European papers largely ignored the final hours of the Democratic primary. Those papers which did cover the campaigning seemed glad it would soon be over, and offered some (almost) final thoughts on the loser.

Maybe it was the summer weather, or the fact that the outcome was nearly certain, but Europeans were hardly riveted by the final round of Obama versus Clinton in Montana and South Dakota.

The daily La Stampa in Turin, Italy seemed to wistfully long for a stop to what it called the "primary carrousel."

"From the perspective of logic and common sense, this has to be the end of the battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton -- the battle that has colored American politics since January and gotten harder and nastier every day," wrote that paper's editorialist.

Despite signs of slowing global economic growth and resurgent inflation, the European economy grew more than expected during the first quarter, according to data released Tuesday, June 3.

The 15-member euro zone economy grew by 0.8 percent quarter-on-quarter during the first three months of the year, the European Union's statistics office said, with rising investment and inventories resulting in an annual 2.2-percent growth rate in the first quarter.

 

This added to signs that the economy built around the euro has so far managed to withstand the fallout from the world financial market and credit crisis.

 

Despite the strong euro, euro zone exports rose 1.9 percent during the first quarter, with investments growing by 1.6 percent. However, private consumption edged up only a marginal 0.2 percent, the statistics office said.

 

The euro zone grew by 2.6 percent last year. Economists had expected the data would show the Euro zone economy growing by 0.7 percent during the first quarter.

The mayor of a Greek island has defied the threat of prosecution to carry out the country's first gay "marriages".

Two men and two women were "married" by Tassos Alfieris in the ceremonies on the eastern Aegean island of Tilos.

Mr Alfieris conducted the proceedings despite Greece's top prosecutor having issued a directive saying that same-sex weddings were outlawed.

One of the women involved, Evangelia Vlami, was bubbling with excitement as she told the BBC she was "so happy".

A Chinese food company opened its first European plant earlier this week in a Czech village, seeking to turn the sleepy spot into a launching pad for its European and North American expansion.

State-owned Shanghai Maling Food Company plans to bring its Chinese-style fare -- luncheon meat, canned pork, ham and ready-to-eat meals -- to Western countries, where product standards and import restrictions hamper imports coming directly from China.

Helped by Czech tax breaks and using European meat, Maling plans to produce 10,000 tons a year at its 400-million-koruny (16.5 million-euro, $25.4-million) plant, production manager Jiri Vancura said.

"They need to be somewhere in the EU so the plant meets all the standards," he said. "They otherwise can't export to the markets where they want to -- and once used to -- be."

The snooping scandal that has rocked Deutsche Telekom threatens to engulf another German concern. Railway company Deutsche Bahn reportedly employed the same firm that spied on journalists and executives for Telekom.

A spokesman for Deutsche Bahn (DB) confirmed that the firm had used the services of security consultants Network Deutschland, business daily Handelsblatt reported.

The managing director of Network Deutschland, Ralph Kuehn, last week admitted analyzing illegally acquired telephone data on behalf of Deutsche Telekom. The telecommunications giant has conceded spying on communications between executives and journalists in 2005 and possibly in 2006. Company CEO Rene Obermann, who denies any knowledge of the activities, has called in prosecutors to investigate the case.

Despite acknowledging the engagement of Network Deutschland by Deutsche Bahn, the DB spokesman stressed that there had been "no illicit surveillance of staff or non-staff." He said that external experts had worked on individual cases as part of the company's strict anti-corruption program. 

The US is set to further tighten its border security in a move that will see all Europeans - currently enjoying a visa-free regime with Washington - registering online before flying across the Atlantic.

According to the Financial Times, US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff will announce on Tuesday (3 June) the creation of an electronic registration system, designed to collect data on passengers no later than 72 hours before their departure

Washington says that an online registration form will require the same amount of information as is currently provided by all travellers by filling out the I-94 immigration form. The subsequent authorisation to travel should be valid for multiple entries for two years.

"History has shown that it is naive to assume a traveller from a [visa waiver] country automatically constitutes a lesser threat than a visa applicant who has undergone greater scrutiny prior to travel,", an US official was cited as saying by the FT.

Gun battles and reports of voting irregularities in Sunday's elections in EU candidate Macedonia may have scuppered the Balkan country's near-term accession hopes, analysts warn.

Slovenia, which currently holds the bloc's six-month rotating presidency, said the EU "deeply deplored that violence and intimidation accompanied elections in parts of the country."
EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn called on Macedonian authorities to "to duly investigate all reported incidents and bring the perpetrators to justice."
Free and fair elections are "an essential part of the political criteria of the EU accession process," he said.
The centre-right Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation-Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity (VMRO-DPMNE) of prime minister Nikola Gruevski is claiming it won 48 percent of votes, which would give his coalition a majority in parliament.

Finance ministers from the 15 eurozone countries in Frankfurt on Monday (2 June) buried France's proposal for Europe-wide fuel tax cuts, despite ongoing strike action across the EU.

"There's no question of putting fiscal measures in place to offset soaring oil prices," the eurogroup chairman, Luxembourg's Jean-Claude Juncker said after the meeting, AFP reports.

The soaring cost of fuel has seen protests across Europe in the past four weeks

German, Dutch and Spanish finance chiefs also put the boot in. "France already has a few problems in its budget ... so cutting taxes will not necessarily make it easier," the Netherlands' Wouter Bos stated.

The ministers predicted oil prices will remain high and said other relief measures may need to be put in place, however. Mr Juncker indicated that Brussels may seek ways to discourage speculative trading on oil.

The aging planes of United, American, and Delta guzzle more gas and make the US carriers more vulnerable to soaring oil prices -- and to their global competitors.

 The fleets of many US airlines are several years older than their European counterparts. For a look at one of the biggest headaches facing US airlines, head out to Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport any day and watch the big jets taking off for the US. There goes United Airlines to Chicago, American Airlines to Boston, Delta Air Lines to Atlanta, and Air France to New York's John F. Kennedy airport.

What's the big deal? Many of the US carriers' planes are Boeing 767s, a model that dates from the mid-1980s. Most Air France-KLM planes are at least a decade younger -- and a lot more fuel-efficient. According to US Transportation Dept. data, the Airbus A330 model that Air France flies between Paris and JFK burns an average 12 percent less fuel per passenger than the 767 does on a similar flight.

PARIS: Truckers and taxi drivers slowed traffic around a Paris business district to a crawl Tuesday in a protest over rising fuel prices, and hundreds of fishermen demonstrated in London to demand government help.

Dozens of trucks and taxis in Paris drove slowly toward and around the headquarters of the oil giant Total in La Défense, site of the main financial district on the western edge of the city, to protest a new tax on heavily polluting vehicles.

The authorities said the operation snarled traffic on several highways.

Farmers elsewhere in France blocked ports and oil terminals as part of protests started by fishermen last month demanding government aid to help mitigate high fuel costs.

Fishermen from throughout Britain demonstrated in central London on Tuesday to demand their government's help in coping with soaring fuel prices.

Apart from dismaying fans of winter sports, climate change could alter the whole of Russia's traditional way of life, the BBC's James Rodgers reports. His diary is published fortnightly.

A CHANGE OF OUTLOOK?

"Go out into the street and see!"

Russia's Deputy Economics Minister, Andrei Belousov, was talking to reporters ahead of the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, which begins later this week.

Could Russia's famously fierce winters become a thing of the past?

I had asked why climate change was one of the items topping the agenda - Russia isn't a country where the issue gets much attention in public debate.

Two consecutive warm winters have dismayed Muscovites. Conditions for skiing and skating can no longer be counted on as once they could.

But, on the other hand, Moscow's pavement coffee shops and bars have been opening earlier in the year.

Two decades ago Rachida Dati, a French daughter of north African immigrants, got married to a man that she barely knew. It was not quite an arranged marriage. It was a marriage "to please her family". She immediately regretted her decision. She persuaded her Algerian husband to agree to an instant annulment.

Rachida Dati was in her early twenties at the time and making her way as a young lawyer and businesswoman in Paris. Through hard work, as a law student and by taking menial jobs, she had already fought her way clear of her impoverished, immigrant family of 11 brothers and sisters just north of Lyons.

Two decades later, Mme Dati is France's first senior minister of north African origin. She is a protégée of President Nicolas Sarkozy. She has been catapulted without previous experience - and her enemies insist without any political skills - into one of the most senior and potentially explosive jobs in French government. As Justice Minister, she has already made several mistakes and many enemies, not least among her own political "allies". She is resented especially by several experienced, male, white, centre-right politicians who think that they have a superior claim to her plum job.

President Sarkozy calls her a "symbol" of his attempts to break down racial and social and gender barriers in France. As a symbol, he has told her several times, she has "no right to fail".

A UN summit in Rome gathering together world leaders and food and agriculture experts has seen a showdown on EU and US biofuels policies and agricultural subsidies.

One UN official called the policies "incomprehensible," while development organisations and the biofuels industry campaigned fiercely to try to influence the meeting's outcome.

In an impassioned speech, Jacques Diouf, the director-general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation told some 60 heads of state that it is "incomprehensible...that subsidies worth €7-8 billion ($11-12 billion) in 2006 were used to divert 100 million tonnes of cereals from human consumption mostly to satisfy a thirst for fuels for vehicles."

George Soros, the billionaire hedge fund manager, will warn later today that the oil price has become a bubble that could trigger a stock market crash.

The Financial Times reported today that Soros will tell the US Senate commerce committee that oil was pushed to its recent all-time peak of $135 a barrel by a new wave of speculators.

He believes that the doubling in the price over the last year is partly due to investment institutions, such as pension funds, who are pumping money into indexes that track the cost of crude.

According to the FT, Soros will warn that there could be very serious consequences for global stock markets if the institutions suddenly began betting on a fall in the oil price.

He compares it with the stock market crash of 1987, which was partly caused by a sudden rush of money into portfolio insurance - which institutions used to protect themselves against a fall in share prices.

There was no shortage of acrimony at the two-day UN conference in Rome on the threats posed by rising food costs. Participants attacked the obese, protectionism, biofuels and two leaders many felt shouldn't attend.

The summit, which kicked off in the Italian capital on Monday, June 2, was called to address fears that rising food prices could leave up to one billion people in danger of malnutrition or starvation.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon attacked trade barriers imposed by India and China to protect their own citizens against the higher costs of rice and other foodstuffs.