Britain's decision to legalize hybrid animal-human embryos for medical research was widely met with negative reactions in Germany and elsewhere in Europe.

On Monday, May 19, British lawmakers voted to legalize the creation of animal-human embryos for medical research. Critics said the move was unethical, but supporters cited the need to forge ahead in stem-cell research by any means necessary.

 

After a very heated debate, Britain's lower house of parliament voted on the Human Embryology and Fertilization Bill, which could well be the biggest shake-up of laws affecting sensitive areas like stem cell research and abortion in the past two decades.

 

In the future, scientists in Britain will be allowed to combine human DNA with animal egg cells. But the law says the resulting "chimera" embryos must destroyed within 14 days, and cannot be implanted.

 

After 18 months of opposition, the 27 European Union member states finally agreed to launch strategic partnership talks with Russia, a move that green lights negotiations for a new cooperation accord between the nations.

The deal, which had been delayed because of objections from former Soviet satellite states, comes ahead of an EU-Russia summit to be held June 26-27 in Siberia. The EU agreement, which came Wednesday, May 21, gives the go-ahead for talks that address the bloc's relationship to Russia as well as discussions on energy and political issues.

 

Talks were delayed beginning in November 2006, when Poland vetoed the mandate's adoption after Moscow banned imports of fresh meat and other food products from Warsaw. The objections were lifted when Russia removed their embargo earlier this year.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission has adapted keenly expected health-check proposals on the EU's farm policy to the current situation of rising food prices, suggesting various ways to help the sector boost production and respond to market demands.

Mariann Fischer Boel, EU agriculture commissioner, presented the final version of the farm policy review to the European Parliament on Tuesday (20 May) after a two year-long political debate in national capitals and EU institutions.

"Some claim that we're now playing a totally different ball game," she said, referring to an everyday "avalanche of media headlines about rising agricultural prices, their causes and their impact around the world."

In a bid to react to the price trends, the EU executive is proposing to abolish current rules on keeping 10 percent of farm land fallow, which could bring four to five million hectares of idle fields back into production. Brussels is also suggesting phasing out milk quotas by April 2015.

French workers at the national rail company, SNCF, have begun strike action against President Nicolas Sarkozy's plans to reform public-sector pensions.

Workers from other sectors are expected to join them early on Thursday in a one-day protest to pressure Mr Sarkozy to reverse his economic reforms.

Bus drivers nationwide were expected to strike, air service may be disrupted and about 50% of trains are to be cut.

The strikes follow protests by fishermen that blocked French ports.

High-speed international trains between Paris, London and Brussels were not expected to be affected by the SNCF workers' action.

The transport workers are due to be joined by postal, utility and other public sector workers across France.

ROME: Emerging from his first cabinet meeting as Italy's new prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi on Wednesday presented a series of forceful measures - from new restrictions on immigrants to a military-style strategy to tackle a longstanding garbage crisis in Naples - that presaged a direct, no-nonsense style of leadership uncommon in Italian politics.

"The state has to return to being the state," Berlusconi said at a news conference in the port city of Naples, where he held his first meeting in order to underline his commitment to solving the garbage crisis.

It was an oblique reference, perhaps, to the center-left government of his predecessor, Romano Prodi, whose fractious coalition failed to pass effective policies either to clean up the estimated 50,000 tons of trash littering the streets of the city, or to assuage Italians' growing concerns about illegal immigration in the county. Berlusconi, a conservative, has a strong majority in Parliament.

To increase consumer spending and spur industrial growth in a lackluster economic landscape, the cabinet also announced plans Wednesday to eliminate a residential property tax and reduce taxes on overtime pay and incentives for productivity. Berlusconi said it was time to put a country with zero growth "back on the path of development."

Russia's state railroad is the first company to show serious interest in buying a stake in German railroad Deutsche Bahn, which is to be partially privatized this year.

The head of Russian state-run railroad RJD, the world's second-largest railroad, has acknowledged that his company is mulling a stake in Deutsche Bahn.

 

"[A share purchase] is a good idea and we are going to talk about it," RJD Chairman Vladimir Yakunin said on Wednesday, May 21, during a meeting with high-ranking German rail officials, including Deutsche Bahn chief Hartmut Mehdorn.

ROME The Italian organised crime group the 'Ndrangheta makes more money than some small European countries, a study by the Eurispes research group found.

The estimated turnover of the group, which has overtaken the Sicilian Mafia for drug trafficking, was valued at €44 billion (£35.5 billion) last year. This is the annual business equivalent of 2.9 per cent of the Italian gross domestic product for the same year and is equal to the combined GDP of Slovenia and Estonia. The 'Ndrangheta was responsible for the killing of six Italians at a pizzeria in Germany last August. It makes its money through drugs, extortion, arms trafficking and prostitution.

As Iceland once again defied the world with the launch of its annual whale hunt this week, the European Commission called on the country to prove that it is not engaged in commercial whaling.

"While there's an exception to the International Whaling Commission's moratorium on the hunt for scientific or indigenous whaling, Iceland still needs to be demonstrate that it is killing these whales for genuine non-commercial purposes," said commission spokesperson on environment, Barbara Helfferich.

On Tuesday (20 May), the Icelandic Ministry of Fisheries handed out a quota for the killing of 40 minke whales.

Within hours, the whaling boat Njordur was out on the hunt. Two other boats will later join it.

DETAILS of every phone call, email and period of time spent on the internet by the public would be held on a British government database under a plan to combat crime and terrorism. Internet service providers (ISPs) and telecommunications companies would hand over the records to the Home Office, who would hold them for at least a year, The Times reported today.

Police and security services would be able to access the information with permission from the courts.

The proposal is part of a plan aimed at creating uniform record-keeping following the terrorist bombings on London's public transport system on July 7, 2005.

Since last October, telecoms companies have been required to keep records of phone calls and text messages for 12 months and police and security services can access them with a warrant issued by the courts.

Under the new proposals, that requirement would extend to internet, email and voice-over-internet use and the records would be held by the Government, rather than individual companies.

If George Soros thinks Britain is likely to have a recession, it must be so? Er, no. The Hungarian-born billionaire speculator and philanthropist made his name, and much of his fortune, by betting against sterling ahead of its ejection from the ERM in 1992. That earned him the sobriquet: "The man who broke the Bank of England" and a place on the Forbes rich list. He is big bucks, though not the biggest, since at $8.5bn last year he came in at only No. 80 in the ranks of global billionaires.

Still, that plus his hugely successful books is enough to make people sit up. And so it was yesterday when he was interviewed on the Today programme. We were, he said, past the "acute phase" of the credit crunch but he added: "Financial institutions have been severely damaged and we are currently in a situation that will probably, I think almost inevitably, result in a recession certainly in the United States and most likely in England also."

Since this comes on top of a warning that the world faces the most serious financial situation since the 1930s, it is all a bit daunting. Add in the warning last week from the governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, that the UK faced the possibility of recession, though that was not the Bank's central forecast, and we now have both a chief gamekeeper of financial markets and a most successful poacher leaning towards similar judgements.

Employment intentions among UK businesses hit their lowest level in at least 11 years last month, according to a Bank of England report published yesterday.

The monthly survey by the Bank's regional agents - covering 650 companies - showed employment intentions plunged to the lowest since the study began in 1997.

The Bank also pointed to "credit rationing" as lenders clamp down and firms become wary of borrowing over concern about their ability to repay debt.

Mirror.co.uk: Fuelling fears over high energy costs

Customer champion Energywatch blamed rocketing bills on lack of competition - 10 years ago there were 20 energy firms vying for business, now there are just six.

Energywatch chief Allan Asher told the Commons Business and Enterprise Committee: "There is a myth about vigorous price competition between suppliers.

"For the product they most actively sell - direct debit for 'dual fuel' gas and electricity - the price difference between the cheapest and the most expensive is about £30 a year, a few pence a week."

JERUSALEM: Israel and Syria announced on Wednesday that they were engaged in negotiations for a comprehensive peace treaty through Turkish mediators, a sign that Israel is hoping to halt the growing influence of Iran, Syria's most important ally, which sponsors the anti-Israel groups Hezbollah and Hamas.

Senior Israeli officials from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office and their Syrian counterparts were in Istanbul on Wednesday, where both groups had been staying separately, at undisclosed locations, since Monday. The mediators shuttled between the two. Syria and Israel have not negotiated this seriously in eight years.

Syria's motives are clear: it wants to regain the Golan Heights captured by Israel in the 1967 war and to re-establish a relationship with the United States, something it figures it can do through talks with Jerusalem.

For Israel -- which has watched the Palestinian group Hamas take over Gaza and gain ground in the West Bank, and the Lebanese group Hezbollah display raw power in Beirut -- an effort to pull Syria away from Iran could produce enormous benefits. An announcement on Wednesday of a peace deal that gives Hezbollah the upper hand in Lebanon's government probably added to Israel's sense of urgency.

Barack Obama has begun to edge away from his offer to pursue talks with Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after being hammered by Republicans as an "appeaser".

Now on the cusp of securing the Democratic nomination, Obama yesterday continued to attack John McCain, his likely Republican opponent in November, over his hawkish foreign policy.

"He has spent his last week describing his foreign policy as who he won't talk to," Obama told a rally in Florida yesterday.

After Tuesday's primaries, in which Obama lost badly to Hillary Clinton in Kentucky but won well in Oregon, he is now just 65 delegates away from the Democratic nomination.

Rival Lebanese leaders have agreed on steps to end the political deadlock that has led to the country's worst violence since the 1975-90 civil war.

The Western-backed government and the pro-Syrian opposition arrived at the deal after days of talks in Qatar.

Under the deal, the opposition - led by the Hezbollah political and militant group - will have the power of veto in a new cabinet of national unity.

It also paves the way for parliament to elect a new president.

The post has been empty since November.

Correspondents say the agreement is a major triumph for Hezbollah, whose key demands have been met.

JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert proposed in talks with a U.S. congressional leader that a naval blockade be imposed on Iran to try to curb its nuclear program, an Israeli newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The Haaretz daily quoted Olmert as telling Nancy Pelosi that "the present economic sanctions have exhausted themselves" and the international community needed to take more drastic steps to stop Iran's efforts to obtain nuclear weapons.

A spokesman for Olmert declined to comment on the Israeli leader's talks on Monday with Pelosi, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, in Jerusalem.

"It was a confidential discussion," said the spokesman, Mark Regev.

Pelosi's office had no immediate comment. On her return to Washington, Pelosi said she and the congressional delegation she led to Israel had discussed with its leaders "the threat posed by Iran."

A group of up to 300 young men killed 11 people who were accused of being witches and wizards in western Kenya, in some cases slitting their throats or clubbing them to death before burning their bodies, officials said.

The gang moved home to home through two villages, using a list of suspected witches and wizards and the kind of spells they were believed to have cast on the community, said Ben Makori, a local councilor.

"The villagers are complaining that the (suspected) wizards and witches are making the bright children in the community dumb ... These (suspected) witches are not doing good things to us," Makori told The Associated Press.

Astronomers have been able to capture and record the first moments when a massive star blows itself apart.

After decades of searching, researchers have used the world's top telescopes to observe the remarkable event.

Previously, scientists had only been able to study these "supernovas" several days after the event.

The results, published in the journal Nature, show that within two hours of the blast, a giant fireball scattered radioactive debris across space.

Gone are the days of believing plants are just passive organisms. Earlier this year, researchers found that plants can communicate through little understood chemical mechanisms. Now scientists are even saying that plants can do something perhaps even more incredible: Control the weather. According to researchers at the Scottish Association for Marine Science and the University of Manchester, brown seaweed, kelp, has the ability to create cloudy days at the seaside. But why would plants want to alter weather patterns? Apparently, because cloudy days make the plants more comfortable.

When the sky is overcast kelp are comfortable when the tide goes out, since they are able to stay moist until it comes back. On a bright day however, they dry out. When they start getting dry the plants become stressed and begin releasing iodide. The iodide rises, causing clouds to form overhead, which in turns protects the kelp from unwelcome sunshine.

Kelp plays an important antipollution role in the removal of ozone close to the Earth's surface. Frithjof Küpper, of the Scottish Association for Marine Science, who led the research, explains that the benefit is mutual. Iodide can neutralize ozone in the atmosphere and, as it rises, "these chemicals act as condensation nuclei around which clouds may form". Hence we get a healthier atmosphere and the kelp also gets what it wants: Shade.

Excerpt: 'The Woman Who Can't Forget'

by Jill Price

Prologue

I know very well how tyrannical the memory can be. I have the first diagnosed case of a memory condition that the scientists who have studied me termed hyperthymestic syndrome -- the continuous, automatic autobiographical recall of every day of my life from when I was age fourteen on. My memory started to become shockingly complete in 1974, when I was eight years old. From 1980 on, it is near perfect. Give me a date from that year forward and I can instantly tell you what day of the week it was, what I did on that day, and any major event that took place -- or even minor events -- as long as I heard about them on that day. <...>

Though I hate the idea of losing any of my memories, it's also true that learning how to manage a life in the present with so much of the past continually replaying itself in my mind has been quite a challenge, often a debilitating one. I have struggled through many difficult episodes of being emotionally overwhelmed by my memory through the course of my life. Then finally I decided I had to reach out and try to discover whatever I could about what was going on in my head and why.

Here is a radio interview with Jill Price from Tuesday in which she demonstrates her perfect memory, but at the same time sadly comes across as a very unhappy woman.

... all progress depends on the unreasonable mensch.
(apologies to G.B. Shaw)

As the saying goes, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's reasonable to assume it's a duck. In light of a new rodent study, environmental scientists worry that the same might apply to asbestos.

Certain long carbon nanotubes -- tiny cylinders only 20 micrometers long and perhaps a few micrometers wide -- have the same basic dimensions as toxic asbestos fibers. A broad body of data has suggested that the damage caused by asbestos traces more to its physical dimensions than its chemical recipe. So scientists had begun over the past few years expressing concerns that long nanotubes could trigger characteristic asbestos disease, especially mesothelioma -- an unusual cancer that is nearly always fatal.

Support for such concerns emerges in the new study, although the study's duration was too short and its design too simplistic to prove such a link. For instance, asbestos diseases develop slowly over many years, and this study lasted only seven days. Asbestos diseases result from inhalation of toxic mineral fibers, which over time migrate through the wall of the lung to produce disease on the breathing organ's exterior surface. Here, the researchers released the fibers into the abdomen, giving them direct access to the lung's exterior mesothelial tissue, where mesothelioma develops.

Photographing a Wedding and then an Earthquake | lelandwong's Xanga Site - Weblog

Photographing a Wedding and then an EarthquakeCan you imagine what it was like to have been photographing a wedding in Sichuan, China when 7.9
earthquake hit and shakes for three minutes?  (photos courtesy of Dragon Photo, ND Daily and Sohu.com)

Carla Bruni might be a multimillionaire aristocrat, former supermodel and French president's wife but let's not forget that her day job is to rock modern society to its foundations with her own brand of breathy folk-pop.

So it is perhaps no surprise that France's free-spirited first lady has a song on her new album called Ma Came (translation: my junk, or my dope) in which, speculation has it, she sings: "My guy, I roll him up and smoke him." The album will be called Comme Si de Rien n'Etait (As If Nothing had Happened) after a picture by Bruni's photographer brother, who died two years ago.

She has written 14 tracks herself but her agent has said that 95% of the songs were written before she met Sarkozy. This leaves critics looking for the bits inspired by the president. The album includes a cover of the song You Belong to Me, once covered by Bob Dylan, which will bring back memories of the couple's highly controversial public cavorting on Middle Eastern mini-breaks: "See the Pyramids/Along the Nile/Watch the sun rise/On a tropic isle/Just remember darling/All the while/You belong to me."

Intriguingly, Bruni has also co-written a song with France's ageing enfant terrible, the novelist Michel Houellebecq, based on a poem from his science-fiction novel about cloning and "neo-humans", The Possibility of an Island.