BRATISLAVA, Jun 26 (IPS) - Rights groups in Slovakia have attacked new abortion legislation they say not only breaches women's rights to privacy and regulations on medical confidentiality but could force some women into undergoing risky, illegal abortions.

Under the legislation, approved last week, women who want abortions will only be able to undergo the procedure two days after they have been given official advice on the `risks and alternatives' by their doctor. Information about them, including an identity number given to every Slovak at birth, will also be sent to a state health information institute.

The age at which adolescents have to gain their parents' informed consent for an abortion has also been raised from 16 to 18.

But the legislation continues to allow abortion on request up until 12 weeks of pregnancy and until 24 weeks if the foetus has a genetic defect or the woman's life or health is in danger.

Christina Zampas, senior legal advisor for Europe at the Centre for Reproductive Rights, told IPS: "This is the first time that an EU member state has managed to create significant barriers to women accessing abortion.

"This runs against a worldwide trend of liberalisation of abortion laws which reflect the fact that creating barriers to abortion does not reduce abortion numbers, it merely endangers women's health and rights."

EU Employment and Social Affairs Commissioner Vladimír Špidla yesterday (25 June) urged EU member states to do more to protect young people facing unemployment, and reiterated a number of proposals for battling the EU's jobs crisis.

Speaking at a keynote conference during the 2009 Employment Weekexternal  in Brussels yesterday, Špidla said he was "particularly concerned" by the plight of young people, who have been among the hardest-hit by the bleak employment landscape as a result of the recession.

"Employment remains the greatest defence against social exclusion," the commissioner emphasised.

The European Commission earlier this month recommended that EU member states sign up to a commitment to provide five million apprenticeships across Europe this year and next. This would allow young Europeans facing unemployment to "ride out the storm" and be "more employable" at the end of their training, a Commission spokesperson told EurActiv.

However, the spokesperson admitted that this target had not been officially adopted by EU leaders, whose conclusions at the EU summit earlier this month were "very general" in respect of the Commission's action points.

The German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück has told the BBC that Germany must begin to reduce its dependence on foreign trade.

Germany was ranked by the World Factbook as the biggest exporter in the world last year.

But the downturn in global trade caused by the credit crisis has hit it hard.

The German government expects the country's economy to contract by 6% this year, largely because of very steep falls in exports.

Some economists have argued that Germany had relied far too heavily on foreign trade, which made it rich in the boom times but left it vulnerable to a global crisis.

Its finance minister Peer Steinbrück has now admitted in an interview with the BBC that the current balance between foreign and domestic markets must start to change.

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti economic commentator Oleg Mityayev) - The economic downturn has hurt both the price and the volume of the natural gas Russia exports to Western Europe.

However, some analysts attribute the drop in Russian gas exports to another major reason, Gazprom's inflexible pricing policy, which could eventually lose the gas monopoly its European customers. However, officials at Gazprom do not plan a policy change. Neither do they see any reason to panic.

Deputy Energy Minister Sergei Kudryashov said on June 23 one of the problems with Russian gas exports was the lack of flexibility in liberalized European markets when the competition grows fierce. By Kudryashov's estimate, demand for gas in Europe dropped by a mere 5% in the first quarter, while Russian exports plummeted by nearly 60%.

It transpires that, along with the shortfall in earnings, the key Russian gas exporter lost part of its control of the European gas market to competitors.

The next day, June 24, Gazprom's Deputy CEO Alexander Medvedev did his best to rebut criticism of the monopoly's export policy. He admitted that supplies to Europe at the end of 2008 and beginning of 2009 were cut for reasons beyond their control.

Gazprom's relations with foreign customers are regulated by long-term contracts, where quarterly price adjustments are based on European petroleum prices six to nine months before. In the first half of 2008, oil reached a peak, gas prices also peaked, and so after the relevant time lag, prices reached $500 per 1,000 cubic meters in the forth quarter. The price remained high in early 2009.

That is why Europeans drew more heavily on their underground gas storage tanks. In Medvedev's estimates, they increased the use of previously accumulated fuel by 65% in the first quarter. This move naturally affected Gazprom's earnings along with other gas suppliers, Nigeria and Algeria, but benefited Norway which trades on the spot market for gas, where deals take immediate effect. In addition, Norway then commissioned a huge gas deposit, Ormen Lange.

The Russian-Ukrainian gas conflict also seriously harmed Russia's supplies to Europe, resulting in a 4.5 billion cubic meter shortfall for European consumers.

Nevertheless, Medvedev does not believe Gazprom is losing its grip on the European gas market (of which the Russian monopoly has controlled a quarter until recently), and sees no point in abandoning the existing pricing or contract policy.

Brussels / Luxembourg - European environment ministers have sidestepped the key emissions reduction strategy of classifying carbon dioxide as a pollutant during consideration of new laws to limit industrial pollution.  The move further questions Europe's claim to be a leader in climate action, with California requiring carbon pollution mitigation for the last two years and reclassification under consideration elsewhere.

The EU Environment Council reached a common position on the new Industrial Emissions Directive. The draft law overhauls the framework for controlling pollutants such as sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and dust from thousands of industrial installations across Europe, combining and strengthening seven earlier pieces of legislation.

WWF is calling for carbon dioxide standards to be added to the proposal, in order to respond adequately to the increasing scale and urgency of the global climate crisis. Such a move could cut Europe's total greenhouse gas emissions by around a quarter over the next two decades. But EU ministers failed on this occasion to seize the opportunity.

"Environment ministers skipped aimlessly past what is an obvious game-changing move. In the face of increasingly stark warnings from scientists, Europe has missed a straight-forward opportunity, using a proven regulatory tool, to plan the phase-out of dirty coal-fired power stations," said Mark Johnston, Coordinator for Power Plant CO2 Standards at WWF. "Such a move, which is still possible later this year, would inject a huge confidence boost into the slow-moving global negotiations."

Emission performance standards have been used successfully by European law-makers for more than two decades, leading to dramatic environmental improvements on issues like acid rain and smog.

The first generation of Albanians born after the collapse of Communism in December 1990 vote in a general election on Sunday.

The vote is seen as a major test of Albania's progress towards future integration with the European Union.

Three million registered electors will vote in what has turned essentially into a contest between two candidates: Sali Berisha, the current prime minister and head of the Democratic Party; and the popular mayor of Tirana, Edi Rama, who leads the opposition Socialist Party.

Both Mr Berisha and Mr Rama promise more jobs, better living standards, new infrastructure and a tougher fight against corruption.

A Swedish court has thrown out a request for a retrial by the four men behind The Pirate Bay website.

The four were found guilty of promoting copyright infringement in April and face jail sentences and hefty claims for damages.

The Pirate Bay's lawyers called for a retrial when it emerged that one of the judges in the case belonged to several copyright protection groups.

The Swedish court said the judge's affiliations did not bias the case.

Twenty hours of journey time separate Belfast, via Dublin and Budapest, from Batar but, surveying the medieval conditions in which the Roma live here, one might do better to take as a measure of distance not years, nor even decades, but centuries.

Florin Fekete returned on Monday with his wife and two sons. "There is no work here. Life in Belfast was good, we had really good times but I could not risk my family's lives. I asked some of the ones who were attacking us, `What do you have against us?'.

"The reply was, `We hate you because you are gypsies'. But even though I am afraid, I want to go back. Is it safe now, do you think?"

The cancer of sectarianism, which fuelled decades of violence, is now, as foreigners arrive in greater numbers, embracing racism. A report by the University of Ulster in 2007 made the astonishing claim that Northern Ireland has the highest proportion of bigoted people in the Western world.That was supported by an Equality Commission study this week that found that nearly a quarter of people in the province object to having a migrant or a gay person as a neighbour.