Stress can be physical,And then there’s the kind that’s in our heads — that OMG I’m so overwhelmed right now feeling. While psychological stress has some definite downsides (chronic freak-outs may increase our risk for cancer and other diseases), take a moment to exhale. In moderate amounts, stress can boost our focus, energy, and even our powers of intuition.

Still, in some cases, stress does more than light a productivity-boosting fire under our butts. Both emotional and physical stress activate our central nervous system, causing a “natural high,” says Concordia University neuroscientist and addiction specialist Jim Pfaus. “By activating our arousal and attention systems,” Pfaus says, “stressors can also wake up the neural circuitry underlying wanting and craving — just like drugs do.”

This may be why, experts believe, some of us come to like stress a little too much.

Type A and Type D personalities — or people prone to competitiveness, anxiety, and depression — may be most likely to get a high from stressful situations, says stress management specialist Debbie Mandel. Stress “addicts,” Mandel says, “may also be using endless to-do lists to avoid less-easy-to-itemize problems — feelings of inadequacy, family conflicts, or other unresolved personal issues.”

Some stress junkies have difficulty listening to others, concentrating, and even sleeping because they can’t put tomorrow’s agenda out of their minds, explains Mandel. Others tend to use exaggerated vocabulary — craaazy busy right now, workload’s insane!! And some begin to feel anxious at the mere thought of slowing down their schedule.

But psychologist and addiction researcher Stanton Peele cautions against labeling anyone a stress addict. “Only when that pursuit of stress has a significant negative impact on your life could it qualify as addiction,” he said, adding that many people are able to effectively manage — and in fact thrive under — high stress conditions. (Think: Olympic athletes or President Obama.)

 Study: Stress Shrinks the Brain and Lowers Our Ability to Cope with Adversity

For budding stress “addicts” or for those who just, well, feel overwhelmed, here are some tips to dial down that anxiety:

• Seek professional help if you’re verging on burnout. (Not only can hashing it out with a therapist take a load off your mind. Some studies suggest it also boosts physical fitness.)
• Do something creative. Mandel recommends carving out a once-weekly time not to think about tomorrow’s agenda by painting, cooking, writing, dancing, or anything else that’ll take you off the clock temporarily.
• Take it outside. Numerous studies show spending time in nature improves general well-being, lowers anxiety, stress and depression, and even boosts self-confidence. Especially for women. (As it turns out, most addiction recovery centers offer outdoor-immersion programs.)
• Calm down quickly. If you really don’t have time for any of the above, these 40 tricks to chill take five minutes or less.

Some of us may seek out stress a bit more excessively than others and struggle to just relax. It takes skill to handle hectic agendas and long lists of responsibilities — without losing sleep or feeling frazzled. So try these tips and try not to freak out.

Worried that you or someone you know seeks out stress a little too much? Think stress addiction is a myth? Tell us about it in the comments section below.

 Turns out, those glasses of wine would be a lot healthier if they were non-alcoholic, a new study shows.  Spanish researchers led by Gemma Chiva-Blanch of the University of Barcelona found that non-alcoholic red wine reduced blood pressure in men at high risk for heart disease better than standard red wine or gin, according to the study published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation Research. Although the reduction in both systolic and diastolic blood pressure was modest, decreases of just 4 and 2 mm Hg have been associated with a 14 to 20 percent reduction in heart disease and stroke, the researchers pointed out. “The daily consumption of dealcoholized red wine could be useful for the prevention of low to moderate hypertension,” they concluded.  Although there have been many studies on the impact of moderate drinking on health, the findings have been mixed, with some studies showing a benefit and others suggesting none. The new study found that 3 ounces of gin a day had no impact on blood pressure, while consumption of regular red wine led to a small, but not statistically significant, improvement. The new study suggests that if you’re going to have a drink, red wine would be the healthiest choice, said Dr. Kelly Anne Spratt, a heart disease prevention specialist and a clinical associate professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Still, Spratt said, “while there are those of us in cardiology who believe in the benefits of red wine, we want to be wary. We’re not going like gangbusters recommending people go out and start drinking. There are a lot of problems associated with drinking, like weight gain, cardiomyopathy, alcoholism, an increased breast cancer risk in women who consume two or more drinks a day.” Chiva-Blanch and her colleagues suspect that blood pressure improvements were due to the impact of polyphenols, a red wine component, on nitric oxide. The theory is that nitric oxide molecules help blood vessels relax, which allows better flow and more blood to reach the heart and other organs. For the new study, Chiva-Blanch and her colleagues followed 67 men with diabetes or three or more cardiovascular risk factors. During the study, the men were all required to consume the same foods along with one of three drinks: 10 ounces of red wine, 10 ounces of non-alcoholic red wine or 3 ounces of gin. During the 12 week study, the men tried each diet/beverage combination for four weeks at a time. The researchers determined that the standard red wine and its nonalcoholic counterpart contained equal amounts of polyphenols, an antioxidant which has been shown to decrease blood pressure. Men who drank regular red wine saw minor reductions in blood pressure – too small, in fact, to be statistically significant. Those who drank gin with their meals saw no change in blood pressure. But men who drank non-alcoholic red wine saw a blood pressure decrease of about 6 mm Hg in systolic and 2 mm Hg in diastolic blood pressure. Chiva-Blanch and her colleagues concluded that their findings show that the alcohol in red wine actually weakens its ability to lower blood pressure.

Breaking Free of the Co-dependency Trap presents a groundbreaking developmental road map to guide readers away from their co-dependent behaviors and toward a life of wholeness and fulfillment.UK Citizens

This is the book that offers a different perspective on codependency and is strongly recommended by Dream Warrior Recovery as part of a solution based recovery. This bestselling book, now in a revised edition, radically challenges the prevailing medical definition of co-dependency as a permanent, progressive, and incurable addiction. Rather, the authors identify it as the result of developmental traumas that interfered with the infant-parent bonding relationship during the first year of life.US Citizens

Drawing on decades of clinical experience, Barry and Janae Weinhold correlate the developmental causes of co-dependency with relationship problems later in life, such as establishing and maintaining boundaries, clinging and dependent behaviors, people pleasing, and difficulty achieving success in the world. Then they focus on healing co-dependency, providing compelling case histories and practical activities to help readers heal early trauma and transform themselves and their primary relationships.

 

All of the following ads are real and unaltered, so don't blame us. We weren't there when they were made, and in some cases the entire insane thought process that went into creating them has been lost to history. Maybe they made perfect sense at the time?

Maybe. But it's really hard to see how even our parents and grandparents didn't get nightmares from ...

#13. Three-Legged Dingo Boots

vintageadbrowser.com

The Message:

Here are some boots that you should buy, because famous people wear them. Three of them.

The Horror:

Wait, what?

Yes, amazingly, the fact that this ad stars a pre-murder O.J. Simpson is the second-creepiest thing about it. And you can squint and try to read the text all you want -- it makes no reference whatsoever to the fact that their spokesperson has three legs. There's no cute slogan like "Boots so comfortable, you'll wish you had another foot!" Nope. It's like some guy in the art department just said, "Eh, I don't like how you can't really see the chair, let's just add another leg to fill that space."

We know what you're thinking: "Cracked, this is obviously a subtle 'big dick' joke. 'Third leg?' Get it?" But, no, it turns out this was a whole campaign they did with various celebrities, some of whom are women:

eBay
Like, uh ... this famous lady right here.

But O.J. seems to be the most frequent star of the "Third Leg" campaign, which apparently lasted for years. Note how his afro shrinks as he gets more comfortable with his new appendage:

The picture in that third ad would have been perfect for the cover of his book.

Please don't blame us for the inevitable nightmare in which O.J. is running after you, in the dark, those three boots pounding down the pavement after you with a noise like a wounded horse.

#12. Lord West Suits Will Impress Your 7-Year-Old Date

vintageadbrowser.com
"I like my women like I like my code names: 007."

The Message:

Women of all ages dig men in tuxedos!

The Horror:

According to the text, this dinner suit is for "sophisticated traditionalists," a euphemism we weren't previously aware of for "child molesters." Because there's no other way to interpret this picture. That's not tenderness on their faces. That's hunger. If you told us that they're a father and daughter, that would only make it creepier.

And it turns out that this is only the worst example in a whole series of ads associating little girls with selling tuxedos.

eBay
The style is best described as Godfather meets Lolita.

Can you imagine the pitch meeting that led to this campaign? Picture Don Draper from Mad Men standing before his clients, selling them on this idea:

"Class. Elegance. Making out with little girls. These are the values your company represents."

"Did ... did you say 'making out with little girls,' Don?"

"Yes," replied Don with perfect confidence.

"OK, just making sure."

Sitting at the end of the table, Peggy looks at Don and smiles. He did it again.

#11. Man in Tuxedo Carefully Considers Naked Child

library.duke.edu
"Told you it was bigger. Now pay up."

The Message:

Regular soap sinks in the bathtub, causing children to take longer in washing themselves and their fathers to get angry and spank them. Prevent child abuse by buying Ivory Soap -- it floats.

The Horror:

OK, they're clearly just fucking with us at this point. Remove the text and the message becomes clear: "In the old days, child predators used to dress way better than they do now." But let's put the pedophilia overtones aside for the moment and examine the text.

Was the elaborate scenario described under the picture (involving childhoods ruined by non-floating soap) really such a common problem in the '20s, or was this based on the painful personal experiences of whoever commissioned this ad? We're betting on the latter option. Note that the father's body language doesn't say "I'm going to spank you" -- he's clearly pondering which part of the kid's body to break first.

"Maybe the 28th trimester isn't too late for an abortion."

#10. "Are You Sure I'll Still Be a Virgin?"

thesocietypages.org
"If you didn't think band camp counted, I don't see why you'd think this would."

The Message:

Don't worry, teens, you can use Tampax tampons without losing your virginity.

The Horror:

Be honest: How many of you looked at this picture and immediately recognized it as a Tampax ad? And how many looked at it and thought it depicted a teenage girl being sexually propositioned? It's not just us, is it?

This ad would have looked 90 percent less sordid if both people involved were clearly visible. Instead, the second teenager is for some reason sitting on the floor of the porch with her back to us, so we can't see how young, or scared, she is. But, of course, all of that is purely from our own depraved imagination. The real ad is simply about two teenagers debating whether or not inserting a tampon counts as sex.

#9. Escaped Convicts Love Revell Authentic Model Kits

vintageadbrowser.com
"Is this the new plan, boss?"
"I've spent all day plotting against Superman; this is 'Lex Time'."

The Message:

Hey kids! Check out these sweet model kits!

The Horror:

There's only one possible scenario in which this picture could have come to exist: The photographers were getting ready to shoot this ad when they realized that the boy who was supposed to be holding up the models in the picture never showed up for work. Panicking, the man from the ad agency looked around the studio.

"Dmitri, can you come here for a second?" he said to the guy who fixes the lighting. "Stand here and hold this model. Yes, that's great. You'll play the boy in this ad."

"But sir," said the photographer, "Dmitri was just released from jail. In fact, he's still wearing the prison jumpsuit."

"No, no, he's perfect. Look at him. Look at that childlike innocence in his face."

"Could you open the top button maybe, show a little chest hair?"

"Perfect."

#8. Our Competitors = Surgical Ass Torture

vintageadbrowser.com
"Don't worry, sir, the gloves are just to establish atmosphere."

The Message:

Using cheap toilet paper can lead to medical complications.

The Horror:

... which in turn can lead to rubber-gloved hands inserting clamps in your anus. Better play it safe and go with Scott Tissues.

This attempt to traumatize customers into buying their product with threats of anal torture was part of a whole marketing campaign created during the Great Depression in which Scott Tissues' slogan went from "Wipe your butt with us" to "Wipe your butt with us, or die in a world of asshole pain."

Of course, it was all bullshit: There's no such thing as "toilet tissue illness," it was just a thing they made up to convince people to keep buying tissues at a time when they were lucky enough if they had a toilet.

#7. "Before You Scold Me, Mom ... Maybe You'd Better Light Up a Marlboro"

deceptology.com

The Message:

Before you beat your baby for stealing your favorite hat, have a cigarette and relax yourself. Then beat the baby.

The Horror:

How many times did this months-old child have to be punched before it learned to pick up the Marlboros and offer them to mommy to calm her down? If that's not the saddest thing you've imagined all week, you're dead inside. This is actually one in a series of ads from the '50s, back when Marlboro was targeting mommies instead of rugged cowboys. Sometimes the babies actually seem to be guilting their moms into smoking more.

tobacco.stanford.edu
"You turned me into an addict when I was a fetus, now deal with it."

Oddly enough, the version of this ad aimed at fathers doesn't involve scolding, but a pompous baby in a basket defending daddy's rather feminine cigarette tastes (note the reference to "beauty tips" at the bottom).

tobacco.stanford.edu
This is the kind of debate babies have all the time.

The 48-year-old has taken charge of preparations for the wedding that is expected to take place end of September. He has flown in a team of builders to renovate the home he shares with Jolie in southern France.

"Angelina isn`t so bothered about when they tie the knot, it`s Brad who is piling on the pressure," a website has quoted a source as saying.

"He wants the main house to be finished when the event takes place, even though the close friends and relatives who are invited aren`t the types to care. He wants everything to be absolutely perfect," the source added.

yellow jacket is a case that transforms the iPhone 4 & 4S into that 650,000-volt stun gun you've always needed.

scheduled to hit the US market in fall 2012 the case is advertised as being able to 
easily stop an aggressive male attacker, and ready for use in less than two seconds. 
its designer seth froom, a former military policeman came up with the product after 
being robbed in his home at gunpoint.

what is the demand for such a hostile product you might ask? well, yellow jacket 
has managed to receive over 100,000 USD worth of backing on the crowd-funding 
website indiegogo which means that there must be quite a few people out there 
who feel the need to transform their phone into a weapon.


detail of the stun gun nodes 

the iPhone's designers could never have conceived half of the the weird and wonderful accessories 
that have been designed for use with the iPhone since its launch, but even in the name of self defense 
a stun gun seems a bit much, doesn't it?

Remember that time when everyone got all freaked out about thatsnakeskin pedicure that cost $300? Well, get ready to completely lose it, because we just got a press release for the “most expensive nail polish in the world.”

That title was previously held by Models Own, which produced a $130,000 bottle (featuring a 24-carat gold, diamond-encrusted lid) back in 2010. However, the self-professed “king of black diamonds,” Azature, has doubled that figure. A bottle of black nail polish containing a whopping 267 carats of black diamonds in the actual polish will go for $250,000. Yikes. You won’t be able to just walk into Duane Reade and buy this sucker, however–only one bottle of the stuff will be produced.

For those of us who can’t afford a quarter of a million dollars for a manicure, Azature is offering a $25 version (see, now doesn’t $25 nail polish sound downright cheap in comparison?) containing one measly black diamond. You’ll be able to pick it up in LA at Fred Segal starting this month.

The news was given on Wednesday by the Councillor for Personnel, Pilar Fernández-Figares Estepona Town Hall has sacked 176 municipal workers. The PP Councillor for Personnel, Pilar Fernández-Figares, announced on Wednesday that the 176 workers are victims of the ERE Employment Regulation which the Town Hall put forward in June. The workers will be compensated with 2.5 million € and they will be given their ‘finiquito payments of 408,000 € between them. Pilar Fernández-Figares said one they were sacked the Town Hall will start to work on a new ‘training program for the reinsertion of the sacked workers’.

The BMW i3 concept car at the 2012 Detroit Auto Show in January. (John T. Greilick / Detroit News)

BMW will sell cars over the Web for the first time as the world's largest maker of luxury vehicles seeks an inexpensive way to reach more buyers to recoup spending on its electric models.

A direct online sales platform for BMW's new I sub-brand will be unique in an industry where, outside of small-scale experiments, competitors leave Internet orders for cars to dealers. BMW's range of strategies for the models, including a roaming sales force backing a limited showroom network, reflects the challenge carmakers face as low-emission vehicles trickle into dealerships to sluggish demand after years of development.

"There is considerable risk in BMW's approach of promoting the I brand so prominently," said Stefan Bratzel, director of the Center of Automotive Management at the University of Applied Science in Bergisch Gladbach, Germany. "There is the image risk, if they don't succeed as quickly as expected, and then there's the main risk of costs, which can only be countered with high deliveries."

BMW opened the I models' first showroom Tuesday in London, although only prototype cars and informational materials will be displayed at first because the vehicles themselves won't go on sale before next year. BMW is spending about $3 billion developing the i3 battery-powered city car and i8 plug-in hybrid supercar, according to an estimate by Frost & Sullivan. Industry sales of electric cars last year, at 43,000 vehicles, were only 57 percent of the 75,000 deliveries predicted by Sarwant Singh, a London-based automotive partner at the consulting company.

Starting prices posted

The four-seat i3, scheduled to reach the market in late 2013, will be priced at about 40,000 euros ($48,500), Bratzel estimated. That compares with a 23,850-euro starting price ($29,388) in Germany for the 1-Series, the cheapest BMW-brand car. The i8, targeted for sale in 2014, will cost more than 100,000 euros ($123,221), according to Ian Robertson, BMW's sales chief.

Details of how I-model buyers, the website and dealerships will interact are "still in the planning process" and will be communicated later, Linda Croissant, a spokeswoman at Munich- based BMW, said last week. Sales will be focused on the world's major urban areas, she said.

The online sales option is aimed at a generation of drivers used to making daily purchases over the Internet, and will be an extension of the car configuration that most automakers offer customers to view models with desired options such as interior colors, seat materials and roof styles.

Test drives not an option

The Internet platform may take a while to catch on because "many customers will still want to go somewhere to look at and drive the vehicle before buying," said Ian Fletcher, an auto analyst in London at research company IHS Global Insight.

"With new technologies, there may be even greater skepticism about buying a car over the Internet, as in many cases you'll have to win the confidence of customers that it works and there is support for them," Fletcher said in an email.

The setup may help BMW reduce expenses: Internet sales require less than half the cost of distributing through a dealership, according to Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer of the Center Automotive Research at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany. That allows online car prices to be 5 percent to 7 percent less than showroom tags.

Still, BMW sees standard dealerships as "the backbone of what we are doing in the interface with the customer" for the I models, Robertson said in June at a press presentation at the sub-brand's Park Lane showroom in London.

Dealer selection criteria

Outlets will be restricted to dealers with high BMW-brand sales volume who have floor space as well as capacity to work with I models' powering technology and carbon-fiber body material, Robertson said. The carmaker has chosen 45 of its approximately 200 dealers in Germany to sell the i3 and i8, a ratio that will probably be similar elsewhere, he said.

Dealers will be designated as agents for the I models, which provides an "advantage" by keeping the vehicles on the carmaker's books, the association of BMW distributors in Germany said in an email.

Electric vehicles' disadvantages versus conventional cars include costly battery packs, limited ranges and the time needed to recharge. Consumer reception to models like the Nissan Motor Co.'s Leaf and General Motors Co.'s Chevrolet Volt has been tepid.

"Currently available electric cars have a limited market success because they are a big compromise," said Arndt Ellinghorst, a London-based analyst at Credit Suisse AG. "Customers are not willing to compromise and spend a lot of money."

Carbon fiber bodies lighter

BMW Chief Executive Officer Norbert Reithofer started Project I at the end of 2007 as tighter emissions regulations threatened the viability of sporty sedans. BMW chose to create all-new vehicles that use expensive carbon fiber for a lighter body to make up for the weight of the battery system.

The approach contrasts with a decision by Daimler AG's Mercedes-Benz Cars division to convert existing models, such as the van-like B-Class or two-seat Smart, to electric power.

To make its electric vehicles more attractive, Stuttgart, Germany-based Daimler's Smart brand offers to lease the battery separately from the car. The automaker has a target of selling more than 10,000 of the models next year, with a starting price of 18,910 euros plus monthly battery rental at 65 euros.

The I models' new technology poses risks for BMW, "but they have no choice if they want to keep their premium and image as an innovation leader," Ellinghorst said.

The i3 and i8 will probably be among BMW's lowest-selling models through 2024, alongside the existing Z4 roadster, according to IHS estimates. In 2014, the first full year of production, BMW will probably deliver 31,380 i3s, compared with 564,760 of the best-selling 3-Series model and 18,101 Z4s, a study by the research company shows.

BMW's stance is that the models should produce earnings from the start, sales chief Robertson said.

"We clearly, as a company, go into any product launch with the view of making profit, which is no different with the I brand," Robertson said. "This is a car line just as every other car line, and we intend to make profit from Day 1."

The widely used diabetes drug metformin comes with a rather unexpected and alluring side effect: it encourages the growth of new neurons in the brain. The study reported in the July 6th issue of Cell Stem Cell, a Cell Press publication, also finds that those neural effects of the drug also make mice smarter. See Also: Health & Medicine Brain Tumor Stem Cells Nervous System Mind & Brain Brain Injury Intelligence Neuroscience Strange Science Reference Neural development Stem cell treatments Diabetes mellitus type 2 Embryonic stem cell The discovery is an important step toward therapies that aim to repair the brain not by introducing new stem cells but rather by spurring those that are already present into action, says the study's lead author Freda Miller of the University of Toronto-affiliated Hospital for Sick Children. The fact that it's a drug that is so widely used and so safe makes the news all that much better. Earlier work by Miller's team highlighted a pathway known as aPKC-CBP for its essential role in telling neural stem cells where and when to differentiate into mature neurons. As it happened, others had found before them that the same pathway is important for the metabolic effects of the drug metformin, but in liver cells. "We put two and two together," Miller says. If metformin activates the CBP pathway in the liver, they thought, maybe it could also do that in neural stem cells of the brain to encourage brain repair. The new evidence lends support to that promising idea in both mouse brains and human cells. Mice taking metformin not only showed an increase in the birth of new neurons, but they were also better able to learn the location of a hidden platform in a standard maze test of spatial learning. While it remains to be seen whether the very popular diabetes drug might already be serving as a brain booster for those who are now taking it, there are already some early hints that it may have cognitive benefits for people with Alzheimer's disease. It had been thought those improvements were the result of better diabetes control, Miller says, but it now appears that metformin may improve Alzheimer's symptoms by enhancing brain repair. Miller says they now hope to test whether metformin might help repair the brains of those who have suffered brain injury due to trauma or radiation therapies for cancer.

Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond has resigned with immediate effect. The move comes less than a week after the bank was fined a record amount for trying to manipulate inter-bank lending rates. Mr Diamond said he was stepping down because the external pressure on the bank risked "damaging the franchise". Chairman Marcus Agius, who said on Monday he was stepping down, will take over the running of Barclays until a replacement is found. "I am deeply disappointed that the impression created by the events announced last week about what Barclays and its people stand for could not be further from the truth," Mr Diamond said in a statement. He will still appear before MPs on the Treasury Committee to answer questions about the Libor affair on Wednesday. "I look forward to fulfilling my obligation to contribute to the Treasury Committee's enquiries related to the settlements that Barclays announced last week without my leadership in question," Mr Diamond said. Last week, regulators in the US and UK fined Barclays £290m ($450m) for attempting to rig Libor and Euribor, the interest rates at which banks lend to each other, which underpin trillions of pounds worth of financial transactions. Staff did this over a number of years, trying to raise them for profit and then, during the financial crisis, lowering them to hide the level to which Barclays was under financial stress. Prime Minister David Cameron has described the rigging of Libor rates as "a scandal". The Serious Fraud Office is also considering whether to bring criminal charges.

Portrait of George Washington, whose personal copy of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights fetched $9.8m at auction. Photograph: Stock Montage/Getty Images

George Washington's personal copy of the US constitution and bill of rights sold for $9.8m (£6.3m) at auction on Friday, setting a record for any American book or historic document.

Bidders at Christie's New York salesroom and others on the telephone competed for the first US president's signed, gold-embossed volume dating to 1789, which had a pre-sale estimate of up to $3m.

The non-profit Mount Vernon Ladies Association of the Union, which maintains the historic Mount Vernon estate in Virginia that was Washington's home and is now open to the public, was the successful bidder.

"The unique book had been in the Mount Vernon library until 1876, and will soon be returned to that library," said Chris Coover, senior specialist of books and manuscripts at Christie's.

The bound volume was Washington's personal copy of the Acts of Congress and is noteworthy for his bold signature marking it as his own.

The Acts of Congress include the Constitution, whose preamble promises to "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity," and the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the constitution, which establish such fundamental liberties as the right to free speech, press, assembly and religion.

Christie's described the book as being in near-pristine condition after 223 years. It was specially printed for Washington in 1789, his first year in office as president.

The margins include Washington's handwritten brackets and notations highlighting key passages concerning the president's responsibilities.

The Acts of Congress volume was sold from Washington's library at Mt Vernon in 1876 and eventually bought at auction by collector Richard Dietrich in the 1960s. It was being sold by the family's estate.

Similar volumes created for Thomas Jefferson, the first secretary of state and third US president, and attorney general John Jay, are in Indiana's Lilly Library and a private collection, respectively.

Rare books and manuscripts have achieved impressive prices in recent years.

An autographed manuscript of Lincoln's 1864 election victory speech sold for $3.4m in February 2009, which set a record for an American manuscript at the time. A 1787 letter written from Washington to his nephew on the subject of the ratification of the Constitution fetched $3.2m in December 2009.

performance@holmesandco-london.com

ASTON MARTIN ONE-77

 

Car No.40 of 77 Made.

 

The Client is seeking 1.2 Million Sterling for the Car.

 

The Cars were originally sold by Aston Martin for 1Million, plus costs.

 

Equivalent cars are available for 2 Million Sterling – 2.7 Million Dollars.

 

We are Offering the Car at 1.4 Million, but it should be considerably more.

 

Our Client wishes for the Sale to be Confidential, and approaching clients will need to provide documents

On Tuesday night WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange applied for political asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London after failing in his bid to avoid extradition to Sweden to face sex crime allegations. The 40-year-old Australian is currently inside the building in Knightsbridge, having gone there on Tuesday afternoon to request asylum under the United Nations Human Rights Declaration. The country's foreign minister Ricardo Patino told a press conference in the South American country that it was considering his request. In a short statement last night, Mr Assange said: "I can confirm that today I arrived at the Ecuadorian Embassy and sought diplomatic sanctuary and political asylum. This application has been passed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the capital Quito. I am grateful to the Ecuadorian ambassador and the government of Ecuador for considering my application." The computer expert, who was on £200,000 bail after failing in several attempts to halt extradition, attracted several high-profile supporters including Ken Loach and socialite and charity fundraiser Jemima Khan, who each offered £20,000 as surety. Other supporters included Bianca Jagger and veteran left-winger Tony Benn. The Swedish authorities want him to answer accusations of raping a woman and sexually molesting and coercing another in Stockholm in August 2010 while on a visit to give a lecture. Assange, whose WikiLeaks website has published a mass of leaked diplomatic cables that embarrassed several governments and international businesses, says the sex was consensual and the allegations against him are politically motivated. The Supreme Court last month ruled in favour of a High Court ruling that his extradition was legal. Last week the Supreme Court refused an attempt by him to reopen his appeal against extradition, saying it was "without merit". He had until June 28 to ask European judges in Strasbourg to consider his case and postpone extradition on the basis that he has not had a fair hearing from the UK courts. A statement issued on behalf of the Ecuadorian Embassy said Mr Assange would remain at the embassy while his request was considered.

Asian markets reversed the previous day's hefty gains on Tuesday, with nervous investors far from convinced that a bailout for debt-stricken Spanish banks will halt Europe's spreading debt crisis. European shares were set to track Asian peers lower, with spreadbetters predicting major European markets to open down as much as 0.4 percent. But U.S. stock futures were up 0.4 percent.

Russia has grappled with it for two decades as the leader of the October Revolution languished in Red Square, exposed to proletarian gaze. Actually, the question dates back to Stalin, who had Lenin embalmed against his wishes for a “proletarian” burial. Stalin’s similarly embalmed corpse, however, was buried near the Kremlin walls in 1961, five years after Khrushchev condemned his murderous legacy. But the Russian Federation’s indecision has to do with voter acceptance. The Bolshevik revolutionary remains an icon for elderly Russians, as Vladimir Putin has been arguing all along. Unsurprisingly, given Putin’s resurrection of the Soviet project under a pseudo-czarist theme, he didn’t seem keen on disturbing Lenin’s public sleep. Now Russia’s new Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky has expressed his “private opinion” that Lenin’s body should be “returned to the earth”. Post mortem, the corpses of Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh and Kim Il-sung became testaments to the founding myths that communist regimes had to create in the absence of traditional religion. The North Koreans and the Vietnamese employed the very embalming expertise of the Laboratory of the Mausoleum of V.I. Lenin. The secret messages in Hamlet productions infuriated Stalin enough to execute director Vsevolod Meyerhold. He particularly detested the Prince of Denmark’s indecisiveness. That Lenin lab is now called the Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants. Whether in deference to a god-fearing Russia or the dictates of incontrovertible post-Soviet logic, Russia may find it easier to answer the question — to bury or not to bury. RIP.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin has been pulled up by his opposition group Solidarity over claims that he wears wristwatches far out of the league of his apparent $100,000 (£65,000) annual salary, in a video dubbed “Watches of a Kleptocrat”.

The video questions how Putin can afford his collection of high-end timepieces, offering that they might be evidence of government fraud.

His range of watches is thought to include a platinum A. Lange & Sohne Tourbograph worth about £322,000, as well as a Patek Philippe Perpetual Calendar, a Breguet Marine and a Blancpain Leman Aqua Lung Grande Date.

Boris Nemtsov, a former prime minister and Solidarity’s leader is said to have written a sarcastic blog regarding the watch collection in which he writes: “Putin, it seems, did not eat or drink for six years to acquire this collection”.

Putin is also said to be known for giving away luxury watches as gifts, often on a whim and sometimes from his own wrist.

In 2009 he gave a watch to a “stunned factory worker”, and in 2010 is said to have tossed a Blancpain watch intop wet concrete while visiting a construction site.

The video then compares Putin’s collection to the sub-£500 Jorg Gray timepiece worn by Barack Obama and the £80 Swatch worn by French President Francois Hollande’s.

Solidarity’s efforts to highlight the collection comes only a short time after Russia’s Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, had to acknowledge that his $30,000 Breguet timepiece was photoshopped out of a picture earlier this year.

Russian police searched opposition leaders' homes on Monday in morning raids intended to disrupt plans for a protest rally against President Vladimir Putin's rule and show he has lost patience with demonstrations that are undermining his authority. The searches before Tuesday's rally were an aggressive turn after months of opposition rallies, signalling a tougher approach designed to crush dissent at the start of the former KGB spy's new six-year term as president. Several leaders were also summoned for questioning on Tuesday about violence at a rally on the eve of Putin's May 7 inauguration, almost certainly stopping them from attending the first big planned protest since he returned to the Kremlin. Armed police stood guard as investigators searched the apartments of anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny, leftist leader Sergei Udaltsov and other opposition figures, rifling through rooms and seizing computer drives and disks. "They practically cut out the door," Navalny, one organiser of the protests sparked by allegations of fraud in a December parliamentary election won by Putin's United Russia party, said on Twitter. He tweeted that police had confiscated the electronics in his home "including discs with the children's photos". After tolerating protests while seeking re-election, Putin looks intent on carrying out promises to guarantee stability, even if critics say this could mean political and economic stagnation and a return to police tactics not seen since Soviet times when a knock on the door could lead to years of exile in a prison camp or even death under dictator Josef Stalin. On Friday, he signed a law that increased fines, in some cases more than 100 fold, for violations of public order at street demonstrations, ignoring warnings from his human rights council that it was an unconstitutional infringement on the right to free assembly. "HELLO 1937" The federal Investigative Committee, Russia's main investigation agency, said it planned to conduct about 10 searches on Monday in connection with the criminal probe into violence against police at the earlier protest. A former deputy prime minister, Boris Nemtsov, and Ksenia Sobchak, a TV presenter and socialite who has become a Putin critic despite her late father's close ties to the president 20 years ago before he rose to power, were also among those whose apartments were targeted, activists said. Two dark-uniformed police officers armed with semiautomatic rifles guarded the entrance to Navalny's modest, Soviet-built apartment building in a neighbourhood near Moscow's edge, allowing residents in and out but barring others. Navalny's lawyer was barred from his flat for hours, Ekho Moskvy radio said. His spokeswoman, Anna Veduta, said armed police also showed up at an office Navalny uses, but they were unable to enter because there was nobody there. Udaltsov, head of the Left Front party, told reporters officers had confiscated computer drives, documents and discs, photographs of his children and flags for Tuesday's protest from his apartment. "They rifled through everything, every wardrobe, in the toilet, in the refrigerator. They searched under the beds. Were they looking for our secrets?" he said outside the protest organisers' offices. Opposition politician Sergei Mitrokhin said the raids were a sign that Putin was relying on oppressive measures to rein in dissent, rather than conducting political reforms. "Putin has stopped even imitating democracy," Mitrokhin, leader of the liberal Yabloko party, said on Ekho Moskvy. Dozens expressed anger over the move on the Internet, which opposition activists and ordinary Russians have used to organise the protests, bypassing a compliant television media that is under tight state control. "Vova is crazy," one Twitter user wrote, referring to Putin by using the common nickname for Vladimir. Others messaged under the tag that translates as 'hello1937' - a reference to the deadliest year of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's repression. "What we are witnessing today is in essence the year 1937," opposition activist Yevgenia Chirikova said. "It is an absolutely clear scenario in which the authorities scare the people." SUMMONED Interfax news agency cited Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin as saying those whose homes were searched had been summoned to appear at the committee on Tuesday. Udaltsov said he and his wife had been summoned to appear at 11 a.m. (0700 GMT), an hour before the protest's scheduled start. At an emergency meeting in a cramped Moscow office, activists confirmed that at least one other leader, Ilya Yashin, had received a summons. Opposition leaders have permission for a march and rally in central Moscow, a test of their ability to maintain pressure on Putin through protests despite the new law increasing fines for protests at which to as much as 300,000 roubles ($9,200) for participants and 1 million roubles ($30,600) for organisers. In power since 2000, Putin won a six-year presidential term in March despite the protests which have drawn tens of thousands of people to the streets, particularly middle-class city dwellers worried about economic and political stagnation. Police largely left those protests alone but began to crack down after Putin's election, beating protesters in clashes that broke out at a demonstration on the eve of his inauguration in May and chasing peaceful protesters around Moscow in the subsequent days and weeks, briefly detaining hundreds. They have also detained 12 people on suspicion of responsibility for violence at the May 6 protest on charges that are punishable by jail terms of more than a year. Opposition leaders including Navalny and Udaltsov have repeatedly been jailed for days over protests and fined small amounts, but have avoided more serious charges. The new law means they could fined up to 1 million roubles for organising protests at which public order is deemed to have been violated. ($1 = 32.6725 Russian roubles)

Thousands of anti-government protesters are expected to march through the Russian capital Moscow, demanding fresh elections and a new president. The march comes after a day after police raided the homes of several prominent activists. Last week, President Vladimir Putin signed a new law increasing fines for those who hold unsanctioned protests. Mr Putin won a third presidential term in March despite protests over alleged fraud in December's parliamentary vote. Tuesday's rally is the first since his return to office and correspondents say he appears to be taking a harder line against the opposition. Those targeted by police on Monday included leading opposition activists Alexei Navalny, Sergei Udaltsov and Ilya Yashin. Police also searched the home of Ksenia Sobchak - a well known TV presenter and daughter of Mr Putin's late mentor and St Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak - who has joined the protest movement. "People barged in at 8am, gave me no chance to get dressed, robbed the apartment, humiliated me," Ms Sobchak said in a Twitter post. "I never thought we would return to such repression in this country." Mr Udaltsov told reporters that police had "rifled through everything, every wardrobe, in the toilet, in the refrigerator. They searched under the beds". Summoned Mr Navalny said police seized computer disks containing photos of his children, along with clothes including a sweatshirt bearing an opposition slogan. Federal investigators have summoned the opposition leaders to appear for questioning just one hour before the scheduled start of the rally. Following the raids, US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Washington was "deeply concerned by the apparent harassment of Russian political opposition figures on the eve of the planned demonstrations on June 12". "Taken together, these measures raise serious questions about the arbitrary use of law enforcement to stifle free speech and free assembly," she said. The searches also triggered a wave of protest from Russian bloggers, who compared the actions to those of Stalin's secret police in the 1930s. Artyom Liss of BBC Russian said the raids may draw new supporters to the anti-Putin cause.

According to Merriam-Webster, ingenuity can be defined as "skill or cleverness in devising or combining" or "cleverness or aptness of design or contrivance." We'd say that's an apt description of a Frenchman named Emile who reportedly found himself stranded in the deserts of Northwest Africa after breaking a frame rail and a suspension swingarm underneath his Citroën 2CV.

What to do? Why, disassemble the broken hulk and build yourself a motorcycle from its pile of parts, of course! As the story goes, Emile was able to use the inventive machine to escape the desert, though not before convincing the local authorities that he wasn't an insurgent and paying a fine for importing a non-conforming vehicle...

Since Emile was the only soul in the area, nobody has been able to confirm the veracity of the events that led to the little French runabout's conversion into a makeshift motorcycle. That said, judging by the images you can see here (apparently from the March 2003 issue of 2CV Magazine), this Citroën-bred two-wheeler does indeed exist, and it was definitely fashioned from parts scavenged from an old 2CV.

Emile, wherever you are, we take our hats off to your real-life MacGyver skills, sir.

Bank of England policymakers meet today to decide whether to change interest rates or to pump in more money into the ailing economy, with leading economist saying they may opt to inject a further £50bn of stimulus.

Global capital markets, now the most powerful force on earth, are rapidly losing confidence in the financial coherence of the 17-nation euro zone. A market implosion there, like that triggered by Lehman Brothers collapse in 2008, may not be far off. Not only would that dismantle the euro zone, but it could also usher in another global economic slump: in effect, a second leg of the Great Recession, analogous to that of 1937. This risk is evident in the structure of global interest rates. At one level, U.S. Treasury bonds are now carrying the lowest yields in history, as gigantic sums of money seek a safe haven from this crisis. At another level, the weaker euro-zone countries, such as Spain and Italy, are paying stratospheric rates because investors are increasingly questioning their solvency. And there’s Greece, whose even higher rates signify its bankrupt condition. In addition, larger businesses and wealthy individuals are moving all of their cash and securities out of banks in these weakening countries. This undermines their financial systems. 423 Comments Weigh InCorrections? Personal Post The reason markets are battering the euro zone is that its hesitant leaders have not developed the tools for countering such pressures. The U.S. response to the 2008 credit market collapse is instructive. The Federal Reserve and Treasury took a series of huge and swift steps to avert a systemic meltdown. The Fed provided an astonishing $13 trillion of support for the credit system, including special facilities for money market funds, consumer finance, commercial paper and other sectors. Treasury implemented the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program, which infused equity into countless banks to stabilize them. The euro-zone leaders have discussed implementing comparable rescue capabilities. But, as yet, they have not fully designed or structured them. Why they haven’t done this is mystifying. They’d better go on with it right now. Europe has entered this danger zone because monetary union — covering 17 very different nations with a single currency — works only if fiscal union, banking union and economic policy union accompany it. Otherwise, differences among the member-states in competitiveness, budget deficits, national debt and banking soundness can cause severe financial imbalances. This was widely discussed when the monetary treaty was forged in 1992, but such further integration has not occurred. How can Europe pull back from this brink? It needs to immediately install a series of emergency financial tools to prevent an implosion; and put forward a detailed, public plan to achieve full integration within six to 12 months. The required crisis tools are three: ●First, a larger and instantly available sovereign rescue fund that could temporarily finance Spain, Italy or others if those nations lose access to financing markets. Right now, the proposed European Stability Mechanism is too small and not ready for deployment. ●Second, a central mechanism to insure all deposits in euro-zone banks. National governments should provide such insurance to their own depositors first. But backup insurance is necessary to prevent a disastrous bank run, which is a serious risk today. ●Third, a unit like TARP, capable of injecting equity into shaky banks and forcing them to recapitalize. These are the equivalent of bridge financing to buy time for reform. Permanent stability will come only from full union across the board. And markets will support the simple currency structure only if they see a true plan for promptly achieving this. The 17 member-states must jointly put one forward. Both the rescue tools and the full integration plan require Germany, Europe’s strongest country, to put its balance sheet squarely behind the euro zone. That is an unpopular idea in Germany today, which is why Chancellor Angela Merkel has been dragging her feet. But Germany will suffer a severe economic blow if this single-currency experiment fails. A restored German mark would soar in value, like the Swiss franc, and damage German exports and employment. The time for Germany and all euro-zone members to get the emergency measures in place and commit to full integration is now. Global capital markets may not give them another month. The world needs these leaders to step up.

A crime linked to Facebook  is reported to police every  40 minutes. Last year, officers logged 12,300 alleged offences involving the vastly popular social networking site. Facebook was referenced in investigations of murder, rape, child sex offences, assault, kidnap, death threats, witness intimidation and fraud.

The Duke of Edinburgh has been taken to hospital with a bladder infection and will miss the rest of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations. Buckingham Palace said Prince Philip, 90, had been taken to the King Edward VII Hospital in London from Windsor Castle as a "precautionary measure". The Queen is still expected to join 12,000 others at the Jubilee concert which is under way at the palace. The prince will remain in hospital under observation for a few days. The prince had appeared to be in good health when he accompanied the Queen on Sunday on the royal barge the Spirit of Chartwell, which formed part of the rain-drenched Jubilee river pageant. He and the Queen stood for most of the 80-minute journey, as they were accompanied by 1,000 boats travelling seven miles down the river to Tower Bridge.

Luka Rocco Magnotta was arrested in Berlin Monday after a four-day international manhunt that spanned three countries. The 29-year-old Canadian wanted over a horrific Montreal ice pick murder and decapitation of a Chinese student that he allegedly filmed and posted to the Internet, was arrested in or near an Internet cafe, Berlin police said. Montreal police confirmed they are aware of the reports that Magnotta was arrested, but said they are still in the process of contacting their Berlin counterparts. The arrest comes after French authorities said they were investigating a tip that Magnotta travelled from Paris to Berlin via bus on the weekend. “Somebody recognized him and (then) all the police recognized him,” Berlin police spokesperson Stefan Redlich told CP24 Monday. Handout (Click to enlarge) Magnotta's alleged victim is Lin Jun, a 33-year-old Concordia University student from Wuhan, Hubei, China. He was last seen on May 24, police said, and reported missing on May 29. Redlich said police were called in by a civilian who spotted Magnotta and he was arrested after police asked for his identification at about 2:00 p.m. local time in Berlin. Reuters is reporting it was an employee of the cafe, Kadir Anlayisli, that recognized Magnotta. The cafe is on Karl Marx Strasse, a busy shopping street filled with Turkish and Lebanese shops and cafes in the Neukoelln district of Berlin. German television quoted the owner of the cafe saying Magnotta was surfing the Internet for about an hour before his arrest. Redlich said Magnotta has been taken into custody without incident and will go in front of a judge Tuesday. Canadian officials are expected to start the extradition process for Magnotta in the near future.

US benchmark borrowing costs plunged to levels last seen in 1946 and those for Germany and the UK hit all-time lows as investors took fright at what they see as a disjointed policy response to the debt crisis in Spain and Italy. In a striking sign of the flight to haven assets, German two-year bond yields fell to zero for the first time, below the equivalent rate for Japan, meaning investors are willing to lend to Berlin for no return. US 10-year yields fell as low as 1.62 per cent, a level last reached in March 1946, according to Global Financial Data. German benchmark yields reached 1.26 per cent while Denmark's came close to breaching the 1 per cent level, hitting 1.09 per cent. UK rates fell to 1.64 per cent, the lowest since records for benchmark borrowing costs began in 1703. "They are extreme levels because we are in an extremely perilous situation. People just want to put their money somewhere where they think they will get it back. People may soon be paying Germany or the US to look after their money," said Gary Jenkins, head of Swordfish Research, an independent credit analysis company. The flight to safety came as the situation in Italy and Spain, the eurozone's third- and fourth-largest economies, deteriorated further. Italy held a disappointing debt auction and saw its benchmark borrowing costs rise above 6 per cent for the first time since January. The euro fell 0.8 per cent against the dollar to under $1.24 for the first time in two years. Confusion over how the Spanish government's rescue of Bankia, the stricken lender, will be structured led the premium Madrid pays over Berlin to borrow to hit fresh highs for the euro era at 540 basis points. Analysts said the elevated level meant that clearing houses could soon raise the amount of margin, or collateral, that traders need to post against Spanish debt, a move that led to the escalation of crises in Portugal and Ireland. The European Central Bank has made clear to Spain that it cannot use the bank's liquidity operations as part of a recapitalision of Bankia. However, the central bank said on Wednesday it had not been officially consulted on the plans. Equity markets globally fell on the eurozone fears with bourses in Paris, Frankfurt and London all dropping 2 per cent. But Nick Gartside, international chief investment officer for JPMorgan Asset Management, noted that while US bond yields had halved since April last year the S&P 500 equity market was at the same level. "One of those two markets is mispriced. Core government bonds are an efficient market and they are ahead," he added. Investors said borrowing costs for the US, UK and Germany were likely to continue to fall amid a worsening economic backdrop and the threat of more central bank intervention. Wealth managers have been moving client assets into currency havens in recent weeks, with the Swiss franc and the US dollar among the biggest beneficiaries "Risk aversion, a rapidly slowing global economy and unusually low policy rates will pin these short and intermediate maturity bonds at unprecedented low levels for quite a while," said Mohamed El-Erian, chief executive of Pimco, one of the world's largest bond investors. Mr Gartside said he could easily see German rates going below 1 per cent, following a path that only Japan and Switzerland have taken among major economies, while the US and UK could dip under 1.5 per cent. Markets are increasingly resigned to more turmoil until policy makers take more radical action. The two most popular plans of action for investors are for the ECB to buy Spanish and Italian bonds in unlimited size or for eurozone countries to agree on a fiscal union involving the pooling of debt. "You have to throw everything at it. Spain is just too big for half measures. The next intervention has to be not just massive in size but it has to show a total commitment," said Mr Jenkins. He recommends that the ECB set targets either for the premium Spain and Italy pay to borrow over Germany or for their yields.

Property prices in the capital’s most sought-after postcodes have been driven up by investors moving funds out of assets held in euros to buy into what is seen as a “safe haven” alternative. Foreign money seeking a refuge from the wider economic turmoil accounted for 60pc of acquisitions of prime central London property between 2007 and 2011, according to a report by Fathom Consulting for Development Securities. If the shared currency broke up completely, London property would initially be boosted by the continued flight towards a safe haven, the report predicts. But, once the break-up had taken place, demand for these assets as an insurance against this event would start to ebb. “Although fears about a messy end to the euro debt crisis may account for much of the gain in prime central London (PCL) prices that has taken place over the past two years, we find that a break-up of the single currency area is also the single greatest threat to PCL,” said researchers.

 Five years after joining the European Union, this town 13 miles outside of Romania's capital is still waiting for the jump in living standards its politicians said membership would bring. Four out of five people have no indoor toilet or running water. Homes are heated with wood-burning stoves and most people raise animals in their yards to survive. Just one in five of Petrachioaia's 3,375 inhabitants has a job. Now Europe's newest citizens - the 100 million people in Romania and nine other eastern European countries who have joined the 27-member bloc since 2004 - may have to retire their earlier dreams. A growing number of economists working in think tanks and investment banks say the economic crisis in Europe has hurt the chances the EU's poorest members will catch up to, or converge with, living standards in their richer counterparts. Convergence - the trend for new member countries to move towards Europe's average GDP per capita - has long been one of the rewards of EU membership. That was what politicians almost universally promised in the run-up to membership, saying generous development aid from Brussels and foreign investment could help them follow the example of Ireland, whose boom took it from EU laggard to Celtic Tiger. The former Communist states in eastern Europe appeared to be following the same path. But convergence has now slowed in many places, and economists say it could come to a stop in around 20 years at levels far lower than earlier hoped. "Catching up is unlikely to proceed as rapidly as we thought before 2008," said Ville Kaitila, a researcher at ETLA, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy, referring to the most widely used measuring stick for living standards. "Even though there has been overall long-term convergence in the EU, convergence is not a natural law." The economic slowdown over the past four years is already taking a toll. Angered by austerity measures and slow progress, some voters have swung away from reform-minded parties in favour of those that promote stronger social safety nets and reject economic reforms. Constantin Florea, a 63-year-old former mill worker in Petrachioaia who subsists on a military pension of 100 euros a month and by raising animals, sums up the disillusionment. "I thought they were supposed to raise our wages and pensions and create jobs for young people after we joined," he said as his heifer munched on grass by the side of a road. "If I didn't have this cow, I'd starve." Boom to bust In the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia, people popped champagne and danced in the streets when the EU ushered them into its club eight years ago. Bulgaria and Romania had to wait another three years for accession, which politicians and economists said would boost their economies. It had elsewhere. In Ireland economic reforms and a torrent of EU development funds, foreign investment and a lending boom to firms and consumers boosted GDP per capita from 65 percent of the EU average in 1960, 13 years before EU entry, to almost 150 percent in 2008. At first, it looked like the EU newcomers would go the same way. In the run-up to membership and immediately after, foreign firms ploughed cash into factories in Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, making the latter the world's top car producer per head and, in less than a decade, pushing its GDP per person to 75 percent of the bloc's average from just 50. While the rest of the EU expanded at 2 percent a year from 2000 to 2008, the new eastern states easily grew at double that rate, with Latvia peaking at 11.2 percent in 2006. Convergence looked a sure thing. Bulgaria's GDP per person reached 44 percent of the EU average in 2008, from just 28 percent at the start of the decade. Romania's rose two-thirds to 47 percent. The crisis ended the boom, and slowed convergence. Every country in the region save Poland has had a recession in the past four years. Latvia shrank by more than a fifth from 2008 to 2010, and a two-year contraction in Romania wiped more than 8 percent off its annual output. Many western European members also suffered recessions. The worst-off - debt-choked Greece - is in its fifth year of what looks set to be a 20 percent contraction. But it started from a much higher pre-crisis base and its living standards are still roughly 80 percent of the EU average, neck-and-neck with the richest new EU state, Slovenia, and well ahead of the poorest. Ireland too has dropped from its peak but is still roughly at Germany's level. Not so fast Since the crisis, eastern Europe's governments have imposed austerity measures including layoffs and wage cuts for state workers, to tackle inefficiencies. Foreign banks have shut off credit. Loans are harder to get. Romania has just re-entered recession. "When we joined the EU people believed their world will change," said Decebal Floroaica, a 38-year-old priest who has just opened the first soup kitchen in Pitesti, a southern Romanian town of around 180,000. "Our euphoria was at a maximum and they thought everybody would find jobs abroad. Now we're realising maybe the EU is not the land of milk and honey." Economists now expect growth to remain below potential for several years, squeezing the ability of countries to gain ground on their richer neighbours. "Citizens of new member states must have expected fast convergence. As a result they have been disappointed," Peter Halmai and Viktoria Vasary, Hungarian experts on transition economists, said in an email. "The convergence machine continues to work, but at a lower level than expected earlier... In certain countries convergence has stopped or slowed down to a great extent." In forecasts updated from a 2010 paper published in The European Journal of Comparative Economics, Halmai and Vasary see growth in the new member states outpacing that of the EU's original 15 countries, with a peak in 2030 or 2040. That is when a demographic crisis is expected to hit eastern Europe, as a steep decline in the birth rate after the end of communism in 1989 brings a large fall in the workforce as generations born before then retire. "The real convergence will stop from 2030 onwards and even a moderate divergence from the EU-15 might occur," Halmai and Vasary wrote. Though they concede that their long range forecasts are uncertain, the economists believe that in most advanced states - Slovakia, Slovenia and the Czech Republic - the eventual ceiling of convergence will peak just around the EU norm before falling back to below that level. Poland would top out at 76 percent of the EU average in 2060, they said, far short of last year's boast by former finance minister Leszek Balcerowicz that Poland could catch Germany in 20 years, and behind even countries such as troubled euro zone member Portugal. The poorest two, Bulgaria and Romania, would struggle to break the 60 percent barrier in the next 30 years, and the latter could fall back to below present levels, they said. Zsolt Darvas, a research fellow at Brussels-based think tank Bruegel, said that compared to Ireland's performance two decades ago, the eastern states are lagging, with some coming to resemble the path of Portugal, Spain and Greece, which made advances but then hit a wall. Darvas thinks Bulgaria and Romania still "have a lot of chances to converge" but that realistically "in 40-50 years, if they will be around 50 percent of the EU average, that would not be bad for these countries." END OF MILK AND HONEY It's not as if EU membership has brought no improvements. In Petrachioaia, the main road was paved for the first time in 2008, a year after Romania joined the EU. The last of the town's four schools got plumbing two years ago. In Bucharest, the capital, luxury cars have replaced dilapidated Soviet-era Dacias and western brands from Gucci to Starbucks stand where just a decade ago were grim shops labeled "shoes" and "food". But problems persist. Romania's highways link only three cities, and none reach a land border or a port, a red flag for exporting investors. Only about a quarter of the population hold down steady jobs - there are roughly the same number of pensioners and the same again of subsistence farmers - so the country's production potential is below its better-off peers. And while Ireland benefited from EU funds, Romania, dogged by corruption, bureaucracy and a lack of co-financing, has used just 8 percent of the 19 billion euros available since 2007. Polls show that fewer than half of Romanians now have faith in the EU, down from over two thirds before entry. Tom Gallagher, a professor of east European politics at Bradford University, said that raises the risk of political dissent or a rise of radical parties if people become frustrated with the wealth gap. "Romania will be a permanent drag on the EU if we continue to fall behind, and the country faces long-term underdevelopment and decay unless there is a relaunch of the partnership with the EU," Gallagher said. Petrachioaia school director Minu Iordanescu, 56, has already adjusted his expectations. "Living conditions can get better, but that may take 50 years," he said. "So maybe my grandchildren will taste a more civilized life."

The Sunday Telegraph never got any letter from Mikhail Khodorkovsky, admitted reporter Tom Parfitt who claimed his article was based on a message from the imprisoned ex-oligarch. In a piece published on May 26, the journalist refers to “a letter” that  “passed to The Sunday Telegraph from his prison cell,” saying that “Khodorkovsky urged a ban on 308 officials including high-profile figures such as Russian deputy prime minister Vladislav Surkov, youth leader Vasily Yakemenko and controversial elections chief Vladimir Churov.” Russia’s radio Svoboda says it contacted the reporter after the lawyers of the imprisoned tycoon said the article misrepresented Khodorkovsky’s words in the headline and refers to a letter that never existed. The journalist admitted that his newspaper did not receive any message from the imprisoned ex-head of Yukos, and that Khodorkovsky was only interviewed by the newspaper in written form. “The fact that Khodorkovsky referred to Garry Kasparov’s list of 308 Russian officials involved in human rights violation and urged the British government to compare it to the list of Russian delegation members invited to the Olympics in London gave me a reason to assert that he’d want Britain to ban them from visiting the Olympics,” Tom Parfitt told Svoboda Radio. The press-center website of the former head of Yukos Khodorkovsky and the former head of Menatep Group Platon Lebedev published the full text of the interview. According to this, the ex-tycoon was asked whether the UK should deny entry permission to Vladimir Putin during the Olympics in London. “It’ll be very difficult for the British government to ban any head of state from coming to the Olympics, especially if this state is a member of the Big Eight and the Council of Europe,” Khodorkovsky answered, adding that “the British government could do something to emphasize the importance of human rights while hosting the Olympics.” “In June 2011 one of the Russian opposition leaders Garry Kasparov presented the US House of Representatives with a list of people involved in human rights abuse, and I would call on the British government to pay extra attention to Kasparov’s list and compare it to the list of the Russian delegation members who are set to visit London in 2012,” Khodorkovsky said. Garry Kasparov presented US Congressmen with the blacklist of high-ranking Russian officials who according to rights organizations were involved in violation of human rights. The US House of Representatives was then discussing a bill to pass visa sanctions on foreign officials involved in rights abuse. In May, the British Foreign Office announced its decision to ban foreign officials guilty of rights violations from the London Olympics.

Chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament Vladimir Litvin hopes that the joint project with Russia on building Antonov-70 aircraft will get off the ground. Speaking at a session of the inter-parliamentary commission on cooperation in Voronezh (south of Moscow), he pointed out that that city was already implementing a joint Russian-Ukrainian project on building Antonov-148 planes. Litvin believes that it is time to revive the inter-parliamentary working group on cooperation between Russia and Ukraine in high technology fields, including aircraft building and space research. The working group was set up at the commission’s previous session which was held in Kiev in November 2010. The Antonov-70 is a medium-haul cargo plane developed by the Antonov design bureau in Kiev. It is intended for both the military and commercial use. An aircraft of this model made its first flight in 1994.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday that Moscow was deeply alarmed by the killing of at least 108 people in the Syrian town of Houla but that it was clear both President Bashar al-Assad's government and rebels were to blame. "We are dealing with a situation in which both sides evidently had a hand in the deaths of innocent people," Lavrov said after talks with British Foreign Secretary William Hague. "Nobody is taking (blame) off the government and nobody is taking it off the fighters, but we must understand how it all happened so that such a thing never happens again," Lavrov told a joint news conference. Lavrov hinted Moscow could increase pressure on Assad to abide by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan's peace plan. But he gave no indication Russia, which has aided Assad with arms supplies and U.N. Security Council vetoes and opposed external pressure for his ouster while strongly backing Annan's plan, was changing course. Lavrov and Hague agreed foreign nations should work harder to push the government and rebels into compliance with the April 12 ceasefire but they accented different sides, with Hague suggesting Russia must lean harder on Assad. Hague, on a pre-planned visit to Russia a day after the U.N. Security Council condemned the killing of at least 108 people in Houla, said "we look to Russia as having a particularly powerful role in being able to exert that additional pressure." Hague said Annan's plan - whose demand for a government withdrawal of heavy weapons from cities and towns has not been fulfilled - was "at the moment the only hope for Syria to fight to break the cycle of violence." Like Assad, Russia has blamed rebels for most of the violence that persisted since the ceasefire took effect and said foreign countries are aiding them with encouragement and weapons supplies. Indicating Moscow is also frustrated with the government, Lavrov said it "deeply alarms us that the Annan plan is being implemented in an unsatisfactory way." He said he and Hague agreed that "leading states ... upon which the conduct of one or the other side in Syria depend, should make additional efforts to work out clear and verifiable mechanisms for implementation of Annan's plan. We will be working on work on this in the near future." However, Lavrov criticised nations he said were arguing that there could be no solution the crisis in Syria - where the United nations says government forces have killed more than 9,000 people since March 2011 - without Assad's exit from power. "All the external players need to be playing the same game: the game directed at implementing the Annan plan, and not the game of the regime change," he said.

The chief archivist of Russia’s counterintelligence service said Monday it will continue searching for clues about the mystery of Holocaust hero Raoul Wallenberg, who vanished while in Soviet captivity. Lt.-Gen. Vasily Khristoforov said that his agency, the Federal Security Service, has no reason to withhold any information about the Swedish diplomat from the public eye. He rejected critics’ allegations that his service, the main KGB successor, could be hiding documents related to Wallenberg’s fate. 0 Comments Weigh InCorrections? Personal Post “Believe me, had such an information been known to us, the Russia archivists would have been the first to publish and show it,” Khristoforov told The Associated Press. “When some people say that we are defending the pride of the uniform ... it’s ridiculous. This is another state and a different special service.” Khristoforov insisted that he and his colleagues would have no inclination to whitewash the record of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s much-feared secret police, known under its Russian acronym, NKVD. “I doubt that any of the Federal Security Service officers today would associate himself with the NKVD and would try to defend the uniform of the NKVD,” he said. “That’s why this argument doesn’t stand criticism.” Khristoforov was taking part in an international conference that included researchers from Sweden, Hungary, Israel and Russia. Some of the speakers strongly urged Khristoforov’s agency to give independent researchers investigating the Wallenberg mystery free access to their archives. “I think full access is really needed,” said Ingrid Carlberg, a Swedish author who recently published a book about Wallenberg. “They can’t possibly know what kind of puzzles I have that could be matched with pieces of information in those archives. If we put them all together, we will have a clearer picture.” Wallenberg is credited with saving thousands of Jews in Budapest by distributing Swedish travel documents or moving them to safe houses. He was arrested in Budapest by the Soviet Red Army in 1945. The Soviets initially denied Wallenberg was in their custody, then said in 1957 that he died of a heart attack in prison on July 17, 1947. The Russian government has never formally retracted the initial Soviet version, but some officials acknowledged that Wallenberg likely had been killed. In 2000, Alexander Yakovlev, the one-time chairman of a presidential panel investigating the fate of repression victims, said he had been told by a former KGB chief that Wallenberg was killed in Lubyanka prison. That year, Russia also conceded that Soviet authorities had wrongfully persecuted Wallenberg and posthumously rehabilitated him as a victim of political repression.

Russia’s most senior military officer said Thursday that Moscow would strike and destroy NATO missile defense sites in Eastern Europe before they came online if the U.S. pushes ahead with deployment. “A decision to use destructive force pre-emptively will be taken if the situation worsens,” Russian Chief of General Staff Nikolai Makarov said at an international missile defense conference in Moscow attended by senior U.S. and NATO officials. The threat comes as talks about the missile defense system, which the U.S. and its allies insist is aimed at Iranian missiles, appear to have stalled. “We have not been able to find mutually acceptable solutions at this point, and the situation is practically at a dead end,” Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said. Ellen Tauscher, the U.S. special envoy for strategic stability and missile defense, insisted the talks about NATO plans for a missile defense system using ground-based interceptor missiles stationed in Poland, Romania and Turkey were not stalemated. But she acknowledged Wednesday that the recent elections in Russia and the upcoming elections in the U.S. make it “pretty clear that this is a year in which we’re probably not going to achieve any sort of a breakthrough.” She reiterated that the U.S.-built system, still in development, is being designed to shoot down Iranian intermediate-range missiles aimed at Europe, not Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Russian officials insist that the system has the capability to shoot down their ICBMs, thus robbing their nuclear deterrent of its credibility and destabilizing the Cold War-era balance of mutually assured destruction. Neither the State Department nor the Pentagon had any immediate comment on the Russian threat Thursday.

A giant oil slick is flowing along Russia's Angara river, in southeastern Siberia. Authorities have declared the situation an emergency, with some 80,000 people stranded without water. Reports say the slick is about ten kilometers long. Emergency services are trying to stop the oil from making its way any further, but have not succeeded so far. The concentration of oil in the water still exceeded the norm by several times on Thursday. About two tons of diesel oil spilled into the river on Wednesday as a result of an accident caused by illegal siphoning, officials say.  Cashing in on suffering The incident disrupted the local water intake, which supplies water to three towns, leaving about 80,000 people without water. Local authorities in the affected towns had to close schools and kindergartens in the area, though hospitals are working as usual. The centralized water supply can be restored only after probes show that the oil concentration in the water is lower than the maximum permissible concentration. Meanwhile, there are reports of merchants trying to cash in on the catastrophe by doubling and tripling prices for bottled water. Authorities urged them not to turn a profit on the ecological disaster, and said they would closely monitor the situation to eliminate such cases. Forty tons of free bottled water have been delivered in the affected are as emergency workers try to restore the intake's ability to operate. Threat of ecological catastrophe The oil leak may become a serious ecological problem if urgent measures are not taken to deal with the spill, WWF Russia official Aleksey Knizhnikov told Ria-Novosti. The incident at the Sayano-Shushenskaya power plant revealed that Russia's emergency services were not ready for an oil spill in the river, because it is a rare case, he explained.

Three men have been arrested and 36 criminal websites selling credit card information and other personal data shut down as part of a two-year international anti-fraud operation, police have confirmed. The Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), working with the FBI and US Department of Justice, as well as authorities in Germany; the Netherlands; Ukraine; Australia and Romania, swooped after identifying the sites as specialising in selling card and bank details in bulk. The move comes as a blow to what is a growing black market for stolen financial data. Detectives estimated that the card information seized could have been used to extract more than £500m in total by fraudsters. SOCA claimed it has recovered more than two and a half million items of compromised personal and financial information over the past two years. “The authorities have shut down 36 websites but it is difficult to know how many other people had access to that data. They could spring back up somewhere else if a gang is not eradicated completely,” said Graham Cluley of internet security firm Sophos. He added: “This is big business and, just as in any legitimate company there are people who specialise in different things, so there are those who actually get their hands on the personal data and those who sell it on; they are not often the same person.” An investigation by The Independent last summer found that scammers were making a “comfortable living” getting their hands on sensitive information and selling it online. Card details were being offered for sale for between 4p and £60 per card – depending on the quality – according to one source in the business. Some cards would be sold with incomplete or unreliable information; others ready to use. Some of the card details for sale on the websites shut down by SOCA were being sold for as little as £2 each. Investigators said that the alleged fraudsters were using Automated Vending Carts, which allowed them to sell large quantities of stolen data. They are said to be a driver of the growth in banking fraud over the last 18 months because of the speed with which stolen data can be sold. Lee Miles, Head of Cyber Operations for SOCA said: “This operation is an excellent example of the level of international cooperation being focused on tackling online fraud. Our activities have saved business, online retailers and financial institutions potential fraud losses estimated at more than half a billion pounds, and at the same time protected thousands of individuals from the distress caused by being a victim of fraud or identity crime.” An alleged operator in Macedonia was one of those arrested, while two British men accused of buying the information were also detained. Britain’s Dedicated Cheque & Plastic Crime Unit also seized computers suspected of being used to commit fraud.

Companies that do not do enough to keep their websites secure are to be named and shamed to help improve security. The list of good and bad sites will be published regularly by the non-profit Trustworthy Internet Movement (TIM). A survey carried out to launch the group found that more than 52% of sites tested were using versions of security protocols known to be compromised. The group will test websites to see how well they have implemented basic security software. Security fundamentals The group has been set up by security experts and entrepreneurs frustrated by the slow pace of improvements in online safety. "We want to stimulate some initiatives and get something done," said TIM's founder Philippe Courtot, serial entrepreneur and chief executive of security firm Qualys. He has bankrolled the group with his own money. TIM has initially focused on a widely used technology known as the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). Experts recruited to help with the initiative include SSL's inventor Dr Taher Elgamal; "white hat" hacker Moxie Marlinspike who has written extensively about attacking the protocol; and Michael Barrett, chief security officer at Paypal. Continue reading the main story “ Start Quote Everyone is now going to be able to see who has a good grade and who has a bad grade” Philippe Courtot Many websites use SSL to encrypt communications between them and their users. It is used to protect credit card numbers and other valuable data as it travels across the web. "SSL is one of the fundamental parts of the internet," said Mr Courtot. "It's what makes it trustworthy and right now it's not as secure as you think." Compromised certificates TIM plans a two-pronged attack on SSL. The first part would be to run automated tools against websites to test how well they had implemented SSL, said Mr Courtot. "We'll be making it public," he added. "Everyone is now going to be able to see who has a good grade and who has a bad grade." Early tests suggest that about 52% of sites checked ran a version of SSL known to be compromised. Companies who have done a bad job will be encouraged to improve and upgrade their implementations so it gets safer to use those sites. The second part of the initiative concerns the running of the bodies, known as certificate authorities, which guarantee that a website is what it claims to be. TIM said it would work with governments, industry bodies and companies to check that CAs are well run and had not been compromised. "It's a much more complex problem," said Mr Courtot. In 2011, two certificate authorities, DigiNotar and GlobalSign were found to have been compromised. In some cases this meant attackers eavesdropped on what should have been a secure communications channel. Steve Durbin, global vice president of the Information Security Forum which represents security specialists working in large corporations, said many of its members took responsibility for making sure sites were secure. "You cannot just say 'buyer beware'," he said. "That's not good enough anymore. They have a real a duty of care." He said corporations were also increasingly conscious of their reputation for providing safe and secure services to customers. Data breaches, hack attacks and poor security were all likely to hit share prices and could mean they lose customers, he noted.