Shots to the head killed three of the four found dead in the Alps in what the prosecutor has called an act of "extreme savagery." A 4-year-old survived by appearing "completely invisible."

Prosecutor Eric Maillaud won't say whether the attack has the hallmarks of a professional assassination. Three of the victims were found in a BMW. The fourth, a cyclist, arrived at the scene by chance.

"It was clearly an act of extreme savagery and it was obvious that whoever did this wanted to kill," Maillaud would say.

At least 58 people refugees have drowned after their boat sank close to the coast of Turkey. About half of the dead appear to be children.

Officials said on Thursday that dozens of survivors, mostly from Iraq and Syria, had swum to shore, only 50 meters (165 feet) away from the boat.

The website of the newspaper Hurriyet and Turkish television reported, however, that 58 people had also died.

It's usually political parties which decide policy. But initiatives emerging from direct democracy are becoming ever more popular, particularly at the local level.

Local politicians don't always do what their constituents want - whether it's about building bypasses, power lines, wind turbines or setting the level of local taxes. Citizens used to have to wait until the next election rolled around to do anything about it. But in 1956, one German state made it possible for citizens to submit petitions to hold local referendums. Since then, they've spread across the country and have influenced many local government decisions.

The European Court of Justice has decided that those who are unable to practice their religion openly are entitled to claim asylum. The ruling is expected to have an influence on German asylum law.

The European Court of Justice has ruled that people who are persecuted in their home countries for religious reasons have a right to apply for asylum in Europe. If their personal rights are "gravely" infringed, they must be awarded asylum status. The court's decision confirmed the ruling of a German court.

BRUSSELS - The European Court of Justice was accused of being out of touch after its top advisor insisted that the European Parliament could not scrap its monthly plenary sessions in Strasbourg.

This week the world learned that Norway's foreign ministry was behind months of secret diplomacy to get the government of Colombia and the FARC guerrilla group to finally sit down for peace talks. Relatively little is known about the forthcoming Colombian peace process, but the two parties have confirmed that negotiations will begin in Oslo in mid-October, and then move to Cuba sometime later.

During the past 30 years Norway has become synonymous with peace brokering. Indeed, its peacemaking efforts picked up speed after the Cold War, with the Scandinavian country taking the lead in ending armed conflicts of different intensities in the Middle East, Central America and Africa throughout the 1990s.

Mario Draghi's announcement of Outright Monetary Transactions caused a big rally in the financial markets, with bonds, stocks and the euro all up; the programme will be unlimited; buying will focus on bonds with one-to-three year maturity; pari passu will be guaranteed through legislation; OMT will be conditional on either a full EFSF/ESM programme, a pre-cautionary programme with primary market bond purchases; governing council will have full discretion to determine when conditions have been met; ECB will provide a transparent breakdown of its purchases; Jens Weidmann votes No, and is quoted by the Bundesbank as condemning the decision as monetary financing of debt; Die Welt has the headline: "Financial markets cheer the death of the Bundesbank", as  the reaction in Germany was one of outrage; Holger Stelzner writes that the dividing line between fiscal and monetary policy has disappeared; he said the German constitutional court can still stop this; Marc Beise says it is wrong for Draghi to risk everything to save the euro; Nikolaus Blome says inflation will come with a delay; the FT's editorial speaks of Draghi's audacious gamble; 54% of Germans want the Constitutional Court to ban the ESM; the parliamentary leader of the German Greens says Draghi's decision implies a default on Germany's credit guarantees; Mario Monti welcomes the plan, but says Italy won't need a bailout; Fabrizio Goria says Italy will get a bailout, but one subject to soft surveillance; in other news: Silvio Berlusconi is considering to support Monti after the 2013 elections; Italy is rethinking its ban on off-shore drilling in the search for new tax revenues; the Spanish indignados hold a big demonstration in front of a heavily protected German embassy in Madrid; Francois Hollande will give a speech to the court of auditors today, in which he is expected to outline how the debt brake is likely to work in practice; the Greek coalition partners insist they want a say in the programme; the neo-fascist Greek Golden Dawn party has come third in the polls; Angela Merkel and Mariano Rajoy, meanwhile, held a summit with no visible purpose whatsoever.

Unique economic development programme - planning to create 2 Million jobs: http://goo.gl/ljJQU  - #DSEU - #jobs4Europe /@BerriePelser

BRUSSELS - Euroscepticism is receding amongst Europeans who also want EU lawmakers to promote job creation and welfare schemes ahead of debt reduction,according to a poll published Thursday (6 September).

According the eurobarometer poll, 40 percent reported a positive image of the EU, up 9 percent from the previous poll in November. Eurosceptic sentiment across the 27-country bloc has fallen from 26 percent to 23 percent. Meanwhile, 50 percent regard their country's EU membership as a positive thing compared to 31 percent of naysayers.

[...]

When asked about policies they would like to see pursued at EU level 44 percent of interviewees said that a more harmonised social welfare system would "strengthen (their) feeling of being a European citizen"

The European Central Bank has unveiled an emergency bond-buying program aimed at helping bring down high borrowing costs for debt-laden eurozone members. But "strict conditions" are attached to the aid.

ECB President Mario Draghi said the program - termed Outright Monetary Transactions - would have no set limit and be a "fully effective backstop" to prevent borrowing costs from rising.

In addition, Draghi indicated that the ECB would target government debt with relatively short maturities, presumably between two to three years.

Official unemployment in Greece spiked 1.0 percent in June as the slump in the debt-laden eurozone country has accelerated. Although one in four Greeks is without work, new austerity is in the pipeline.

The jobless rate in Greece jumped to 24.4 percent in June, according to data released by the country's statistics service on Thursday, as an additional 50,000 people lost their jobs in that month.

The rise by almost a full percentage point compared with the previous month of May means that more than 1.2 million Greeks were unemployed - close to a quarter of the nation's entire workforce, and 358,000 more than in June 2011.

The German airline Lufthansa says it will cancel two-thirds of its flights on Friday after the union for cabin crew called for a 24-hour strike. The airline says no peace offer will be made over the ongoing pay dispute.

The Independent Flight Attendants' Organization (UFO) called the action on Wednesday, one day after its members staged eight-hour walkouts at three key German airports.

An airline spokesman says that 600 of Friday's 1,800 scheduled Lufthansa flights would be conducted by "partner airlines" not affected by the strike. The airline has asked for German railways to fill in for it on domestic routes.

A deal to end the miners' strikes in South Africa is yet to be agreed, with a key union refusing to come back to work. The miners want a pay rise, but their employers refuse to discuss it until after an accord is signed.

Key players in the South African miners' strike movement have turned down a deal to end demonstrations, a worker representative and intermediary said on Thursday.

Some unions backed a peace agreement with mining firm Lonmin to return to work at the company's strike-hit Marikana platinum mine and cease demonstrations. But non-unionized workers and the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), an influential union, whose cooperation is imperative to ending the dispute, have refused the deal as it stands.

The General Secretary of the German Social Democrats, Andrea Nahles, is at the Democratic National Convention. She's rooting for Obama and warns that a President Romney could drive Europe and the US apart.

Yadh Ben Achour is the winner of the 2012 International Democracy Award Bonn. The Tunisian lawyer and expert on constitutional law told Deutsche Welle how Islamist forces are gaining strength in his country.

Germany's foreign minister has said Afghanistan will not be forgotten after 2014 and that Pakistan was a crucial ally. He met his Pakistani counterpart in Berlin to set up a road map for closer political cooperation.

As NATO troops prepare to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, the question of how to stabilize the war-torn country and build up a democracy is increasingly pressing. The international community particularly wants to prevent the country from once again becoming a base for terrorism.

And Pakistan is crucial, as German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle pointed out in talks with his Pakistani counterpart Hina Rabbani Khar on Tuesday in Berlin.

A new scandal is causing trouble for China's top party members. The risque details have brought to light the power struggle taking place behind closed doors and the luxurious lives of the party elites and their families.

At first the story was only about fast cars, money and sex. More precisely it was about an accident involving a black Ferrari last March, about a dead playboy and two heavily injured young women who were either completely naked or scantily clad - no one knows for sure.

However, since word got out a few days ago about who was driving the car, the story has become political.

REUTERS - Pakistan is expelling foreign staff of the Save the Children aid group, an agency official said on Thursday, a decision apparently linked to government suspicion the charity helped U.S. spies hunting Osama bin Laden.

The Interior Ministry had told the aid group that its six foreign employees had to be out of Pakistan within two weeks, said Ghulam Qadri, the group's director for programme planning and communications.

The ministry gave no reason for the decision, he said. Interior Ministry officials were not immediately available for comment.

A little more than one year after former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's downfall, a string of attacks have rattled the country's eastern city of Benghazi, also known as the "cradle of the revolution". The surge in violence has prompted local authorities to take tight control of all communication, leaving many in the city feeling helpless.   The most recent attack took place on Benghazi's Gamal Abdel-Nasser Avenue - one of the city's busiest streets - on September 2, when a bomb planted in the car of a Libyan intelligence official exploded, killing him and injuring his passenger. The blast came just one day after a former national holiday celebrating the day Gaddafi took power, prompting government authorities to place the country on high alert over fears of additional violence.

The EU has decided to investigate allegations that Chinese solar firms are dumping their wares in Europe. China has promptly articulated its opposition to the move.

China expressed its "deep regret" on Thursday over the European Commission's decision to look into allegations that Chinese producers are guilty of solar panel dumping.

Chinese Ministry of Commerce spokesman Shen Danyang passed comment after Brussels announced on Wednesday that the Commission would investigate the issue following complaints from European solar companies.

Germany's environment minister has called for wider public debate on gas extraction through the practice of fracking. Opponents fear it could have environmental consequences.

The gas extraction process of fracking should only be allowed to take place in Germany under strict conditions, according to a new report presented by the country's Federal Environmental Agency (UBA) on Thursday.

"The Federal Environment Agency, on the basis of this report, recommends
that, for now, we should refrain from large-scale use [of fracking]," UBA President Jochen Flasbarth said in Berlin on Thursday.

One of President Obama's key electoral pledges in 2008 was a commitment to tackle environmental issues. Four years later, little to nothing has happened - and is unlikely to anytime soon, writes Sascha Müller-Kraenner.

When President Obama was elected four years ago, his platform promised to put the environment at the top of an agenda to revitalize the economy at home and America's standing abroad. Looking back after four years, the record is mixed. Ambitions for the next four years are much more modest.

Jellyfish and chips? Climate change is bringing new species to a warming North Sea. While cod and shrimps move northwards, exotic immigrants are changing the ecosystem and the food chain.

Heligoland is a tiny island edged with red sandstone cliffs, 70 kilometers (43 miles) off the German coast. It offers a window into how climate change is affecting North Sea ecosystems.

French wine producers expect this year's grape yield to be the lowest in almost 20 years, as a result of exceptionally bad spring and early summer weather.

The harvest is being gathered in the coming weeks in what the French call "les vendanges", a highlight of the country's agricultural calendar.

But a mixture of late frosts, heavy rain throughout the spring and early summer, and higher than usual levels of mildew on the vines means that in some regions, especially in central France, the yield is expected to be down by as much as 20 percent from last year.

George Osborne provoked a backlash from environmental groups yesterday by promising to allow more building in the Green Belt as part of a new "go-for-growth" strategy.

As MPs return to Westminster today after their summer break, the Chancellor unveiled measures aimed at jump-starting the economy but at the same time stuck to his deficit-reduction strategy. David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Mr Osborne will make a series of announcements over the next two weeks in what will be seen as yet another relaunch by the Government. The centrepiece will be a plan to guarantee up to £10bn of new housebuilding by housing associations and private developers, and there could be more help for first-time buyers.

Jeff Masters:  Half of the polar ice cap is missing: Arctic sea ice hits a new record low

Extraordinary melting of sea ice in the Arctic this summer has shattered the all-time low sea ice extent record set in September 2007, and sea ice continues to decline far below what has ever been observed. The new sea ice record was set on August 26, a full three weeks before the usual end of the melting season, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Every major scientific institution that tracks Arctic sea ice agrees that new records for low ice area, extent, and volume have been set. These organizations include the University of Washington Polar Science Center (a new record for low ice volume), the Nansen Environmental & Remote Sensing Center in Norway, and the University of Illinois Cryosphere Today. A comprehensive collection of sea ice graphs shows the full story. Satellite records of sea ice extent date back to 1979, though a 2011 study by Kinnard et al. shows that the Arctic hasn't seen a melt like this for at least 1,450 years (see a more detailed article on this over at skepticalscience.com.) The latest September 5, 2012 extent of 3.5 million square kilometers is approximately a 50% reduction in the area of Arctic covered by sea ice, compared to the average from 1979 - 2000. The ice continues to melt, and has not reached the low for this year yet.

No idea this means for the winter Arctic and North Atlantic Oscillations.  As a guess the Nordics need to be ready for some major snow this winter.

 

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

In a small Belgian town with a dark history, 70 international artists have positioned jarring works on human rights. The temporary show is a prelude to a permanent Human Rights Museum set to open in a former Nazi camp.

The small town of Mechelen in Dutch-speaking Belgium has big plans. Not only is its long-planned Human Rights Museum slated to open its doors in November, but an exhibition currently taking place throughout the city also focuses on one of the most important issues of our time.

"Newtopia: The State of Human Rights" is a cooperation with Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and brings together the works of 70 international artists who share their perspectives on the world's governments.

Noor Mohammad is one of dozens of Soviet soldiers who went over to enemy lines in Afghanistan. Today, he has an Afghan wife and six children. He never wants to go back to Russia.

"I came to Afghanistan to fight, to serve my country as a soldier," says Siberian-born Noor Mohammad. "I didn't know my government was killing people here and that's what my task would be."

"Either you kill or you are killed. That's what being a soldier means," he says in Dari.

He explains, not without a touch of pride, that things were different then, back in the 1980s when he was still known as Sergei Yurevich Krasnoperov and the Soviet Union was a mighty world power.

AFP - Tech-savvy Estonia has launched a project encouraging public schools to teach pupils, including first graders, to write computer code, the project's authors said Thursday.

Ave Lauringson from the Tiger Leap Foundation said the project was set up to counter the dwindling number of computer lessons being given in many Estonian schools.

The "teaching materials for all grade levels are almost compiled by now and the interest of schools wishing to join the project since we launched it this week increases every day," Lauringson said.

Ben & Jerry's sued the maker of "Ben & Cherry's" X-rated DVDs Wednesday, saying the "hardcore pornographic" films have smeared the ice cream maker's reputation.

The trademark lawsuit in US District Court in Manhattan said the sale of hardcore and exploitive pornographic DVDs and related goods is tarnishing Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc.'s name by creating an association with pornography. It said the claims arise from the distribution and sale of a series of DVDs containing "exploitative, hardcore pornographic films" featuring titles and themes based on "well-known and iconic" Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavors as well as packaging that contains key company features such as a grazing cow, green grass and large white puffy clouds. 

I found a couple of useful items, and also this (NYT review):

Free Ride by Robert Levine.

"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money," Samuel Johnson declared. As the Internet is destroying the business model that has historically supported high-quality journalism, movies, music and television, the conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley is that Johnson was wrong. "Information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower," technology activists have insisted, selectively quoting the technology thinker Stewart Brand. (In fact, Brand said in the same 1984 speech that on the other hand, "information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable.") According to the worldview embodied by Google and Facebook and many of the best minds in the legal academy and public-­interest community, the culture business is collapsing because the old-style media executives who run Hollywood, cable television, the record companies and newspapers have failed to adjust to the expectations of a demanding new generation of media consumers who want free movies and books and music and news wherever and whenever they're online.

I'm probably going to disagree with a lot of it, but while I have been influenced by Lessig, I'm also a copyright holder myself. So I'm interested in all the arguments, pro and con.

But the theoretical arguments somewhat pale beside the fact that digital parasitism is with us on a massive scale, an entire generation post-93 has grown up thinking it the norm, it can't be easily prevented, and it will permanently change the culture landscape. But how, nobody really knows.

You can't be me, I'm taken

Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo has spoken out in favor of a Maryland ballot initiative that would legalize gay marriage. Yahoo has published a letter that Maryland state delegate Emmett C. Burns Jr. wrote last week to Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti, urging him to "inhibit such expressions from your employee." This is Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe's response to Burns.

Enjoy.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre