(Reuters) - The [UK] government will make significant cuts to its welfare budget on top of the 11 billion pounds already planned, Treasury Chief Secretary Danny Alexander said on Wednesday.

Alexander has a key role in drawing up the coalition government's detailed plans to cut a record peacetime budget deficit of 11 percent of gross domestic product to almost nothing in five years. He did not put a figure on the scale of the additional cuts.

A spending review to be unveiled in October will reveal where the axe will fall, with most departments facing cuts of around 25 percent in their budget.

In an interview with Reuters at the Liberal Democrat party conference in Liverpool, Alexander said it was essential to reduce the annual 192 billion pound welfare bill as any savings would ease the pressure for cuts elsewhere.

Britons need to save almost one- third of their average household income to ensure they receive an adequate pension, according to a study by Aviva Plc, the U.K.'s second-biggest insurer.

British nationals retiring between 2011 and 2051 will have to save on average 12,300 euros ($16,100) a year, more than people in any other European country, to receive 70 percent of their working income in retirement, the study showed. Germans need to save 11,600 euros a year to reach that level and the Irish should save 9,100 euros, according to the research.

Britons are facing the steepest challenge in Europe to save for retirement after the financial crisis eroded the value of funds, many companies stopped offering final salary pensions and an aging population began weighing on the state coffers. The average pretax household income was 35,100 pounds ($54,600) in 2008, the most recent government figure available, and U.K. consumers remain the most heavily indebted in Europe, making it even harder for people to save, according to Datamonitor Group.

Brussels, like Washington, is planning to launch measures to regulate commodity exchanges and curb speculation, as well as step up transparency in food trade after the recent surge in agricultural commodity prices.

 "We are examining with care rules adopted in the United States (in raw materials markets), and notably those concerning position limits or powers given to regulators, including a mandate against speculation," said EU Internal Market Commissioner Michel Barnier.

"We are ready to be pioneers too, if possible," Barnier added during a two-day conference in Brussels on financial services, which ended yesterday (21 September).

European Council President Herman Van Rompuy showcased his confidence in the European project and hailed the "flexibility" of his role as a coordinator of EU governments at a conference in Paris on Monday (20 September). EurActiv France reports.

 At an event organised by the think-tank Notre Europe, Van Rompuy reiterated his faith in Europe's ability to move forward - even if step by step - and rounded on Eurosceptic critics who are talking about the imminent collapse of the EU. "Our Union always surprises," he said. "Together, we are able to stay in control of our destiny."

The Council chairman stressed that the EU cannot afford to stagnate while the world progresses before its very eyes. "He who does not move forwards moves backwards," he declared. But Europe must proceed at its own pace and cannot be expected to change overnight, he added

The European Parliament yesterday (21 September) endorsed a new regulation to prop up Europe's preparedness to deal with gas supply crises.

 An overwhelming majority of MEPs voted in favour of a political compromise reached on the Regulation on Security of Gas Supply in June.

The new rules seek to give the EU the capacity to respond to gas supply disruptions and step up the development of interconnections.

They require member states to establish preventive action and emergency plans and grant the European Commission a strong role in coordinating emergency responses. The EU executive will also scrutinise the prevention plans with a view to ensuring that they do not endanger another member state's security of supply.

The agreement also seeks to correct the lack of interconnections, which was identified as having greatly contributed to the difficulties in getting supplies to Eastern Europe, where gas was largely cut off during the January 2009 Russia-Ukraine gas row.

EU ordered to scrap import tariffs on hi-tech goods.

The European Commission has decided not to appeal against a World Trade Organization ruling that the EU should scrap tariffs on imports of flat-screen displays, multi-function printers and television set-top boxes.

A spokesman for the Commission said today (21 September) that the EU had decided "after careful consideration" not to appeal against the WTO ruling on a complaint brought by the US, China and Taiwan in 2008. The ruling was shared with the parties on 16 August.

Foreign affairs committee "angry" at Ashton appointments.

The European Parliament's foreign affairs committee last night (20 September) postponed a vote to amend staff regulations required for the European Union's new diplomatic service to be launched.

A leading centre-right MEP on the committee, Jacek Saruysz-Wolski of Poland, said that the regulations should include quotas for citizens from the EU's new member states.

...

There was "anger" among MEPs about a first wave of appointments to the European External Action Service (EEAS) announced last week by Catherine Ashton, the EU's foreign policy chief, the source said. The MEPs said that with last week's appointments, Ashton broke her commitment to ensure gender and geographical balance. Last week, Ashton announced 27 appointments to EU delegations, almost all at head of delegation level. They included four from member states that joined the EU on or after 1 May 2004 and seven women.

BRUSSELS, Sep 22, 2010 (IPS) - Less than two months after Pakistan was devastated by one of the worst disasters in recent history, the European Union's lawmakers have decided that Pakistanis living in the 27-country bloc without permission should be returned home.

In a Sep 21 vote, the European Parliament approved a "readmission agreement" with Pakistan under which the country will be required to take back any of its nationals deemed to be "illegal immigrants" by the EU's member states.

Negotiated over an eight-year period, the accord will give the Pakistani authorities 60 days to respond to requests to accept back their nationals from the EU. If no response is forthcoming during that period, the Union will be allowed assume that Pakistan has no objection to receiving the migrants in question. If, however, Pakistan wishes to turn down a request, it will have to present a written "justification" of its reasons for doing so.

Amnesty International has argued that the timing of the agreement is inappropriate at a time when Pakistan is struggling to cope with severe flooding and while the human rights situation in the country remains hugely problematic.

Italian police have seized seven tonnes of the powerful RDX explosives from a container ship believed to be on its way to Syria, according to authorities.

Anti-mafia police found the explosives hidden in a shipment of powdered milk at the port of Gioia Tauro in southern Calabria, Italian news agencies reported.

Carmelo Casabona, the region's police chief, said investigators are not yet sure of who was in control of the shipment, but it appeared that it originally travelled from Iran.

Also known as T4, RDX is a powerful military grade explosive that has been used in several devastating attacks believed to have been carried out by the Italian mafia in past years.

STRASBOURG, France, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- A pan-European financial supervision architecture will come into being next year after the European Parliament gave its final approval to the new framework on Wednesday with a majority vote.

The lawmakers' vote cast during their plenary session in Strasbourg sealed an informal agreement reached earlier this month, ending a long negotiating battle within the EU, since Britain and Germany had been concerned the new regulatory bodies would undermine their national supervisory authorities.

Under the supervision framework, three new pan-European financial watchdogs will be created by the start of next year to oversee banks, insurance companies and trading on markets.

The three European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) will enjoy new powers to settle disputes among national financial supervisors and to impose temporary bans on risky financial products and activities.

ATHENS, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- Greek truckers announced the culmination of their ten-day protest over the liberalization of the freight truck sector in Greece Wednesday afternoon, after the parliament voted for a controversial bill that opens the market in the debt-ridden country after four decades.

"We have lost everything. We have nothing else to lose," said the President of the Federation of Owners of state-licensed Trucks George Georgatos during a demonstration of 3,500 protesters in front of the parliament building in the center of Athens. The union decided to step up the protest with blockades of highways across Greece.

Georgatos's statement followed the official announcement that the bill the socialist government promoted in the framework of austerity measures and reforms to overcome a severe economic crisis, passed.

Qaeda's North African wing is very well recognized as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, stated that they are responsible for previous week's kidnapping in Niger of five French nationals, on Tuesday the Arabic-language news group Al-Jazeera reported that.

The news agency showed an audio recording of a voice that is identified as of Salah Abou Mohammed the spokesman for AQIM. CNN was not straight away able to freely verify the report.

The security was strong in the place and there were many security guards there, soldiers of Islam took in charge of all kidnapped five French nuclear experts that were working for the company Areva and all security. The company professes liability for this blessed operation, as reported by al-Jazeera.

The strong man of Sarkozistan, a small hoodlum state in Western Europe, and his Number Two, seen in traditional dress at an official dacha where they met for talks yesterday.

(Hat-tip to a reader of Arrêt sur images - Bravo l'artiste!)

Thus in October 2008, six months after U.S.-backed Kosovo leaders unilaterally declared that the province was an independent State, Serbia persuaded the UN General Assembly to submit the following question to the International Court of Justice for an (unbinding) advisory opinion: "Is the unilateral declaration of independence by the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government of Kosovo in accordance with international law?'"

This was risky at best, because Serbia had more to lose by an unfavorable opinion than it had to gain by a favorable one. After all, most of the UN member states were already refusing to recognize Kosovo's independence, for perfectly solid reasons of legality and self-interest. At best, a favorable ICJ opinion would merely confirm this, but would not in itself lead to any positive action. Serbia could only hope to use such a favorable opinion to ask to open genuine negotiations on the status of the province, but the Kosovo Albanian separatists and their United States backers could not be forced to do so.

One must stop here to point out that there are two major issues involved in all this: one is the status and future of Kosovo, and the other is the larger issue of national sovereignty and self-determination within the context of international law. If so many UN member states supported Serbia, it was certainly not because of Kosovo itself but because of the larger implications. Nobody objected to the splitting of Czechoslovakia, because the Czechs and the Slovaks negotiated the terms of separation. The issue is the method. There are literally hundreds, perhaps thousands, of potential ethnic secessionist movements within existing countries around the world. Kosovo sets an ominous precedent. An armed separatist movement, with heavy support from the United States, where an ethnic Albanian lobby had secured important political backing, notably from former Senator and Republican Presidential candidate Bob Dole, carried out a campaign of assassinations in 1998 in order to trigger a repression which it could then describe as "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide" as a pretext for NATO intervention.

Vince Cable has insisted he has a pro-business agenda but refused to apologise for attacking excessive bank bonuses paid to "spivs and gamblers".

In his speech to the Lib Dem conference, the business secretary called for action to stop capitalism "killing competition".

But he attributed the idea to the free-market economist Adam Smith.

Mr Cable also revealed Royal Mail staff would be given 10% of shares in any future flotation of the company.

(Reuters) - Billions of dollars in U.S. tax breaks to encourage home ownership, retirement savings, business start-ups and education mostly benefit top income earners and do little to help low- and middle-income people build wealth, a report released on Wednesday said.

The U.S. government spent nearly $400 billion, mostly through tax breaks, in 2009 to promote home ownership and other wealth-building strategies and more than half of that benefited the wealthiest 5 percent of taxpayers, said the study sponsored by the nonprofit Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED).

The report calls these policies "upside down" and recommends redirecting wealth-building incentives to help more middle- and lower-income people save and build assets. With record deficits and tight budgets dominating the political landscape, CFED President Andrea Levere said the report was intended to help policymakers fine-tune some of these tax breaks to get the biggest benefit for the economy.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said the yuan's value isn't causing the U.S. trade deficit with his country, rejecting President Barack Obama's assessment that China is keeping the currency cheap to aid exports.

"The main cause of the U.S. trade deficit is not the exchange rate of the Chinese currency, but the structure of investment and savings," Wen said at a meeting with U.S. business leaders including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein in New York today. "There's a trade imbalance between the U.S. and China, which is not something we want to see. China doesn't pursue a trade surplus intentionally."

The yuan has appreciated 1.8 percent against the dollar since June 19, when the central bank said it would pursue a more flexible exchange rate after keeping the currency at about 6.83 versus the U.S. currency for almost two years. The yuan gained 0.2 percent to 6.69 per dollar today, the strongest level since the central bank unified official and market exchange rates at the end of 1993.

The currency is "valued lower than market conditions say it should be" and that gives China "an advantage in trade," Obama said Sept. 20 at a town-hall discussion on jobs and the economy in Washington.

The Federal Reserve moved closer to a second wave of unconventional monetary easing and said for the first time that too-low inflation, in addition to sluggish growth, would warrant taking action.

The Federal Open Market Committee's statement yesterday that inflation is "somewhat below" levels consistent with its congressional mandate for stable prices pushed yields on two- year Treasuries to a record low. The language evoked FOMC warnings in 2003 of the risk of inflation "becoming undesirably low" that justified the era's low-rate policy.

(Isn't "too-low inflation" deflation? Or is that the word that must not be pronounced?)

For all of Lawrence Summers's drawbacks, a strong-willed and intellectual economist who critics say is difficult to work with, President Barack Obama faces a tough task in finding a replacement with the stature of the departing director of the National Economic Council.

Summers will return to Harvard University, where he has served as president and is a professor on a two-year leave, by the end of the year, the White House said yesterday. He will leave the economic team at a time when the nation is still recovering from the worst recession since the 1930s, and following elections in which the president's party faces the possible loss of control of the House and perhaps the Senate.

Obama will be searching on three fronts, people familiar with the discussions say. Administration officials are debating recruiting a corporate executive to allay the business community's doubts about White House policies. They're also looking at female candidates to add balance on an economic team dominated by men. Most of all, the White House could use another Larry Summers.

Summers was the "brain trust for Obama," said Catherine Mann, a former Federal Reserve economist who is now an economics professor at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.

The ratings agency Moody's on Wednesday said it had raised its outlook on the French banking sector to "stable" from "negative" on grounds that its could look forward to greater stability in the future.

"The structural characteristics of the country's banks have contributed to their resilience during the (economic) crisis by helping them absorb losses and withstand related shocks," the agency said in a statement.

It added that "these factors provide a sound foundation for a more stable performance in the future."

(Reuters) - The global financial crisis led to tighter regulation of the banking industry's excesses, but a top British banker says it had a more important result: greater emphasis on social responsibility.

Barclays President Robert Diamond told the Clinton Global Initiative philanthropy meeting on Wednesday that "strong banks want strong regulation" because they suffered in the crisis from being put in the same basket as failed banks.

"The change is good on the financial side. The change that's more important is on the cultural side," Diamond, who will become Barclays PLC (BARC.L) chief executive next year, said during a discussion on stronger market-based solutions.

Exit Harry Schultz, pursued by a bear?

New York (MarketWatch) -- A famous veteran gold bug, who called the Crash of 2008, is now calling for sudden hyperinflation. But he warns he may not be around to comment on it.

My headline paraphrases Shakespeare's most famous stage direction (from The Winter's Tale). But I've added a query, because Harry Schultz says that, after closing his International Harry Schultz Letter [IHSL] at the end of the year, he will write regular "Big Picture Editorials" to be included with the Aden Forecast, which will take over his subscription obligations, "for as long as my health allows." He's 87.

....

Schultz may be worried about his health but he has not lost his knack for eccentric, possibly prescient, edginess. He leads his current issue:

"I'm happy to announce the end of World War 3. The Iran war, which triggered World War Three, planned by the Pentagon and Mossad, has ended, actually before they began. It's a first in history!

"How do I know this? Follow the money, not the propaganda. Four US banks are to open branches in Iran!...Citibank and Goldman Sachs are among the first applicants! Since Goldman Sachs is the alternate, or behind the scenes US government, as we all know, that name/news assured me of the good news."

Home of Daily Consumer Leading Indicators

"Bringing the measurements of critical economic activities into the twenty-first century by
mining tracking data for an understanding of what American consumers were doing yesterday."

                                                       Growth Index Past 4 Years

It is not necessary to wait until the train is out of sight to know that you have been run over. It is possible to see this as it is happening. Consumer Metrics Institute bases their data on current DAILY events, such as internet purchases, thus their information is "upstream" from BEA data.

The "Great Recession is over!  Long live the Greater Recession?" The BEA should announce this "recession" sometime between New Years Day, 2011 and July 15, 2011.

September 18, 2010 - Has the Bottom Been Reached?:

During the month and a half from August 1 to September 15, our Weighted Composite Index has improved substantially, rising from recording a year-over-year contraction rate in excess of 9% to recently registering a contraction rate near 3%. This is the largest positive movement that we have seen over half of a quarter since late 2009. The improvement has stopped (at least temporarily) the decline of our 91-day trailing quarter average (our Daily Growth Index):

Our Daily Growth Index reached a -5.86% contraction rate on September 12, which was fully 97% as bad as the worst contraction rate reached during the "Great Recession of 2008" (-6.02% on August 29, 2008). A calendar quarter of comparable GDP growth has occurred among only 1.29% of all quarters of U.S. GDP growth recorded by the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the U.S. Department of Commerce, since the spring of 1947. This corresponds to level of contraction that should be expected only once in 19.4 years, and it comes close on the heels of the 2008 contraction that should occur only once in every 21.4 years. (Emphasis added.)

It has been noted that extreme events are occurring closer and closer together of late, but this should render problematic the entire framework of such equilibrium assumptions as "returning to the norm" for our current situation.

One of the tools that we have used to monitor the 2010 contraction event is a chart that we call our "Contraction Watch," which overlays graphically the day-by-day progression of the current 2010 contraction onto the "Great Recession of 2008":

In the above chart the two contractions are aligned on the left margin at the first day during each event that our Daily Growth Index went negative, and they progress day-by-day to the right, tracing out the daily rate of contraction. This chart conveys important information about the 2010 event, in particular how it differs in profile from the "Great Recession of 2008." It has now lasted three weeks longer than the "Great Recession" and is perhaps only just now forming a bottom. Furthermore, that bottom is very nearly as low as the one experienced in 2008. Even if the 2010 contraction immediately starts to retrace the recovery pattern seen in 2008, we should expect at least another 120 days or so of net contraction before the consumer portion of the economy is growing once again.

We have previously pointed out that the true severity of any contraction event is the area between the "zero" axis in the above chart and the line being traced out by the daily contraction values. By that measure the "Great Recession of 2008" had a total of 793 percentage-days of contraction, and its severity can be visualized as the amount of area covered by the red stripes in the chart below:

Similarly, the current 2010 contraction has just reached 592 percentage-days, and its severity can be visualized as the amount of area covered by the blue stripes in this chart:

The blue stripes above already cover about 75% of the area covered by the 2008 "Great Recession", and the curve has only just begun to start back up. Looking ahead, should the 2010 event recover from its bottom exactly like the 2008 event did, it would still experience another 466 percentage-days of contraction before ending -- resulting in a grand total of 1058 percentage-days of contraction for the 2010 event, fully 33% more severe than the "Great Recession of 2008." This, of course, assumes that stimuli comparable to those seen in 2008-2009 will be available to cause such a recovery during 2010-2011 -- and that unemployment quickly returns to the levels that helped consumer demand start to rebound in late August of 2008: about 6.1%. Absent fresh consumer stimuli and dropping unemployment rates, the consumer demand contraction we are witnessing could very well linger. (Empahsis added.)

And, of course, this damage, denoted in "percentage-days of contraction" is cumulative and is being inflicted on an economy that has not truly recovered before the "Greater Recession" began. Bear in mind that this measure, "percentage-days of contraction or expansion" are not measures of economic production, though they are reflections of production.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

Ireland's recovery from the deepest recession of any eurozone country came to a quick and unexpected end today when the Irish government announced that national output dropped by 1.2% in the second quarter of 2010.

After posting an increase in growth in the first three months of the year, official data showed that the former "Celtic Tiger" sank into a double dip recession in the spring.

News of the relapse rattled the financial markets and put additional pressure on Dublin's unpopular coalition government, which had previously insisted that its tough budget cuts were helping to stabilise the economy. Ireland has also been hailed by Britain's coalition government for its decision to tackle the double-digit budget deficit left by the collapse of its property bubble with immediate and deep cuts.

The Obama administration has launched a battle to cut the number of Western Europeans on the board of the International Monetary Fund and make room for more representatives from developing countries.

Taking on a cluster of small nations such as Belgium and the Netherlands, the administration has threatened to to let the board dissolve unless the Europeans give up two or three of the nine seats they hold. The U.S. appointee to the IMF board, Meg Lundsager, in August blocked a vote needed for new board elections, part of an effort to redistribute power within the IMF and, the administration says, sustain the agency's credibility in newly influential parts of the world.

By most any reckoning, Western Europe's role in the global economy is not what it used to be. But the region accounts for more than a third of the board's 24 seats, and several smaller European countries argue that their presence on the board remains vital.

When the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact disintegrated, for example, Belgium took on a leadership role, representing some of the former Soviet states and some of the new Eastern European countries, such as the Czech Republic. The Netherlands represents a patchwork coalition that includes the broken-up bits of the former Yugoslavia and the former Soviet Union, as well as Israel, giving the Jewish state an IMF home other than with the Egyptian-led delegation of Arab states.

The US military has drawn up plans to continue holding Afghan prisoners it deems a threat in a "unilateral" prison complex on Bagram airbase even after it hands control of the main detention facility to the Afghan government next year.     

US military authorities are expecting to retain control part of the existing Bagram prison to hold "security threats," as well as prisoners who were arrested outside the country and flown into Afghanistan on rendition flights, according to the admiral in charge of overseeing US detention operations in the country.

Vice-Admiral Robert Harward, the head of Joint Task Force 435, which runs US detentions in Afghanistan, was quoted on Wednesday by the Wall Street Journal admitting that the handover of Bagram was not expected to include all the prisoners currently being held there.

"I anticipate having a subset of unilateral US detention operations, including Pakistanis we can't repatriate and enduring security threats," the admiral said.

US President Barack Obama's senior advisers have been waging internal battles over Afghan policy for 20 months, according to a new book.

Obama's Wars by Bob Woodward is said to portray an uncertain administration as the president agrees to a troop surge of 30,000.

In one excerpt leaked to US media, US special envoy Richard Holbrooke sums up US policy by saying: "It can't work."

In another, President Obama tells a meeting he wants an exit strategy.

A number of US media outlets have had access to the book, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, which said it had obtained a leaked copy.

(Reuters) - Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao threatened more retaliation against Japan unless it releases a trawler captain whom Tokyo accuses of ramming with two Japanese coastguard ships near disputed islands.

Japanese leaders urged calm but showed no sign of backing down on an issue one analyst said is largely a row over energy resources in sea around the islands that both claim.

In the first comments by a senior Chinese leader on the issue, he told a meeting of ethnic Chinese in New York on Tuesday that the skipper must be set free unconditionally.

TOKYO, Sep 22, 2010 (IPS) - The son had cared for his sick father, and when the old man died, he buried the body in his garden. But the son did not tell the authorities about his father's death, as required by law. Instead, he continued to act as if his father was still alive, and collected the old man's pension.

This story was broadcast just in August on Japan's public television, which also announced the arrest of the 39-year- old son, by authorities. The case left many Japanese aghast, not only because they were shocked by the son's gall. It was also because it was the second such story in a span of a few weeks.

In July, Japan had been rocked by the news that the man believed to be Tokyo's oldest resident had actually been dead for several years. Authorities had come knocking at his door to greet him on his 111th birthday - only to discover his mummified corpse. It turned out that since his wife died in 2004, his daughter, now 81, had been withdrawing the pension due him.

Until now, these stories remain the topic of many conversations throughout Japan, with fingers pointed at various supposed culprits, including bureaucrats for careless record keeping or selfish children for not looking after their ageing parents.

But Itsuko Teruoka, a respected sociologist affiliated with Saitama University, says the ongoing discussions seem to have skirted a crucial point: Japan's increasing poverty rate, which she says is the prime reason for the breakdown of Japan's once proud traditions.

Citing UN sanctions, Russia has cancelled a planned sale of advanced missiles to Iran. Dmitry Medvedev, Russian president, has issued a decree prohibiting the delivery of S-300 air defence missile systems and other weapons to Iran.

Reuters news agency reports that the presidential decree, issued on Wednesday, brings trade rules for Russia and its companies into line with the sanctions, pleasing the United States and other Western nations that are deeply worried about Iran's military capability.

"What's interesting about this order is that it not only bans the sale of  surface-to-air S-300 missiles, it also bans other weapons system," Alexander Nekrassov, former adviser to the Kremlin, told Al Jazeera.

He added that the decree also bans senior Iranian officials "who are somehow linked to the nuclear programme" from visiting Russia.

Wen Jiabao, the Chinese prime minister, has warned of further action if Japan fails to release a trawler captain whose arrest this month set off the worst diplomatic row between the two Asian powers in years.

In the strongest reaction yet from Beijing, Wen demanded the immediate release of the captain who was arrested by Tokyo following a collision between his fishing boat and two Japanese patrol vessels near a string of disputed islands.

Japan in turn called on Wednesday for high-level talks to resolve the feud but rejected China's claims to the disputed islands in the East China Sea, with Seiji Maehara, the foreign minister saying "there is no territorial issue".

Al Jazeera's correspondent Melissa Chan in Beijing said that the problem is that the two countries
disagree fundamentally on the disputed islands.

"If you have this type of fundamental disagreement, you are going to have this type of clash of words."

Al Jazeera has called on the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) to immediately release two of its cameramen arrested in Afghanistan over the last 72 hours.

In a statement issued on Wednesday, Al Jazeera said the arrests were "an attempt by the Isaf leadership to suppress its comprehensive coverage of the Afghan war".

The two Al Jazeera cameramen detained are Mohamed Nader and Rahmatullah Nekzad.

According to Nader's wife, he was picked up from his home in southern Kandahar by Isaf troops on September 22.

Former United States president Bill Clinton came under fire from Russian-born Israeli politicians on Wednesday, a day after he told the media that the Russian immigrant population in Israel is an obstacle to peace with Palestinians.

"An increasing number of the young people in the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] are the children of Russians and settlers, the hardest-core people against a division of the land. This presents a staggering problem," Clinton told a roundtable with press in New York. "It's a different Israel. Sixteen percent of Israelis speak Russian."

Calm appeared to be prevailing on the streets of Jerusalem on Wednesday evening, after hours of bloody clashes apparently sparked by the shooting of a Palestinian by an Israeli security guard in the early hours of the morning. Police also redeployed from the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, situated on the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Israeli riot police had entered the mosque compound on Wednesday afternoon, to push back Palestinians who had thrown rocks at the Western Wall below, a police spokesman said.

TEHRAN, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) -- A bomb blast in northwestern Iran killed nine people and injured at least 20 others on Wednesday, local media reported.

The explosion happened during a military parade in the northwestern town of Mahabad in West Azarbaijan province.

Governor of West Azarbaijan province Vahid Jalalzadeh told the official IRNA news agency that the nine killed were mostly women and children, adding "anti-Revolution agents have always carried out such brutal acts to take revenge on the people of Mahabad who are always in the scene."

Meanwhile, the semi-official ISNA news agency reported that the explosion during the military parade claimed the lives of 10 people and left 47 injured.

Today's Washington Post has a lead editorial entitled The Cost of War Crimes.

I would have called it The Cost of Whistleblowing, especially war-related whistleblowing.

In response to five members of a Stryker brigade in Kandahar province murdering three Afghan civilians in cold blood, the Post's lead editorial notes:

A UN-appointed panel said today that Israeli forces violated international law, "including international humanitarian and human rights law", during and after their lethal attack on a flotilla of ships attempting to break the blockade of Gaza in May.

The UN Human Rights Council's fact-finding mission judged Israel's naval blockade of the Palestinian territory to be "unlawful" because there was a humanitarian crisis in Gaza at the time.

The panel's report, published today, described Israel's military response to the flotilla as "disproportionate" and said it "betrayed an unacceptable level of brutality".

Eight Turkish activists and one Turkish-American were killed in the raid, which prompted international criticism of both the attack and Israel's policy of blockading the Gaza Strip. Israel has since eased its embargo, although still refuses to allow full imports and exports and the free movement of people.

President Barack Obama hedged Monday on whether he planned to keep Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and economic adviser Larry Summers on his staff after the midterm election.

CNBC reporter John Harwood posed the question to Obama during a town hall meeting on the economy in Washington.

"I have not made any determinations about personnel," the president said. "Larry Summers and Tim Geithner have done an outstanding job, as have my whole economic team. This is tough, the work that they do. They've been at it for two years. And, you know, they're going to have a whole range of decisions about family that'll factor into this as well."

Lambert noted:

'Ah, yes. "Family." That with which one spends more time.'


"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

Worthy of a read: Special Report: Who can beat Hugo Chavez?  A quote: For years the opposition tried to oust Chavez through protests, strikes and a coup -- a strategy that merely strengthened support for the former tank soldier.

Opposition leaders campaigned mainly through the media and largely failed to address concerns of the working class. As in previous years, most of Sunday's candidates have been selected behind closed doors and mostly without primaries.

The new wave of young leaders want to change that. They are campaigning and doing social work in the shanty towns that cover Caracas's hills, putting the fight against poverty at the center of the debate and even co-opting some of Chavez's policies and tactics.

AMERICAS QUARTERLY: Weekly Roundup from Across the Americas

...tired after my evening class...

"Beware of the man who does not talk, and the dog that does not bark." Cheyenne

Paris (AFP) Sept 21, 2010
Already deeply troubled UN plans to brake the planet's dizzying loss of species have been further damaged by a row over setting up a scientific panel to assess Earth's biodiversity, sources here say.

World governments are due to discuss the species crisis in New York on Wednesday, and the consensus is likely to be bleak.

Under Target 7b of the Millennium Development Goals, UN members pledged to achieve by 2010 "a significant reduction" in the rate of wildlife loss.

Yet every expert assessment points to accelerating declines in many species, especially mammals, birds and amphibians, their numbers ravaged by habitat loss, hunting or the suspected impact of climate change.

Further darkening this picture is a row over setting up a top-level panel that, like the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), would provide policymakers with the best scientific assessment on biodiversity.

Snow melt in the Colorado River basin is occurring earlier, reducing runoff and the amount of crucial water available downstream. A new study by NASA/UCLA shows this is due to increased dust caused by human activities in the typically arid American southwest region during the past 150 years.

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The research team studying changes in the Colorado River was led by Tom Painter, a snow hydrologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and an adjunct professor in the UCLA Department of Geography. The team examined the impact of human produced dust deposits in mountain snow packs over the Upper Colorado River basin between 1915 and 2003.

Studies of lake sediment cores showed the amount of dust falling in the Rocky Mountains increased by 500 to 600 percent since the mid- to late 1800s, when grazing and agriculture began to disturb fragile but previously stable desert soils.

The team used an advanced hydrology model to simulate the balance of water flowing into and out of the river basin under current dusty conditions and those that existed before the soil was disturbed. Hydrologic data gathered from field studies funded by NASA and others as well as measurements of the absorption of sunlight by dust in snow were combined with the modeling.

More than 80 percent of sunlight falling on fresh snow is typically reflected back into space. In the semi-arid regions of the Colorado Plateau and Great Basin, winds blow desert dust east into the Rocky Mountains where the snow pack is located. Dust will tend to make the snow darker and thereby reducing the snow's ability to reflect sunlight. Dark snow absorbs more sunlight and consequently melts faster and earlier.

Iowa is the big kahuna when it comes to farming, producing a fifth of the nation's corn, a sixth of its soy, 30 percent of its hogs, and 12 percent of its eggs. It's also the second-largest recipient of federal farming subsidies, and currently in the news for the recall of half a billion salmonella-tainted eggs. If challenger Francis Thicke (pronounced "TICK-ee") manages to unseat incumbent agriculture secretary Bill Northey, it would be a huge win not only for sustainable agriculture in Iowa, but the nation. And it would send a clear message to Congress as lobbyists and activists begin putting on their battle overalls for the next Farm Bill.

"To the extent that the 'farm bloc' is shown to be much less unified in its resistance to change, the more likely that change is to come in Washington," Michael Pollan, food-system journalist and UC Berkeley professor, tells me by email. (Pollan and -- in a surreal twist -- filmmaker David Lynch are judges in a contest to make a music video for the brain-colonizing song "Happy Cow" that will be used in Thicke's campaign.) "As the scandal over Jack DeCoster's egg 'farm' demonstrated, Iowans are deeply divided over the industrialization of their agriculture," he continues. "The triumph of a reform candidate like Francis Thicke would demonstrate to Washington that a change in agricultural policy would in fact be welcome in much of the farm belt, and that legislators who purport to represent farm states by simply blocking reform more closely reflect the interests of agribusiness than that of their own constituents."

Thicke is a blue-ribbon reform candidate, a combination of down-to-earth Iowa dairyman and professorial, statistics-spouting visionary. He's been a full-time farmer 27 years, running what's now a 450-acre farm with 80 cows that he and his wife, Susan, got certified organic in 1993. After a B.A. in music and philosophy, he went back to work on the family farm, then a decade later got a PhD in agronomy/soil fertility; at one point he was the USDA's National Program Leader for Soil Science. He's served on the Iowa Environmental Protection Commission and the Iowa Food Policy Council at the appointment of then-governor Tom Vilsack (now the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture), and on the Iowa Organic Standards Board. He's won several awards for sustainable agriculture and land stewardship.

Beijing (AFP) Sept 21, 2010
Police in China have freed more than 10,000 abducted women including 1,100 foreigners since April last year as the widening gender gap fuels bride trafficking and prostitution, state media said Tuesday.

"In recent years, human trafficking has become more complicated, international and professional -- it is a new challenge for police," the Global Times quoted Chen Shiqu, head of anti-trafficking at the Ministry of Public Security, as saying.

According to the paper, China's male-to-female ratio in 2005 was 120 men to every 100 women. The gender gap has created a situation where there are not enough women of marrying-age for China's single men, the paper said.

During an ongoing crackdown on human trafficking that began in April 2009, Chinese police have so far freed 10,621 kidnapped women and 5,896 kidnapped children, the report said.

Among the women freed were 1,099 foreigners, mostly from Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Mongolia, who were sold as brides to Chinese men or forced to work as prostitutes, the paper said.

A Miami appeals court ruled Wednesday that Florida's ban on gays adopting is unconstitutional and affirmed the controversial adoption of two foster children by a gay North Miami couple.

The unanimous 3-0 decision deals a critical blow to Florida's 33-year-old law banning adoption by gay men and lesbians, and most likely sends the case to Florida's highest court for resolution.

``Given a total ban on adoption by homosexual persons, one might expect that this reflected a legislative judgment that homosexual persons are, as a group, unfit to be parents,'' the opinion states. ``No one in this case has made, or even hinted at, any such argument.

``To the contrary, the parties agree `that gay people and heterosexuals make equally good parents.' ''

Tel Aviv, Israel (SPX) Sep 21, 2010
Were our early mammalian ancestors vegetarians, vegans or omnivores? It's difficult for anthropologists to determine the diet of early mammalians because current fossil analysis provides too little information. But a new method that measures the size of chips in tooth fossils can help determine the kinds of foods these early humans consumed.

Prof. Herzl Chai of Tel Aviv University's School of Mechanical Engineering, in collaboration with scientists from George Washington University and the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), has developed an equation for determining how the size of a chip found in the enamel of a tooth relates to the bite force needed to produce the chip.

With the aid of this information, researchers can better determine the type of food that animals, and early humans, could have consumed during their lifetimes.

Crushed leg bones, battered skulls and other mutilated human remains are likely all that's left of a Native American population destroyed by genocide that took place circa 800 A.D., suggests a new study.

The paper, accepted for publication in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, describes the single largest deposit to date of mutilated and processed human remains in the American Southwest.

The entire assemblage comprises 14,882 human skeletal fragments, as well as the mutilated remains of dogs and other animals killed at the massacre site -- Sacred Ridge, southwest of Durango, Colo.

Based on the archaeological findings, which include two-headed axes that tested positive for human blood, co-authors Jason Chuipka and James Potter believe the genocide occurred as a result of conflict between different Anasazi Ancestral Puebloan ethnic groups.

"It was entirely an inside job," Chuipka, an archaeologist with Woods Canyon Archaeological Consultants, told Discovery News.

"The type of event at Sacred Ridge is on the far end of the conflict spectrum where social relations completely melt down," he added, mentioning that the Sacred Ridge "occupants were targeted to take the blame."

A refusal by police to regard tackling antisocial behaviour as "real police work" has led to officers "retreating from the streets", according to a report today by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary.

The study says the scale of antisocial behaviour has been widely ignored, with 14m incidents in the past year, of which only a quarter were reported to the police. Sir Denis O'Connor, the chief inspector of constabulary, says that for 20 years police have increasingly left the public to cope with persistent antisocial behaviour. Victims have suffered repeat attacks and a high level of intimidation if they complain to the police.

He warns chief constables that it would be a mistake to respond to spending cuts by reducing the work they do on antisocial behaviour to concentrate on crimes such as burglary and car break-ins.

One of the most sophisticated pieces of malware ever detected was probably targeting "high value" infrastructure in Iran, experts have told the BBC.

Stuxnet's complexity suggests it could only have been written by a "nation state", some researchers have claimed.

It is believed to be the first-known worm designed to target real-world infrastructure such as power stations, water plants and industrial units.

It was first detected in June and has been intensely studied ever since.

The messages, purporting to come from Birmingham based National Express, claiming that some services would be diverted because of rioting peasants.

One tweet from the account account Travel_WM read: "Probably going to start charging fatties double. Most of you take up more room than 2 people so it's still pretty fair."

Here's an extraordinary story of how an internet feud ignited into an attack which involved sadistic revenge, 100,000 compromised computers around the world, divorce and a man with his life in ruins.

A 48-year-old American faces jail after being found guilty of launching a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack against websites that had published humiliating stories about his adulterous "affair" with a fictitious online lover.

Computer programmer Bruce Raisley found himself at odds with "Perverted Justice", a controversial group who posed as minors on internet chatrooms in an attempt to ensnare paedophiles. "Perverted Justice" collaborated with a US TV news program on a controversial feature called "To Catch a Predator".

Although initially a supporter of the group, Raisley became uncomfortable with the techniques being used by "Perverted Justice" and its leader Xavier Von Erck, questioning the legality of their activities.

Major health insurance companies in California and other states have decided to stop selling policies for children rather than comply with a new federal healthcare law that bars them from rejecting youngsters with preexisting medical conditions.

Anthem Blue Cross, Aetna Inc. and others will halt new child-only policies in California, Illinois, Florida, Connecticut and elsewhere as early as Thursday when provisions of the nation's new healthcare law take effect, including a requirement that insurers cover children under age 19 regardless of their health histories.

The action will apply only to new coverage sought for children and not to existing child-only plans, family policies or insurance provided to youngsters through their parents' employers. An estimated 80,000 California children currently without insurance -- and as many as 500,000 nationwide -- would be affected, according to experts.

Radio One breakfast show DJ Chris Moyles launched an on-air tirade against the BBC on Wednesday, claiming he had not been paid for two months.

"I'm very, very angry for being put into this position," he said. "I haven't been paid since the end of July and no-one cares about it."

Moyles said he had considered skipping work, adding: "If they can't be bothered, why should I bother?"

The 36-year-old signed a new contract with the BBC in July.

I've tried texting her mobile and emailing the address given in the site info and I'm getting nowhere.

If you could get her a message to contact me I'd be grateful.

keep to the Fen Causeway