Greece and eurozone agree on draft accord | News | DW.DE | 20.02.2015

An agreement between Athens and the 19 eurozone finance ministers was confirmed on Friday evening in Brussels, the third round of such talks in a week.

Earlier a source from the Greek government had referred to "an initial agreement on a joint draft text" between the partners, with the details still to be worked out.

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

Majority of Germans reject immigration from outside the EU | EurActiv

In Thursday's (19 February) national edition of the Eurobarometer opinion poll, 37% of Germans surveyed see migration as the biggest challenge for the EU, and for Germany, at the moment.

Only in the United Kingdom (38%) and Malta (57%) are these percentages higher. In most member states, the economic situation (33%) and unemployment (29%) were perceived as the biggest Europe-wide issues.

Meanwhile only 29% of Germans have a positive opinion of immigration from third countries, outside the EU. A relative majority (45%) said they believe illegal immigration into the EU should be counteracted at both EU and national levels. This corresponds to perceptions among a growing number of respondents in Germany (29%), who feel there are not enough inspections at the EU's external borders.

As a result, German citizens are somewhat more critical than the average of all Europeans surveyed, of which 57% are against immigrants from third countries. Opposition was higher than in Germany among respondents from Italy (75%), Latvia (79%) and Slovakia (74%).

They don't mention it, but Pegida (and certain politicians' reaction to it) obviously influenced public perceptions of what's the most important...

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

UK guilty of 'catastrophic misreading' of Ukraine crisis, Lords report claims | Politics | The Guardian

The UK is guilty of sleepwalking into the crisis in Ukraine and has not been as active or visible as it should, according to a damning report into the British and European approach to the crisis by the main Lords committee on foreign affairs.

The report - the fullest evaluation of the Ukraine crisis to emerge from parliament - also finds that expertise within the Foreign Office towards Russia has diminished significantly, and according to the committee chairman, Lord Tugendhat, "led to a catastrophic misreading of the mood in the run-up to the crisis".

The committee also warns that as a signatory to the 1994 Budapest memorandum, setting out the protection Europe would give Ukraine, "the UK had a particular responsibility towards the country and it has not been as active or as visible as it could have been".

The warning comes just a day after RAF Typhoon fighters were scrambled to escort two Russian Bear bombers off the coast of Cornwall, and as a diplomatic row broke out after Michael Fallon, the defence secretary, issued a warning over Moscow's threat to Nato's Baltic states.

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

Mass brawl in Turkish parliament over controversial police bill | World news | The Guardian

The Turkish parliament descended into fresh chaos on Thursday with lawmakers exchanging punches for a second time over a controversial bill to boost police powers against protesters, local media reported.

Ruling party and opposition lawmakers engaged in fisticuffs while one MP fell down the stairs as parliament was about to begin a debate on the so-called homeland security bill, the private Dogan news agency reported.

The unruly scenes mirrored those seen in the parliament overnight on Tuesday, when five deputies were left injured - including two who suffered head injuries inflicted by a ceremonial gavel.

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

Isis supporters call for Charlie Hebdo survivor Zineb el-Rhazoui to be murdered by terrorist lone wolves

Isis supporters have called for lone wolf terrorists to target Franco Moroccan cartoonist Zineb el-Rhazoui, who survived the attacks on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo last month.

Thousands of supporters of the jihadist group have tweeted under the hashtag translated as #MustKillZinebElRhazouiInRetaliationForTheProphet, reports Vocativ, posting her personal details, pictures of her husband and sister, and a map showing places she had visited taken from her Facebook account, as well as pictures of Isis beheadings.

Money has also been offered in reward for information on her or her husband's homes or places of work, reports Alyaoum24.com.

"Where are the lone wolves of Morocco? Where are the foreigners who are thirsty to slaughter?" tweets @mohajera_1415.

Alarming report reveals rampant poverty across Europe | EurActiv

More than a third of the population in Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Latvia and Hungary are at risk of poverty and social exclusion, according to a new report. In half of the EU's 28 member states, at least one in three children live in poverty.

The report, Poverty and Inequalities on the Rise - Just social systems needed as the solution!, was published on Thursday (19 February) by Caritas Europa, an umbrella organisation which fights poverty and social exclusion.

It found disturbing levels of deprivation in the seven EU countries worst hit by the economic crisis: Cyprus, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Romania and Spain.

...Alexis Tsipras, the country's newly-elected leftist Prime Minister, has called on the EU tackle what he described as a "humanitarian crisis across Europe" caused by austerity.

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

Benetton agrees to contribute to Rana Plaza compensation fund | Business | The Guardian

Benetton has agreed to contribute to a compensation fund for victims of the Rana Plaza factory collapse nearly two years after the disaster in which 1,100 people died.

The move comes after more than 1m people signed a petition on campaigning site Avaaz in less than a fortnight calling on Benetton to pay up.

The Italian fashion brand said it was working with an "independent, globally-recognised third party" to "define the principles of our fair and equitable share of compensation" to the fund backed by the UN's International Labour Organisation.

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

Germany's Collective Denial

JAY: Now, you talk about the difference in the wage levels. But how did Germany keep wages down? Is not like it's a state-run economy. I mean, why couldn't the German workers fight for higher wages?

FLASSBECK: Well, this is easily explained. It was, first of all, in agreement. In Germany we have a long tradition of having tripartite negotiations or agreements between the government, the employers, and the unions on wages. So that was the first step, that it was an agreement where everybody agreed that now we have to, so to say, keep our wages low to reduce unemployment, and nobody thought about the currency union. It was only by chance that the currency union started exactly at that moment of time.

And then the second step was that indeed the right-wing government passed a lot of legislation that weakened the unions dramatically. And this package of legislations are not one measure, but ten, 20 measures that all weakened the negotiating power of the unions, all in the attempt to reduce unemployment in Germany. But what nobody thought about: that this is the classical begger thy neighbor policy for the rest of the European Union and for the rest of the world. Don't forget the United States. The United States have a permanent, huge deficit with Germany, because Germany is hidden, so to say, is protected by the low value of the euro. So if there would not be euro, then clearly the D mark would appreciate against the dollar. But with the low euro, the euro is, so to say, the average of weaker countries and stronger countries. Germany has a wonderful, wonderful goal to increase its surplus with United States and begger the neighbors, because it's absolutely clear that the country that is increasing its current account surplus all the time--and it did so for the last ten, 15 years--this country has huge absolute advantage from international trade, where all its trading partners have negative effect. It's not trade as something that helps everyone; if there is absolute advantages through rising current account surpluses in one country, the other countries have negative contribution from trade. And then the whole idea of free trade is useless and the whole negotiations about TTIP, this agreement between Europe and Germany, is absolutely useless. And I saw it was now discussed in the United States and Congress, and rightly so, if there is no clear idea about the exchange rates.

JAY: So, I mean, does this mean the Eurozone really doesn't make any sense, that as long as you've got these different nation-states and at heart they really are competitive--how can they exist within the same monetary union?

FLASSBECK: It could have made sense. You see, if everybody would have obeyed to this rule that I mentioned, wages in line with national productivity, plus commonly agreed inflation target, well, it would have been a nice idea. But if one country goes for a totally mercantilist approach, then there is no chance to make sense of it. Then there is no way to bring it back, or it's very difficult to bring it back, because the other countries would need absolute cuts in wages. But absolute cuts in wages lead to deflation.

Seems counter-intuitive, to think that lower prices are a problem, but if people are broke then even lower prices won't move the merch.

Hard to blow bubbles in a deflationary climate, amiright?

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

Rights groups criticise US and UK spies for 'disturbing' sim cards hack | US news | The Guardian

The National Security Agency (NSA) and its British equivalent, GCHQ, hacked into Gemalto, a Netherlands sim card manufacturer, stealing encryption keys that allowed them to secretly monitor voice calls and data, according to documents newly released by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The breach, revealed in documents provided to the Intercept, gave the agencies the power to secretly monitor a large portion of the world's cellular communications, which experts said violated international laws.

Rachel Logan, Amnesty UK's legal director, said: "This mass sim hacking allegation seems be just the latest disturbing revelation about how GCHQ has overreached. These spooks must stop pretending the law doesn't apply to them.

...Mark Rumold, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said there was no doubt that the spy agencies had violated Dutch law and were in all probability violating laws in many other territories when they used the hacked keys.

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

Life after El Chapo: kingpin's arrest spells new era in Mexican drug war | World news | The Guardian

The arrest of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán on 22 February 2014 was hailed
by the Mexican and US authorities as the one of the biggest blows to
the drug trade in decades. But a year on, the core business of
Guzmán's Sinaloa cartel seems hardly affected. "As long as there are people who want the drugs this will never stop, whoever goes to prison," the seer said.

Overall, seizures of drugs from Mexico heading into the US remain much
as they were before Guzmán's arrest. The Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) has reported only small changes in the way the cartel operates. And after a brief burst of triumphalism in the days
after Guzmán's arrest, the Mexican government now rarely mentions the
Sinaloa cartel at all.

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

Pemex cuts budget and postpones big projects due to sharp drop in oil prices:

MercoPress/Mexico (Friday, February 20th 2015): State-owned oil giant Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, said its board approved budget cuts totaling 62 billion pesos (4.15 billion) and the postponement of some big projects in light of the sharp drop in oil prices.

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

Egypt, Qatar trade barbs in dispute over Libya strikes | Reuters

(Reuters) - A senior Egyptian diplomat on Thursday accused Qatar of supporting terrorism after Qatar recalled its ambassador from Cairo in a dispute over Egyptian air strikes on Islamic State targets in Libya.

Egyptian jets bombed sites in Libya on Monday hours in response to the beheading of 21 Egyptian Christians by Islamic State militants there.

The Arab League expressed its "complete understanding" over the Egyptian action and threw its weight behind Cairo's call for a lifting of the arms embargo on the Libyan army.

But at a subsequent Arab League meeting, Qatar expressed reservations over the attack.

Private donors from Gulf oil states helping to bankroll salaries of up to 100,000 Isis fighters - Middle East - World - The Independent

Islamic State is still receiving significant financial support from Arab sympathisers outside Iraq and Syria, enabling it to expand its war effort, says a senior Kurdish official.

The US has being trying to stop such private donors in the Gulf oil states sending to Islamic State (Isis) funds that help pay the salaries of fighters who may number well over 100,000.

Mr Hussein would not identify the states from which the funding for IS comes today, but implied that they were the same Gulf oil states that financed Sunni Arab rebels in Iraq and Syria in the past.

Dr Mahmoud Othman, a veteran member of the Iraqi Kurdish leadership who recently retired from the Iraqi parliament, said there was a misunderstanding as to why Gulf countries paid off IS. It is not only that donors are supporters of IS, but that the movement "gets money from the Arab countries because they are afraid of it", he says. "Gulf countries give money to Da'esh so that it promises not to carry out operations on their territory."

Is there a latin term for the opposite of divide et impera? We need it to describe the upcoming Israeli elections. Up to now, Israel had masterfully kept the arab vote from being too important by making sure they decided into small, separate parties. But now, Liebermann and Lapid decided to go one step further, and lower the election threshold to get rid of them for good.

The result, as described in The Forward:

The joint list represents four different Arab parties inside Israel: Hadash, the Jewish-Arab communist party; Ra'am, an Islamist group whose base is in southern Israel; and Ta'al and Balad, two nationalist groups. All four parties are currently represented in the Knesset: Hadash has four seats; Balad and Ra'am both have three. Ta'al's only lawmaker is Tibi.
The impetus behind their unification, announced in January, was a new law engineered by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to raise the threshold for entering the Knesset from 2% to 3.25% of votes cast. That's the equivalent of four seats, which would disqualify small parties.

"We admit that it is a challenge for us because of the threshold law," said Aida Touma-Suleiman, a member of Hadash, who is fifth on the list. "That made us very keen about coming together in order to avoid the situation, or the danger, of not being able to be represented in the next Knesset."

Widely seen as an effort by Lieberman to oust Arab parties from the government, the new regulations will likely do just the opposite. With the election less than a month away, polls show that the joint list could yield as many as 15 seats in the 120-member Knesset, making it the third largest bloc in the Israeli government, behind Likud and the Zionist Camp. (Other polls show the list neck and neck with Jewish Home with 12 seats.)

I've seen several articles by Jews claiming  that they will vote for the Joint List as well. Meanwhile Ha'aretz polls shows that Liebermann's party might fall below his own self-imposed threshold....

Energy Union targets renewables subsidies, boosts idle coal plants | EurActiv

The European Commission's overhaul of the EU electricity market will target national public support for renewables, while encouraging governments to pay energy companies in other member states for idle power stations.

Capacity mechanisms reward power companies - mainly gas and coal stations - for the amount of power they can produce, rather than by buying the energy they actually generate.

New legislation on capacity markets are part of the executive's plan to create an EU-wide Energy Union, according to a paper leaked ahead of next week's official launch of the project.

Supporters claim the model can prevent blackouts, enabling the surplus capacity to be brought online in case of a shortage or to cover consumption at peak time.

Critics counter that paying for surplus, unused power is a public subsidy for high-carbon industries, entrenching polluting fossil fuel stations for years to come.

Also see the British example.

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

Balkan dam boom threatens Europe's last wild waterways | Environment | The Guardian

Western financial institutions have ploughed hundreds of millions of dollars into building dams in the region, arguing that hydropower is a green energy source that offers poor countries a way out of energy insecurity.

The Guardian has learned that the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is on the verge of cancelling one €65m (£48m) showcase project in Macedonia's Mavrovo national park, after sustained environmental criticism centred on the potential extinction of the Balkan lynx.

But other projects are still in the pipeline, even if much of the energy they produce is destined for export.

On past trends, deforestation and soil erosion will follow, along with irrevocable changes to the course and character of untamed rivers, a quarter of which lie in pristine national parks and protected areas, according to new analysis by RiverWatch and Euronatur.

..."Scientifically we know more about some rivers in the Amazon than about the Vjosa," Professor Fritz Schiemer of the University of Vienna told the Guardian. "We have very little knowledge about the biodiversity of the river ecosystem, and its ecological processes like sediment transport."

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

Is Hawaii's solar power surge slowing down? | Environment | The Guardian

It would seem like a no-brainer for sunny Hawaii, but it's just since 2007 that a combination of government and utility incentives and the right economics have ushered in a real solar boom, with capacity roughly doubling each year.
Today, Hawaii leads the US in rooftop solar per capita: About 10 % of residential customers, more than 50,000 households, have panels on their roofs, according to the Solar Electric Power Association. That compares with about 0.5 % nationally.

But in 2013, the boom nearly went bust. Because rooftop solar penetration has moved so rapidly, Hawaii's utilities are now grappling with both technical and economic challenges that mainland utilities have yet to fully face. How Hawaii surmounts these hurdles could help other utilities sidestep barriers as they ramp up capacity.

...In Hawaii and worldwide, rooftop solar poses a challenge for utilities because they don't control it. Such "distributed generation" -- electricity generated on existing buildings, rather than at a central power plant -- has environmental benefits over utility-scale solar farms because it doesn't take over agricultural land or wildlife habitat. The question is how to make it work for the utility. One of HECO's proposed solutions is ending net metering...

Yet Isaac Moriwake, a Honolulu-based attorney for Earthjustice, said he's already seeing opposition from the public over discontinuing net metering. "This move removes any doubt that HECO's motivation for slowing down solar for over a year was to protect their bottom line," he said.

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

German nurse apologises for killing more than 30 patients in 'lethal game' | World news | The Guardian

"I am honestly sorry," the 38-year-old said at his trial, where he so far faces three murder charges, adding that he had usually acted on impulse when he injected patients with lethal drug doses.

"Usually the decision to do it was relatively spontaneous," the defendant, who was identified only as Niels H. under Germany's strict court reporting rules, said in his first comments to the court.

He said he knew his actions could not be excused and that he hoped that if he is convicted, the verdict would help the victims' loved ones find peace, national news agency DPA reported.

The former nurse went on trial in Oldenburg in northern Germany in September, accused of the murders of three patients and attempted murders of two others, using a heart medication that lowers blood pressure.

A psychiatric expert last month told the trial that the man had admitted to those crimes and that he also claimed to have over-medicated another 90 patients, 30 of whom died.

...The defendant was caught by a colleague in the act of injecting patients in 2005.

I shudder at the thought of how many similar psychopaths escaped detection in prior decades.

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

Science Is Proving Some Memories Are Passed Down From Our Ancestors - Reset.me

Rewriting The DNA

Fear isn't the only thing that gets imprinted in our genes. Recent breakthroughs have made big strides in understanding epigenetics -- how our DNA gets changed by environmental factors. A study published in 2013 revealed details about how certain aspects of DNA can be turned on or turned off, and therefore passed on to offspring or not. A report last year found that Crohn's disease can cause epigenetic changes in people who suffer from it. And scientists were able to edit the DNA of mice to cure them of an inheritable liver disease -- with hope that the same process would work in humans.

Other researchers are working on how to encode DNA with specific information. A study led by synthetic biologist Timothy Lu of MIT and published in Science in 2014 found a way to rewrite living DNA in a cell and watch as the altered information was transferred to new cells. The researchers changed cells to make them sense light and react to other stimuli. Next, they hope to use the technology to make a recording of the cell's environment for study, such as placing the cells in water for a week and then testing them for toxins.

Other scientists have managed to etch the equivalent of a megabyte worth of data onto DNA, and then read it back. Both studies are more geared toward gathering and storing information, but the more we learn about how to change DNA, the possibility looms that we could learn how memories are implanted -- and someday even artificially create hereditary memories, if scientific interest and ethics allowed such an outcome.

Beyond The Physical Realm

The idea of memories being written into DNA could provoke speculation about phenomenon like visions of past lives, although it might be a leap to go from a reaction to odor to the recall of specific and discrete memories.

Polish Professor of Pedogogy Andrzej Szyszko-Bohusz has worked since the 1960s to promote a theory of genetic immortality in which parental consciousness is transmitted to children along with DNA and other hereditary information. More recently, University of Virginia (UVA) professor Jim Tucker hypothesizes that consciousness needs no physical binding at all to pass on. Tucker, who studies children who have memories of past lives, claims that quantum physics suggests that our physical world is created by our consciousness. Therefore, consciousness doesn't need the world, let alone a brain, to exist, and could simply affix itself to a new brain once it passes out of a dying one.

"I understand the leap it takes to conclude there is something beyond what we can see and touch," Tucker said to UVA Magazine. "But there is this evidence here that needs to be accounted for, and when we look at these cases carefully, some sort of carry-over of memories often makes the most sense."

He calls it the science of reincarnation. Whether he is on the right track, or we discover that memories are passed down by DNA all along, or there is some other mechanism we don't know about yet, is still to be determined.

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

21 February 1235 – Pope Innocent IV "grants" the resignation of Thomas, the bishop of Finland, on the basis that he confessed to torturing a man to death and forging a papal letter. The first bishop of Finland known by name, Thomas was later connected to several probably unrelated events in the region

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

22 February 1635 – formal establishment of the Académie française by royal decree, at the behest of Cardinal Richelieu. As standardizer and guardian of the French language, it was modelled after Florence's Accademia della Crusca, which has done the same for Italian

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

Bill O'Reilly calls accusations of exaggerated war reporting 'total bullshit' | Media | The Guardian

"Total bullshit", "disgusting", "defamation" and "a piece of garbage" - Fox News host Bill O'Reilly had some choice words on Thursday about a report accusing him of making up war correspondent experiences from 33 years ago.

The report, by David Corn in the magazine Mother Jones, traced language O'Reilly has used to describe his time as a CBS correspondent reporting on the 1982 war in the Falklands Islands off the coast of Argentina. Titled "Bill O'Reilly has his own Brian Williams problem", the report compared questions about O'Reilly's war stories with the combat zone fabrications for which the NBC anchor was suspended earlier this month.

O'Reilly has been a harsh critic of Williams, sternly lecturing him during the week of media investigations that preceded the NBC star's suspension. Corn's report accuses O'Reilly of analogous transgressions.

...In multiple responses to the Mother Jones report, O'Reilly said he had never claimed to have been physically on the islands and said that the violent street protests he covered in the Argentinian capital constituted "war zone" reporting.

LOL... but that laughable excuse is just perfect to win the sympathy of his fellow chickenhawk listeners.

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

Former Virginia first lady Maureen McDonnell jailed for corruption | US news | The Guardian

The former first lady of Virginia, Maureen McDonnell, has been sentenced to a year and a day in prison for her role in a public corruption scandal that ended her husband's political career.

US district judge James Spencer sentenced McDonnell on eight public corruption counts on Friday morning. Last month, Spencer sentenced Bob McDonnell to two years in prison on 11 charges relating to selling the influence of his office. McDonnell was charged with receiving improper gifts and loans from the CEO of a Virginia supplements company.

Speaking at federal court in Richmond, McDonnell apologised to her family and the constituents of Virginia before asking Spencer for leniency, on grounds that the public humiliation she enduring as punishment enough.

The article omits to mention that McDonnell was a Republican.

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

Large Mirror Falls On Customers At Balthazar Cafe « CBS New York

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) - Several diners were struck by a large mirror at the popular Balthazar Cafe in SoHo Friday morning.

The incident took place at around 10:15 a.m.

The 10 x 15 foot mirror landed on about 10 brunch diners, CBS2's Meg Baker reported.

As soon as it happened, servers rushed over and pushed the mirror off of them, Baker reported.

One person was transported to Bellevue Hospital Center with minor injuries.

Witnesses said there was little shattered glass, Baker reported.

"We heard a like a crack, you know, this thing fell down, it was like a big boom inside," diner William Cherbit told Baker. "When you see that, I was sure that somebody died."

Among the injured was former French Finance Minister Arnaud Montebourg.

Montebourg was hit in the head by the falling mirror and taken to the hospital for neck and back pain.

Italians laugh off Isil terror threat with travel tips - Telegraph

Then comes the warning. A khaki clad killer points a bloodstained finger northwards, and declares: "We will conquer Rome, by Allah's permission."

With Isil's online supporters claiming that Libya might make a suitable gateway to Europe, one response might be fear and a rash of dire warnings that Italy is next on the group's list of targets.

But that, it turns out, is not the Italian way.

Instead thousands of people have taken to Twitter to offer the violent jihadis a series of cheeky travel tips.

They include useful advice on avoiding the rush hour and the best Italian wines to pair with prosciutto, all filed under the hastag #We_Are_Coming_O_Rome.

Isis: "#We_Are_Coming_O_Rome". Really? Will you come with a Fiat Panda?

— Andrea Baiocco (@Andrea_Baiocco) February 20, 2015

#We_Are_Coming_O_Rome - don't let #Schettino steer your ships. He has a tendency to get too close to islands... pic.twitter.com/m5lm7GLcpq

— Sara (@EthicalRobot) February 20, 2015