EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The EU and US signed a new deal on a trans-Atlantic economic partnership at their summit in Washington on Monday (30 April) but remained unable to agree steps for tackling climate change, despite an increase in positive rhetoric on the issue.

The economic deal is aimed at increasing trade and investment by harmonising business standards between the two blocs - with trade in goods and services across the Atlantic accounting for more than $2 billion every day.

As part of the agreement, a transatlantic economic council is to be set up - to be chaired by EU industry commissioner Guenter Verheugen and US National Economic Council director Al Hubbard - to overcome regulatory barriers in 40 areas, including intellectual property and financial services.

"It is recognition that the closer that the United States and the EU become, the better off our people become," US president George W. Bush said, referring to the deal. German chancellor Angela Merkel, currently chairing the EU, called it a "significant step forward."

Turkey's top court yesterday intervened in the country's biggest political crisis for years, striking down the result of a vote among MPs for the key post of president.

The decision increases the likelihood of fresh parliamentary elections and may help to avoid a confrontation between Turkey's Islamist government and the military, which sees itself as the guardian of the secular Turkish state.

Amid mounting tension that saw hundreds of May Day protesters detained by police, the Constitutional Court in Ankara ruled in favour yesterday of an opposition request to block the election by MPs of the Foreign Minister, Abdullah Gul, who represents the ruling Islamist AK Party.

In a bid to resolve the stand-off, the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said that general elections could be held as early as 24 June. Mr Erdogan said: "The earliest possible date for elections is June 24 or July 1." He also called for a constitutional amendment to allow popular vote to elect the president. Parliament currently elects the president.

The court decided that not enough MPs were present when the first round was held last week. "What we have cancelled is the first round of voting," Hasim Kilic, deputy head of the court, said.

The European Union has promised to help end a virtual siege of the Estonian embassy in Moscow sparked by the removal of a Soviet-era war memorial in Tallinn, Estonia's Foreign Minister Urmas Paet said Tuesday.

Foreign Minister Paet said he had spoken to his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier who "promised speedy assistance from the European Union to normalize the situation around the Estonian embassy in Moscow."

Germany currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU.

Estonia's President Toomas Hendrik Ilves has described the Moscow embassy protest as "psycho-terror."

"Nearly two dozen citizens of Estonia are in the embassy building, as if taken hostage. Other citizens of Estonia are blocked from entering the embassy," he said.

About 100 youths from pro-Kremlin organisations Young Guard and Ours have ringed the Estonian embassy since Friday, chanting anti-Estonian government slogans and pointing the barrel of a green inflatable tank at it.

The European Union law book can be so complicated that the EU wants to spend millions of euros explaining it. This is too much for some Germans, who have crossed swords with Brussels over its ever-expanding bureaucracy.

Germany has earned itself a reputation for having a particularly rigid bureaucracy. A recent survey commissioned by the German Embassy in Washington, DC, found that although Americans share a largely positive view of Germans, widespread stereotypes persist of the Germans as a "meticulous" and "rule-abiding" people.

 

But in the case of the European Union, the rules are sometimes too complicated to comprehend, let alone abide by.

 

The EU Commissioner for Regional Policy, Poland's Danuta Hübner, appears to have recognized this. But like the EU rulebook, her solution is sure to baffle even the most enlightened observer. Hübner wants to introduce a new multi-million-euro program, with the sole purpose of elucidating three other multi-million-euro programs.

Differences between presidential candidates Nicolas Sarkozy and Segolene Royal are strategic rather than substantive in foreign affairs. Neither is beholden to the anti-American Gaullist or Socialist legacies.

In the last decades, the French have made a political sport of bashing various American presidents. Peanut farmer Jimmy Carter was called incompetent and Ronald Reagan was considered a second-rate Hollywood actor.

 

But after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, George W. Bush, became the most despised US president ever, the embodiment of everything the French hate about America--its religious fundamentalism, permissive gun laws, and above all, its unilateralism in the conduct of foreign policy.

Although Germany also took a hard line view in its opposition to the war in Iraq, former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was simply dismissed in Washington as an opportunist playing to an electorate whose experience with war in the 20th century had made them viscerally opposed to war in principle.

But the Americans retaliated against the French only. They dumped imported Chardonnay in the Great Lakes, boycotted Camembert cheese and french fries were renamed "freedom fries" on congressional menus in cafeterias on Capitol Hill. Ditto with french toast.

A catalogue of errors over planning for Iraq after the invasion, and an inability to influence key figures in the US administration, led to anarchy in Iraq from which the country has not recovered, the British defence secretary during the invasion admits today.

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Geoff Hoon reveals that Britain disagreed with the US administration over two key decisions in May 2003, two months after the invasion - to disband Iraq's army and "de-Ba'athify" its civil service. Mr Hoon also said he and other senior ministers completely underestimated the role and influence of the vice-president, Dick Cheney.

Article continues "Sometimes ... Tony had made his point with the president, and I'd made my point with Don [Rumsfeld] and Jack [Straw] had made his point with Colin [Powell] and the decision actually came out of a completely different place. And you think: what did we miss? I think we missed Cheney."

Giving the most frank assessment of the postwar planning, Mr Hoon, admits that "we didn't plan for the right sort of aftermath".

"Maybe we were too optimistic about the idea of the streets being lined with cheering people. Although I have reconciled it in my own mind, we perhaps didn't do enough to see it through the Sunni perspective. Perhaps we should have done more to understand their position."

He said history would have to decide whether the coalition should have anticipated the Sunni-Shia violence. "Given what we know now, I suppose the answer is that we should, but we did not know that at the time."

Of the summary dismissal of Iraq's 350,000-strong army and police forces, Mr Hoon said the Americans were uncompomising: "We certainly argued against [the US]. I recall having discussions with Donald Rumsfeld, but I recognised that it was one of those judgment calls. I would have called it the other way. His argument was that the Iraqi army was so heavily politicised that we couldn't be sure that we would not retain within it large elements of Saddam's people."

The Netherlands has moved to open up its labour markets to workers from "new" EU member states. But the German government has agreed to extend restrictions against them until 2011, despite opposition from the current economy minister.

Experts from Germany's right-left ruling coalition last week backed plans to use the full EU temporary period for labour barriers and delay lifting them for the two final years until 2011, according to German weekly Der Spiegel.

Berlin as well as most other west European capitals opted to keep their labour markets closed for jobseekers from the eight countries in central and Eastern Europe that joined the EU in 2004.

Several countries extended the restrictions in 2006 for another three years and can decide whether to delay them again until 2011, with Austria likely to follow Germany in doing so.

The agreement between the Christian democrats and Socialists in the German government goes against the arguments of the economy minister Michael Glos, who favoured dropping the barriers earlier, according to Der Spiegel.

Malta's spring bird hunt is in full swing for what could be the last time before the country is taken to court accused of violating the EU Birds Directive.

A bee eater with fatal injuries, discovered by school children

The European Commission began infringement proceedings against the country last year, for allowing the hunting of two migratory birds - the quail and the turtle dove - as they travel to their breeding grounds.

Malta is the only country in the EU that allows bird hunting in spring.

And according to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, some hunters fire at any bird that flies past, not just the two species the government permits.

"They are blasting at everything. While waiting for quail and turtle dove they will use swallows and house martins for target practice," says the RSPB's Grahame Madge.

"They will literally shoot anything that casts a shadow over Malta, they will blast it out of the sky."

Poland and the Czech Republic are raising the ante in negotiations with the Americans, demanding missiles to deploy against Russia and security and legal guarantees in return for hosting elements of the US missile shield.

The missile defence programme is splitting Europe and igniting a new cold war-style clash with the Kremlin, and the demands from the central Europeans plunge the Pentagon project into greater uncertainty.

The negotiations, about extending the missile defence project from California and Alaska to Europe, are expected to be wound up before the end of the year. The Poles are insisting on US security guarantees and supplies of Patriot missiles to protect themselves against a perceived threat from Russia, while the Czechs are embroiled in discussions over how a US radar base south of Prague would be safeguarded and what's in it for the Czechs.

Article continues As Russia, in the words of a US official, delivers "bloodcurdling" threats in response to the Pentagon project in central Europe and unease spirals in Germany, there is also growing frustration in Warsaw and Prague with what is perceived as a high-handed approach by the US administration. "We want legal guarantees. I can't go into details but it is to do with how the base is protected and also about the base agreement," said a senior Czech official of the proposal for a radar base south-west of Prague. "Unfortunately the Americans could have done more to engage the Russians over the past year."

French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen called on his supporters Tuesday to abstain in this weekend's presidential vote pitting right-winger Nicolas Sarkozy against socialist Segolene Royal.

"Both of them are official representatives of parties and policies that for the past 30 years have brought France to the brink of a political, economic, social, cultural and moral abyss," Le Pen told
cheering supporters in Paris.

The National Front leader, who stunned France in 2002 when he made it to the run-off presidential ballot against current President Jacques Chirac, urged his voters to "save their votes" for parliamentary elections in June.

"I call on voters who have shown their confidence in me to cast their vote neither for Madame Royal nor for Mr. Sarkozy," Le Pen said in a speech in front of the ornate Paris opera house after his party's traditional May 1 parade.

LONDON, May 1 -- Omar Khyam, the ringleader of the thwarted London bomb plot who was sentenced to life imprisonment on Monday, showed the potential for disaffected young men to be lured as terrorists, a threat that British officials said they would have to contend with for a generation.

But the 25-year-old Mr. Khyam, a Briton of Pakistani descent, also personifies a larger [sic!] and more immediate concern: as a British citizen, he could have entered the United States without a visa, like many of an estimated 800,000 other Britons of Pakistani origin.

American officials, citing the number of terror plots in Britain involving Britons with ties to Pakistan, expressed concern over the visa loophole. In recent months, the homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, has opened talks with the government here on how to curb the access of British citizens of Pakistani origin to the United States.

Explains the 10 major milestones that London's Olympic Delivery Authority intends to achieve by August 2008 in order to provide the foundations for the delivery of the venues and infrastructure for the London 2012 Olympics. Looks at the five priority themes that will underpin delivery: health and safety, sustainability, design and accessibility, equality and diversity, and legacy.

The Attorney General has instructed a senior counsel to represent the interests of the unborn in the court case being taken by a 17-year-old girl who wishes to travel to the UK for an abortion.

James Connolly SC told the High Court this morning that he had been instructed by the Attorney General to represent the interests of the unborn.

This means the AG will have two teams of lawyers at the case; the other will represent the State.

[...]

The challenge by the girl, who is four months pregnant with a baby that cannot survive for more than three days after he or she is born, is due to begin tomorrow.

The baby is suffering from anencephaly, which means a major part of the brain and skull is missing.

Once it was born it'd be declared dead more-or-less immediately, but as long as it isn't born it can have a lawyer.

Venezuela's leader Hugo Chavez has underlined his intention to develop an alternative economic vision for Latin America by pulling his country from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund - organisations that have long had a controversial role in the region.

He is also to nationalise operational control of four oil field projects currently run by foreign companies.

Though Venezuela has paid off its loans to the two international lending organisations, Mr Chavez's announcement that he intends to quit the organisations is powerfully symbolic. It is likely to lead to other smaller nations to question their membership and demand a greater say in the organisations' policies.

"We will no longer have to go to Washington, nor to the IMF, nor to the World Bank, not to anyone," said Mr Chavez. "I want to formalise our exit from the World Bank and the IMF."

Despite Venezuela's close trading relationship with the US over oil - it is the fourth largest supplier of crude in the United States - Mr Chavez has long been critical of US interference in Latin America, be it political, military or economic. He has long derided the IMF and the World Bank for being controlled by US and Western interests and has said their policies of tight budget controls, privatisation and open markets have benefited foreign companies while leaving much of Latin America in grinding poverty.

One day after a report blasting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's handling of the 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, pressure is growing on the premiere to resign. One member of his cabinet has already headed for the door.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is short on job security these days. On Monday, following a devastating report calling into question Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's judgement for starting the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon last summer, the premier announced that he would convene a special meeting with his government ministers on Wednesday. Since then, his cabinet has begun shrinking.

Eitan Cabel, a Labor Party minister without portfolio, resigned from the government in protest over Israel's handling of the Lebanon War and called on his prime minister to do the same. He is the first member of government to quit in response to the report, presented on Monday by a government inquiry group called the Winograd Commission, and has raised speculation in Israel that the Labor Party may be preparing to leave Olmert's governing coalition in early May.

"The public has lost faith in Prime Minister Ehud Olmert," Cabel, said according to the Israeli daily Haaretz on Tuesday. "I cannot continue to serve as a minister in a government headed by Olmert."

Olmert himself has ruled out stepping down. "It would not be correct to resign," Olmert said in a short televised address on Monday evening. "I have no intention of resigning."

President Bush last night stepped up his conflict with the Democrats in Congress, vetoing their attempt to set a timetable for troop withdrawal from Iraq and saying: "Our troops and their families deserve better".

In a TV statement, Mr Bush accused the Democrats of imposing a "rigid and artificial" requirement on US troops to withdraw from Iraq. "It makes no sense to tell the enemy when you plan to start withdrawing," he said, adding that it would allow the insurgents to take over the country.

Article continues Mr Bush's veto was only his second since he entered the White House in 2001. Last year he vetoed a bill freeing up federal funding for stem cell research.

The president objected to the bill framed by the newly resurgent Democrats in Congress because it requires American forces to begin pulling out by the start of October with the goal of a withdrawal six months later.

Mr Bush said a legislative timetable would also put the military in Iraq in an impossible situation. "American commanders in the middle of a conflict zone would have to take orders from politicians 6,000 miles away in Washington DC."

Mr Bush let it be known that he had signed the veto with a pen given to him by Robert Derga, father of a marine, Dustin, who was killed in Iraq two years ago.

This is really hard to believe, given that we are allowing a major terrorist to vacation at his Miami villa:

"Sudan continued to take significant steps to cooperate in the War on Terror. Cuba, Iran, and Syria, however, have not renounced terrorism or made efforts to act against Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Iran and Syria routinely provided safe haven, substantial resources, and guidance to terrorist organizations. "

I am sorry, but since when have we seen Cuba commit acts of terrorism? We have seen far-right anti-Castro Cubans working for the CIA commit acts of terrorism against Cuba and we are holding of the most notorious of them, Luis Posada, at his mansion in Miami. See here. So it would seem that the US routinely "provided safe haven" for terrorists, but the US is not on the list. More from the article:

UN hopes to send peacekeepers to Somalia

01 May 2007 09:06

The Security Council on Monday asked the United Nations chief to begin contingency planning to send UN peacekeepers back to Somalia for the first time since 1995.

Battles between insurgents and Ethiopian-backed government troops in Somalia's capital over the past month have killed more than 1 000 people and driven nearly 400 000 from their homes, according to humanitarian groups.

The fighting, which the Red Cross has called the worst in Somalia in 15 years, began when Somali and Ethiopian troops launched a major military operation in Mogadishu in late March to crush the remnants of an Islamic insurgency. The city's streets have been calm in recent days, prompting some residents to return to their homes.

In its statement on Monday, the 15-member Security Council asked UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to issue a report by mid-June on the contingency planning for a possible UN peacekeeping mission.

http://blog.digg.com/?p=74

What's Happening with HD-DVD Stories?

Today was an insane day. And as the founder of Digg, I just wanted to post my thoughts...

In building and shaping the site I've always tried to stay as hands on as possible. We've always given site moderation (digging/burying) power to the community. Occasionally we step in to remove stories that violate our terms of use (eg. linking to pornography, illegal downloads, racial hate sites, etc.). So today was a difficult day for us. We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease and desist declaration. We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code.

But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you've made it clear. You'd rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won't delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

Digg on,

Kevin

Discussion on slashdot:

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/02/0235228