German Chancellor Angela Merkel has urged EU leaders to be ready to compromise on a new constitutional treaty before a crucial summit.
Mrs Merkel met Polish President Lech Kaczynski in Germany for crucial talks on the simplified treaty.

Germany, the current holder of the EU presidency, wants states to agree to a road map for a new constitution at next week's summit in Brussels.

(...)She urged leaders from the EU's 27 member states to act quickly to resolve the constitutional crisis.

"We need a new contractual basis for this, but we also must not devote our attention to ourselves for too long," she said.

France is to hold a second and final round of elections later on Sunday to choose a new National Assembly.
The vote comes a month after Nicolas Sarkozy's presidential election victory over the Socialist Segolene Royal.

Mr Sarkozy's centre-right UMP party is hoping to win a crushing majority, predicted to be well over 400 seats or more than two-thirds of the total.

The Socialists are hoping to reclaim some lost ground after disappointment in round one, which saw a low turnout.

The polls open at 0800 (0600GMT) and close at 2000, with some 44 million voters deciding between 933 candidates in the 467 constituencies where deputies were not returned in the first round.

The day of reckoning has come for a debt-soaked society that has seen outstanding household loans double to £1.3 trillion in just seven years.

In a deliberate new policy of blunt-speaking, the governor eschewed the normally equivocal language of central bankers to warn that if we don't change our free-spending ways, he will - by pushing up interest rates until the growing threat of inflation is eliminated.

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"It wasn't what he said; it was who was saying it," says Ray Boulger, a mortgage broker. City economists expect the response to come by August, increasing interest rates from 5.5 to 5.75 per cent. But the real fear is that this will not be enough and that 6 per cent interest rates will be with us by the autumn.

This could make for a rocky Christmas, not just for homeowners but also shops and manufacturers reliant on easy credit to fuel consumer spending. Property experts fear the housing market may not be able to cope

"A quarter point rise is as much as the market can take. Anything more will precipitate a serious crash," says Robert Bryant-Pearson, of Allied Surveyors, the largest independent property valuer. "Everyone seems to forget what happened between 1990 and 1993: the repossessions, the negative equity. The problem now is that people's borrowing in relation to their income is extremely high."

Chirac's prosecution immunity expires

Jacques Chirac, France's former president, will be spending an uncomfortable weekend in the knowledge that his immunity from criminal prosecution expires at midnight on Friday.

Investigating magistrates have already indicated they would like to question the 74-year-old Mr Chirac amid media reports that they could summon him as early as Monday.

Under article 67 of the French constitution, the president becomes answerable for any illegal acts committed before entering office one month after his term expires.

Mr Chirac's supporters have denied that the former president has received any formal notification that the magistrates want to question him.

Le Canard Enchainé made it clear that some of the magistrates are keen to move quickly before Sarkozy can do the "amnesty lite" he's planning to (the plan is to shorten the statute of limitations, which would not impact Chirac's case, but would make everyone else in some of the most sensitive files home free, thus making it hard to prosecute Chirac alone without the underlings that did the illegal deeds for him).

Watch this space Monday.

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

http://www.april.org/actions/paris-capitale-du-libre/2007/discours-remise-lutece-d-or-assemblee-nati onale.html

Speech by Frederic Couchet (APRIL NGO délégué général) :

« L'an dernier deux services de l'État ont été récompensé pour leur choix des logiciels libres :

    * la Gendarmerie nationale, qui a généralisé l'utilisation de la suite bureautique OpenOffice et du navigateur Firefox dans l'ensemble de ses services, et a remporté à ce titre le Lutèce d'or de la meilleure stratégie logicielle.
    * la Direction Générale des Impôts, qui s'est vu remettre le Grand prix du jury pour son système de télédéclaration de l'impôt sur le revenu.

Cette année, une nouvelle catégorie a été créée pour récompenser la personnalité de l'année. Il s'agira d'une personnalité morale, puisque nous avons décidé de mettre à nouveau l'État à l'honneur et remettant un Lutèce d'Or à l'Assemblée nationale, dont le Président et les Questeurs ont décidé d'équiper le matériel informatique de la prochaine législature en logiciels libres.

Cette décision est tout d'abord historique, car c'est la première fois qu'une institution fait la bascule complète en faisant le choix d'utiliser des applications mais aussi un système d'exploitation libre. Les députés élus dimanche prochain et leurs collaborateurs à l'Assemblée utiliseront un système GNU/Linux, la suite OpenOffice et le navigateur Firefox, entre autres, pour leur travail quotidien. Espérons que, conformément aux engagements pris par l'ancien ministre de la Culture lors des débats sur la loi DADVSI (Droit d'auteur et droits voisins dans la société de l'information), les députés pourront utiliser un logiciel libre de lecture de contenus multimédia comme VLC (VideoLAN), primé il y a quelques minutes avec le « Lutèce d'Or du meilleur projet de développement libre réalisé ».

C'est ensuite un choix ambitieux, qui montre que malgré les déconvenues juridiques récentes, le Logiciel Libre a fait du chemin dans l'esprit de nos dirigeants. Il n'est plus considéré comme un concept obscur destiné à une poignée de geeks.

C'est un choix ambitieux car

    * d'un point de vue économique, le Président Debré et les Questeurs ont préféré l'investissement dans l'économie nationale à l'évasion fiscale pratiquée par Microsoft, ce qui est encore bien trop rare.
    * techniquement, c'est le choix de l'interopérabilité (l'Assemblée nationale devance ici la mise en oeuvre du RGI que nous attendons avec impatience). C'est aussi le choix de la stabilité et de la sécurité du système.
    * mais c'est plus particulièrement un choix politique, qui privilégie la maîtrise des technologies et le contrôle des données sensibles en interne plutôt que la sous-traitance de ces domaines stratégiques à des entreprises extra-européennes.

Enfin - et surtout - c'est un symbole très fort : l'Assemblée nationale, la Maison du Peuple souverain, ouvre la voie à l'émancipation du Parlement, et offre une reconnaissance au Logiciel Libre en général et aux compétences françaises en particulier. Nous comptons tous sur Alexandre Zapolsky et Linagora pour mener à bien ce projet avec les services de l'Assemblée nationale, et encourageons vivement d'autres institutions ou administrations, en France et en Europe, à suivre l'exemple de nos députés, tant pour la bonne gestion des deniers publics que pour la souveraineté des États sur leurs systèmes d'information.

Merci à Monsieur Jean-Louis Debré, ancien Président de l'Assemblée nationale, et à Messieurs Drut, Gaillard et Migaud, Questeurs, de montrer que le logiciel libre dans les institutions c'est possible, et surtout que c'est un choix d'avenir.

Cette migration est l'aboutissement d'une démarche « transpartisane », merci aussi à tous les députés qui ont contribué à cette décision, et tout particulièrement à Bernard Carayon et Richard Cazenave qui ont proposé à l'origine ce choix au Président et aux Questeurs. À Christian Paul, Patrick Bloche et Frédéric Dutoit qui ont participé à l'étude préalable. À Martine Billard qui a participé à sensibiliser ses collègues lors des débats sur la loi DADVSI.

Je suis donc très heureux de remettre à l'Assemblée nationale, représentée par Monsieur Eric Heitz, conseiller du président de l'assemblée nationale, ce Lutèce d'Or. »

Note that the video software VLC mentionned here is developped mainly by Ecole Centrale Paris students and they were forced to remove from VLC source code implementing one audio codec after the school received a patent threat letter.

WASHINGTON -- A pair of U.S. senators investigating reports of waste, fraud and mismanagement in defense contracts in Iraq reported from Baghdad Saturday that they see some improvement but the military has a long way to go.

Sens. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Tom Carper, D-Del., were in Iraq meeting with Pentagon officials to discuss reports of waste, fraud and mismanagement in defense contracts.

Uncountable billions of dollars have been squandered, McCaskill said, but there has been improvement in centralizing contracting oversight and increasing the number of fixed-price contracts containing incentives not to pad costs.

That's a departure from the early days of the war when reconstruction money and other aid to Iraq was shoveled into the country with little oversight.

She said criminal charges may be filed in some cases and that the government might get at least a little of its money back.

BAGHDAD - Security forces in Baghdad have full control in only 40 percent of the city five months into the pacification campaign, a top American general said Saturday as U.S. troops began an offensive against two al-Qaida strongholds on the capital's southern outskirts.

The military, meanwhile, reported that paratroopers had found the ID cards of two missing U.S. soldiers at an al-Qaida safe house 75 miles north of where they were captured last month, but there was no sign of the men. The house contained computers, video equipment and weapons.

Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno said American troops launched the offensive in Baghdad's Arab Jabour and Salman Pac neighborhoods Friday night. It was the first time in three years that U.S. soldiers entered those areas, where al-Qaida militants build car bombs and launch Katyusha rockets at American bases and Shiite Muslim neighborhoods.

Q&A With the Yes Men's Andy Bichlbaum
By Brandon Keim EmailJune 15, 2007 | 3:52:49 PMCategories: Climate, Energy, Politics  

Bichlbaum_2 The Yes Men, a corporate ethics activist group, have become famous for impersonating company officials and delivering satirical pronouncements about industry practices and policies. Their latest target was the Gas and Oil Exposition 2007 in Calgary, Alberta, where Yes Men members Brian Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum impersonated industry officials and announced a plan to turn human flesh into fuel. Wired Science talked with Bichlbaum today.
[...]

Other links:

http://www.cbc.ca/cp/business/070615/b0615116A.html:
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3244,36-924173@51-924176,0.html

COLORADO CITY, Arizona (Reuters) - In a dusty neighborhood under sheer sandstone cliffs studded with juniper on the Arizona-Utah border, a rare genetic disorder is spreading through polygamous families on a wave of inbreeding.

The twin border communities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona, have the world's highest known prevalence of fumarase deficiency, an enzyme irregularity that causes severe mental retardation brought on by cousin marriage, doctors say.

"Arizona has about half the world's population of known fumarase deficiency patients," said Dr. Theodore Tarby, a pediatric neurologist who has treated many of the children at Arizona clinics under contracts with the state.

"It exists in a certain percentage of the broader population but once you get a tendency to inbreed you're inbreeding people who have the gene there, so you markedly increase the risk of developing the condition," he said.

The community of about 10,000 people, who shun outsiders and are taught to avoid newspapers, television and the Internet, is home to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), a sect that broke from the mainstream Mormon church 72 years ago over polygamy.

Gerardo Gonzales' heart started to race just before noon Saturday.

He stood by his roommate on North 36th Street in Fremont with his bicycle and the support of friends who coated him with the body paint that would be his only covering.

He isn't a typical "naked guy," but something intrigued the 26-year-old Seattle man about the naked cyclists -- traditionally, one of the most popular groups in the Fremont Solstice Parade.

"There were about four or five guys and a few girls standing around in our group. One guy said, 'OK,' and we all 'dropped trou,'" Gonzales said. "It was pretty scary at first, but you make friends really quickly when you're out there naked."

Dozens like Gonzales led the 19th annual parade, part of the Solstice Saturday celebration organized by groups including the Fremont Arts Council. Thousands of people who packed North 36th Street cheered the riders, who were painted up as bumblebees, cowboys, flags -- even one as Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6750005.stm

Huge bird dino unearthed in China

The fossilised remains of a giant bird-like dinosaur have been uncovered in the region of Inner Mongolia, China.

While some have theorised that meat-eating dinosaurs got smaller as they evolved to be more bird-like, this beast weighed about 1,400kg (3,080lbs).

That is about 35 times heavier than other similar feathered dinosaurs.

Nature journal reports that the beaked animal was 8m (26ft) long and twice as tall as a man at the shoulder; yet it was only a young adult when it died.
[...]

BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- A 50-ton bowhead whale caught off the Alaskan coast last month had a weapon fragment embedded in its neck that showed it survived a similar hunt -- more than a century ago.

Embedded deep under its blubber was a 3½-inch arrow-shaped projectile that has given researchers insight into the whale's age, estimated between 115 and 130 years old.

"No other finding has been this precise," said John Bockstoce, an adjunct curator of the New Bedford Whaling Museum.

Calculating a whale's age can be difficult, and is usually gauged by amino acids in the eye lenses. It's rare to find one that has lived more than a century, but experts say the oldest were close to 200 years old.
[...]

It has been added to wikipedia on June 14th:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale

EW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - This brief documentary from Dutch filmmakers Hans Pool and Maaik Krijgsman is like a mini-academic course in photojournalism. Detailing the back stories behind four iconic photographs, all of them World Press Photo contest winners, "Looking for an Icon" will be of great interest to history as well as media buffs. The film recently received its U.S. theatrical premiere at New York's Film Forum.

The four famed photos under discussion probably are familiar to most viewers. They include the shooting of a Viet Cong guerrilla by a South Vietnamese police chief (1968); the final photo of a slightly ridiculous-looking Salvador Allende, taken during the 1973 coup; the unknown Chinese protester single-handedly facing down a tank in Tiananmen Square (1989); and a moving portrait of a soldier grieving for his dead friend during the first Gulf War (1991).

Among those discussing the epochal pics are some of the photographers who shot them, as well as photojournalists, editors, professors and others who provide historical and cultural context.

BELLAIRE, Michigan (Reuters) - Michael Moore thinks he has made an even-handed movie about health care that should appeal to the civic-mindedness and decency of all Americans.

And now he's bracing for the hate mail.

The gadfly director, who spoke to reporters at an unusual northern Michigan premiere for his documentary "SiCKO," said he expected the U.S. pharmaceutical and insurance industries to go on the offensive against his call for a sweeping overhaul that would give the United States a national health care system.

"I am anticipating the onslaught of attack," Moore said.

But he added: "My hope in this film was to reach out across the great divide that exists in this country and say you know, those on the other side, who may disagree with me, can't we find some common ground on this issue? We're all Americans."