Just months after his May 2007 election, French president Nicolas Sarkozy faced growing criticism over his stalled reforms, flashy style, and stormy divorce. The last straw should have been his whirlwind remarriage, to an Italian heiress, ex-model, and singer who had past liaisons with Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, among others, and nude photos all over the Internet. But the lady in question, Carla Bruni, is proving an unexpected asset. At the Élysée Palace, Maureen Orth encounters a pair of romantic predators who appear to have met their matches.

Barack Obama's encounter with a German reporter while working out in a Berlin gym last week has become an issue in the US, where bloggers are calling the story embarrassing. Now Obama has given his version of events: "She hustled us."

Bild reporter Judith Bonesky with Barack Obama in the gym. Barack Obama knows how to handle the media. His appearances are strictly choreographed, as if they were held on movie sets, and you only get access to the star if you fit the marketing concept. During his visit to Berlin, for example, he only allowed hand-picked journalist to interview him -- with one exception.

"Bild Reporter with Obama in the Gym," was the banner headline of the Friday edition of the German tabloid Bild published the day after Obama's visit to the German capital. "While thousands waited for him at the Victory Column," wrote Judith Bonesky," I, the Bild reporter, met Barack Obama alone -- in the gym!"

The story contained a florid description of Obama's physical attributes, praising his "well-trained arms," "his tight rear view," and how he lifted the masculine 32-kilogram (70-pound) dumbbells "first 10 times with his right arm, then 10 times with his left." And then there was the culmination: "Barack put his arm around my shoulders. I held him round the waist. Wow! He isn't even sweating!" And, lastly, there was Bonesky's conclusion: "What a man!"

Alarm raised on EDF bid for British Energy

EDF's planned takeover of British Energy risks creating serious competition problems in the UK electricity market, rival companies and customers have warned.

A deal that values British Energy's equity at about £12.5bn ($24.8bn) could be announced this week. It is backed by the UK government, which controls 35 per cent of the company and wants to get the industry moving on building more nuclear power stations.

But electricity companies and industrial users have called for radical changes to protect competitors and consumers. The business and enterprise select committee makes the same call on Monday in its report on energy markets.

An EDF deal would mean "essentially handing the British nuclear industry to the French government", says Dieter Helm, an energy expert at Oxford University.

EDF would have a dominant position in running Britain's existing nuclear power stations and in building more. Another French company, Areva, leads a consortium that this month won the contract to run the fuel reprocessing and fabrication operations at Sellafield, north-west England. Areva also supplies pressurised reactors that EDF plans to build in the UK. Both companies are controlled by the French state.

"If the ambition was to create a privatised market where we have companies competing against each other, we have taken one step in a completely different direction," Prof Helm says.

A greater concern is the effect on competition in the wholesale market, where generators sell to suppliers. Keith Munday, commercial director of Bizzenergy, an independent supplier, calls the move "a very significant step in the wrong direction".

The wholesale electricity market "is profoundly illiquid", he says. "It's bad now and it's going to get worse."

Concerns about liquidity in the wholesale power market have been rising in recent years.

A growing proportion of generation capacity has been tied up in vertically integrated companies such as EDF, Centrica, and Scottish and Southern Energy, which both generate and sell their own electricity.

Independent suppliers and some customers say it is too hard for entrants to break into generation or supply.

As Britain's biggest generator, with no supply business, British Energy has played a vital role in the wholesale market. If bought by EDF, it risks losing that role.

"A takeover of British Energy by EDF would move a huge chunk of generation capacity into an integrated group," says Graham Paul of Electricity4Business, another independent supplier serving small and medium businesses. "It will do damage to the liquidity of the already struggling wholesale market."

Funny how corporations have done nothing but rebuild their vertical integration since the markets were liberalised, because it's just damn simpler to manage the resources in-house than to depend on a fickle and unpredictable market to do the same. The logic of that is one fully integrated power system.

Looks like it's going to happen, wit hthe twist that it will be owned by the French State ,which is probably a good thing, as it still takes these kinds of tasks seriously.

LOL

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes