EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - MEPs have strongly criticised both Washington and the go-it-alone attitude of several member states for opening bilateral talks on tightened travel security measures in return for visa-free travel.

"We express our regret at Washington's choice to enter into bilateral agreements with the recent members of the EU," Italian MEP Claudio Fava, speaking on behalf of the socialists in the European Parliament, said on Wednesday (23 April), describing the move as "completely unacceptable".

"The US must respect the union's political unity (...) We should also remind this to member states," Mr Fava added.

A similar message was echoed by conservatives, the parliament's biggest group, with Polish MEP Urszula Gacek saying that Washington "cannot exert pressure on individual nations to break EU guidelines, especially in the sensitive areas such as revealing passenger information in greater detail than the EU allows".

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - As the wave of strikes, protests and riots by millions of the world's poorest citizens in reaction to soaring food prices spreads around the globe, the European Commission is to offer a further €117.25 million in emergency food aid in response to the impact of the increase in food prices on the world's most vulnerable people.

Making the announcement in the European Parliament, the commission's development chief, Louis Michel, said: "The rise in basic food prices is a worldwide humanitarian disaster in the making. Ongoing humanitarian food programmes are under enormous pressure with less food available for people already on the brink of starvation."

"Millions more, who were just about coping before, now risk going hungry," he added. "Addressing food price issue is a global challenge requiring long-term solutions but the emergency is now. We have an obligation to act - and act quickly."

"All analysts say that the era of cheap food is over. We won't see food prices going back down to former levels," he said, pointing out that the aid package was only a partial solution, but not enough to deal with what he called a "structural problem."

STARY OSKOL, Russia: It was not long after a Methodist church put down roots here that the troubles began.

First came visits from agents of the FSB, the successor to the KGB, who evidently saw a threat in a few dozen searching souls who liked to huddle in cramped apartments to read the Bible and, perhaps, drink a little tea. Local officials then labeled the church a "sect." Finally, last month, they shut it down.

"Naturally, it will be perceived as propaganda directed at our population," Kotenyov said. " 'What kind of propaganda are you preaching?' " they would ask. 'An American faith?' "

"This is how they think: If you are a Russian person, it means that you have to be Russian Orthodox."

NATO's proposed expansion into the Balkans and eastwards into Ukraine and Georgia is causing tensions between the alliance and Russia and within NATO itself. What exactly is planned and is everything as it seems?

When the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was created in 1949, the alliance was based on a system of "collective defense" which meant its member states agreed to mutually defend each other in response to an attack by any external party.

 

For most of the last half of the 20th century, the most likely external party was the Soviet Union. Not long after the signing of the treaty which brought NATO into being, the Cold War intensified and pitched NATO members into a standoff with the Warsaw Pact signatories which lasted over 40 years. Until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, NATO's primary goal was to contain the threat that was thought to originate from behind its eastern borders.

 

Since the removal of the Soviet threat, NATO's goal in Europe has changed from defending its eastern borders to pushing those boundaries as far east as possible. In 2004, the alliance executed the biggest expansion in its history, to include seven new members: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia -- all formerly part of the Soviet Union or the Warsaw Pact.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - MEPs on Wednesday (23 April) called on both Macedonia and Greece to solve a 17-year-old row over the Balkan country's name suggesting that the dispute should no longer be a hindrance to Skopje's attempts to join international organisations, such as the EU.

In a report on the country's progress towards the EU in 2007, the deputies called "on both sides to seize the opportunity to immediately resume negotiations in light of the important progress made recently [on the name issue] and in the knowledge that, with the compromise solution within reach, the issue does not continue to represent an obstacle to the Former Republic of Macedonia's membership of international organisations."

Athens has been refusing to recognise its neighbour's constitutional name - Republic of Macedonia - since the country declared independence in 1991, considering that it implies territorial claims on a northern Greek province also called Macedonia.

Following the ongoing stalemate, Greece earlier this month blocked a NATO invitation to Skopje. It has also indicated that it wants the "name issue" to be resolved before Macedonia is allowed closer to the EU.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has decided that Italy's new commissioner should take over the transport portfolio rather than keep the justice and home affairs job.

The announcement on late Tuesday (22 April) followed signals from Rome that the current justice chief Franco Frattini is to become his country's new foreign minister in the centre-right cabinet of Silvio Berlusconi.

French commissioner Jacques Barrot, previously in charge of transport, is now to take on the high profile justice and security post.

Mr Barroso said in a statement that Mr Barrot had substituted for his Italian colleague during Mr Frattini's temporary leave around the election "in an outstanding way".

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European ombudsman is one step closer to gaining full access to information and documents held by EU institutions after MEPs adopted on Tuesday (22 April) a report boosting his powers.

"The community institutions and bodies shall be obliged to supply the ombudsman with any information he has requested of them and give him access to the files concerned," reads the European Parliament's report, supported by an overwhelming majority of the lawmakers.

It continues by describing the move as crucial to "eliminate any possible uncertainty concerning the capacity of the ombudsman to conduct thorough and impartial inquiries in alleged cases of maladministration".

Some 620 MEPs voted in favour of the suggestions, while 18 were against and 18 abstained.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has assured Georgia that the US is firmly committed to supporting the country's sovereignty.

Georgia says Russian moves to forge closer ties with two of its breakaway regions threaten its sovereignty.

The row between the two neighbours will be discussed at a closed-door session of the UN Security Council.

After meeting Georgia's foreign minister, Ms Rice said the US was "very concerned" by Russia's actions.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision last week to order closer links between Russia and Georgia's two breakaway regions - Abkhazia and South Ossetia - prompted outrage in Tbilisi.

Llewellyn Werner, a California investor, admits he is facing obstacles most amusement park developers never have to deal with. Such as insurgent attacks and looting.

But when the amusement park you're building lies in downtown Baghdad, those risks come with the territory.

Mr Werner, chairman of C3, a Los Angeles-based holding company for private equity firms, is pouring millions of dollars into developing The Baghdad Zoo and Entertainment Experience, a massive American-style amusement park that will feature a skateboard park, rides, a concert theatre and a museum. It is being designed by the same firm that developed Disneyland.

"The people of Iraq need this kind of positive influence. It's going to have a huge psychological impact," Mr Werner said.

You need only to read, in a previous finding, that Japan's transport system is 30 per cent less efficient than that of the US to smell a rat. Common sense tells you that passenger transport is vastly superior in Japan, where tens of millions of people are moved daily at reasonable cost. The Shinkansen bullet train, for example, with 300 daily services between Tokyo and Osaka, makes the 552km journey in 2½ hours with an average delay measured in seconds.

Japan's health service is also regularly portrayed as inefficient. Patients languish in hospital beds far longer than they would in the US. Yet, according to government statistics, Japan spends 7.9 per cent of gross domestic product on healthcare against 15.2 per cent in the US. Life expectancy in Japan, admittedly a crude measure of healthcare quality, is 79 for men and 86 for women, respectively four and six years higher than in the US. <...>

The basic measure of retail-sector productivity is how much of a product an employee can shift in an hour. On this measure, Germany does well. That turns out to be because of restricted opening hours, which oblige customers to make hefty purchases in one go. Japan does badly. Cavernous US superstores do better than cramped noodle or tofu shops. Japan also has a dense network of convenience stores on almost every city block, open 24 hours , allowing people to shop whenever they want. This makes them inefficient, since purchases are less concentrated.

No allowance is made, either, for the fact that Japanese shops tend to be within walking or, at most, cycling distance. Figures do not capture the inconvenience of having to travel, or the externalities associated with long shopping expeditions: traffic accidents, pollution, road maintenance.

In short, Japanese service may be "inefficient", but it more than makes up for this "efficiency deficit" in quality.  Anyone who has visited Japan knows this.  Studies urging increased efficiency at the expense of quality, convenience, consistency, etc. are according to idiotic "productivity" measures are ridiculous.

A language is a dialect with an army and navy.

The United Nations says that it is being forced to suspend its humanitarian work in Gaza because of the Israeli fuel blockade.

A UN official says food aid to 650,000 refugees and the collection of sewage will have to stop on Thursday if Israel does not allow in more vehicle fuel.

The UN Security Council met to discuss the crisis, but Western representatives walked out over comments from Libya.

They objected to the Libyan delegate likening Gaza to a Nazi death camp.

Among the diplomats to the leave the UN chamber in New York were representatives of the United States, Britain, France and Belgium.

Trying to figure out who won the Iraq war is a challenging parlour game.

Nearly every faction, group and nation has lost. The only evident victors are Iran, the Kurds and a handful of giant American corporations.

Many voters in the US were horrified when senator John McCain suggested that the occupation of Iraq might last for another century. Latin Americans, however, could be forgiven for liking the idea. The last five years have shown them that the more fully the US sinks into its Middle East quagmire, the more freedom they will have to chart their own futures.

Dean Kamen, creator of the Segway and robotic arms, has invented an eco-friendly water regenerator that can take nearly any source of moisture -- including ocean water, urine or sewage--and quickly turn it into safe drinking water. The device, called the Slingshot, can help save the environment in a cost-effective way, Kamen claims. <...>

Kamen's generator is based on one of the most efficient Stirling engines that produces enough electricity to power 70 light bulbs or one high-end gaming PC. <...>

Iqbal Quadir, the founder of Grameen Phone, the largest cell phone company in Bangladesh, is collaborating with Kamen to provide this regenerator in his country in a field trial.

Apparently the Slingshot has been around since 2006, but I had never heard of it.

A language is a dialect with an army and navy.

Vast amounts of money are flooding the world's commodities markets, driving up prices of staple foods like wheat and rice. Biofuels and droughts can't fully explain the recent food crisis -- hedge funds and small investors bear some responsibility for global hunger.

The Philippines will take delivery of 500,000 tons of rice in May to address its shortage. But the price has been bid up by speculators. Not long ago, Dwight Anderson welcomed reporters with open arms. He liked to entertain them with stories from the world of big money. Anderson is a New York hedge fund manager, and as recently as last October he would talk with enthusiasm about his visits to Malaysian palm-oil plantations and Brazilian grain farms. "You could clearly see how supply was getting tight," he said.

In mid-2006 Anderson was touting the "extraordinary profitability" of field crops from corn to soybeans. He was convinced that rising worldwide hunger would be synonymous with highly profitable -- and dead-certain -- investment bargains.
In search of new investments, Anderson sends dozens of his employees to visit agricultural regions around the world. Back in New York, at his company's headquarters on the 27th floor of an office building high above Park Avenue, they bet on agricultural markets from Peru to Vietnam.

What could be more environmentally friendly than hanging out your laundry in the fresh air? Yet a growing global movement that advocates doing just that has met outrage in America from those who want to keep their neighbourhoods knicker-free.
I have been meaning to have a word with my next-door neighbour in the upstate town where I have a small weekend home. A perfectly amiable retired gentleman - he used to work in the local match factory until it closed - he will insist on hanging his laundry in the garden. From our deck, we can almost read the labels on his yellowing boxers. And let me tell you, he does not shop at Calvin Klein.
Bud's line is one of those double fraying cords stretching the length of his sloping garden with pulleys at each end which squeak whenever he attaches a new load. Hasn't he heard of tumble-dryers? I mean who hasn't in this day and age? At Christmas, I was almost tempted to buy him one.
Is it possible, though, that it's me who needs bringing up to date, not Bud? It's taken me a while to notice, but a movement is stirring all across North America to reinstate the venerable clothesline and ditch the dryer. The clothes-peg is making a comeback (not plastic, please, but those sturdy wooden ones with springs your mother used to collect). The reason, of course, is concern about global warming.

DALLAS--In what the company is calling a "bold new leap" in comfort, convenience and overall quality of travel, Southwest Airlines announced Monday that it would be replacing its entire fleet of passenger jets and planes with daily shuttle buses.

The shuttle buses, which will depart from airport runways to over 200 destinations nationwide, represent a major breakthrough in commercial aviation.

"The future is now," announced Southwest CEO Gary Kelly, gesturing to a 30-foot bus painted in the company's signature red, yellow, and blue.

!!

"It is time for a new Humanism, or we perish" -Albert Hoffman

One morning a few years ago, forensic accountant Al Vondra was driving to work on Cleveland's Interstate 77 as he always did. But this day was different. As he was driving, all four tires on his Buick LeSabre suddenly exploded. The gas tank hit the ground at 65 miles per hour, and the car came to a grinding halt. Fortunately, nothing exploded, and Vondra was able to get to the side of the road and wait for the police.
    
At the time, Vondra was working with the U.S. Department of Justice to liquidate a $20 million portfolio owned by a group of businessmen engaged in a highly risky and, as it turns out, illegal investment scheme that had targeted retirement funds and several Amish people. The timing of the incident was so suspicious that the Justice Department attorneys on the case asked the F.B.I. to investigate.

unsung heroes?

"It is time for a new Humanism, or we perish" -Albert Hoffman

LONDON: Former British prime minister Tony Blair was left red-faced when he was caught travelling on a train without a ticket and said he had no cash to pay the fare.

Mr Blair, who has earned about pound stg. 500,000 on the speaking circuit since leaving office in June, was confronted by a ticket inspector as he travelled to Heathrow to catch a flight to the US on Monday, the Daily Mail reported last night.

He said he had no cash for the pound stg. 24.50 ($51.27) fare because money an aide had given him was no longer in his pocket.

A year after his victory in the first round of French presidential elections, Nicolas Sarkozy will attempt tonight to refloat an administration which threatens to sink into a morass of internal bickering and popular discontent.

President Sarkozy will use a prime-time television interview to try to recapture the lost image of a reforming man of action, close to the people, which took him to the ElyséePalace in the two-round election last April and May.

After a slight recovery in his poll ratings, M. Sarkozy has floundered in three surveys this week. His approval ratings, varying between 28 and 35 per cent, are the lowest for any year-old presidency since the launch of the Fifth Republic half a century ago.

In other words, M. Sarkozy, who had sold himself to voters as "anti-Chirac" - a man of action and a man of his word - is even less popular than President Jacques Chirac after a first, calamitous, shilly-shallying year in office in 1995-96.