his one lung - the other also removed by the doctors - breathe more easily. He has an ancient sickness, tuberculosis, but his is a wretched new mutation of the disease that now seems impervious to almost all of mankind's very much ageing weapons against it.

The 50-year-old former oil driller from Strezhevoy, a Rosneft company town in the far northwest of the Tomsk Oblast, is nevertheless surprisingly upbeat and chatty. "I suppose I'll never run a marathon now," he jokes, "I just wish I could at least walk a few metres without losing my breath."

He's been in the Tomsk TB hospital undergoing treatment for a disease against which very few drugs work at all for four years now. He complains that four years is a long time for a hospital whose library doesn't have much of a selection, but he's happy his wife has not left him "as, you know, it happens a lot in Russia," and that she and his children come to visit.

A campaign to save the eel, the continent's most threatened common freshwater fish, may be breaking down because French fishermen are exporting too many baby eels to China, British conservationists fear.

France holds up to 90 per cent of Europe's eels, and French supplies are crucial for restocking rivers and lakes in other countries from which they are rapidly disappearing.

But in the current fishing season, which runs for another two months, French fishermen plan to export a massive 14.5 tonnes of baby eels - elvers or "glass eels" - to China, where they can fetch the remarkable price of €800 per kilo. And in doing so, they may not be able to meet the restocking commitments which they have entered into under an EU rescue plan for the species.

High-level nuclear waste from across the European Union could be shipped to eastern Europe for burial in a central underground storage facility under plans being considered by EU member states.

The Times has learnt that the project, which comes amid a resurgence of interest in nuclear power, could be given the green light later this year by the European Commission. Ewoud Verhoef, deputy director of Covra, the agency responsible for the storage of the Netherlands' nuclear waste, said: "The nuclear programme in Holland is small and the cost of building a geological repository is very high. We only have one nuclear reactor in the Netherlands so there would be big advantages to a shared solution."

Discussions are under way between eight countries -- the European Repository Development Organisation which includes the Netherlands, Italy, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Lithuania, Slovenia and Bulgaria -- about transportation and storage of waste. It is due to meet again in May.

In Slovenia, a repository for low-level waste is under construction at Vrbina in the east of the country. Last July, the local community agreed to accept its construction in exchange for €5 million (£4.4 million) a year in compensation, according to the World Nuclear Association.

NASA explains: "This infrared image taken by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, shows a star-forming cloud teeming with gas, dust and massive newborn stars. The inset reveals the very center of the cloud, a cluster of stars called NGC 3603. It was taken in visible light by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope."

A twin-engine Cessna piloted by a "high-ranking official at Tesla" crashed into an East Palo Alto neighborhood today killing the pilot and two others on board. A Tesla spokesperson has confirmed three employees were involved in the crash.

Ian Gregor, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said the plane was a twin-engine Cessna 310 that had taken off from Palo Alto Airport, about a mile to the southwest, and was bound for Hawthorne Municipal Airport in Los Angeles County.

The European Space Agency satellite Mars Express has captured the most detailed images yet of the largest moon on Mars.

The satellite came within 621 miles (1,000km) of Phobos, closer than any previous approach, and sent back high-resolution images of the small, irregular moon. A series of approaches over the next month will culminate with the Mars Express coming within 30 miles of Phobos on March 5.

The high-quality images will allow astronomers to analyse the composition and structure of the moon in detail.

Phobos orbits about 5,827 miles from the centre of Mars, closer to its planet than any other known moon, and so close that if viewed from Phobos, Mars would take up about a quarter of the width of the sky.

... in shifting hundreds more ships to its slow steaming program last year, [Danish container ship Ebba] Maersk considered itself prescient: it is convinced that a carbon tax or tighter shipping rules are on the horizon. <...>

Super slow shipping involves adjustments. Maersk had to prove that slow speeds would not damage ship engines in order to maintain engine warranties that did not cover such slow travel. Customers have to factor in extra time for delivery, which can be problematic for time-sensitive products like fashion or electronics, said Mr. Damas of Drewry Shipping.

Maersk has also shouldered the labor costs of having crews at sea for longer periods and added two ships on its Germany-to-China route to maintain scheduled deliveries. But those expenses were canceled out by decreased fuel costs, it said. <...>

By halving its top cruising speed over the last two years, Maersk cut fuel consumption on major routes by as much as 30 percent, greatly reducing costs. But the company also achieved an equal cut in the ships' emissions of greenhouse gases. ...

The UK is positioning itself as one of the biggest offshore wind markets in the world, with the potential to deliver thousands of British jobs, but it still has no major manufacturer investing in it. Louise Bateman reports.

Vestas chief executive officer Ditlev Engel was in London last week trying to present a positive spin to the UK media on sluggish fourth-quarter results. The boss of the world's largest wind turbine manufacturer also used the opportunity to clarify Vestas' position on re-entering the UK manufacturing market. The company would not, he said, be investing in production in the UK at least until 2014, at which point it would consider the opportunities being presented by the UK offshore wind sector.

He was looking for adventure. But when the young Dane Jacob Holdt arrived in the US in the 1970s, he found a country deeply divided -- and spent the next five years photographing that divergence. His photos, now on display in Braunschweig, show a haunting America.

Jacob Holdt was young and angry when he set off 40 years ago to change the world. Angered by the Vietnam War and full of fierce idealism, the young Dane wanted to travel to Chile in the spring of 1970 to fight for socialism and to support the Marxist politician Salvador Allende, who would become the country's president later that year.

Holdt had nothing but contempt and hatred for his homeland of Denmark. "Smash all the windows in the country!" he wrote to a friend, expressing his anger about Danish support for US foreign policy in Southeast Asia. "Smash all of Denmark's windows so that even the coldest conservatives can smell the stench of napalmed flesh."

At press conferences their English is so mangled your head starts to swim. And the comprehension quota approaches zero. Our politicians need remedial lessons in English, a reasonable command of which is, after all, a key competitive factor for a country like Austria, exhorts Vienna's Der Standard.

Günther Oettinger got off to an ill-starred start as EU commissioner: the Youtube video of his address in English, rendered nearly incomprehensible by his thick Swabian accent, made him the laughing-stock of Europe. Even with English lessons, he will have a hard time shedding that notoriety for some time to come. To steer clear of suchlike pitfalls, Austrian commissioner Johannes Hahn stuck to German at his confirmation hearing in the European Parliament - though a click on Youtube will suffice to show his English is quite passable, at least better than a number of his ex-ministerial cohorts'. Over at the Viennese Opera Ball, to cite another egregious instance of public mortification, ORF [Austrian national broadcasting corporation] presenter Claudia Reiterer lost a chunk of her dancing star glamour by stammering through an interview in English with French lingerie designer Chantal Thomass.

MAKHACHKALA, Russia -- A funny thing happened to Magomedkhan M. Magomedkhanov, an ethnographer from the Russian republic of Dagestan, on a recent visit to the United States. Surrounded by distinguished colleagues at Harvard University and sensing that there was only one way to put everyone at ease, he dusted off a favorite joke about a Jew in a pit full of wild animals.

As the silence congealed into something approximating hostility, Mr. Magomedkhanov was reminded that he was no longer in Dagestan.

He grew up among the Archi, a 1,200-member ethnic group that speaks a language of unknown origin and, for at least seven centuries, was connected to the outside world only by rugged mountain paths. This is fairly typical of Dagestan, a collection of 14 major and several dozen minor ethnic groups that formed in tide pools and cul-de-sacs off one of humankind's great migration streams.

All this has proven exceptionally fertile ground for ethnic humor. Dagestanis can tell ethnic jokes for hours, returning to beloved themes like the muscle-bound denseness of the Avars, the naked commercialism of the Dargins, the bookish pusillanimity of the Lezgins, the slyness of Lakhs and so on. And that's not counting jokes about especially dumb villages.

Human rights court rules that censorship of 1907 erotic novel The Eleven Thousand Rods 'hindered public access to a work belonging to the European literary heritage'

Turkey violated freedom of expression laws and prevented access to Europe's literary heritage when it banned Guillaume Apollinaire's classic French erotic novel The Eleven Thousand Rods, the European court of human rights ruled yesterday.

The court found in favour of Turkish publisher Rahmi Akdaş, who complained to it after he was convicted under the Turkish criminal code "for publishing obscene or immoral material liable to arouse and exploit sexual desire among the population" when he released a Turkish translation of Les onze milles verges (The Eleven Thousand Rods) in 1999. The book details the erotic adventures of the debauched Romanian aristocrat Mony Vibescu and his fellow sybarites, containing graphic scenes of intercourse, sadomasochism, paedophilia, necrophilia, coprophilia and vampirism. It was banned in France until 1970 and Apollinaire himself never claimed authorship, fearing prosecution under France's public obscenity statute.

The Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania has protested against the inclusion of a Romanian film about anti-communist partisans in the Berlinale festival program. They say the main character was fascist and anti-Semitic.

The Berlin International Film Festival is no stranger to controversy and, as it celebrates its 60th anniversary, another scandal may be brewing.

The Romanian film "Portrait of the Young Man as a Fighter," which deals with anti-communist partisans in post-World War II Romania, has been accused of glossing over the anti-Semitism of its main character.

The Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania has protested at the inclusion of the film in the Berlinale's Forum section this year. The film by 36-year-old Romanian director Constantin Popescu tells the story of a group of anti-communist fighters, led by Ion Gavrila Ogoranu, who hid out in the Carpathian Mountains until well into the 1950s.

TV pitchman Kevin Trudeau, known as the infomercial king and best-selling author, was ordered by a federal judge to serve 30 days in prison and must turn himself in tomorrow.

"This was an attempt by Mr. Trudeau to harass, intimidate and influence the court," said U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman, who was flooded with hundreds of "harassing, threatening and interfering" emails, locking up the judge's email system and shutting down his blackberry for part of the day.

Labour is planning to rebrand one of its local authorities as Britain's first "John Lewis council", offering council tax rebates to residents in exchange for helping to run services, in a direct challenge to the Conservatives' pioneering "easyCouncil".

In a move which could propel town hall politics into the national general election campaign, ministers are to champion the south London borough of Lambeth as their new vision of how local government can work.

It will put Lambeth head-to-head with the north London borough of Barnet, where the Tories are charging customers for services along the lines of the business model of budget airlines such as easyJet.

Under the plans, being promoted by Tessa Jowell, the cabinet office secretary of state, Lambeth could borrow ideas from the way John Lewis is structured as it becomes a "co-operative council".

While users of services run by the "co-operative" council would not become shareholders, the people of Lambeth will be asked to get involved in the running of all their services along the lines of John Lewis and other "mutuals", with the possibility of financial recompense further down the line.

... The issues surrounding Intellectual Ventures, viewed broadly, are the ground rules and incentives for innovation. <...>

He says he is trying to build a robust, efficient market for "invention capital," much as private equity and venture capital developed in recent decades. <...>

Mr. Myhrvold describes the patent world as a vastly underdeveloped market, starved for private capital and too dependent on federal financing for universities and government agencies, which is mainly aimed at scientific discovery anyway. Eventually, he foresees patents being valued as a separate asset class, like real estate or securities. <...>

Ignoring the patents of others is "deeply ingrained in parts of certain industries," he writes in the article, "most notably software, computing and other Internet-related sectors."

Large technology companies complain about patent suits but, Mr. Myhrvold says, their actions often invite litigation. "The attitude of the big guys has been that unless you sue me or threaten to sue me, get lost," he said in the interview. "I know, I was one of those guys." Indeed, Mr. Myhrvold, 50, supplied his considerable brain power to Microsoft for 13 years, serving as chief technology officer until 2000....

What happens when (if) Alexander Lebedev buys the Indy? Will the titles be held separately or, well, merged? After all they are on top of each other at Kensington High Street. And, both lose money -- about £15 million a year in the case of the Indy and rather more for the free Standard (exact figures are hard to calculate but it should be over £20 million).

My reliable Lebedev source tells me that initially both titles will be run separately. But, said source adds that this will only be a temporary phase. There will be  "after a while" some "joint-working" which is the kind of phraseology that can only mean one thing -- savings achieved by sharing ad sales and, of course, shared journalism.

The daughter of Kiev's mayor told police she was robbed of €4 million (£3.5m) worth of jewellery as she travelled by car from Charles de Gaulle airport to the French capital, Paris police said.

A spokesman for her father, however, immediately denied the report, which could be embarrassing considering that his daughter heads a charity organisation funded by his own city government and many Ukrainians are struggling amid a widespread recession.

A Paris police official said Kristina Chernovetska reported that a man broke into her luxury car on Monday as it stopped on a highway north of Paris, then stole her purse.

Russian police have arrested a prankster who hacked into a computer system to beam a pornographic movie on a giant advertising screen, causing havoc on a busy Moscow thoroughfare.

The two-minute clip, which was displayed on a video screen above a main road south of the Kremlin, caused midnight traffic jams and a frenzy of excitement across the Russian blogosphere.

Police said the hacker gained control of the screen by breaking into an online company's server in the volatile southern region of Chechnya as "he didn't think the police would go looking for him there".

In the days of French kings, a nobleman would have been sent to the Bastille for likening the monarch to a pig. Dominique de Villepin, the former Prime Minister and rival to Nicolas Sarkozy, has just done that and got away with it.

Mr Villepin, 56, who is at war with his former cabinet colleague, became a star of the internet this week after picking up a piglet while on a visit to a farm in Brittany. "Does this remind you of someone? Me too," Mr Villepin said to accompanying reporters. He laughed when one of them suggested that it was called Nicolas.

Mr Villepin holds no office, but his joke, repeated across the media, showed his power to land blows on the man whom he blames for his prosecution in the so-called Clearstream affair. He is awaiting a retrial in the case, which involves a 2004 conspiracy to smear Mr Sarkozy. He was acquitted last month but the prosecution appealed and Mr Villepin accused the President of having him persecuted.