The people of Lebanon are facing their "hour of greatest need", the UN said yesterday in launching an emergency appeal for $150m (£81m) to help an estimated 800,000 civilians whose lives have been disrupted by Israeli bombing of Lebanon.

The relief plan would focus on providing food, water, healthcare and other essential services, Jan Egeland, the UN emergency relief coordinator, said.

IT was a glamorous Saturday night out in Sydney. The restaurant, the food, the wine and the calibre of guests were all first-class. The exclusive Guillaume at Bennelong restaurant sits atop the stairs at the Sydney Opera House, commanding one of the best views in the nation.
The restaurant's enticing degustation menu includes multiple courses, each served with a glass of one of the world's best wines, creating an unforgettable dining experience.

Among the 278 diners were some of the nation's top cancer specialists from our leading public hospitals. Some had brought partners, some were alone. All were there as guests of Swiss drug giant Roche Pharmaceuticals. At a cost of more than $65,000, Roche had booked out the restaurant and thrown a $200-a-head feast for the doctors.

"The gluttony of the whole thing was mind-blowing," says Karen McLeod, the former partner of one attending doctor.

A blistering report out today from a blue-ribbon legal panel dramatically establishes how President Bush's use of signing statements to assert his right to ignore legislation passed by Congress undermines the rule of law and the constitutional system of separation of powers.

The report, from an American Bar Association task force, goes a long way toward establishing the parameters for what could be a ferocious and consequential debate -- or an unparalleled acquiescence to an executive-branch power grab.

Five years of talks aimed at making global trade freer were on the brink of collapse last night after a make-or-break meeting between six of the leading players ended in acrimonious failure.
With the hardline stance adopted by the United States being blamed for the breakdown, the head of the World Trade Organisation said he had no choice but to suspend the talks, with no immediate prospect of them being resumed.

Pascal Lamy, the WTO's director general said: "Faced with this persistent impasse, I believe that the only course of action I can recommend is to suspend the negotiations across the board."

SCOTLAND'S fire service is attempting to shed its "macho" image in a nationwide drive to recruit gay officers.

Posters have been distributed in gay bars and clubs across the country as part of the equality campaign

Four of Scotland's eight fire brigades are behind the move, which has also seen firefighters taking part in a series of gay fairs and parades where they have tried to get the equal opportunities message across.

Seattle Post Intelligencer:  Crews begin rescue of 22 stranded sailors from listing ship

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- The rescue of crew members of an Asian ship listing on its side in the Pacific Ocean began late Monday, officials said.

"The first helicopter is on the scene, and starting hoist operations," said Alaska National Guard spokesman Maj. Mike Haller.

Two National Guard Pave Hawk helicopters and a Coast Guard helicopter will pick up the 22 crew members of the Cougar Ace, 230 miles from Adak Island in the Aleutians. The crew members all had donned survival suits as the ship began to take on water.

The intent, Haller said, was to deliver all crew members to Adak Island.

(...)The Cougar Ace had been carrying nearly 5,000 cars from Japan to Canada when it began taking on water Sunday night.

"It's sitting on its side, basically," Petty Officer Stephen Harrison said.

Stand up to US, voters tell Blair

Britain should take a much more robust and independent approach to the United States, according to a Guardian/ICM poll published today, which finds strong public opposition to Tony Blair's close working relationship with President Bush. <...>

Just 30% think the prime minister has got the relationship about right, against 63% saying he has tied Britain too closely to the US.

Carried in the wake of the accidental broadcast of the prime minister's conversation with President Bush at the G8 summit, the poll finds opposition to this central element of the prime minister's foreign policy among supporters of all the main parties.

Even a majority of Labour supporters - traditionally more supportive of Mr Blair's foreign policy position - think he has misjudged the relationship, with 54% saying Britain is too close to the US. Conservatives - 68% - and Liberal Democrats - 83% - are even more critical.

And voters are strongly critical of the scale of Israel's military operations in Lebanon, with 61% believing the country has overreacted to the threats it faces.

See Helen's diary for background on The Guardian's change of attitude to Blair.

Millions of people like to hear Bob Geldof talk about causes as diverse as debt relief and the rights of fathers but it seems not so many, at least in Italy, are as keen to hear him sing.
The Irish rock musician and political activist beat a retreat back to London at the weekend after cancelling concerts in Milan and Rome because too few fans had bought tickets.

Only 45 people turned up on Friday at Milan's Civic Arena for a performance by the 51-year-old singer and songwriter. The venue has a capacity of 12,000.

Geldof refused to go on stage once he realised the dismally small number of people waiting to hear him perform. Before taking a taxi back to his hotel to pack his bags, he stopped to placate those who had turned up by signing autographs and having his photograph taken.

"There aren't the right conditions for a concert, it's not our fault," Geldof is reported to have told the small but angry crowd gathered outside.

EU bans 22 hair dye substances on health concerns

The European Commission has ordered a ban on 22 chemical substances used in hair dying after the cosmetics industry failed to submit data proving that they do not pose a health risk for consumers. <...>

The decision was taken upon recommendation of the EU's Scientific Committee on Consumer Products (SCCP), an advisory body to the Commission made up of scientists designated by the 25-member bloc.

By the end of last year, the cosmetics industry had submitted 115 files on hair dye substances for evaluation by the SCCP. The ban concern 22 substances for which no files have been submitted. The others are currently being assessed by the SCCP who will emit its next round of opinion in October this year.

In an opinion dated 17 December 2002, the SCCP said there is epidemiological evidence showing that "the regular and long term use of hair dyes by women may be associated with the development of bladder cancer". An overall strategy was subsequently agreed to test the cosmetic ingredients used in hair dye substances for their potential genotoxicity or mutagenicity.

The High Cost of Being Poor

There are people, concentrated in the Hamptons and Beverly Hills, who still confuse poverty with the simple life. No cable TV, no altercations with the maid, no summer home maintenance issues -- just the basics like family, sunsets and walks in the park. What they don't know is that it's expensive to be poor.

In fact, you, the reader of middling income, could probably not afford it. A new study from the Brookings Institute documents the "ghetto tax," or higher cost of living in low-income urban neighborhoods. It comes at you from every direction, from food prices to auto insurance. A few examples from this study, by Matt Fellowes, that covered 12 American cities:

<follow link for more...>

Camp Nashi

The Nashi summer camp at Lake Seliger opened itself up to media on Saturday, giving reporters a chance to get a glimpse of how members train to become tomorrows “Our Army”.  As I wrote last week, Nashi has adopted a platform that encourages its youth to join the Russian military.  According to
Kommersant
correspondent, Ekaterina Savina, the camp is much more.  In addition to physical fitness, the day of a Nashist is filled with seminars and lectures on ideology and chances to meet with some of Russia’s important political figures.  It serves to not only to indoctrinate youth with the ideology of Putin; it seeks to reproduce it by concretizing loyalty through the opportunities of networking and social mobility Nashi membership provides.  To older Russians the similarities to the Soviet era are striking.  They should be.  It seems that all that is missing are the little red neckties.

 [Sean's Russia Blog]

The War in Lebanon: Iraqi Perspective

I have a soft spot for Lebanon. There was a time when many Iraqis spent their summer holidays In Lebanon. I was 13 when I first visited the country and immediately fell in love with it. I was struck by the friendliness of the people, their openness towards strangers and the wonderful lifestyle. The picturesque country and its pleasant cultural and geographic variety are also unique in the region: It is one of the few countries I know where you can move from warmth of sunny sandy beaches to the fresh coolness of mountain air in less than half an hour. I went back to Lebanon many times. I have fond memories of the country and its people.


Some people have indicated that most Iraqis are too busy with their own misfortunes to follow what is happening in Palestine and Lebanon. This is not true. Despite their own misery and preoccupations, most Iraqis are following those developments very closely.


Sunnis mostly do not look at Hezbollah as a ‘Shiite’ movement. The sectarian polarization, bad as it is, has not gone that far in Iraq… yet. In this respect, most Iraqis are united. Most ‘Shiite’ and ‘Sunni’ pro- and anti-Occupation political and insurgency groups declared their solidarity with Hezbollah and Lebanon and their outrage at Israel! Even the puppets and the stooges, have expressed their displeasure! Notable exceptions are the Kurdish ‘leadership’ and the Qaeda people.


Furthermore, these people almost unanimously believe that the root cause of all that is taking place is America, not Syria and Iran! Odd? Not really!


America and Israel keep saying that Hezbollah’s weaponry comes from Iran. What most people here see is that Israel’s superior weaponry that was killing innocent civilians comes from the US.

[Iraqi Letters]

People gather to cool off at the Plaza de Cesar Chavez fountain in downtown San Jose, Calif. The start of a new work week amid sweltering temperatures pushed California's electricity supply to the brink on Monday, triggering some businesses to voluntarily cut their power usage. (AP Photo/John Stubler)

French nuclear reactor maker eyes UK

In the French town of Chalon-sur-Saone, the world's busiest nuclear factory is building the components for a new plant in Finland.

If the UK Energy Review gives the green light to nuclear power, the French company Areva will be very keen to build its new design - the European Pressurised Water Reactor, or EPR - in Britain.

World War Three
You may have missed it, but World War Three actually already took place:    

The Second Congo War was a conflict that took place largely in the territory of Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire). The war began in 1998 and officially ended in 2003 when a Transitional Government took power. The widest interstate war in modern African history, it directly involved nine African nations, as well as about twenty armed groups, and earned the epithets of "Africa's World War" and the "Great War of Africa." An estimated 3.8 million people died, mostly from starvation and disease brought about by the deadliest conflict since World War II. Millions more were displaced from their homes or sought asylum in neighboring countries.

   Despite a formal end to the war in July 2003 and an agreement by the former belligerents to create a government of national unity, the state remains weak and much of the eastern region continues to suffer from violent conflict. In 2004, an estimated one thousand people died every day from violence and disruptions to basic social services and food supply. Sporadic outbreaks of fighting continue to lead to large scale forced migration.

[MyDD]

Embarkation controls 'to return'
Home Secretary John Reid is to reveal plans for the return of embarkation controls at UK airports.

The plans, to be unveiled by the home secretary, will make it easier to tell whether illegal migrants and failed asylum seekers have been deported.
 [BBC News]

On an animal-breeding farm in Siberia are cages housing two colonies of rats. In one colony, the rats have been bred for tameness in the hope of mimicking the mysterious process by which Neolithic farmers first domesticated an animal still kept today. When a visitor enters the room where the tame rats are kept, they poke their snouts through the bars to be petted.

The other colony of rats has been bred from exactly the same stock, but for aggressiveness instead. These animals are ferocious. When a visitor appears, the rats hurl themselves screaming toward their bars.

...

The two strains of rat are part of a remarkable experiment started in the former Soviet Union in 1959 by Dmitri K. Belyaev. Belyaev and his brother were geneticists who believed in Mendelian theory despite the domination of Soviet science by Trofim Lysenko, who rejected Mendelian genetics.

...

Richard Wrangham, a primatologist at Harvard, has proposed that people are a domesticated form of ape, the domestication having been self-administered as human societies penalized or ostracized individuals who were too aggressive.

The latest politician bringing it up is a right-winger: Bavaria state's hawkish interior minister Günther Beckstein. However, he wants to spend the income on road construction...

*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.

This despite eye witnesses describing a long and prety determined massacre. The killed were villagers fleeing a North Korean offensive who were ordered off the road by the military. They were first bombed by airplanes, fled under a bridge, were shot at if they tried to move away, and when night came, floodlights were directed at them, and the major massacre began. Those who could run away were hunted for three days. About 400 were killed and 20 survived.

Now I read in SPIEGEL that a new document proves the massacre at No Gun Ri on 26 July 1950 was ordered.

The document is a letter by Ambassador John J. Muccio, written on the day of the massacre. He writes about a "necessary" dicision of the 8th Army that civilians should be shot under certain conditions, as a probable problem with the home public. From the letter, we learn of an order the day before to stop refugees going South by any means necessary, if nothing helps then by killing them.

Note that this event is only the best documented (and maybe the largest) of dozens to hundreds of similar massacres following the same order.

*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.

Less than a week ago, Norbert Röttgen, a member of the German parliament (the Bundestag) who is said to be a close confidant of chancellor Merkel, had to resign his post in the German Indistrialist Assicoation (the BDI) -- he was even to become its secretary... But then the scandal shifted to another CDU representative, Reinhard Göhner, who is the secretary of the German Employers' Association.

This is getting ugly. While even Hans-Olaf Henkel, the weasely former long-time BDI boss demands Göhner's resignation (maybe thinking that old boys networks work better in the shadow), the CDU faction chief so far defends him with a non-sequitur argument ("Every politician should be able to decide himself whether he can master two posts at the same time") -- and Göhner himself also refuses to step down, claiming he can separate the different interests of his two posts...

*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.

Hamed Abderrahman Ahmed, an Arabian Spaniard born in Ceuta, who was detained in Pakistan, endured two years in Guantanamo, was then delivered to the tender mercies of Aznar's Spain, but was sentenced to six years in Zapatero's Spain (in October 2005), was now freed by the Spanish High Court on insufficient evidence.

Swiss paper NZZ reports that the High Court said that the lower-instance court ingored the principle of innocence until being proven otherwise, and that the 'proofs' used came from Guantanamo and as such aren't valid before court.

BTW, he doesn't look like an Islamist fanatic to me:

2004:

2005:

Another Spain-related news comes from German news channel n-TV: the Mediterranean countries asked the EU and EU partners for more help to confront the refugee stream, as Spanish "seas turn into mass graves", with hundreds of unsuccessful refugees drowning, their corpses washing up on the shores.

*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.

Radon gas at Kerry house 'worse than Sellafield'
A house in Co Kerry has been exposing its residents to the equivalent of 10,000 chest x-rays a year - a level that would not be tolerated by workers at the Sellafield nuclear plant, a national monitoring body has said. [ireland.com Breaking News]

European Parliament calls for censorship code of conduct
<h4>Names Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft</h4>

The European Parliament has called on the European Commission to establish a code of conduct governing the online censorship of dissidents. It wants companies such as Google and Telecom Italia to pledge not to help governments censor their citizens.…

[The Register]

Israel withdraws unilaterally? Diplomatic settlement? Israel snared in counter-insurgency? Lebanese government falls? Israel invades Lebanon? We analyse the options.

Someone should diary this, would make for a good conversation starter (not that we haven't discussed most of the options already, but The Independent's front page story is a good way to focus our attention).

Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman