EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Brussels officials have turned to religious VIPs to help spread the gospel of an environmentally friendly society and increase awareness of climate change in their parishes, as well as promoting tolerance between different confessions in Europe.

Twenty high-level representatives - 19 men and one woman - from European Christian, Jewish and Muslim congregations met in Brussels on Monday (5 may) to discuss the sensitive issues of climate change and reconciliation between peoples.

The meeting was co-chaired by European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, Slovenian Prime Minister and current president of the European Council, Janez Jansa, and the president of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Poettering.

Mr Barroso told a press conference that churches, mosques and temples could all play an important role in identifying and implementing solutions to the challenge of climate change.

Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said in an interview that Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence was a mistake as was the EU's recognition of it.

In an interview with Russian state news agency RIA Novosti on Monday, May 5, Schroeder said the declaration had come too early and was thus wrong.

 

It had created new problems without solving old ones, he said.

 

The European Union had succumbed to pressure from the United States on the Kosovo issue. While recognizing Kosovo may benefit US interests, Schroeder said, it was definitely not in Europe's interests.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson has urged Irish farmers to refrain from linking next month's vote on the Lisbon Treaty to ongoing world trade talks.

"I don't think the Doha talks should get mixed up with the Lisbon Treaty or any referendum on it. Rejecting the treaty would not be in Ireland's interests, it wouldn't be in Europe's interests," said Mr Mandelson on Tuesday (6 May).

The commissioner, who represents the EU in the global trade liberalisation negotiations known as the Doha talks, has come under increasing fire from Irish farmers, who say he will undermine their interests during the negotiations.

The Irish Farmers Association (IFA) has delivered up the threat of a No vote in next month's referendum to both the commissioner and the Irish government if their interests are not defended in the talks.

06.05.2008 - 09:28 CET | By Renata Goldirova
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission has dropped its plan to table a piece of legislation granting more powers to the EU's judicial body, Eurojust, after being wrong-footed by a group of 14 member states.

Austria, Belgium, Estonia, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands have come together to table their own proposal - seen as a move to put a lid on anything too ambitious by the commission.

Under the proposal, all national members would enjoy a minimum four-year-long, renewable mandate as well as a minimum set of powers, including the possibility to "undertake an investigation or prosecution of specific acts" and to "set up a joint investigation team".

In addition, they would have "full access" to a number of national databases such as registers on national criminal records and on arrested persons, investigation registers and DNA registers.

After years of warnings, and a spell of hot weather that did nothing to improve the stink of tons of uncollected trash around Naples, the European Commission filed suit against Italy on Tuesday, charging that it had failed to meet its obligation to collect and dispose of its rubbish.

"The piles of uncollected rubbish in the streets of Campania graphically illustrate the threat to the environment and human health that results when waste management is inadequate," Stavros Dimas, the European Union's environment commissioner, said in Brussels, referring to the southern region around Naples. "Italy needs to give priority to putting in place effective waste management plans."

The suit, filed before the European Court of Justice, is aimed at pressing Italy to take more serious action against a problem that has enraged southerners, embarrassed national pride and influenced recent national elections. If the court rules against it, Italy could face substantial fines, more than a dozen years after Naples faced the first of its regular trash crises.

ATHENS: A rash of refugees from Africa, southern Asia and the Middle East has been crossing the Aegean Sea and besieging a cluster of craggy Greek islands.

Local officials have called for the central government to declare a state of emergency on the tiny island of Leros, after the Greek coast guard picked up more than 200 refugees, half of them minors, over the weekend.

The immigrants, Pakistanis, Ethiopians, Iraqis and Somalis, said they had reached Greece by boat from Turkey.

Some were sent to reception centers across the country, while others were released after requesting political asylum, the authorities said.

BBC News has seen the conclusions of research commissioned after the devastating floods of 2007.

The study finds "the risks posed by natural hazards are already rising and are predicted to rise further".

The catalyst for this investigation was the near-loss of a major power switching station at Walham, near Gloucester, in July last year.

It provides electricity for 500,000 homes and businesses in Gloucestershire and acts as a key relay for supplies to south Wales.

Only with emergency work supported by the military was the floodwater kept inches away from overwhelming the plant.

BUDAPEST -- Ostensibly, a rock concert sparked it, reminding us that culture is not the exclusive province of liberals, certainly not here in Europe. A young woman (who knows whether she was just intending to make trouble) walked into a ticket office in the traditionally Jewish 13th District in this Hungarian capital several weeks ago and asked about Hungarica, an obscure extremist far-right band.

The woman said the ticket agents called her a fascist and threw her out. The agents said that she spouted anti-Semitic abuse when told the office didn't handle that event. A little later somebody tossed a Molotov cocktail outside the office. Then a blogger, Tamas Polgar, with the screen name Tomcat urged neo-Nazis to rally at the ticket office, and about 30 turned up on April 7 along with 300 counterdemonstrators. Tomcat called for a second rally, four days later, and about 1,000 more extremists were met that time, across police barricades, by 3,000 antifascists, including the beleaguered Hungarian prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsany, and the former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/arts/design/07anti.html?_r=1&8dpc&oref=login

I told Bush; don't play chess with the freakin' Russians.

The eight-year presidency of Vladimir Putin will come to an end today according to a carefully scripted scenario as his successor Dmitry Medvedev is sworn into office. Mr Putin is almost certain to be named as Prime Minister tomorrow, and many analysts expect him to continue calling the shots.

Mr Medvedev will arrive at the Kremlin at midday local time, where in front of assembled dignitaries and politicians he will swear an oath on the constitution.

Most analysts expect Mr Medvedev to continue, at least initially, the domestic and foreign policy course charted by Mr Putin. "There's an expectation among investors that there will be more of the same," said Roland Nash, head of research at Renaissance Capital in Moscow. "Anything that isn't will be a surprise."

Authorities in Chile have ordered the complete evacuation of two towns after a volcano erupting nearby increased its activity, spewing out lava and ash.

Chaiten volcano in the southern Patagonia region began erupting on Friday for the first time in 450 years.

Ash from the volcano has caused disruption in neighbouring Argentina.

Sitting on the edge of the South American and Nazca tectonic plates, Chile is in one of the most

volcanically-active regions on Earth.

Experts say about 20 of its more than 100 active volcanoes are in danger of erupting at any time.

JERUSALEM: As Israel toasts its 60th anniversary in the coming weeks, rejoicing in Jewish national rebirth and democratic values, the Arabs who make up 20 percent of its citizens will not be celebrating. Better off and better integrated than ever in their history, freer than the vast majority of other Arabs, Israel's 1.3 million Arab citizens are still far less well off than Israeli Jews and feel increasingly unwanted.

On Independence Day, this Thursday, thousands of Israeli Arabs will gather in their former villages to protest what they have come to call the nakba, or catastrophe, meaning Israel's birth. For most Israelis, Jewish identity is central to the state, the reason they are proud to live here, the link they feel with history. But Israeli Arabs, including the most successfully integrated ones, say a new identity must be found for the country's long-term survival.

"I am not a Jew," protested Eman Kassem-Sleiman, a prominent Arab radio journalist with impeccable Hebrew whose children attend a predominantly Jewish school in Jerusalem. "How can I belong to a Jewish state? If they define this as a Jewish state, they deny that I am here."

Flammable oil-like material carried on board by a passenger triggered Monday's bus fire in Shanghai that left three dead and 12 injuries, police said Tuesday.

The police are not able to specify the nature of the oil, saying further investigation is underway.

Not particularly newsworthy in and of itself.  However, today during our break in listening comprehension class, our teacher casually asked us about the train crash near Qingdao, (northeast) China which killed 70 people and injured over 400.  Then she told us that she did not believe the reason for the crash given in the news (i.e. excessive speed over part of a rail line being upgraded for the Olympics), and said she thinks that it was caused by people from Xinjiang, China's northwestern-most province that is inhabited predominantly by the native Muslim Uighur population.  (At least, that's where I thought she said they were from.  In our next class, however, two other students were certain she had said Xizang (Mandarin for Tibet), not Xinjiang.)

I told her, "You know, accidents like this happen in other countries, too," thinking of the derailment in Hyogo, Japan three years ago that killed 107 and injured 460 (the rookie conductor was speeding around a bend so as not to arrive late at the next station), among other accidents.  But she firmly maintained that terrorism was involved.

When I asked her, "Do you think lots of other Chinese have the same suspicions as you do?"  she answered, "Yes."  Then she went on to say that the this bus fire over the weekend was probably also a terrorist act.  She did not mention the news about two terrorist groups that allegedly were broken up in Xinjiang a few weeks ago, but I would not be surprised if that had influenced her thinking.

Searching online to determine just how widespread this conspiracy theory was, I found a partial translation of an article in the "sensationalistic" Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily that also

has suggested a "suicide-style bombing" (自杀式炸巴士) by Xinjiang terrorist groups. ...

Even more scary to the outside world is that the authorities could cover up the fact that the train in the Shandong collusion was the Olympic Games special promotion train. If they can seal off the truth about the Shanghai bus and they can seal off the situation about epidemics, what couldn't they not deceive the Chinese people and the rest of the world on?

This article and the news about the terrorist groups broken up in Xinjiang last month convince me that my teacher said Xinjiang, not Xizang (Tibet).

These accidents are tragic enough in and of themselves.  But as one of my classmates pointed out, if, God forbid, more such incidents should happen before the Olympics, their tragedy will be magnified since it seems likely that suspicion against Uighur and even Tibetan "splittists" will only grow stronger.

A language is a dialect with an army and navy.

Chris Matthews & Tim Russert of MSNBC have said it's over and she's cancelling all of her morning meetings. Does this mean it's really over ? Or is she still gonna hang in there, hoping for a bus to hit Obama...or something ?

But it's intriguing cos the media narrative has changed. Nobody can take her candidacy seriously now, for Obama this is now procession time and re-orient towards McCain.

keep to the Fen Causeway

Click on the image for more background info on what you're seeing here:

On April 15 (top), rivers and lakes are sharply defined against a backdrop of vegetation and fallow agricultural land. The Irrawaddy River flows south through the left-hand side of the image, splitting into numerous distributaries known as the Mouths of the Irrawaddy. The wetlands near the shore are a deep blue green. Cyclone Nargis came ashore across the Mouths of the Irrawaddy and followed the coastline northeast. The entire coastal plain is flooded in the May 5 image (bottom). The fallow agricultural areas appear to have been especially hard hit. For example, Yangôn (population over 4 million) is almost completely surrounded by floods. Several large cities (population 100,000-500,000) are in the affected area. Muddy runoff colors the Gulf of Martaban turquoise.

A violinist who left his 285-year-old instrument in a taxi in the United States is playing a concert to thank the driver who returned it to him.

Philippe Quint is giving a private 30-minute performance on Tuesday in the cab waiting area at Newark Liberty International Airport.

He left his violin, a 1723 Kiesewetter Stradivarius, in a taxi on the way back from the airport last month.

The driver, Mohamed Khalil, got in touch the next day to return it.

Mr Khalil, who was born in Egypt, was given a reward of $100 (£50) by Mr Quint, and was also presented with a medal from the City of Newark.

France may be famed for its fabulous bread but a British baker has secured a surprising contract - to ship thousands of loaves across the channel.

It is not the first request from France for the baking firm, based in the South Yorkshire town of Barnsley.

"I nearly fell off my chair laughing," said director John Foster. "Asking a Brit to make French sticks?"

They will ship some 7,000 soft white loaves for use in toasted sandwiches to France every few months.

Mr Foster, of Foster's Bakery, said he thought that French bakers' strict adherence to tradition was why suppliers seeking a different kind of bread had to turn further afield.

The bicycle. It's the model of green transport and sales of folding ones that fit on trains are stepping up a gear. But as they multiply, so does rush-hour resentment, as commuters and cyclists come to blows.

Dawn is breaking over one commuter-town train station as the daily grind of travelling to work begins. A City type is easy to pick out at the far end of the London-bound platform - he has forgone formal pinstripes for Lycra shorts and a luminous top.

It is by this familiar maneuver that the people who have designed and supported the policies that have brought the class divide back to America - the people who have actually, really transformed our society from an egalitarian into an elitist one - perfume themselves with the essence of honest toil, like a cologne distilled from the sweat of laid-off workers. Likewise do their retainers in the wider world - the conservative politicians and the pundits who lovingly curate all this phony authenticity - become jes' folks, the most populist fellows of them all.

But suppose we read on, and we find the news item about the hedge fund managers who made $2 billion and $3 billion last year, or the story about the vaporizing of our home equity. Suppose we become a little . . . bitter about this. What do our pundits and politicians tell us then? <...>

If Barack Obama or anyone else really cares to know what I think, I will simplify it all down to this. The landmark political fact of our time is the replacement of our middle-class republic by a plutocracy. If some candidate has a scheme to reverse this trend, they've got my vote, whether they prefer Courvoisier or beer bongs spiked with cough syrup. I don't care whether they enjoy my books, or would rather have every scrap of paper bearing my writing loaded into a C-47 and dumped into Lake Michigan. If it will help restore the land of relative equality I was born in, I'll fly the plane myself.

Mr. Frank is the author of "The Wrecking Crew," forthcoming from Metropolitan Books. He will begin a weekly column each Wednesday in the Journal on May 14.

A year after his election win, French President Nicolas Sarkozy's ratings have nosedived amid irritation at his flamboyant lifestyle and economic woes. But some say the French want to have their cake and eat it.

In his victory speech on May 6, 2007, Sarkozy told thousands of people: "I don't have the right to disappoint the country."

But a year on, that's exactly what the French president has done. Just over one third of the population say they support the new president, compared with some two-thirds 12 months ago.

To begin with, French voters were shocked by his hardly statesman-like behaviour with model Carla Bruni whom he married just weeks after divorcing his second wife Cecilia in October. He gave the impression of a man with his mind on ... well, on other things than the business of government.

Topless and dressed in suspenders, she stares from the cover of one of Spain's bestselling soft porn magazines. But this is not another of the scantily clad models who feature every week in Interviú, rather it is the niece of the conservative head of Spain's Catholic church, Cardinal Antonio María Rouco Varela.

Magdalena Rouco Hernández stripped off to embarrass her uncle, who is head of the Spanish Episcopal Conference and also a friend of Pope Benedict XVI.

The mother-of-two posed topless on eight pages of Interviú magazine, whose curious formula consists of generous helpings of female flesh combined with serious investigations.

The 27-year-old, who went to mass every day as a girl, said she chose to do the photoshoot to expose her uncle's "hypocrisy" following her father's death. "My uncle never tires of repeating that the family is sacred and that you have to respect it. But then he does not respect it and abandons his own," she said.