EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Several EU countries buy and sell equipment used in torture such as spike batons, metal thumb cuffs and electric-shock stun sleeves delivering 50,000-volt shocks to detainees, despite a 2006 EU law against the trade, according to a report from human rights watchdogs Amnesty international and the Omega Research Foundation.

The report reveals how EU countries including Spain, Germany, Hungary and the Czech Republic have authorised exports of policing weapons and other possible torture tools to at least nine countries where use of such equipment in torture has been documented.

"The introduction of European controls on the trade in `tools of torture' ... was a landmark piece of legislation. But three years after these controls came into force, several European states have failed to properly implement or enforce the law," said Nicolas Beger, director of Amnesty International's EU office.

According to the document, law enforcement equipment suppliers in Italy and Spain have promoted the sale of illegal electroshock cuffs or sleeves thanks to loopholes in the EU law that permit their trade, even though similar electric stun belts are prohibited for import and export across the EU on the grounds that their use inherently constitutes torture or ill treatment.

Hungary in 2005 even declared its intention to introduce such electric stun belts into its own prisons and police stations, despite the import and export ban.

German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg has announced his desire to push forward a planned reduction in the length of conscription for German soldiers.

A measure to reduce the time Bundeswehr soldiers serve from nine to six months is already scheduled to come into effect on January 1. According to statements made to German public broadcaster ARD, Guttenberg hopes to implement these changes before the end of this year.

A traffic stop of a suspected stolen vehicle turned deadly Tuesday when gunmen opened fire on French police near Paris, killing one officer. Spain has blamed the Basque militant group ETA for the crime. 

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has blamed members of the Basque separatist group ETA for the shooting death of a French police officer near Paris on Tuesday evening.

According to police reports obtained by the French media, police officers stopped a vehicle suspected of being stolen from a nearby car lot in the Paris suburb Dammarie-les-Lys. During the traffic stop, another car appeared and opened fire on the officers, hitting one of them in the chest despite his bulletproof vest.

The suspects then fled the scene, but one was later apprehended and reportedly gave a Basque identification. The officer died from his wounds.

The head of the Catholic church in Ireland has used his annual St Patrick's Day sermon to apologise for his role in the cover-up of child abuse by one of the country's most notorious paedophile priests.

Cardinal Sean Brady is under intense pressure to resign after he admitted attending meetings where two 10-year-olds were forced to sign vows of silence over complaints against Father Brendan Smyth, who continued abusing children for another 18 years.

Brady said last weekend that he had taken notes during one meeting and interviewed the children in another. He referred the abuse claims to his superior but did not report them to the police, and it was only in 1994 that Smyth's appalling abuse came to light. Smyth died in prison 13 years ago, while serving 12 years for 74 sexual assaults on children.

The government of Ukraine's pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych has announced its intention to pass a law to keep the country out of military alliances, which would end the debate over Ukraine joining NATO. 

The government of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has issued a formal statement of intent that it is planning legislation to keep Ukraine out of all military alliances. This would provide a legal block to the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO.

During Yanukovych's recent election campaign, keeping Ukraine out of NATO was one of his campaign promises.

Leaders of Turkish descent across Europe recently received an invitation to a fancy event in Istanbul, all expenses paid. But what sounded innocent enough appears to have been an attempt by Ankara to get members of the Turkish diaspora to represent Turkish interests abroad. Turkish-German politicians have reacted angrily to the brazen lobbying.

The invitation that numerous Turkish-German politicians received in February sounded enticing: Lunch in a five-star hotel in Istanbul, travel expenses included. The session was titled: "Wherever One of Our Compatriots Is, We Are There Too."

Around 1,500 people of Turkish descent from several European countries accepted the tempting offer. Among the speakers at the event, which took place at the end of February, were businesspeople, NGO representatives and a member of the Belgian parliament of Turkish descent. But the meeting, which has sparked outrage among Turkish-German politicians, was more than a harmless gathering of the Turkish diaspora.

The event was organized by the Turkish government, which is led by the conservative-religious Justice and Development (AKP) party, in an attempt to send a clear message to the participants that they should represent Turkey in other countries. Turks living abroad should take the citizenship of their new home country -- not, however, with the intention of becoming an integrated part of that society, but so they can become politically active, said Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who spoke at the event. Erdogan also compared Islamophobia with anti-Semitism in his speech and said that countries which oppose dual citizenship are violating people's fundamental rights. (Germany, for example, generally does not allow its citizens to hold dual nationality.)

'Crime Against Humanity'

Participants in the session told SPIEGEL ONLINE that the Turkish prime minister then repeated a sentence which had already sparked fierce criticism when he said it during a 2008 speech in Cologne: "Assimilation is a crime against humanity." And even stronger language was apparently used by one representative of the Turkish government. According to Ali Ertan Toprak, the vice chairman of the Alevi community in Germany, who was present at the lunch, one speaker went so far as to say: "We need to inoculate European culture with Turkish culture."

Raising the stakes in Turkey's rejection of the genocide label by US and Swedish lawmakers for the mass deaths of Armenians a century ago, Turkey says it might send home up to 100,000 Armenians currently living in Turkey without citizenship.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, angry over the decision earlier this month by a US congressional committee and by the Swedish parliament to call the 1915 deaths of up to 1.5 million Armenians a "genocide," has said the issue could disrupt a nascent Turkey-Armenia reconciliation process started last year.

Mr. Erdogan is now unlikely to attend an energy summit hosted by Barack Obama in April, Hurriyet newspaper reported. Erdogan already pulled out of a top-level meeting in Sweden, and Turkey withdrew ambassadors from both Washington and Stockholm after the two votes.

The issue of deaths during the expulsion of Christian Armenians by forces of the crumbling Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I are sensitive in Turkey, which argues that killing took place on both sides.

More broadly, NATO member and European Union candidate Turkey does not want to be lumped with Nazi Germany, Cambodia, or Rwanda as perpetrators of genocide in the 20th century.

The 16-nation euro zone must be able to remove members who persistently break fiscal rules, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday. She added that the Greek debt crisis, which has rattled the euro, should be dealt with at its "roots".

AFP - The 16-nation eurozone must have the option of removing one of its members from the club if a country persistently breaks its fiscal rules, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday.
  
The option, which would be used only "as a last resort", should apply to countries which "again and again do not fulfil the conditions" to which euro area members are bound, she said in a speech to parliament.
  
The chancellor added that the current rules in the European Union's Stability and Growth Pact were no longer sufficient to deal with the current crisis, which she described as the euro's "greatest-ever challenge."

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Fighting cross-border crime in the EU still faces "practical difficulties" due to scarce resources in member states and the ability of criminals to move freely from one country to another, Eurojust's new chief Aled Williams told MEPs on Wednesday (17 March).

Tasked with ensuring co-operation of prosecutors and police when faced with cross-border criminal cases, Eurojust is grappling with 27 different legal systems while skilled criminals are easily able to take advantage of the confusion.

Eurojust is headquartered in the Hague

"The first set of difficulties in judicial co-operation between member states is very practical - lack of resources and the fact that criminals are able to take advantage of the freedom of movement all other law-abiding citizens enjoy," Mr Williams said during a hearing in the European Parliament's justice and home affairs committee.

Elena Salgado, the Spanish finance minister, joined the calls on Wednesday for faster consolidation of the country's weaker savings banks, admitting in the process that up to a third of lending institutions could face "solvency problems".

Speaking in parliament, Ms Salgado was seeking to reassure Spaniards that the difficulties of some cajas de ahorros - unlisted savings banks usually controlled by regional governments - had not unduly restricted the flow of credit to cash-starved private businesses.
...
Miguel Angel Fernández Ordóñez, Bank of Spain governor, called last year for a third of the 45 cajas to be absorbed by stronger institutions. But he has been frustrated by the slow progress and the reluctance of autonomous regional governments to abandon their hold on the cajas.
...
According to official data from the Bank of Spain, the bad loan ratios of the cajas appear to have reached a collective plateau at just over 5 per cent of assets, but the true figure is much higher if lenders' debt-for-asset swaps and property repossessions are counted.

Two days after José María Roldán, the central bank's head of regulation, warned of the likelihood of further bad loan provisions by banks and cajas to cover the riskier parts of their €445bn in Spanish construction and real estate assets, Ms Salgado told parliament on Wednesday that "the government is going to do everything it can to accelerate [banking reforms]."

The BBC has shelved a Panorama documentary about the business affairs of the Tory billionaire Lord Ashcroft, because of a threat of legal action.

The Corporation has received what one insider described as "several very heavy letters" from Lord Ashcroft's lawyers. There is now little or no prospect of the investigation being broadcast before the general election, if it goes out at all.

Four banks were on Wednesday charged with fraud linked to the sale of derivatives to the city of Milan in a case that could set off a string of lawsuits by Italian local governments facing potentially billions of dollars of losses on their borrowings.

A trial of the banks, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase, UBS and Hypo Real Estate Holding's Depfa Bank, has been scheduled for May 6

The banks have been accused of misleading the city on swaps that adjusted interest payments on €1.7bn of borrowings. They are also accused of earning hidden fees of €101m on the deal - a €1.7bn bond issue in 2005. In April last year police seized assets worth €476m from the four banks in connection with the case, which is being led by Alfredo Robledo, Milan's public prosecutor.

Italian prosecutors are probing banks as local and national government agencies face potential losses of €2.5bn on derivatives, lawyers say.

TOKYO -- In a bid to shore up a deflation-plagued economy, Japan's central bank eased monetary policy further Wednesday by enlarging a loan program for banks, setting the country, the world's second-largest economy, on a path divergent from those of other industrialized nations.

Central banks around the world have in recent weeks contemplated rolling back stimulus steps put in place during the global economic crisis, gradually shrinking excess liquidity in their banking systems. The U.S. Federal Reserve said Tuesday that it would let a mortgage-security purchase program expire at the end of March in the United States, the largest economy.

But in Japan, where prices have remained sluggish in a lackluster recovery from the country's worst recession since World War II, the government has urged the monetary authorities to stimulate the economy further by flooding the banking sector with cash.

Japan is also leaning on monetary policy because its public debt load, the highest among industrialized countries, makes it reluctant to spend more money on public works projects and other government stimulus programs.

In a 5-to-2 vote at a policy meeting Wednesday, the Bank of Japan's board decided to double a loan program for banks aimed at increasing liquidity in the Japanese economy, to ¥20 trillion, or $222 billion. The fixed-rate loans are available for three months.

The World Bank on Wednesday raised its growth forecast for China this year to 9.5 per cent, although it warned that tighter monetary policy and a stronger currency were needed to prevent bubbles and rising inflationary expectations.

In a generally upbeat assessment of the Chinese economy which played down some of the concerns prevalent among investors, the bank raised its forecast for 2010 from the 8.7 per cent it predicted in its last quarterly report in November.

"China's economy held up well in the global crisis and the growth prospects for this year and next year are quite good,'' said Louis Kuijs, senior economist in the bank's Beijing office.

Mr Kuijs said that China needed to adopt a tighter monetary policy this year given the strong rebound in the economy, however he played down the risk that inflation - which has risen strongly in recent months - would surge this year. The bank expects inflation to be 3.5-4 per cent in 2010.

Moreover, he said China could tolerate a rate of inflation a little bit above the 3 per cent target the government has set. The bank said in its report that in many other developing countries an inflation rate of 4-5 per cent is not a problem.

WASHINGTON -- The Senate approved and sent to President Obama on Wednesday what Congressional Democrats hope will be the first in a series of bills spurring employment by providing tax breaks and other hiring incentives to businesses.

The measure, approved on a bipartisan vote of 68 to 29, would give employers an exemption from payroll taxes through the end of 2010 on workers they hire who have been unemployed for at least 60 days. It also extends the federal highway construction program and takes other steps to bolster public building projects.

After the vote Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York praised the Republicans who voted for the bill, calling it "a legislative dream."

"Today is really a turning point," said Mr. Schumer. "And there are two words that symbolize it -- jobs and bipartisan. The American people sent us a message in Massachusetts and elsewhere. It was focus on jobs, the economy, helping the middle class stretch its paycheck. Our answer today: We heard you."

While 11 Republicans voted for the measure, others in the party were skeptical that it would help create new jobs, or said they were distressed at its cost.

The European Commission on Wednesday warned the eurozone's four largest countries - Germany, France, Italy and Spain - that their economic growth forecasts for the next three years were too optimistic, putting at risk their ability to cut their budget deficits in accordance with the European Union's fiscal rules.

The Commission asked these four countries, and others including Austria, Belgium, Ireland and the Netherlands, to spell out exactly how they intended to meet their medium-term deficit reduction targets of 3 per cent or less of gross domestic product - the EU's ceiling in normal economic times.

Britain has been warned that its plans to cut its deficit, which is estimated to be £178bn this financial year, were too timid. The Commission wants headline borrowing - currently more than 12 per cent of national output - to fall within the rules of the EU's stability and growth pact to a level of 3 per cent by 2014-15.

The Valukas report also exposes the dysfunctional relationship between the country's main regulatory bodies and the systemically dangerous institutions (SDIs) they are supposed to be policing. The NY Fed, the regulatory agency led by then FRBNY President Geithner, has a clear statutory mission to promote the safety and soundness of the banking system and compliance with the law. Yet it stood by while Lehman deceived the public through a scheme that FRBNY officials likened to a "three card monte routine" (p. 1470). The report states:

   "The FRBNY discounted the value of Lehman's pool to account for these collateral transfers. However, the FRBNY did not request that Lehman exclude this collateral from its reported liquidity pool. In the words of one of the FRBNY's on-site monitors: 'how Lehman reports its liquidity is between Lehman, the SEC, and the world'" (p. 1472).

Translation: The FRBNY knew that Lehman was engaged in smoke and mirrors designed to overstate its liquidity and, therefore, was unwilling to lend as much money to Lehman. The FRBNY did not, however, inform the SEC, the public, or the OTS (which regulated an S&L that Lehman owned) of what should have been viewed by all as ongoing misrepresentations.

The Fed's behavior made it clear that officials didn't believe they needed to do more with this information. The FRBNY remained willing to lend to an institution with misleading accounting and neither remedied the accounting nor notified other regulators who may have had the opportunity to do so.

The Fed wanted to maintain a fiction that toxic mortgage products were simply misunderstood assets, so it allowed Lehman to maintain the false pretense of its accounting. We now know from Valukas and from former Treasury Secretary Paulson that the Treasury and the Fed knew that Lehman was massively overstating its on-book asset values: "According to Paulson, Lehman had liquidity problems and no hard assets against which to lend" (p. 1530). We know from Valukas' interview of Geithner (p. 1502):

   The challenge for the government, and for troubled firms like Lehman, was to reduce risk exposure, and the act of reducing risk by selling assets could result in "collateral damage" by demonstrating weakness and exposing "air" in the marks.

Or, in plain English, the Fed didn't want Lehman and other SDIs to sell their toxic assets because the sales prices would reveal that the values Lehman (and all the other SDIs) placed on their toxic assets (the "marks") were inflated with worthless hot air. Lehman claimed its toxic assets were worth "par" (no losses) (p. 1159), but Citicorp called them "bottom of the barrel" and "junk" (p. 1218). JPMorgan concluded: "the emperor had no clothes" (p. 1140). The FRBNY acted shamefully in covering up Lehman's inflated asset values and liquidity. It constructed three, progressively weaker, stress tests -- Lehman failed even the weakest test. The FRBNY then allowed Lehman to administer its own stress test. Need we tell you the results?

'how Lehman reports its liquidity is between Lehman, the SEC, and the world'

The data are not good.

First of all, what this chart shows you is that the consumer is not deleveraging significantly (see Consumer credit down, but does it show deleveraging? and Why is everyone saying consumer credit is falling? It's not). Sure revolving debt (read: credit card debt) has fallen. But mortgage debt is still sky high. And on a debt to GDP basis, there really isn't a huge come down. Sorry, but that's what the data are saying. For an indebted household sector, this is bad news.

But, then you look at the other sectors and you see that the financial sector is deleveraging in a massive way. When I last looked the data, I concluded that the U.S. economy was wholly dependent on leverage in the financial sector to continue growing. So, the decreased financial sector leverage spells a lower growth future.

Finally, the government sector debt load continues to surge upward. Keynesians will tell you that the deficit spending that is the source of this increasing debt load is needed to increase savings in the private sector. However, it appears that most of the savings is being done in the financial sector and not in the household sector where it should be.

I see the data as an indication the private-sector deleveraging is only in its beginning stages and has much farther to go.

Regulators need new powers to control lending practices in targeted financial sectors and products to allow them to prick dangerous asset bubbles before they build up, according to the UK's top financial regulator.

Calling for a "radical reassessment" of global banking rules, Lord Turner, chairman of the Financial Services Authority, argued in a speech that politicians and regulators had to rethink the view that more lending and bigger markets are always better. They also needed to consider whether to impose transaction taxes and higher capital charges on banks to curb risky trading and financial activity that does not stimulate growth in the real economy.
...
Instead, governments could raise capital requirements for loans to overheated sectors, such as commercial real estate, or ban particular products, such as high-loan-to-value mortgages. Regulators may want to consider limits on borrowing by hedge funds to curb speculation.

"We need a new philosophical approach . . . which recognises that market liquidity is beneficial up to a point but not beyond that point, and dethrones the idea that more liquidity, supported by more trading, is axiomatically beneficial," said Lord Turner.

China and Germany are, of course, very different from each other. Yet, for all their differences, these countries share some characteristics: they are the largest exporters of manufactures, with China now ahead of Germany; they have massive surpluses of saving over investment; and they have huge trade surpluses. (See charts.)

Both also believe that their customers should keep buying, but stop irresponsible borrowing. Since their surpluses entail others' deficits, this position is incoherent. Surplus countries have to finance those in deficit. If the stock of debt becomes too big, the debtors will default. If so, the vaunted "savings" of surplus countries will prove to have been illusory: vendor finance becomes, after the fact, open export subsidies.

I am beginning to wonder whether the open global economy is going to survive this crisis.

BAGHDAD -- The followers of Moktada al-Sadr, a radical cleric who led the Shiite insurgency against the American occupation, have emerged as Iraq's equivalent of Lazarus in elections last week, defying ritual predictions of their demise and now threatening to realign the nation's balance of power.

Their apparent success in the March 7 vote for Parliament -- perhaps second only to the followers of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki as the largest Shiite bloc -- underscores a striking trend in Iraqi politics: a collapse in support for many former exiles who collaborated with the United States after the 2003 invasion.

Although rivals disparaged the Sadrists' election campaign, documents and interviews show an unprecedented discipline that has thrust the group to the brink of perhaps its greatest political influence in Iraq.

The outcome completes a striking arc of a populist movement that inherited the mantle of a slain ayatollah, then forged a martial culture in its fight with the American military in 2004.

After years of defeats, fragmentation and doubt even by its own clerics about its prospects in this election, the movement has embraced the political process, while remaining steadfast in opposition to any ties with the United States. It was never going to be easy to form a new postelection government -- and the Sadrists' unpredictability, along with a new confidence, may now make it that much harder.

FOND-DES-BLANCS, Haiti -- Before the earthquake that changed everything, Chlotilde Pelteau and her husband lived a supremely urban existence. A cosmetics vendor and a mechanic, they both enjoyed a steady clientele and a hectic daily routine, serenaded by the beeping cars and general hubbub of Port-au-Prince.

Now, as roosters crow and goats bleat, Ms. Pelteau, 29, toils by day on a craggy hillside in the isolated hamlet of Nan Roc (In the Rocks), which she had abandoned at 14 for a life of greater opportunity. At night, she, her husband and their two children sleep cheek-to-jowl with a dozen relatives in the small mud house where she grew up.

"With everything destroyed, what could I do but come back?" said Ms. Pelteau, wearing a floral skirt as she poked corn seeds deep into arid soil unlikely to yield enough food to sustain her rail-thin parents, much less those who fled the shattered capital city to rejoin them.

Life has come full circle for many Haitians who originally migrated to escape the grinding poverty of the countryside. Since the early 1980s, rural Haitians have moved at a steady clip to Port-au-Prince in search of schools, jobs and government services. After the earthquake, more than 600,000 returned to the countryside, according to the government, putting a serious strain on desperately poor communities that have received little emergency assistance.

More than 45,000 Sacramento County residents joined the ranks of the medically uninsured in the past two years, according to a new report that further illustrates the staggering depth of the recession: a surge of 2 million Californians without health insurance.

One in four Californians, or 8.2 million people, now lack coverage, according to UCLA researchers.

The study, released Tuesday, quickly became a talking point in the national debate over health care legislation, which could culminate later this week in a dramatic up-or-down vote on Capitol Hill.

California's newly uninsured include 400,000 children. In all, 1.5 million children in California have no health insurance, the study says.

"Given the economic conditions, we knew something was going to change, because 2009 was a terrible year," said Shana Alex Lavarreda, director of health insurance studies at UCLA and the lead author of the report.

"We didn't think it was going to be this huge. The numbers startled us. This is the biggest jump we've seen in decades."

KAMPALA (Reuters) - Ugandan security forces shot and wounded at least seven people on Wednesday after fire destroyed a royal tomb, heightening tensions between the government and the powerful Bugandan kingdom.

A Reuters witness said the shooting happened when security forces were clearing Bugandan loyalists from the charred remains of the tombs where their royalty are buried, so President Yoweri Museveni could visit the site gutted by fire on Tuesday night.

The cause of the blaze which destroyed the thatched-roof mausoleum and many centuries-old royal artefacts at the UNESCO World Heritage Site has not been identified, but some angry protesters suspected foul play.

"They have a wide conspiracy of destroying everything that marks there was a great kingdom called Buganda, and this is one of them," loyalist Jemba Erisa told Reuters at the tombs.

The Baganda are Uganda's largest tribe and were instrumental in Museveni coming to power 24 years ago. Museveni based his five-year military struggle in the kingdom's heartland and support by the Baganda has helped him stay in power.

But relations have been increasingly strained since Museveni last year blocked the reigning Bugandan monarch, or Kabaka, Ronald Mutebi, from visiting a part of his kingdom.

Clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli police have continued in the occupied West Bank despite the reopening of access to and from the area. 

Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, ordered the closure to be lifted on Wednesday, five days after imposing it citing security reasons.

Officials also reopened the al-Aqsa mosque compound in East Jerusalem, where dozens of people were injured on Tuesday as Palestinian demonstrators clashed with Israeli security forces.

"Access to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem is now free for both Muslim worshippers and tourists," Micky Rosenfeld, an Israeli police spokesman, said, using the Jewish name for the site.

It had been closed to Muslim men under the age of 50 and all non-Muslims.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 16, 2010) -- NASA scientists analyzing 30 years of satellite data have found that the amount of ultraviolet (UV) radiation reaching Earth's surface has increased markedly over the last three decades. Most of the increase has occurred in the mid-and-high latitudes, and there's been little or no increase in tropical regions.

The new analysis shows, for example, that at one line of latitude -- 32.5 degrees -- a line that runs through central Texas in the northern hemisphere and the country of Uruguay in the southern hemisphere, 305 nanometer UV levels have gone up by some 6 percent on average since 1979.

The primary culprit: decreasing levels of stratospheric ozone, a colorless gas that acts as Earth's natural sunscreen by shielding the surface from damaging UV radiation.

The finding reinforces previous observations that show UV levels are stabilizing after countries began signing an international treaty that limited the emissions of ozone-depleting gases in 1987. The study also shows that increased cloudiness in the southern hemisphere over the 30-year period has impacted UV.

WASHINGTON -- When it comes to dinner, Puget Sound's killer whales show no respect for international boundaries.

It's long been known that their favorite meal is Chinook salmon. However, using new genetic tests on the orcas' feces, and fish tissue and scales taken from the waters near where the whales are feasting, scientists say that as much as 90 percent of the Chinook they eat are from Canada's Fraser River.

Though the dietary habits of killer whales may not seem like a big deal, the orcas and various salmon species are protected on both sides of the border. Efforts to revive endangered species that share the same ecosystem can become intertwined.

"It is fascinating the whales specialize in a particular species, and the species they focus on is one of the rarer ones and in some case protected," said Michael Ford, the director of the conservation biology division at the National Marine Fisheries Science Center in Seattle. "Recovery of the whales could be dependent on the recovery of salmon. It is all related."

Ford was among a group of U.S. and Canadian scientists who published the results of their study in the recent edition of the journal Endangered Species Research.

A running mantra through the climate debate is that global warming is global indeed. Now, however, a scientist has found that localized "CO2 domes" could increase urban smog and other air pollution problems.

In a study published in Environmental Science & Technology, Stanford University professor Mark Jacobson estimated that the effect could cause the premature deaths of 50 to 100 people a year in California and 300 to 1,000 for the continental United States. By comparison, anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 people a year die in air pollution-related deaths.

The finding, he says, could justify a regional or local approach to cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Nearly all global and national emissions reduction plans operate on the assumption that a ton of CO2 from a coal plant in China or Ohio has the same climate effect as a ton from cars stuck in traffic on the Los Angeles freeway. Instead, he said, the local health effects of those emissions should also be considered.

"For better or worse, there is this local effect of CO2. That does give us scientific basis for controlling CO2 based on its local impact," said Jacobson.

NEW YORK, March 16 (Reuters) - A huge snowpack from a harsh winter will cause extensive flooding this spring in the upper Midwest and in the major corn-growing state of Iowa, the U.S. National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration said on Tuesday.

"We are looking at potentially historic flooding in some parts of the country this spring," NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco told reporters in a briefing while presenting the government's spring flood risk outlook.

The snowpack in the Midwest is "more extensive than in 2009," with precipitation in December up to four times above average, NOAA said.

"It's a terrible case of deja vu, but this time the flooding will likely be more widespread," Lubchenco said. "As the spring thaw melts the snowpack, saturated and frozen ground in the Midwest will exacerbate the flooding of the flat terrain and feed rising rivers and streams."

Of particular risk is the Red River Valley in Minnesota, with NOAA officials saying it was unusual that the area would face the threat of severe floods for the second year running. [ID:nN15199245]

The Red River runs north, dividing North Dakota and Minnesota, before running through the flat southern plains of the Canadian province of Manitoba.

WASHINGTON -- Many of America's coal-fired power plants lack widely available pollution controls for the highly toxic metal mercury, and mercury emissions recently increased at more than half of the country's 50 largest mercury-emitting power plants, according to a report Wednesday.

The nonpartisan Environmental Integrity Project reported that five of the 10 plants with the highest amount of mercury emitted are in Texas. Plants in Georgia, Missouri, Alabama, Pennsylvania and Michigan also are in the top 10.

The report, which used the most recent data available from the Environmental Protection Agency, found that mercury emissions increased at 27 of the top 50 plants from 2007 to 2008. Overall, power plant emissions of mercury decreased 4.7 percent in that timeframe, but that amount was far less than what would be possible with available emissions controls, the report said.

Coal-fired power plants are the largest source of mercury pollution, generating more than 40 percent of U.S. emissions. Mercury released into the air settles in rivers and lakes, where it moves through the food chain to the fish that people eat.

Creative writing programs in a university setting are nothing new in the US and Britain. But in Germany, the teaching of creative writing remains novel. An award-winning program in Leipzig is trying to change that. 

"Speaking very generally, Germans tend to think of creative writing as something that cannot be taught - a matter of genius, independent of education," said Sebastian Hermann from the University of Leipzig.

 

That historical belief may be why the German Creative Writing Program (DLL) at the University of Leipzig is unique in the country. It has been guiding students through the intricacies of writing literary texts since 1995.

 

From poems to novels to radio plays, graduates of the institute have written it all.

 

And written it well - they've got the publications and awards to prove it. Leipzig alumni have been awarded the nation's top literary accolades, including the German Book Prize and the Leipzig Book Fair's Prize. The institute itself was awarded the German Critics' Prize in 2005, a symbolic award intended to draw attention to an undiscovered cultural gem.

 

This reputation for excellence has likewise helped the institute draw a star faculty. Recent guest lecturers have included the Nobel Prize-winning author Herta Mueller ("The Appointment") and best-selling author and cultural critic Iliya Troyanov ("The Collector of Worlds"), among others.

Historians criticized proposed revisions to the Texas social studies curriculum Tuesday, saying that many of the changes are historically inaccurate and that they would affect textbooks and classrooms far beyond the state's borders.

The changes, which were preliminarily approved last week by the Texas board of education and are expected to be given final approval in May, will reach deeply into Texas history classrooms, defining what textbooks must include and what teachers must cover. The curriculum downplays the role of Thomas Jefferson among the founding fathers, questions the separation of church and state and says that the U.S. government was infiltrated by communists during the Cold War.

Because the Texas textbook market is so large, books assigned to the state's 4.7 million students often rocket to the top of the market, decreasing costs for other school districts and leading them to buy the same materials.

[...]

Each subject in Texas's curriculum is revised every 10 years, and the basic social studies framework was introduced by a panel of teachers last year. But the elected state board of education, which is made up of 10 Republicans and five Democrats, has made more than 100 amendments to the curriculum since January.

Discussions ranged from whether President Ronald Reagan should get more attention (yes), whether hip-hop should be included as part of lessons on American culture (no), and whether President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis's inaugural address should be studied alongside Abraham Lincoln's (yes).

Germans are popular in India and Pakistan, but not always for the right reasons. Many in South Asia have nothing but admiration for Adolf Hitler and still associate Germany with the Third Reich. Everyday encounters with the love of all things Nazi makes German visitors cringe.

Pakistan is the opposite of Germany. The mountains are in the north, the sea is in the south, the economic problems are in the west and the east is doing well. It's not hard for a German living in Pakistan to get used to these differences, but one contrast is hard to stomach: Most people like Hitler.

I was recently at the hairdresser, an elderly man who doesn't resort to electric clippers. All he has is creaky pair of scissors, a comb, an aerosol with water. He did a neat job but I wasn't entirely happy.

I said: "I look like Hitler."

He looked at me in the mirror, gave a satisfied smile and said: "Yes, yes, very nice."

A French spacecraft designed to discover new worlds beyond our solar system has made one of its most significant finds yet--a planet that looks like a cousin to those in our own celestial backyard. COROT 9 b, named by astronomical convention for the instrument that discovered it, the COROT (for COnvection, ROtation and planetary Transits) satellite, is less massive than Jupiter and orbits a star, called COROT 9, at about the same distance Mercury orbits the sun. The new world is of fairly average size, but it is the most temperate exoplanet yet whose properties are well known in orbit around a sunlike star.

A largely European research team reports the discovery the March 18 issue of Nature. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.)

Like NASA's Kepler spacecraft, launched in 2009, the three-year-old COROT tracks the brightness of stars with a photometer, looking for periodic dimming that might be attributable to the passage of a planet across the face of its host star. Actually confirming a planetary cause of that dimming takes painstaking follow-up work at telescopes on the ground. Most often the researchers look for Doppler shifts in the host star's light as the planet's gravity regularly tugs the star nearer to and then farther from Earth.

The degree of dimming starlight during the passage of a planet across its star, a type of partial eclipse known as a transit, indicates the body's diameter. The velocity at which the star wobbles under the planet's influence, on the other hand, reveals the object's mass. With both transit and stellar-wobble observations of a planet, astronomers can paint a fairly complete picture of a world they have only indirectly observed.

"With transits we can learn much more about the planets than with any other method to find planets," says lead study author Hans Deeg, an astronomer at Spain's Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands. "It's the only method currently where we can measure the size of the planets fairly reliably." On its own, a measurement of the star's wobble can only reveal a lower limit to the planet's mass, and in some cases the true mass turns out to be many times greater than that lower bound.

Mr. Judt's new book, "Ill Fares the Land," is a slim and penetrating work, a dying man's sense of a dying idea: the notion that the state can play a significant role in its citizens' lives without imperiling their liberties. It makes sense that this book arrives now, not merely during the hideous endgame of the national health-care debate but during mud season; this book's bleak assessment of the selfishness and materialism that have taken root in Western societies will stick to your feet and muddy your floors. But "Ill Fares the Land" is also optimistic, raw and patriotic in its sense of what countries like the United States and Britain have meant -- and can continue to mean -- to their people and to the world.

And in the end it comes down to:

It is "incumbent upon us to reconceive the role of government," Mr. Judt admonishes his audience. "If we do not, others will."

Physicists have demonstrated behavior governed by rules of the quantum world, which operate at the level of atoms, in mechanical objects large enough to see.

The accomplishment fulfills a long-held dream to bridge the quantum and everyday worlds. One day, researchers say, mechanical devices in a laboratory might be manipulated according to the rules of single atoms -- paving the way to quantum information processing or probing other unusual behaviors of the subatomic world.

A pair of UK hackers who used false betting slips in a bid to con casinos into paying out on bogus gambles were undone by greed and a schoolboy maths error, a court heard.

Andrew Ashley, 30, and Nimesh Bhagat, 31, were each handed a suspended jail sentence of one year after they pleaded guilty to theft over a plot involving the mock-up of false winning betting slips for live roulette wheels running at four Gala Casinos in London.

The duo took the casino for an estimated £33,000 in the summer of 2007 after hacking into casino systems to print out winning slips valued at up to £600, irrespective of the number that actually dropped on the wheel, The Daily Telegraph reports.

However, the scheme came unstuck after an alert cashier noticed a winning slip for £600 for a £10 bet at odds of 35-1. The casino launched an investigation that unearthed a string of other suspicious bets, traced back to Ashley and Bhagat, IT contractors working at the casino at the time of the scam.

Here's a figure that will chill the blood of any parent thinking about sending their child to university.

It's a price tag of more than $200,000 - about £132,000 - for a four-year undergraduate course at one of the leading universities in the United States.

It means that as well as student loans there are also parent loans - with huge sums of money borrowed by people who might have been planning for their retirement.

And it's the middle-income families who are facing the toughest squeeze.

In England a major review of university funding and students' fees is under way. What would happen to the cost of going to university if there were no fixed limits?

NEW YORK -- All the world from the Sydney Opera House to the Empire State Building turned Irish, or at least Irish for the day, as revelers marked St. Patrick's Day with bagpipes, dancing, emerald lights and green body paint in a flurry of celebration.

New Yorkers and visitors from all over the globe lined Manhattan's Fifth Avenue a dozen deep for the world's oldest and largest St. Patrick's Day parade Wednesday, as crowds gathered along sun-warmed routes in Dublin and cities around the U.S. to mark the holiday.

The day simultaneously served as a celebration of spring in many cities, with participants in parades and other outdoor gatherings basking in temperatures in the 60s after a harsh winter.

The 249th St. Patrick's Day extravaganza in New York City was to be the last of the Big Apple's world-famous parades to take place before new restrictions go into effect April 1 requiring all parades to be shorter to save money.

The city issued the new rules in February, requiring all parades to trim routes by 25 percent and reduce time to less than five hours, changes estimated to save $3.1 million in police expenses.

NEW YORK--While having drinks with friends at a local bar Monday, Donald Fagen, 60, a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and cofounder of the multiplatinum-selling American rock band Steely Dan, was once again forced to defend his appreciation for the multiplatinum-selling American rock band Steely Dan.

"Look, I understand. It's an acquired taste," Fagen said after putting his group's 1978 hit "Deacon Blues" on the bar's jukebox. "I wasn't that into it at first, either. But when you really listen to the unbelievable production values and the wry, perfectly crafted lyrics--it's just great art, okay? You should definitely give 'the Dan' a shot."

Fagen went on to cite additional evidence in defense of his admiration for the music, including the disparate jazz, R&B, and blues influences that pervade the band's music, and the ultraclean sound that became the group's hallmark.

"No one attained that level of perfection in the studio," Fagen said. "Do you know how many guitar players tried and failed to nail the solo on the song 'Peg'? Six. Six professional session guitar players. That's commitment to a vision, if you ask me."

[...]

Even after his acquaintances roundly dismissed Steely Dan as "pussy music," Fagen vehemently maintained that the band has contributed significantly to the rock and roll genre, and described his and Becker's unorthodox instrumentation choices and song arrangements as "bold."