France and Germany have already made clear that they want to institutionalise eurozone summits, which is seen by many as a move to snatch from the Commission some of the economic powers previously delegated to Brussels.

...The presidency of the Eurogroup will therefore remain a crucial position in steering eurozone economic policies. And this is exactly the trade-off  that the Commission is thinking about for accepting the strengthening of the inter-governmental method requested by Paris and Berlin.

The role that is now held by Luxembourg Prime Minister and Finance Minister Jean-Claude Juncker could be given in the future to the commissioner in charge of economic and financial affairs, currently held by Olli Rehn.

Van Rompuy may be Mister Euro, but Rehn should become Mister Eurogroup, goes the argument of the Commission.

Austrian politicians have voted to expand the powers of the eurozone's bailout fund, which is designed to help Greece and other potentially struggling countries deal with their debts.

Today's passage means that Austria guarantees to provide 21.6 billion euro to the fund, compared to 12.2 billion euro previously.

...Parliament's backing had been expected, with the governing centre-left coalition supported by the opposition Greens in backing the measure. Only two right-wing parties opposed the bill.

Inspectors from the so-called troika of the EU, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund returned to Athens on Thursday (29 September) to review the Greek government's austerity work only to find staff from seven key ministries blockading their way.

Furious at fresh pay cuts and mass lay-offs, civil servants occupied the ministries of finance, development, labour, justice, health, agriculture and interior affairs, according to local reports.

France continues to target and evict Roma EU citizens, despite assurances from the European Commission last August that the country had successfully complied with European law, according to the non-governmental organisation Human Rights Watch.

Judith Sunderland, senior Western Europe researcher at Human Rights Watch said: "One year and a new immigration law later, Roma in France are still vulnerable to serial evictions, unfair expulsions, and discrimination."

Last August, the European Commission claimed that it had "helped resolve 90% of open free movement cases," raised following France's controversial displacement of Roma camps, some of which included Romanian nationals protected by EU free movement laws.

The Commission had cleared France, saying that the French government adopted the legislative amendments required by the Commission to ensure compliance with the Free Movement Directive on 16 June, including the safeguards that protect EU citizens against arbitrary expulsions or discriminatory treatment.

AFP - French police questioned a senior adviser to President Nicolas Sarkozy, Brice Hortefeux, on Friday after he called a suspect in a campaign financing scandal to warn him his wife was talking too much.

"Brice Hortefeux was questioned this morning by judicial authorities, at his own request, as a witness," after the call to Thierry Gaubert was revealed, Hortefeux said in a statement, telling AFP later that he was "relieved".

Hortefeux, France's former interior minister and now Sarkozy's key political lieutenant, was questioned for three hours then released without charge.

Croatia will seal its EU accession in a treaty signing ceremony in Warsaw on 19 December, the Polish EU presidency announced yesterday (29 September).

EU leaders have promised authoritarian Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko $9 billion if he frees political prisoners and holds normal elections.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk unveiled the offer at a press event at an EU summit with post-Soviet countries in Warsaw on Friday (30 September). The money would come in the form of loans from two EU banks, the EIB and EBRD, and from the International Monetary Fund in Washington. Lukashenko would not have to step down as part of the deal. But he would have to free political prisoners and, later on, hold EU-and-US-recognised elections, which would most likely see him ejected.

CZECH REPUBLIC: Open access operator RegioJet launched services between Praha and Havírov on September 26, breaking Czech Railways' monopoly on long-distance passenger services by competing directly with CD's premium Pendolino service.

RegioJet is initially running three trains each way per day, calling at nine intermediate stations including Ostrava-Hlavní, Olomouc and Pardubice. It expects to increase this to nine trains each way from the December timetable change when it expects to extend services to Zilina in Slovakia. From December 2012 the trains will run through to Kosice.

...To counter RegioJet, CD is considering adjustment of its ticket prices, but RegioJet guarantees never to be more expensive. CD has enhanced selected Praha - Ostrava trains, with first class passengers offered newspapers and cold or hot drinks. On September 1 CD launched CD Taxi, which allows passengers to reserve taxis in Praha, Brno and Ostrava at guaranteed prices when showing a CD ticket.

Like most long-distance open access pioneers in the EU so far, RegioJet struggled for months to get its service going. They managed to do it with second-hand vehicles all already approved for the Czech Republic (as detailed in the article, the locos returned from Italy and the coaches are formerly Austrian).

Again as most other long-distance open access attempts, the new competitor targets the busiest corridor, which will eliminate profits there which now support services with a wider network...

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

EUROPE: The European Commission has launched infringement proceedings against France and the UK over their 'failure to implement legislation to open the market for rail services in the Channel Fixed Link'. On September 29 the Commission said the countries have two months to respond before it requests full implementation of the first railway package.

The Commission is concerned about the lack of independence of the Channel Tunnel rail infrastructure manager, and insufficient implementation of provisions in the first railway package regarding access charges, independent regulation and capacity allocation.

...FTA cited charges of £60/km for the Channel Tunnel, compared with £4 for High Speed 1 and £2 for Network Rail. 'Eurotunnel's pricing strategy for rail freight is fundamentally flawed, and this is why it is not fulfilling anywhere near its true potential', said Welsh. 'Whereas in Britain freight trains generally pay marginal track access charges based on incremental cost-damage to the infrastructure, Eurotunnel pricing policy appears to be based on total cost recovery for the project. As such, prices are uncompetitive with other modes.'

INTERNATIONAL: DB Schenker Rail Automotive is to launch a daily container train service between Germany and China in late November, carrying BMW automotive components from Leipzig to Shenyang.

'With a transit time of 23 days, the direct trains are more than twice as fast as maritime transport followed by transport to the Chinese hinterland', said DB Mobility Logistics board member Dr Karl-Friedrich Rausch...

DB is already carrying car components on the route on an interim basis, with a fourth train carrying 40 containers leaving the Leipzig-Wahren terminal on September 29.

Ambitions for Transasian rail transport were first covered in the diary Another Great Game, then as things heated up, a number of updates in Salon comments in of 2010 and in 2011.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

Two commuter trains collided in a tunnel outside Caracas, Venezuela, killing one person, injuring about 30 and leaving frightened passengers gasping for air in the dark.

One train suddenly braked due to an apparent malfunction and another crashed into it from the rear, causing the first to derail, transportation minister Francisco Garces said on state television.

Officials said a packed train coming in the opposite direction was able to stop before colliding with the others, averting a possible disaster.

...Mr Lira said the engineer of the rear train died.

UK diplomats have broken away from traditional British reserve by saying they would oppose a "bonkers" European Commission proposal for a Financial Transactions Tax (FTT), likening EU policymakers to "charlatans".

The unusually heated comments came ahead of a meeting of EU finance ministers on Tuesday (4 October) that will provide a first opportunity to exchange views on the Commission's FTT proposal.

"We will resist it because 85% of it [the financial industry] is in the UK," said a senior British diplomat in Brussels who preferred not to be named.

Announcing its monthly package of infringement proceedings, the Commission singled out the case of Hungary, which has been charging a tax on telecom operators ranging between 0% and 6.5%, on the basis of gross revenues (excluding VAT).

...The tax is illegal, Todd explained, because the proceedings went to the state budget. Under EU rules, charges on telecoms operators can only cover certain administrative and regulatory costs.

Budapest was quick to answer. Hungary's government sees no reason to act on the Commission's decision, the prime minister's spokesman Peter Szijjarto said, quoted by Dow Jones. Budapest expects telecoms firms to make a contribution to the state's finances and is therefore willing to dispute the matter with the EU executive, Szijjarto added.

...Faced with a high public debt (see 'Background'), the centre-right ruling party Fidesz has pledged to cut the country's budget deficit below 3% of GDP in 2011, making it one of the EU's top fiscal performers.

But the methods used to achieve this goal have stirred controversy inside the country and now also at European level.

Turkey joined a chorus of European companies demanding that Gazprom cut its natural gas prices, increasing pressure on the lucrative pricing model that underpins Russia's gas exports.

Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said yesterday (29 September) the country might terminate one of its contracts unless it obtains a sufficient price reduction.

Amazon, maker of the popular Kindle electronic book reader, unveiled a tablet computer, the Kindle Fire, on Wednesday in a challenge to Apple's market-leading iPad.

The Kindle Fire, which has a seven-inch (17.78-centimeter) screen, smaller than the iPad's 9.7 inches (24.6 cm), will cost $199 and be available on November 15, the US online retail giant said at a launch event in Manhattan.

The Kindle Fire features Wi-Fi connectivity and is powered by Google's Android software. It does not have a camera like many other leading tablets, including the latest iPad.

California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris will no longer take part in a national foreclosure probe of some of the nation's biggest banks, which are accused of pervasive misconduct in dealing with troubled homeowners.

Harris removed herself from talks by a coalition of state attorneys general and federal agencies investigating abusive foreclosure practices because the nation's five largest mortgage servicers were not offering California homeowners relief commensurate to what people in the state had suffered, Harris told The Times on Friday.

The big banks were also demanding to be granted overly broad immunity from legal claims that could potentially derail further investigations into Wall Street's role in the mortgage meltdown, Harris said.

"It has been  a process of negotiating and sitting at a table in good faith, but ultimately I have decided that we have to go our own course and take an independent path. And that decision is because we need to bring relief to Californians that is equal to the pain California experienced, and what is being negotiated now is insufficient," Harris told The Times in an interview.

I cannot think of a better subject to accompany the 2012 campaign season than that of banks imploding due to fraud liability.

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

The monetary reform envisaged here is simple: Bank-money on account (today's demand deposits) would be declared to be legal tender just like coins and banknotes. The system of public central banks - the monetary power - would exclusively be authorized to create these official means of payment and regulate the quantity thereof. Money on account would thus be nationalized in the same way as banknotes were nationalized over a hundred years ago. At that time, privately issued banknotes were phased out in favor of public banknotes issued by the central bank. Today the crux of the matter is to replace the debt-laden, unstable and unsafe bank-created demand deposits by a public money base which is free of debt and interest. Today's partially nationalized money base (5-15% coins and banknotes) would fully be nationalized, not however the banks.

Government and parliament would have no say in the central bank's independent decisions on how much money it deems necessary. The discretionary additions to the money supply would be transferred free of interest from the central bank to the government that spends it into circulation under normal budgetary procedures. In recent years this has involved 200-350 billion euros p.a. within the European Monetary Union. This represented an overshooting supply, but even less money still represents very much money foregone to the public purse.

Banks and financial markets should be able to freely pursue all but one of their current activities: that of creating money by crediting it out of thin air into customers' current accounts. Banks would have to operate purely within the means which they have obtained as earnings or taken up at the money market or from their customers. Banks would hold that money in cash or non-cash in their account with the central bank.

please debunk, disarticulate, PN, defibrillate econogeeks?

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

AFP - Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said Thursday he would not step down if his former allies-turned-rivals are allowed to run in elections -- a potential setback to hopes for a peaceful transition.

The embattled leader told Time and The Washington Post that a power transfer deal crafted by his Gulf neighbors calls for "all the elements" causing tension in Yemen to be removed -- and warned of a civil war if that did not occur.

He was referring to dissident General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, who has joined ranks with a populist uprising that began early this year, and the powerful Ahmar tribe, not related to the general.

Tens of thousands of Syrians were in the streets Friday demanding the removal of President Bashar al-Assad, as security forces continued their "terrorist" operation in Rastan. The state news agency counted seven dead as a result of the fighting.

The legal action, brought by Evangeline Banao Vallejos, a Filipino domestic helper who has lived in Hong Kong since 1986, has cast a spotlight on the financial hub's treatment of its army of 292,000 maids.

The High Court ruled that immigration laws barring domestic workers -- mostly from the Philippines and Indonesia -- from applying for permanent residency violated Hong Kong's mini-constitution, known as the Basic Law.

"My conclusion is that on the common law interpretation approach the impugned provision is inconsistent with (Hong Kong's Basic Law)," Judge Johnson Lam wrote in a ruling issued Friday.

"The mere maintenance of (a) link with her country of origin does not mean that (a maid) is not ordinarily resident in Hong Kong."

MercoPress: The top commander of the military police in Rio de Janeiro state in Brazil has resigned amid a scandal that linked a top officer and other policemen to the assassination of a high-profile judge.

MercoPress: Chilean students and government leaders met Thursday in an angry atmosphere for long-awaited negotiations on the country's education reform while tens of thousands of protesters challenged police in the streets of Santiago.

Colombia Reports: Authorities have suspended the fumigation of coca plantations in west Colombia following days of community protests. Up to 5000 people have been blocking roads near the Panama border in the department of Choco since Sunday to protest the government's eradication program.

Honduras Culture and Politics: The fissure in the National Party has become an open split. Ricardo Alvarez, the Mayor of Tegucigalpa with presidential aspirations, and Miguel Pastor, current head of SOPTRAVI, have formed a caucus of 25 Congress persons from the National party, splitting with Juan Orlando Hernandez, and promising a legislative agenda of their own. Three of the four fired Ministers have pledged to join the group as well (Oscar Alvarez, Armando Caledonio, and Nasry Asfura). This split has the effect of denying the National Party a straight line ability to pass legislation without consultation. While still large, with 46 members, the National Party caucus loyal to Juan Orlando Hernandez no longer forms a majority.

MercoPress: Cuba is closing its once powerful Sugar Ministry in favour of a state holding company charged with pulling the sector out of a long decline, official media announced on Thursday.

SAO PAULO (AP) -- Indian rights activists in Brazil say a Guarani Indian was beaten and stabbed to death in a western state that has been the scene of much violence against indigenous people. A statement posted Friday on the website of the Roman Catholic Church-backed Indigenous Missionary Council says that Teodoro Ricardi was killed Tuesday. He was slain near the town of Paranhos in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul.

FM Bolivia: The president of the Chamber of Deputies, Hector Arce, said Thursday that the Human Rights Commission of the Organization of American States (OAS) rejected the lawsuit filed by indigenous peoples, in coordination with the Center for Legal Studies and Social Research (CEJIS) against the Bolivian government for the construction of the San Ignacio de Moxos-Villa Tunari highway.

CARACAS - President Hugo Chavez moved to put a stop to rumors circulating about his being hospitalized due to a health crisis by accusing the opposition of wanting to create uncertainty and calling on its members to make a commitment to accept the results of Venezuela's 2012 general elections, in which he is seeking another term. (...) The leftist head of state made his remarks after El Nuevo Herald, a U.S. Spanish-language newspaper, reported that he had been rushed to the Caracas Military Hospital on Tuesday and that his doctors were assessing whether to transport him to another facility to treat problems associated with insufficient kidney function.

The Pan-American Post: In an interview with the Miami Herald, Ecuador President Rafael Correa blames U.S. non-profit the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) for playing a role in the attempted coup against him in 2010.

With unemployment rising and a U.S. debt-crisis looming, Americans haven't had much good news lately. But there is one bright spot on the policy front: Illegal immigration from Mexico has virtually stopped.

Less than a decade ago, a half-million Mexicans were coming to the U.S. illegally every year, accounting for 60 percent of all illegal immigration. But last year, fewer than 100,000 Mexicans crossed the border illegally or overstayed their visas. And it appears that an even greater number of Mexican illegal immigrants left the U.S., resulting in a net reduction in the number of Mexican illegal immigrants living here.
 

REUTERS  - Myanmar's government suspended on Friday a controversial $3.6 billion, Chinese-led dam project, a victory for supporters of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and another sign of apparent reform in one of Asia's most repressive states.

After weeks of rare public outrage against the Myitsone dam, Myanmar's largest hydropower project, President Thein Sein told parliament his government had to act "according to the desire of the people," officials in parliament told Reuters.

In a move that echoes German measures following the Fukushima disaster, the Swiss Parliament has approved plans to phase out nuclear power plants by 2034.

The Swiss Senate's endorsement yesterday (28 September) follows a June vote by the lower chamber to back the gradual shutdown of nuclear energy plants recommended in May by the government, which has frozen plans for a new construction programme in the wake of the Fukushima atomic plant explosion.

The cost of decontamination work and the disposal of rubble tainted with radioactive materials from the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant is expected to top 1 trillion yen, the Environment Ministry disclosed on Sept. 29.

Based on its projections, the ministry will seek 453.6 billion yen in related expenses in its fiscal 2012 budget request. The costs do not include the maintenance of interim storage facilities for contaminated soil and waste, or measures to treat areas with highly concentrated radiation, and officials say it is possible that in the future costs could run several trillion yen higher.

The Environment Ministry is including decontamination and disposal-related funding for other ministries in its requests. In the fiscal 2012 budget, the ministry will seek 374.4 billion yen for decontamination work, 77.2 billion yen for the disposal of contaminated waste, and 2 billion yen for research and examination of interim storage facilities.

Kickstarter is the largest funding platform for creative projects in the world. Every week, tens of thousands of amazing people pledge millions of dollars to projects from the worlds of music, film, art, technology, design, food, publishing and other creative fields.

A new form of commerce and patronage. This is not about investment or lending. Project creators keep 100% ownership and control over their work. Instead, they offer products and experiences that are unique to each project.

Three top police officers were taken into police custody Friday following the arrest of the city's deputy police chief on Thursday, as part of a major internal investigation into drug trafficking and corruption.

Deputy police chief Michel Neyret, 55, was arrested by the General Inspection Service (IGS) - or the police's internal police force - along with his wife at his home in France's southern city of Lyon on Thursday. He is suspected of having compensated informants with batches of confiscated drugs, then "helping" the criminals to resell the products. Neyret was formerly lauded for his successes in cutting drug crime in the central Lyon region.

Police say several other suspects have been questioned, including one man who is said to have furnished Neyret with luxury cars, including a Ferrari and a Rolls Royce, during his stays in the Mediterranean city of Cannes.

A Berlin hospital is returning to Namibia 20 skulls that were stolen by colonial Germany, after a brutal repression of an uprising at the start of the 20th century. Some say the gesture does not go far enough.

Two 20-year-old men have been arrested in the Austrian capital, Vienna, on suspicion of carrying out a series of random airgun attacks that have injured 18 people since late August. The attacks were carried out on busy streets, damaging vehicles and property.

Police said the two men have admitted carrying out the attacks, but failed to provide a motive. Officers say they detained the accomplice driver, before arresting the suspected gunman. Police found BB pellets in their vehicle.

A treasure trove of letters penned by French wartime leader and former President Charles de Gaulle has been released to the public after 70 years in the dark.

The 313 handwritten documents were found in a cupboard by typist Marie-Thérèse Desseignet in Algiers in 1944, after de Gaulle and his entourage had decamped to newly liberated France.

...Gerard Lheritier, owner of the private "Musee des Lettres et des Manuscrits" in Paris, which bought the documents, said that although the letters "would not rewrite the history of the Second World War", the collection offered a unique look into the mind of an "embattled, lonely and often angry mind."

He said, "What we do discover is a de Gaulle who is intensely curious, who is extremely thorough in giving orders, who is the embodiment of Free France. We see a man who believes he is standing alone against the whole world."

The relationship with the USA and the Soviet Union are of particular interest.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

China launched an experimental module yesterday as it works towards developing a space station, underscoring its ambition to become a major space power.

The Tiangong-1 module shot into space from the Jiuquan launch centre near the Gobi Desert aboard a Long March 2FT1 rocket.

After moving it into orbit, China plans to launch an unmanned Shenzhou 8 spacecraft to practise docking manoeuvres with the module, possibly within the next few weeks. Two more missions are to meet up with it next year for further practice, with astronauts staying for up to one month.

...the humblebrag is when someone, possibly unconsciously, manages to show off about something while simultaneously couching it in terms of self deprecation - at least enough to give the impression that the author doesn't believe the hype...

...The ubiquity of Facebook-status updates and - particularly - Twitter messages have made the humblebrag the de facto method of choice for those wanting to share their achievements with as many people as possible, often in lieu of having anything else to say.

Indeed, the worst offenders tend to be celebrities followed by tens of thousands of people on Twitter, who have a lot to brag about but maintain enough self-awareness not to wantonly show off about the luck that has befallen them...

...The man making sure that the most egregious humblebrags are shared with the world is the US comedy writer Harris Wittels. Wittels works on cult comedy hits Parks and Recreation and Eastbound and Down but has devoted hours of his spare time making sure that no backhanded self-deprecation can pass unmarked.

Wittels set up the @humblebrag Twitter account (and an email address for people to grass humblebraggers up on) in the summer of 2010, to snare humblebrags and, hopefully, remind users of the social network that it's perhaps best used as a forum for sharing news, ideas and analysis, rather than the fact that Brett Davern (who?) got "recognised at the grocery store in the same T-shirt I wore at the VMAs".

In an interview broadcast last night on India's CNBC-TV18, in which he also defended his relationship with Rupert Murdoch and blamed the children of alcoholics, drug addicts and prostitutes for Britain's recent riots, Mr Blair said recent allegations against him had been inspired by a left wing media establishment which resented him for creating New Labour, and a right wing establishment which hated him for winning three general elections.

Staff at one of the UK's leading homelessness charities are threatening strike action over new working conditions.

Centrepoint, which supports young people aged 16-25 who become homeless, has been forced to reduce the salaries of 112 of its London staff by up to 10 per cent after losing a third of its contracts between October 2010 and April 2011.

Union Unite's members voted by 70 per cent to 30 per cent for strike action at the charity and will meet on Monday to decide strike dates.

Matt Smith, regional officer at Unite, said: `We hope the board will intervene and bring this iconic charity back from the brink of disaster.

`We need to prevent this charity from carrying out the cruelest of ironies - cutting our members' pay by so much it could potentially force them to join the very  homeless that they do so much to help.'

He stands accused of some of the worst crimes known to criminal law. But former Bosnian-Serb military leader Ratko Mladic doesn't think he has to answer for anything -- not even for the wartime suicide of his daughter. There are many in Serbia who would agree.

First time I read a detailed account of what led to the suicide of his daughter.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

In their first meeting since Dominique Strauss-Kahn's return to France Thursday, the former IMF chief faced Tristane Banon, the French writer who has accused him of attempting to rape her in 2003. Both parties maintained their version of events.

..."I thought he'd apologise at least for what he's admitted to. I looked at him constantly, he didn't dare look at me," Banon said, after Strauss-Kahn reportedly admitted he tried to kiss her.

..."I knew I'd be given a hard time, just as Nafissatou Diallo (the hotel maid) was in the United States," she said.

"In what kind of country do you attack my lawyer, my childhood, my family, my father in order to explain that I wasn't the victim of an attempted rape?"

...Banon's complaint is for attempted rape rather than sexual assault or harassment, and if the prosecutor decides to downgrade the charge Strauss-Kahn would be protected by a statute of limitations on the lesser crimes.