The European Union Times |
- Russia might bailout Greece
- Church of England warns over three-parent babies
- UK Government Announces Plan to Remotely Control Vehicles
- Infants create new knowledge while sleeping
- Russia quits PACE because it has turned into ‘Western ideological tool’
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Posted: 30 Jan 2015 05:40 AM PST
 “Well, we can imagine any situation, so if such [a] petition is submitted to the Russian government, we will definitely consider it, but we will take into account all the factors of our bilateral relationships between Russia and Greece, so that is all I can say. If it is submitted we will consider it,” Siluanov told CNBC in an interview in Moscow on Thursday. The new left-wing Syriza government in Greece won a majority at last Sunday’s election on the promise to renegotiate the country’s €317 billion debt and end austerity. Greece needs to negotiate with EU policymakers by February 28 in order to receive the next tranche of bailout funds. If Athens doesn’t get the money it will have difficulty servicing its debt. Two bailouts were paid in 2010 and 2014 totaling €240 billion. The new government was quick to show support for Moscow, and has openly called for an end to Russian sanctions, and may veto any future sanctions.  On Thursday the European Commission decided to extend sanctions against Russia through September 2015, but did not add any broader economic measures. A spokesperson for the new PM Alexis Tsipras said Greece didn’t approve of any further restrictive measures. Between announcing it doesn’t intend to pay off its €317 billion debt in full and blocking Russia sanctions, Greece has emerged as a wild card among the 29 countries of the EU. Russia-Greece deals Russia gave Greece a very valuable card to play in the EU when it announced its South Stream pipeline will be re-routed through Turkey, with a gas hub expected to be built on the border between Turkey and Greece. Russian investors have been watching Greece closely since the economy went bust in the 2008 credit crisis, which sent it looking for financial assistance from the EU to pay its creditors. The crisis, as well as the EU bailout policy, has sent the economy into a six-year recession, forcing the government to dismantle and privatize state assets to meet austerity targets under its EU bailout plan. State-owned Russian Railways and Gazprom have been eyeing stakes in Greek assets. Russian Railways has held talks with TrainOSE, Greece’s state-owned passenger and cargo rail operator. In 2013, Gazprom made a €900 million bid for Greece’s state gas company DEPA, but backed out of negotiations at the last minute, citing concerns over the company’s financial stability. Russian investment in Greek railways is estimated at up to $3 billion per year. Traditionally, the two countries have very strong tourist ties, with more than 1 million Russians visiting Greece each year. This number has been trimmed since the ruble crisis and slowed growth have forced many Russian to forgo foreign travel. Greece is home to a robust Russian diaspora – nearly 300,000 Russian nationals live 1,400 miles south of Moscow, largely a result of emigration. Source           |
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Posted: 30 Jan 2015 05:30 AM PST
 The Church of England has expressed opposition to an amendment on a bill up for debate next week that would allow so-called “three-parent babies.” Introducing laws to allow in vitro fertilization (IVF) babies to be born with DNA from three different people would be “irresponsible,” said medical ethics adviser to the Church of England, Rev Dr. Brendan McCarthy. An amendment to the Human Fertilization and Embryology Act 2008 is due for vote on February 3, that if passed would allow the replacement of an egg’s defective mitochondrial DNA with healthy DNA from a female donor. The procedure would prevent children from inheriting debilitating conditions like muscular dystrophy. However, the Church of England called for more research, saying the role mitochondria play in the transfer of hereditary characteristics was not clearly understood. “The Archbishops Council, which monitors this issue, does not feel that there has been sufficient scientific study or informed consultation into the ethics, safety and efficacy of mitochondria transfer,” McCarthy added. Meanwhile, two science advisers insisted that the medical benefits were likely to outweigh any risks in creating three-parent babies. Nearly 2,500 British women with genetic mutations in their mitochondria could benefit from the procedure. About one in every 200 babies born in the United Kingdom inherits a mitochondrial disease. If passed, the new legislation would open doors into the first human trials from October and the first babies born by 2016. Source      |
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Posted: 30 Jan 2015 05:26 AM PST
 State to seize control of cars via wi-fi sensors to reduce “traffic congestion” & global warming. The UK government today announced a plan to remotely control vehicles on roads using wi-fi technology in order to reduce traffic and offset global warming, the latest manifestation of the ‘Internet of Things’ that will stir up concern amongst privacy advocates. A report released today by Ofcom, the government-controlled body which regulates communications in the United Kingdom, lays out a blueprint that could be realized in as soon as 10 years where cars would communicate with each other to “reduce congestion”. The proposals are being billed by some media outlets as a means of solving traffic jams and taking the stress out of finding a parking space, while also serving to reduce “greenhouse gases” and offset global warming. However, buried in the report is a detail that will horrify many libertarians and privacy advocates. The state plans to achieve this new high-tech solution by fitting sensors in all cars that would wirelessly send information to a “central traffic control system”. The control system would then react by imposing remote speed limits on each vehicle, a “shockwave effect” which would cause each one to brake and accelerate in unison. In other words, in the name of reducing traffic and helping the environment, the government could at any time seize control of your vehicle against your will. Such a system would also obviously empower the government to keep a flawless and permanent database of the precise travel details of every single driver in the country, which would likely be utilized for criminal investigations. “M2M sensors in cars and on the roads monitor the build up of congestion and wirelessly send this information to a central traffic control system, which automatically impose variable speed limits that smooth the flow of traffic,” states Ofcom. “This system could also communicate directly with cars, directing them along diverted routes to avoid the congestion and even managing their speed.”  Car manufacturer Nissan is also developing a similar system to be implemented in Japan. The blueprint was revealed at the same time it emerged that the U.S. Justice Department had built a national database for real-time tracking of vehicles, “a secret domestic intelligence-gathering program that scans and stores hundreds of millions of records about motorists,” reports the Wall Street Journal. The proposal serves to underscore the privacy and civil liberties threat posed by so-called “smart technology” and the ‘Internet of Things’. In a 2012 Wired Magazine interview, former CIA director David Petraeus hailed the advent of every device being connected to the Internet as a transformational boon for “clandestine tradecraft”. Source      This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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Posted: 30 Jan 2015 05:22 AM PST
 A new study shows that an infant’s brain reprocesses what it has learned and creates new knowledge even during sleep. Babies from 9 to 16 months of age remember the names of objects better if they had a short nap, German researchers from the University of Tübingen and the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in the city of Leipzig, both in Germany, said in a study. The sleeping baby’s brain converts new experience into knowledge, the study noted. When waking from a nap, infants can then transfer learned names to similar new objects. Researchers believe that the brain retrieves recent experiences when asleep, thereby integrating new knowledge into the existing memory. This is done by strengthening, re-linking or even dismantling neuronal connections. When the brain is largely cut off from outside influences, as in sleep, it organizes its experiences and forms new generalizations. “In this way, sleep bridges the gap between specific objects and general categories, thus transferring experience into knowledge,” explained Manuela Friedrich of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences. Learning Session The study was conducted on a group of babies who were repeatedly shown images of certain objects while hearing the fictitious names assigned to the objects. One group of infants took a nap for up to two-hours while the other group remained awake. The children who had stayed awake had forgotten the names of the individual objects. The group who took a nap remembered a series of object-word mappings. Scientists also found radical differences in their abilities to categorize the objects. “The infants who slept after the training session assigned new objects to the names of similar-looking objects… They were not able to do that before their nap, and nor were the ones who stayed awake able to do it. This means that the categories must have been formed during sleep,” Friederici concluded. Source      |
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Posted: 30 Jan 2015 04:57 AM PST
 “It is impossible for us to stay in an organization which discriminates the Russian delegation,” the chief of Russia’s PACE delegation and chairman of the State Duma’s Foreign Affairs Aleksey Pushkov told RT. “Before we came to Strasbourg, we had warned our European colleagues that Russia will not accept new sanctions,” Pushkov said. “It was not a surprise, it was not a threat. It wasn’t even a warning – we just informed our colleagues that in these conditions, Russia does not see the possibility of staying in the Parliamentary Assembly.” For the time being, Pushkov said that President Putin is not contemplating the possibility of quitting the entire Council of Europe. However, he stressed that the situation is playing out a bit differently in the Russian parliament. Pushkov was referring to the announcement by Duma speaker Sergey Naryshkin, which said that Russia may eventually cease its membership to the Council of Europe, unless its Parliamentary Assembly reverses its attitude towards Russia. “This is the first time such a move is even being discussed,” Pushkov said. “But because there is constant obstruction of our work in the Parliamentary Assembly and because we constantly face discriminatory sanctions…Russia warned it will leave [PACE] if new sanctions are imposed, and next year will review the rationale of remaining in the Council of Europe.”  “I think PACE is the real loser here,” Pushkov said. After Russia has stopped all communications with PACE, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has the opportunity to replace the assembly as the main forum of discussion on European issues, the politician told RT. Moreover, Pushkov believes that over the last year, PACE has lost its credibility by repeatedly violating its own core principle of protecting democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. It is now serving as an “ideological tool of Western policy” which has failed to condemn numerous violations of human rights, along with the atrocities in Ukraine. The limitation of the Russian delegation’s powers is indeed a “discriminatory act” apparently encouraged by “pro-American forces,” agrees Russian Senator and a member of the Committee on International Affairs, Igor Morozov. “And it is of great regret, since PACE is ceasing to serve as a parliamentary debate platform, where we can discuss key issues of our time, where the delegates have an opportunity to explain to each other their national position,” Morozov told RT, adding that all parliamentary activity will be transferred to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly forum and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean.  Russia’s permanent representative to the European Union, Vladimir Chizhov, also says that PACE’s decision to strip the Russian delegation of its voting power has deprived the assembly of the opportunity to hear Russia’s point of view. “The damage from this is not to the Russian delegation, nor the Russian parliament. The damage from this is caused mostly to the Parliamentary Assembly, which will be deprived to the end of this year the possibility to hear the Russian point of view and lead a joint search for solutions to the problems that are on the agenda,” Chizhov told Sputnik.  Meanwhile, PACE president Anne Brasseur told RT that she “regrets” Russia’s decision to cut its communication with the assembly for the rest of the year. “I think the decision of the Russian delegation to leave immediately was not the right decision,” Brasseur told RT, explaining that the suspension of one’s voting rights does not mean the delegation can’t take part in committees and discussions. “Suspending the voting rights doesn’t mean to annul the credentials,” she said. “Each year, at the beginning of the January sessions, the credentials of all national delegations have to be ratified, unless the credentials are going to be challenged. They had been challenged in relation with Russia. And then we had a procedure, and the Parliamentary Assembly came to the conclusion not to annul the credentials of the Russian delegation, but to keep them in, suspending their voting right.” Still hoping for the continuation of dialogue with Russia, the PACE president told journalists on Thursday that if progress on Ukraine reconciliation is achieved, the organization may cancel its restrictions on Russia after “re-evaluation” in April. Source     |
