"Projection Ruhr - an urban laboratory", at Paris's architecture and heritage musem, is a look at a ten-year revitalisation project in Germany's Ruhr region, a centre for heavy industry and coalmining for 150 years.

By the 1980s it was a devastated area, where large-scale vestiges of industrialisation and deindustrialisation lay side-by-side.

The river Emscher and its tributaries had been reduced to a central, open sewer. In fact, the name Emschler for the Germans became synonymous with the ecological, aesthetic and social abuse of a river landscape, and for the ecological backwardness of an entire industrial region.

Through Germany's International Building Exhibition, the region has been completely rehabilitated. An abandoned blast furnace plant has been transformed into a sports centre - complete with swimming pool and golf driving range. Coalmines were converted into cultural spaces. And the environment has been completely cleaned up.

Francis Rambert, the director of the French Institute of Architecture, says that the idea of sustainable architecture is indelibly linked to the sustainable development of an entire region.

"This exhibition is about more than architecture - it's about an entire territory, of about 120 kilometers. That's about the size of Paris. And with the Greater Paris debate in full swing, we thought French architects may learn something from the German experience - because the Ruhr region comprises over 17 towns."

BRUSSELS, Nov 28 (IPS) - Cote d'Ivoire became the first country in Africa to sign an economic partnership agreement (EPA) with the European Union this week, prompting fears that the accord will prevent the country from developing closer ties with its neighbours.

More than 80 percent of the taxes levied on imports from the EU will be eliminated over a 15-year-period as a result of the free trade deal, formally copper-fastened in Abidjan Nov. 26. Under the agreement, Cote d'Ivoire will immediately open its markets to chemicals and vehicles, that it does not produce domestically.

Despite the steep loss in government revenues this will incur for a country where the national income per capita is only 900 dollars a year, the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, sought to put a positive spin on the deal. It promised that an unspecified amount of aid will be given to help the Ivorian economy adjust to the slump in earnings from tariffs.

Brussels officials have attached the prefix 'stepping stone' to the agreement, stating that they hope it will lead to a similar agreement involving most, if not all, of the countries in the west African region. Almost 80 countries from Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific have been involved in EPA negotiations.

Switzerland was one of the first countries to dispense heroin to addicts on a trial basis and now the future of this therapy is in the hands of voters.

As the trial period comes to end, psychiatrist Christoph Bürki - who has worked for 14 years in the Bern heroin-dispensing centre (Koda) and is now the senior doctor there - gives swissinfo his perspective on the practice.

The temporary legal provisions that allow this form of therapy are set to become enshrined in a revised drug law, along with the decriminalisation of cannabis use.

Although the new drug policy has cleared parliamentary hurdles, voters must now approve it in a referendum on Sunday. Opponents of the new law have campaigned strongly against these two elements

See also this inverview with Béatrice, who says that it is better to stay "independent" and "chez nous".  (She says one thing before that which I could not make out:  "Il vaut mieux être intransigeant."  Is that the word she uses?)

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

KIEV, Ukraine -- With the Ukrainian government reeling from a financial crisis and internal power struggles, the country's pro-Russian opposition has been leveling potentially damaging accusations of improper arms sales to Georgia during that country's brief war with Russia.

And Russia's leaders, furious with Ukraine's president over his pro-Western leanings and vocal support of Georgia, have personally weighed in, making accusations of their own.

It may not matter that the opposition has provided no conclusive evidence of the claims, despite weeks of pronouncements that the evidence -- once released -- will be explosive. The claims alone, which have made headlines, have nonetheless helped to further undermine the government's authority at a time of heightened political instability, while also roiling Ukraine's already tense relationship with neighboring Russia.

At issue are accusations that the government of President Viktor A. Yushchenko, who supported Georgia during the crisis, covertly supplied it with weapons before and soon after the fighting broke out in August, and sold tanks and an antiaircraft system to the Georgians at reduced prices.

A parliamentary commission set up by Ukraine's opposition parties has been investigating the claims, which also include allegations that the president decommissioned equipment sorely needed by Ukraine's military and gave it to Georgia.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) begin a party conference amid deep divisions over how Germany should come to grips with the worst financial upheaval in decades.

Merkel has called for a measured response to the crisis, saying the economic stimulus package enacted by her government, a coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD), should be given time to kick in before further action is taken.

 

This is not enough for many in the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), who want tax cuts to be introduced before the nation goes to the polls in a general election that's likely to take place on Sept. 27, 2009.

  

Merkel is opposed to lowering taxes before the polls, pointing out that Berlin's prime goal is to reduce borrowing and balance the budget. Originally, the government had hoped to balance the budget by 2011, but that date was abandoned after Germany fell into recession and the government was forced to increase net borrowing for 2009 by eight billion euros to 18 billion euros ($10.3 billion to $23.1 billion).

[Executive and former editor in chief of the Paris newspaper Libération Vittorio de] Filippis, in a detailed account published Saturday by Libération, said [investigating magistrate Muriel] Josié questioned him about a lawsuit brought against the newspaper last year. The suit concerned an opinion article contributed by an Internet commentator and published by Liberation's Web site that described past legal troubles of Xavier Niel, founder of a French Internet access company called Free.

<...>

"I told the cops that there was perhaps another way to conduct themselves. The response in front of my son: 'You, you are worse than scum.' "

After a stop at the suburban Raincy police station, near his home, Filippis said, he was handcuffed with his arms behind his back and driven to the main Paris courthouse beside the Seine River in the center of the city. After taking all his personal effects, police ordered him to strip and bend over for a body search, he said, before locking him in a cell.

"The room had a table, a roll of toilet paper, a concrete sleeping platform with two blankets," Filippis said. "I saw a toilet in a corner. I sat on the table to avoid the cockroaches and moths."

About 10 a.m., two officers escorted him down a long corridor and ordered him to undress for another search. When he protested, Filippis said, he was told that the investigating magistrate had insisted on following procedure, and so he submitted a second time before being taken into Josié's office.

Josié said she had summoned him numerous times without success, he said, and asked him to identify his attorneys from a list of names. She refused his request to call the lawyers, he added, and so, in a testy exchange, he declined to respond further to her questions. After formally notifying him that he was being investigated in the libel case, she ordered him released, he said, and he found himself on the sidewalk in front of the courthouse.

What the f would make Josié and Niel to go after Filippis so crazily like this?

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.