Euro-zone finance ministers criticized corporate bonuses and questioned Europe's agriculture policies in face of inflation and slowing growth.

Euro-zone finance ministers said it's inappropriate for top managers to rake in big bonuses at a time when ordinary Europeans are struggling to make ends meet

"It is no longer acceptable to have situations whereby certain top managers have excessive salaries and also benefit from golden parachutes, payments which have no relationship to their performance," said Luxembourg's Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, who chaired the ministerial meeting of the 15 countries sharing the euro currency on Tuesday, May 13.

Juncker said ministers were considering hiking taxes to limit what he dubbed a "scandal" and "social scourge."

Any move aimed at curbing salaries or bonuses granted to captains of industry is likely to be met with strong resistance by EU member states such as Britain, which fears that it might pose a threat to the City of London by pushing businesses to relocate.

British diplomats said that they believed there was "zero appetite" within the EU for such initiatives.

Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi will be called as a witness in a trial over the alleged CIA kidnap of a terror suspect.

Twenty-six Americans and six Italians are accused of kidnapping a Muslim cleric from Italy and sending him to Egypt, where he claims he was tortured.

A judge in Milan ruled that Mr Berlusconi, who faces no charges in the trial, could be called to testify.

Former spy chief Nicolo Pollari says testimony from ex-heads of government may prove he was against the practice.

Mr Berlusconi is considered a key witness as he was prime minister when prosecutors allege that Egyptian cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr was snatched from a street in Milan, in February 2003.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission has begun to look at the possible set-up for the planned Mediterranean union by trying to breathe life into current bilateral relations between the EU and Mediterranean countries while avoiding an unwieldy new political organisation.

An internal paper discussed last week in EU commissioners' cabinets, suggests the new relationship has to be a "multilateral partnership" and "encompass all member states of the European Union."

It suggests summits at head of state and government level twice a year with the first official one to take place in Paris on 13 July, when France has the EU presidency.

This maiden summit is to formally create the "Barcelona Process - A Union for the Mediterranean" and establish the union's "structures and principle goals."

WARSAW: Whenever the United States sends missile defense negotiators to the Czech Republic and Poland, where the Bush administration intends to deploy parts of its anti-ballistic shield, they encounter surprisingly different attitudes.

In the Czech Republic, where negotiations are all but complete, the administration deals with a government that believes that the threat the shield is designed to counter comes from Iran and other "rogue" regimes.

"Our rationale for agreeing to accept the radars stems from the fact that we agree about the threats," said Nikola Hynek, a security expert at the Institute of International Relations in Prague.

In Poland, traditionally one of the closest U.S. allies in this part of Europe, Donald Tusk's center-right Civic Platform coalition has taken a dramatically different stance. It believes the threat comes from Russia, not the Middle East.

EUOBSERVER / KIEV - Expectations are high in Kiev that an EU-Ukraine summit in September in France will result in stronger ties between the two sides and boost progress in negotiations on a new bilateral agreement.

"We expect certain serious steps to be taken along the lines of preparing the new enhanced agreement and the free trade agreement [between Ukraine and the EU]," Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko told a group of journalists in Kiev.

"We look forward to the EU flashing the green light for us that would help us on our way forward," she added.

Ukraine's relations with the EU are currently regulated by a Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) in force since 1998, a set-up that Kiev considers politically insufficient.

Negotiations to replace the PCA started in March 2007 and Ukraine wants it to contain a clear reference to eventual EU membership, and avoid the vague political formulations that have characterised Brussels statements about the large eastern European country to date.

Less than a week after taking office, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday welcomed German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and the two called for closer Russian-German ties.

"I wish you energy, productivity and good fortune - everything that a man in your position needs," Steinmeier told Medvedev on the first of a four-day trip through Russia.

 

In a speech at the Urals State University in the industrial city of Yekaterinburg, the foreign minister outlined the possibilities for a partnership in which the two could work together to modernize Russia.  

BRUSSELS: European antitrust investigators are expanding the scope of a major inquiry into the €484 billion pharmaceutical market in a bid to determine whether companies are blocking generics makers from getting less-expensive medicines to market quickly.

Lawyers and European Union officials said Neelie Kroes, the European Union competition commissioner, was also casting her net widely in a bid to determine whether drug companies' efforts to block competitors by extending patents were also distracting them from developing new medicines, which have been slow in coming to market in recent years.

Investigators, who questioned about 100 companies early this year, including Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi-Aventis, are now turning to about 80 medical organizations, including associations of doctors, patients and pharmacies, and government agencies that set the prices of prescription drugs in Europe. That could make it the broadest antitrust investigation ever in the EU.

If Kroes determines that companies that make and sell medicines are using unfair practices, she could eventually impose large fines - as happened once already to AstraZeneca - and could recommend changes to the way the industry operated.

CHENGDU, China -- The possibility of far worse damage from Monday's earthquake loomed Wednesday after a Chinese government report said that nearly 400 dams suffered damage. State media reported that 2,000 soldiers were sent to try to plug "very dangerous" cracks in one, upriver from the hard-hit Sichuan city of Dujiangyan, official media said.

Meanwhile, hundreds of Chinese soldiers marching through mud and debris reached mountain towns at the epicenter of the earthquake on Wednesday, while army helicopters began airdrops of food and medicine in the same area. Officials raised their estimate of the number of people killed to nearly 15,000, with thousands more trapped and missing in remote areas.

The report on the damaged dams was by the National Development and Reform Commission. Most, it said, were small dams. The most seriously harmed appeared to be to the Zipingpu Dam, near Dujiangyan. The irrigation system in that area dates to the 3rd century B.C.

That city is the site of some of the most horrific scenes in the last few days. A school collapse in a southern suburb killed hundreds of children, perhaps as many as 900. Parents have begun setting up memorials and bodies are still being pulled from the rubble.

What can Western companies do when China's factory workers start demanding better wages and conditions? Easy -- just transfer production to a cheaper country. China's loss is Vietnam's gain.

The world's manufacturing powerhouse needs new low-wage workers, which is why the man in the dark suit is talking himself hoarse. "Do not delay," he calls out to the people gathered around him, pressing his mouth to the microphone. "We will handle everything in minutes, and you'll have work right away."

The man, whose name is Zhou Liang, works for a private employment agency, which has its office in a bus terminal in Shenzhen, the southern Chinese industrial center. Buses are constantly arriving at the terminal from all across China, bringing in fresh supplies of young migrant workers.

But Zhou, the employment agent, sounds desperate, like someone trying to hawk a product no one wants. Posters on the wall advertise some of the lowest-paid jobs in the world. A wide range of factories are seeking workers, but they pay only the minimum monthly wage of 750 yuan, or about €70 ($45), and that for an eight-hour day, five days a week. But by working overtime and on weekends, Zhou calls out, hoping for takers, workers can easily earn twice as much.

Brazil has been accused of turning its back on its duty to protect the Amazon after the resignation of its award-winning Environment Minister fuelled fresh fears over the fate of the forest. The departure of Marina Silva, who admitted she was losing the battle to get green voices heard amidst the rush for economic development, has been greeted with dismay by conservationists.

"She was the environment's guardian angel," said Frank Guggenheim, executive director for Greenpeace in Brazil. "Now Brazil's environment is orphaned."

In a letter to President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, Ms Silva said that her efforts to protect the rainforest acknowledged as the "lungs of the planet" were being thwarted by powerful business lobbies. "Your Excellency was a witness to the growing resistance found by our team in important sectors of the government and society," she wrote.

To that, Lewis retorted: "The role of the president of the United States is to support the decisions that are made by the people of Israel. It is not up to us to pick and choose from among the political parties." The audience members applauded.

The Earth's temperature may stay roughly the same for a decade, as natural climate cycles enter a cooling phase, scientists have predicted.

A new computer model developed by German researchers, reported in the journal Nature, suggests the cooling will counter greenhouse warming.

However, temperatures will again be rising quickly by about 2020, they say.

Other climate scientists have welcomed the research, saying it may help societies plan better for the future.

See how modelled temperatures may develop

The key to the new prediction is the natural cycle of ocean temperatures called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), which is closely related to the warm currents that bring heat from the tropics to the shores of Europe.

The cause of the oscillation is not well understood, but the cycle appears to come round about every 60 to 70 years.

LIEDEKERKE, Belgium: If Belgium vanishes one day, it will be because of little towns like this one, where Flemish politicians are riding a new wave of nationalism and pushing for an independent state.

Liedekerke has only 12,000 inhabitants, but its elected council has caused a stir by insisting on the "Flemish nature" of the town. Not only must all city business and schooling take place in Flemish, true throughout Flanders, but children who cannot speak the language can be prohibited from taking part in holiday outings, like hikes and swimming classes.

"België barst!" says the graffiti on the bridge near the train station, or "Belgium bursts," the cry of the nationalists who want an independent Flanders. But here they also want to keep the rich, French-speakers from Brussels - only 21 kilometers, or 13 miles, away, and 15 minutes by train - from buying up this pretty landscape and changing the nature of the village.

Marc Mertens, 53, is the full-time secretary of the town, a professional manager who works under the elected, but part-time village council. Sitting in a café near the old church - Liedekerke is thought to mean "church on the little hill" - he describes how his grandfather fought in World War I under officers who only gave commands in French.

The world has been introduced to the true face of Julius Caesar with the discovery in a river in southern France of a bust that was sculpted in the lifetime of the Roman leader.

The marble sculpture, found in the bed of the Rhône in the town of Arles, has been authenticated as a realistic likeness of Caesar, wrinkled and balding in his fifties and probably modelled from life.

"It is the only known bust of the living Caesar, except for the Mask of Turin, which was made just before or after his death, said Luc Long, the Ministry of Culture archaeologist who found it along with other treasures last autumn. "Even in Rome, no one has found a portrait of the living Caesar," he added.

The bust, which has a broken nose, dates from between 49 and 46BC, the period when Caesar founded the Roman colony of Arles, to thank the town for helping him to conquer the nearby port of Marseille. Caesar used Arles as a base for his campaign against Pompey, his rival.

Hospitals and airplanes ban the use of cell phones, because their electromagnetic transmissions can interfere with sensitive electrical devices. Could the brain also fall into that category? Of course, all our thoughts, sensations and actions arise from bioelectricity generated by neurons and transmitted through complex neural circuits inside our skull. Electrical signals between neurons generate electric fields that radiate out of brain tissue as electrical waves that can be picked up by electrodes touching a person's scalp. Measurements of such brainwaves in EEGs provide powerful insight into brain function and a valuable diagnostic tool for doctors. Indeed, so fundamental are brainwaves to the internal workings of the mind, they have become the ultimate, legal definition drawing the line between life and death.

Brainwaves change with a healthy person's conscious and unconscious mental activity and state of arousal. But scientists can do more with brainwaves than just listen in on the brain at work-they can selectively control brain function by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). This technique uses powerful pulses of electromagnetic radiation beamed into a person's brain to jam or excite particular brain circuits.

Although a cell phone is much less powerful than TMS, the question still remains: Could the electrical signals coming from a phone affect certain brainwaves operating in resonance with cell phone transmission frequencies? After all, the caller's cerebral cortex is just centimeters away from radiation broadcast from the phone's antenna. Two studies provide some revealing news.

The first, led by Rodney Croft, of the Brain Science Institute, Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, tested whether cell phone transmissions could alter a person's brainwaves. The researchers monitored the brainwaves of 120 healthy men and women while a Nokia 6110 cell phone--one of the most popular cell phones in the world--was strapped to their head. A computer controlled the phone's transmissions in a double-blind experimental design, which meant that neither the test subject nor researchers knew whether the cell phone was transmitting or idle while EEG data were collected. The data showed that when the cell phone was transmitting, the power of a characteristic brain-wave pattern called alpha waves in the person's brain was boosted significantly. The increased alpha wave activity was greatest in brain tissue directly beneath to the cell phone, strengthening the case that the phone was responsible for the observed effect.

Los Angeles - Swarmed around Leo's Taco truck on Eagle Rock Boulevard, about 50 night patrons are stuffing their cheeks with carne asada tacos - and chewing over one of this city's big controversies: taco trucks.

"Why should a taco vendor be able to park in front of someone else's restaurant and steal his customers away with cheaper food?" asks one man, spearing pinto beans on a paper plate with a plastic fork.

"But making them move every hour is a bad idea," says another as he orders a veggie burrito. "How can a truck vendor keep loyal customers if he has to move so often?"

These patrons, like many Angelenos, are as hot as salsa caliente over new rules that go into effect Thursday - what to do with the 14,000 roving restaurateurs who have brought inexpensive entrees, a sense of community, intensifying competition for diners, neighborhood complaints, and a political brouhaha to the street corners of Los Angeles County.

The new county law makes parking a taco truck in one spot for more than an hour punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 or six months in jail, or both.

Just as "The Origin of Species" reshaped social thinking, just as Einstein's theory of relativity affected art, so the revolution in neuroscience is having an effect on how people see the world. <...>

This new wave of research will not seep into the public realm in the form of militant atheism. Instead it will lead to what you might call neural Buddhism. <...>

First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is. <...>

In unexpected ways, science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other. That's bound to lead to new movements that emphasize self-transcendence but put little stock in divine law or revelation. Orthodox believers are going to have to defend particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They're going to have to defend the idea of a personal God, and explain why specific theologies are true guides for behavior day to day. I'm not qualified to take sides, believe me. I'm just trying to anticipate which way the debate is headed. We're in the middle of a scientific revolution. It's going to have big cultural effects.

But beware the Skolnick Effect!

A language is a dialect with an army and navy.

Chicago repeals foie gras ban

Chicago's aldermen showed Wednesday that they have had their fill of the ban on foie gras and made it legal once again for city restaurants to serve up the delicacy made from duck and goose liver.

Mayor Richard Daley, who had once dismissed the ban as "the silliest law the City Council has ever passed," squelched debate on the measure and commanded the council to vote. Looming above the council at the dais, his arms crossed and his gaze stern, he ignored the repeated, shouted objections of the ban's sponsor, Ald. Joe Moore (49th).

After the 37-6 vote, Daley seemed weary of the topic, as he noted the widespread attention that the ban has brought to Chicago since its passage.

"There's been extensive, extensive, extensive debate on this," Daley told reporters after the council meeting. "This has been talked about, debated about constantly by international, national, local press, media, by the whole hospitality, culinary field, all of it . . . This has been going on forever."

(...)

Moore spent hours Wednesday in hushed conversations with fellow aldermen on the council floor and in the antechamber. The only five who stuck with him in defiance of Daley were Toni Preckwinckle (4th), Ricardo Munoz (22nd), Ed Smith (28th), Scott Waguespack (32nd) and Rey Colon (35th).

After the vote, Moore spoke briefly and warned his colleagues that what happened to his measure "tomorrow could happen to you."

In a caustic voice, the mayor shot back: "Thank you, Ald. Joe 'Foie Gras' Moore."

City Hall.  Hard at work.

FWIW, while Moore is a frequent interloper in my circle, I'm squarely with the Mayor on this one.  

"Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.

"Goodbye. We won't miss you," Cherie Blair told the press, on the day of her husband's handover of power to Just Gordon. Touchingly, it appears that she has missed us, so very much that she's spent every spare minute of her new, less scrutinised life, scribbling away at her memoirs, inviting with their surprise-surprise publication another round of the comment and the speculation she had claimed to be so exasperated by.

Since Mrs Blair is well known to be materially acquisitive and obsessively insecure about income, she must have known that the publication of her autobiography, Speaking For Myself, would be greeted with a barrage of cynical remarks about her greed. It has been, of course. But it appears that Mrs Blair is willing to put up with such accusations, as long as there's money in it. Oh dear.

I've never found all the reports about Mrs Blair's avarice to be particularly compelling. The way people go on, you'd think that she is some sort of weird aberration, a grossly atypical bread-head operating in a society that is otherwise awfully spiritual and not in the least concerned with material wealth.

The red carpets were rolled out on Wednesday May 14, as the 61st edition of France's premier film event opened. Films from all over the world are being screened, including one from the heavyweight German director.

The Brazilian film, Blindness, starring American actress Julianne Moore, kicked off the event, which will run until Saturday, May 25.

As usual, there will be no shortage of big names in attendance, with American directors Steven Soderberg and Clint Eastwood both entering films in the festival's main competition.

But one work certain to interest cineastes is Wim Wenders' Palermo Shooting, which is also gunning for the Palme d'Or.

The glint in Silvio Berlusconi's eye has landed the Italian prime minister in trouble again, after he was caught passing a flirtatious note during a parliamentary session to two young female politicians.

Even though the 71-year-old was busy making his first speech to parliament before a vital vote of confidence, his attention did not waver from the two attractive newcomers sitting on the other side of the chamber.

Dark-haired Nunzia De Girolamo, 32, and blonde Gabriella Giammanco, 31, were elected for the first time last month.

Mr Berlusconi was determined to send them his regards, but unfortunately his affectionate note was captured by television cameras.

May 15, 2008 | Even for a dedicated fan, it's hard to keep seasons of "America's Next Top Model" straight. Tyra Banks and company have been squeezing out these suckers since the show debuted in 2003, and now that episodes from all 10 cycles are shown in repertory on VH1, keeping your Joanies and your Jaslenes and your Jades straight has become no small task. So it's nice when a season finale hands you something memorable: This is the year the competition had its first plus-size winner, Whitney.

A luscious, hip-swinging blonde (though she began as a brunette) from Florida with a hint of Guess-era Anna Nicole Smith about her, Whitney was never a front-runner in the competition. That would have been Anya, a nymphlike blonde who swept challenges and spoke with a dopey, indefinable accent that made her sound as though she needed to blow her nose. Or maybe it would have been Fatima, an Iman look-alike from Somalia, whose own tragic back story -- female circumcision at the age of 7 -- probably did more for public awareness of female genital mutilation than a hundred National Geographic specials.