The European Commission issued a bloc-wide alert after a nuclear power plant in Krsko, Slovenia, began shutting down due to a technical problem with its cooling system.

The plant's primary cooling system lost coolant, the Commission said in a statement on Wednesday, June 4.

"The plant has been stopped preventively for some hours to allow the personnel to determine the cause of the failure and fix it," it said, adding that there had been no discharge to the environment.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - A citizen's petition has been launched to lobby for a woman to win one of the top four EU posts up for grabs next year, with such jobs normally going to a clutch of men following much closed-door bartering - between other men.

Dubbed 'Females in Front', the online petition set up by Danish socialist MEP Christel Schaldemose has set its sights on gaining 1 million signatures to use as a political pressure tool to ensure more gender balance in the jobs.

"With 1 million signatures, we can ask the commission to take action to secure that the Union fulfils the treaty's goal of gender equality, starting with the upcoming nominations," reads the petition, referring to the forthcoming EU Lisbon Treaty, which also contains the new petitions article and creates two of the top jobs.

"I don't think that women are necessarily better for the job. But they are just as qualified as their male counterparts. With one or more women in top positions, the EU would become far more representative of its citizens," says Ms Schaldemose.

Newspaper headlines on Wednesday, June 4, made for disturbing reading for Germany's Social Democrats. Their support has dropped to a historic nadir of 20 percent. There are many reasons for the plunge.

The poll, which was carried out by Germany leading opinion surveying organization, FORSA, showed support for the SPD had declined by three percentage points within a week. 2,501 likely voters were asked about their political preferences. The poll had a margin of error of 2.5 percent.

One short-term factor in the SPD's current decline may be the party's decision to field its own candidate, academic Gesine Schwan, to challenge popular President Horst Koehler in next year's Federal Assembly vote.

Many Germans see that move as a trial balloon for cooperating with the Left party, the successor to the East German Communist party. The votes of the SPD, the Left and the Greens would currently yield a parliamentary majority in the Bundestag.

The Baltic states and Poland want to join energy, environment and economic development projects in the Baltic Sea region despite their opposition to a planned Russian-German underwater gas pipeline.

The assertion came at the start of a summit of the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS) attended by leaders from 10 of the 12 members on Wednesday, June 4. Only German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin were absent from the talks in the Latvian capital, Riga.

  

The CBSS plans a series of reforms aimed at promoting safer environmental and economic development in the region, Danish Prime Minister Andres Fogh Rasmussen said.

  

Speaking to reporters, Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk reiterated his country's opposition to the 1,200-kilometer (745-mile) pipeline expected to link Vyborg in Russia with Germany's Greifswald via the Baltic Sea.

 

"We believe that the gas transfer by land would be cheaper and more effective," he said.

Hundreds of angry fishermen, mostly from France and Italy, hurled stones at the police and fired flares at European Union buildings Wednesday, June 4, during a protest in Brussels against rising gas prices.

Police estimated the number of protesters at around 250, but demonstrators said law enforcement agents had prevented hundreds of others from Spain and Portugal from reaching the Belgian capital.

 

Flares fired by the fishermen damaged the headquarters of the European Commission and smashed windows of a nearby building hosting EU translators. Police in anti-riot gear moved to disperse the crowd and used water cannons to extinguish burning banners.

European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso will in a ceremony on Wednesday (4 June) help dedicate a Brussels temple as the "Great Synagogue of Europe," amid prayers for EU leaders to act justly.

The synagogue - an 1878 Romanesque-style building in Brussels' central Rue de la Regence - is to become a symbolic focal point for Judaism in Europe, a little like St Peter's Basilica in Rome is for Roman Catholics.

The commission head will sign a document of dedication along with two chief rabbis and two witnesses, with Mr Barroso's name also appearing on a plaque inside the building.

The event will involve the reading of a specially-drafted "Prayer for Europe" as well as singing by the European Choir - a Brussels-based team of 100 singers from 20 EU states set up in 1958 to act as "musical ambassadors for Europe."

The Greek Cypriot government has announced it will drop legal action against EU aid to Turkish Cypriots in the north of the divided island, in a boost to chances for settling the long-term dispute between the two communities and between Europe and Turkey.

The decision unveiled by Nicosia on Tuesday (3 June) involves eight European Commission tenders "relating to services and projects for the economic development of the Turkish Cypriot community," a government spokesperson said, according to AFP.

The legal action was launched by the administration of hard-line peace-process rejectionist former president Tassos Papadopoulos. But the office of the new pro-unification president, communist Demetris Christofias, elected in February, found a legal solution to allow the tenders to take place.

According to the government's spokesperson, the compromise version of the text of the invitations for EU tenders now formally clarifies that the north is not a third country separate from the Cyprus Republic.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Parliament is seeking to bolster its role in the bloc's common foreign and security policy (CFSP), with senior MEPs saying it is time for Europe to become a "player and not just a payer" on the world stage.

Polish centre-right MEP and head of the foreign affairs committee, Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, says that EU foreign is moving "from one era to another" with the new Lisbon Treaty, due to kick in next year.

The proposed new EU foreign minister and diplomatic service as well as the possibility for a group of member states to move ahead in defence cooperation mean foreign policy is "one of the most innovative parts of the treaty."

The fact that Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, will for the first time be present at the MEPs' annual debate on CFSP on Wednesday (4 June) is in itself a "turning point," said the Pole at a briefing on Tuesday.

BERLIN: Despite strong criticism from the opposition and even its own coalition partners, Chancellor Angela Merkel's government agreed Wednesday to give Germany's police forces greater powers to monitor homes, telephones and private computers, maintaining that an enhanced reach would protect citizens from terrorist attacks.

But opposition parties and some Social Democrats who share power with Merkel's conservative bloc criticized the measures in the draft legislation, saying they would further erode privacy rights that they contend have already been undermined, after revelations of recent snooping operations conducted by Deutsche Telekom, one of the country's biggest companies.

Deutsche Telekom had for some time been monitoring calls of its employers, despite federal regulations on strict data protection.

The proposed legislation would for the first time give federal police officers the right to take preventive measures in cases of suspected terrorism.

It's a long, long time since Jacques Delors, the president of what was then the European Commission, persuaded the trade unions that they could retrieve in Brussels what was being taken away from them by the Thatcher government in Whitehall. Proof of this vaulting claim has sometimes seemed a little thin on the ground, but today's agency working deal is a great victory for Europe, backbench Labour MPs and the political sophistication of the TUC.

The deal, which gives agency workers parity with permanent workers after 12 weeks, is not everything anyone wanted, but it's a lot more than the unions thought they'd get only a month or two ago. They have conceded they cannot have parity from the start of employment, and they have lost the battle for the right to sick pay and a pension: to employers, agency workers will still be significantly cheaper than their directly employed equivalents.

But agency working, although it can be a convenient option for both employers and employees, has also been used to exploit vulnerable workers and undercut wages for decades. The unions were first promised a deal before the 2005 election campaign. They've been fighting to get the government to honour its commitment ever since. In the past few weeks the squeeze has been on, and not (or not only) because the Labour party is more or less broke.

A new programme to open up the UK's seas to more wind farms was launched today as part of a bid to increase massively the supply of offshore renewable power.

The Crown Estate, owner of the seabed around Britain, launched round three of its scheme to license companies to build wind farms, which it hopes will speed up the delivery of offshore renewables.

The Estate has earmarked 11 areas which have the potential to be viable offshore wind sites, due to the levels of wind, water depth and potential connection to the grid and taking in shipping and environmental concerns.

Successful bidders will be given exclusive rights to develop farms, and the Crown Estate is planning to co-fund up to 50% of the costs of getting planning consent for the projects.

The Estate said it was also prepared to fund work which would speed up wind farm delivery, such as action to address problems with the turbine and installation supply chain and connections to the grid - some of the issues faced by wind power companies.

ROME, June 3: Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Tuesday backtracked on a controversial bill that would make illegal immigration a jailable offence after the United Nations and the Vatican criticised the measure.

Berlusconi's new conservative government last month unveiled tough measures aimed at fighting crime and illegal immigration but which critics say risk fuelling xenophobia and racism.

One of the most controversial steps, still to be discussed and approved by parliament, states that illegal entry into Italy is a crime punishable by up to four years in jail.

However Berlusconi said on Tuesday that people should not be prosecuted simply for being illegal immigrants, but their status should be considered an aggravating circumstance if they committed a crime.

WARSAW, June 4 (RIA Novosti) - Poland would agree only to regular inspections by Russian military experts at a planned U.S. anti-missile base in the north of the country, but not to their permanent presence, the Polish Foreign Ministry has said.

The ministry's spokesman, Piotr Paszkowski, said late on Tuesday that Warsaw would never allow the permanent presence of Russian military personnel at the base due to the "past history" of relations between Russia and Poland.

Poland and the United States have been engaged in protracted talks over a U.S. request to place 10 interceptor missiles in northern Poland as part of a U.S. missile shield for Europe and North America against possible attacks from "rogue states," including Iran.

The Pentagon's plans continue to be a major bone of contention in relations between the U.S. and Russia, which considers the project a threat to its national security. Washington has proposed a range of measures to ease Russian concerns, including regular inspections of the base in Poland by Russian military experts.

However, Russia is insisting on the permanent deployment of Russian personnel at the proposed facilities in Poland.

BRUSSELS: Is Europe too friendly to underdogs?

With a key decision expected soon in a European Commission investigation of Intel, the world's largest maker of computer chips, some U.S. critics of Brussels are sharpening a long-running complaint: They say that in a series of disputes involving big U.S. companies, the European antitrust authorities have been too ready to act on complaints from runners-up, particularly American ones like Advanced Micro Devices, which accuses Intel of anticompetitive behavior.

"It's an interesting thing why most of the complainants in these dominance cases in Europe happen to be American," said C. Boyden Gray, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, at a recent panel discussion on antitrust law. "That's where we do see some difficulty" with the European regulatory approach, Gray said, underlining his preference for less interventionist policies.

Advanced Micro Devices is trying to narrow the huge gap between it and Intel in the global market for computer chips, announcing Wednesday that it planned to sell a new device, called Puma, for notebook computers, several weeks ahead of an expected update of Intel's Centrino chip set. (Page 15)

In the next month Romania must prove to the European Commission that it is making some progress against the corruption that has run throughout its politics and public life. It must show that it is dragging its courts and judges farther from the communist era and closer to 21st-century Europe.

The task of convincing Brussels falls on Romania's new Justice Minister, Catalin Marian Predoiu, who faces scepticism, frustration and even anger from Brussels. Since Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU in January 2007 the Commission's reports have noted in alarm that the pair, let in before they were really ready, have lost all incentive to improve, and that in corruption (and in Bulgaria's case, murder by organised crime), their standards are unacceptable. Officials say that if the July reports are bad, sanctions could follow.

Predoiu, a 39-year-old commercial lawyer, takes on a brief that others have failed to master. In Romania's struggles to haul itself out of the era of Nicolae Ceausescu, the dictator executed in 1989, the Justice Ministry has been at the heart of the storm. One of Predoiu's predecessors, Monica Macovei, became a hero in Brussels and at home for her pursuit of corrupt high-level officials and politicians.

A week after it emerged that the telecoms giant had spied on its own employees, German MPs discussed what lawmakers could do to protect people from illegal surveillance. But there was little agreement.

Telekom boss René Obermann may have announced additional training for employees about data retention laws, but that did little to cool the tone of the Bundestag debate on Wednesday, June 4 about the spying scandal.

All the major parties condemned the illegal surveillance at the telecommunications giant, with the Left Party's Petra Pau going furthest, saying it amounted to an intentional violation of the German constitution.

But the partners in the governing grand coalition -- the conservative CDU-CSU and the Social Democrats -- disagreed vehemently over whether anti-surveillance legislation needed to be bolstered to prevent similar incidents in future.

Que fait une "Arge" ("ArbeitsGEmeinschaft", Fusion entre la "Bundesagentur für Arbeit" (agence fédérale du travail) et un organisme communal) quand la pression sur les chômeurs ne suffit pas pour les faire plier à ses exigences ? Elle s'en prend à leurs enfants ! À Fribourg, comme dans d'autres villes, des enfants de parents allocataires de Hartz 4 sont traités comme des chômeurs et mis sous pression, contrairement à la loi. Une mère, son avocat et un activiste prennent position.

Jobless-pupil ? The German unemployment agency puts pressure on minors

What does the German ARbeitsGEmeinschaft do when it isn't able to pressure  unemployed persons into obeying its will ? It puts pressure on their kids ! In Freiburg, as in other towns, children of Hartz 4 assisted parents are treated like unemployed people and put under pressure, against the law. A mother, a lawyer and a militant take position.

Apparently, a 15 years old kid has been asked (illegaly, but how does he know it ?) to come to an interview at the local unemployment agency ; they are asked to provide proofs of school assiduity - else they'll have to look for a job... Will kids of unemployed people be forced to work on the side after school ? Will they be forced to give up diplomas and go for an apprenticeship ? Ah, the crime of being born poor...

Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.

THE top-secret document at the heart of the Lockerbie bombing appeal confirms beyond doubt the bomb timer was supplied to countries other than Libya, Scotland on Sunday can reveal.

The information in the document was a key part of the Crown's case that the timer used in the bomb was supplied only to Libya. It also appears to confirm that the method of attack was typical of a Palestinian terror cell in Germany.

Scotland on Sunday's source confirmed: "The document dispels any doubts about the supply of MST-13s (timers] elsewhere."

He added: "There is considerable detail about the method used to conceal the bomb. The use of a small Semtex bomb concealed inside a Toshiba radio-cassette recorder was not linked to Libyan terror activity, but to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC), the first suspects in the case."

There is growing suspicion among Lockerbie experts that the document could even provide the UK with a way to get Megrahi out of jail without facing a re-trial and thorough examination of aspects of the case that would embarrass the Crown Office and Westminster.