European officials and diplomats are working to establish the scope and control of the EU's future foreign policy, including a new European diplomatic service.

Assuming the union's new Lisbon Treaty is eventually ratified by all 27 member states, then 1 January 2009 should see a very different Europe facing the world.

Two new posts should bring new coherence in Europe's global role:

• A permanent European Council president chairing leaders' summits;
• A new foreign policy chief - a "high representative" - to unify much of the EU's external policies through a new European diplomatic corps.

Outsiders will finally know which telephone number to call in an international crisis.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Tuesday that pressure from Washington over the stationing of US anti-ballistic missiles on Polish soil was a pure negotiating tactic.

"Unofficial and informal mutterings" were more "an element of the negotiations than a serious standpoint," Tusk was quoted by the Polish Press Agency as saying in Warsaw.

Washington was pushing for an end to the political negotiations by mid-July, Gazeta Wyborcza reported Tuesday.

Warsaw should send a signal before the summer holidays that the missile-defence shield would be set up in Poland, the newspaper report said, citing sources close to the negotiations.

If Poland wasn't prepared to host the missiles, the United States would have to find another location for them, the report said.

The Polish standpoint remained unchanged, Tusk said ahead of a trip to Latin America.

ROME: Premier Silvio Berlusconi stressed the need for economic growth and reform of Italy's aging institutions as he outlined his government's plans on Tuesday before a confidence vote in parliament.

Berlusconi sought to restore optimism about the future for Italians, who have been gripped by a sense of malaise and showed little confidence in their politicians. But in his first address to legislators since his election victory last month, he also expressed a need for urgency, saying: "Italy has no time to waste."

"This country must get back on its feet," Berlusconi said, using his electoral slogan. "It has all the potential to start a new path and get into a new era, which must be one of growth."

The address was uncharacteristically moderate for the 71-year-old media magnate, and won applause even from some of the opposition members.

Berlusconi's conservative Cabinet is expected to easily win confidence votes Wednesday in the lower house and Thursday in the Senate, as his forces have comfortable control of parliament.

LONDON - The largest biorefinery in the European Union should be up and running in the first half of next year, consuming a substantial chunk of Britain's exportable wheat surplus, the head of UK biofuels firm Ensus said.

Ensus chief executive Alwyn Hughes told Reuters the plant, which the company is building in Wilton, northeast England, will make bioethanol and a protein rich animal feed co-product from about 1.2 to 1.3 million tonnes of British wheat.

"We are well into construction now and we will be producing ethanol and animal feed in Q1, Q2 next year," he said in comments released on Monday.

Britain traditionally has an exportable wheat surplus of about 2.5 million tonnes.

The plant will the first major bioethanol plant in Britain, producing around 330,000 tonnes of the biofuel, far larger than the current leader, a British Sugar facility in eastern England with an annual capacity of around 55,000 tonnes.

It will also produce 350,000 tonnes of animal feed.

The Irish government has launched its campaign in favour of the EU treaty with the new prime minister, Brian Cowen, calling for a "yes" vote in next month's referendum.

"It would be a very backward step to resign from the strategic political positioning we have established in 35 years of (EU) membership," Mr Cowen said on Monday (12 May). "It would have very serious implications."

The government push comes as the most recent poll, by the Sunday Business Post, put the "yes" camp in front with 38 percent, the "no" side on 28 percent and "don't knows" at 34 percent.

This represents a better showing for the "yes" side than two weeks ago, when a poll by the same newspaper put the yes and "no" vote at 35 and 31 percent, respectively. The undecided remained static.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The EU has stepped up pressure on Moscow and Tbilisi to avoid any further escalation of tension over Georgia's breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Foreign ministers from five EU member states - Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia and Sweden - travelled to Georgia on Monday (12 May) following Russian claims that Georgia is preparing to invade Abkhazia.

Slovenia's Dmitrij Rupel, speaking on behalf of the EU presidency, described the situation in the Caucasus region as "a cause for concern" and asked the two countries to "do their best to prevent any destabilisation."

In addition, Mr Rupel reiterated the union's "full commitment to the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Georgia" and to "a peaceful resolution" of the frozen conflicts.

AMSTERDAM: As a young executive at Procter & Gamble, Jan Bennink regularly brought home large packets of diapers, poured water over them, then cut them open to check on the absorbency of the material inside.

The workaholic Dutchman later prospered as a top executive at Danone, the French food giant, before moving to a struggling Dutch baby food maker, Numico, and turning that company around.

Though his career reads like a business school case study, Bennink became famous in the Netherlands not for his boardroom success, but for cashing in stock options, performance shares and bonuses worth around €80 million, or $124 million, when Danone snapped up Numico for €12.3 billion last year.

The compensation created such a public furor among the egalitarian Dutch that the government is backing an unusual law that takes a first crack at curbing such windfalls. The legislation, drafted by the finance minister, Wouter Bos, was sent to Parliament on Tuesday, where it is expected to pass in time to come into force next year.

The two American military attachés who were expelled from Russia early this month, days ahead of the Victory Day martial parade on Red Square, had made an uninvited visit to a military aviation factory in Siberia that Russia regards as strategic, several American officials said.

The unannounced visit occurred in late March at the Novosibirsk Aviation Production Association in the Name of V.P. Chkalov, a plant that manufactures Sukhoi-34 fighter-bombers, known as Fullbacks by NATO designation. The two officers involved, a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and U.S. Navy lieutenant commander, appeared at the factory's gates and were subsequently questioned by the surprised local authorities, three American officials said.

The Russian government later asked for them to leave the country, a request the United States honored.

Both the United States and Russia have provided very little information about the reasons behind the expulsions. But the more detailed account of the officers' travels and the Russian reaction appeared to undercut in part the assertion last week by Defense Secretary Robert Gates that the attachés had fallen victim to simple tit-for-tat retaliation for two Russian diplomats expelled from the United States.

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 town business and schooling take place in Flemish, true throughout Flanders, but children who cannot speak the language can be prohibited from holiday outings, like hikes and swimming classes.

Labor ministry officials from the Group of Eight (G8) nations on Tuesday agreed to address widening income disparities and the needs of vulnerable workers amid globalization.

Senior labor officials issued a statement at the end of a three-day discussion in the central Japanese city of Niigata that called for effective career consulting and skills development for vulnerable workers, especially the "working poor."

The statement urged the member states to "promote local development and job creation by facilitating the effective use of local resources and policies" for the vulnerable population.

The participating members also adressed the need to keep a well-balanced lifestyle between work and leisure in the rapidly ageing societies through flexible job arrangements and job security.

They also agreed to improve compliance with occupational safety and health regulations, while educating workers about such issues, for a better quality of life after retirement.

NEW DELHI: Instead of blaming India and other developing nations for the rise in food prices, Americans should rethink their energy policy and go on a diet, say a growing number of politicians, economists and academics here.

Criticism of the United States has ballooned in India recently, particularly after the Bush administration seemed to blame India's increasing middle class and prosperity for rising food prices. Critics from India seem to be asking one underlying question: "Why do Americans think they deserve to eat more than Indians?"

The food problem has "clearly" been created by Americans, who are eating 50 percent more calories than the average person in India, said Pradeep Mehta, the secretary general of CUTS Center for International Trade, Economics and Environment, a private economic research organization based in India with offices in Kenya, Zambia, Vietnam and Britain.

If Americans were to slim down to even the middle-class weight in India, "many hungry people in sub-Saharan Africa would find food on their plates," Mehta said. The money Americans spend on liposuction to get rid of their excess fat could be funneled to famine victims instead, he added.

Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, 62, talks to SPIEGEL about why Brazil wants to join OPEC, his country's biofuels program and Europe's fear of Latin America's shift to the left.

SPIEGEL: Mr. President, when you took office five years ago, many feared that you, as a former union leader, would take the country on a socialist course. Instead, you have adopted liberal economic policies which have led the country to spectacular economic growth. Have you abandoned the principles of your past?

Lula: As president, I have to be there for everyone. That's the strength of democracy. Someone who is elected by the people will pay as much attention to the needs of a banker as to those of a street child or a blue-collar worker by seeking a balance among their individual interests. In 2003, we had to make some very tough changes to our government finances, so that Brazilians can now enjoy more stability. At the time, I used part of the political capital that I had to get the country back in shape.

A massive rescue operation yesterday struggled with heavy rain and aftershocks in the search for tens of thousands of people who remained missing following the devastating earthquake which struck central China on Monday.

As President Wen Jiabao toured the disaster area to oversee rescue efforts, the authorities said the death toll had reached 12,000 people in Sichuan Province alone. In some towns, there were more people missing buried under collapsed homes, hospitals and schools than found alive, raising fears that the death toll could soon rise dramatically.

In Mianyang 60 miles east of the epicentrre, 18,645 people remained buried under debris and survivors spent a second night sleeping outside in the rain, some under striped plastic sheeting strung between trees. The government ordered them not to return home, citing safety concerns, and posted security guards outside apartment complexes to keep people out. At least 4,800 people remained buried in Mianzhu, local authorities said.

In Yingxiu, a town of 12,000 people, only 2,000 had been found alive, state television quoted He Biao, an official, as saying. "They could hear people under the debris calling for help, but no one could, because there were no professional rescue teams," he said.

The U.S. government has injected hundreds of foreigners it has deported with dangerous psychotropic drugs against their will to keep them sedated during the trip back to their home country, according to medical records, internal documents and interviews with people who have been drugged.

The government's forced use of antipsychotic drugs, in people who have no history of mental illness, includes dozens of cases in which the "pre-flight cocktail," as a document calls it, had such a potent effect that federal guards needed a wheelchair to move the slumped deportee onto an airplane.

"Unsteady gait. Fell onto tarmac," says a medical note on the deportation of a 38-year-old woman to Costa Rica in late spring 2005. Another detainee was "dragged down the aisle in handcuffs, semi-comatose," according to an airline crew member's written account. Repeatedly, documents describe immigration guards "taking down" a reluctant deportee to be tranquilized before heading to an airport.

In a Chicago holding cell early one evening in February 2006, five guards piled on top of a 49-year-old man who was angry he was going back to Ecuador, according to a nurse's account in his deportation file. As they pinned him down so the nurse could punch a needle through his coveralls into his right buttock, one officer stood over him menacingly and taunted, "Nighty-night."

(via atrios)

Dublin - Earthworms provide services to Ireland worth over €700-million (about R829-million) a year, according to a government-commissioned study on Monday.

The environment ministry's 197-page report, Benefits and Costs of Biodiversity in Ireland, investigates the social and economic aspects of biodiversity in the country.

"By drawing a comparison between the value of ecosystem services provided by biodiversity and the cost of implementing biodiversity protection policies, the authors established a marginal value of biodiversity to Ireland or at least €2,6-billion a year," said Environment Minister John Gormley.

"The report has estimated that the value of the humble earthworm to Ireland to be in the region of €700-million per annum for the services it provides in removing dead matter and releasing nutrients back to the soil."

Ireland has a national herd of about seven million cattle and the report says worms perform a "valuable function" in dung burial in a situation where a cow can produce over nine tonnes of waste per year.

For half a century, Germany was divided by an internal border, running between democratic West Germany and communist East Germany. Now, 18 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the nature that found refuge in no-man's-land may finally be given official protection.

 A stretch of the Green Belt that divides Germany and provides a haven for wildlife. The "inner German border," which separated East and West Germany, stretched 1,400 kilometers (879 miles) from the Baltic Sea down to the Czech Republic. It was covered in barbed wire, surrounded by mines and booby trapped with automatic spring guns, while soldiers patrolled the barrier intent on preventing any East German citizens escaping to the West.

At the same time, this strange border developed a completely different function: It became a haven for wildlife. The no-man's-land that emerged, ranging from 60 to 200 meters wide, provided the ideal conditions for the flourishing of flora and fauna. Up to 600 endangered species, including the black stork and the lady's slipper orchid, thrived in this unusual terrain.

Then the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and Germany was reunited. There were immediate attempts to jump in and fill the void with buildings, streets and farmland. Motorways and train tracks were even laid in some places. But Germany's environmentalists soon took action. They campaigned to protect the area, known as the Green Belt. It now forms part of a European Green Belt winding its way along the route of the former Iron Curtain from the north of Finland down to the Adriatic Sea.

BARCELONA, Spain: Spain's worst drought in decades forced the proud city of Barcelona to start shipping in drinking water Tuesday, an unprecedented step that business leaders bemoan as a public relations nightmare for one of Europe's top tourist destinations.

A Panamanian-flagged tanker loaded with water docked in Spain's second-largest city, launching a mission by an emergency, six-vessel flotilla scheduled to operate for at least three months.

Tuesday's scene was humbling for Catalonia, the capital of which is Barcelona, with more than 100 journalists crowded at the dock to record the water delivery.

The region likes to say it stands out from the rest of Spain for its efficiency and economic might. But it has been among the regions hardest hit by Spain's worst springtime drought since record-keeping began 60 years ago.

France has long battled against the Anglophone cultural invasion and now it has thrown down a virtual gauntlet. Larousse, the French encyclopaedia created more than 150 years ago, is launching its own - it would say improved - version of Wikipedia.

Its first, free-access, online encyclopaedia will have the same contributor function but, to try to surmount the inherent problem of unreliability of articles, which can be modified by anyone at any time, Larousse has introduced some constraints.

Users who want to contribute have to sign up and their names will then appear on the article they submit. Unlike on Wikipedia, anonymous contributions are not allowed, and once written, contributions become protected.

Alongside the user-written pieces, Larousse will be making available 150,000 articles from its universal encyclopaedia, plus 10,000 images. Larousse is promising more in the future, along with the inclusion later this year of hundreds of video clips from channels such as National Geographic.

The Pope's chief astronomer says that life on Mars cannot be ruled out.

Writing in the Vatican newspaper, the astronomer, Father Gabriel Funes, said intelligent beings created by God could exist in outer space.

Father Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory near Rome, is a respected scientist who collaborates with universities around the world.

The search for forms of extraterrestrial life, he says, does not contradict belief in God.

A plan for a manned spacecraft has been announced by the European firm EADS.

Its Astrium division has designed a variant of its space station freighter that could also transport astronauts.

Limited details were released in Bremen, Germany, on Tuesday; further information and a mock-up are expected at the Berlin Air Show this month.

Europe does not currently possess its own human space transportation system and is reliant on the Americans and the Russians to get its people into orbit.

How to keep the lights on when all is still and the local windmill won't budge? A small Norwegian island testing a way to store wind-generated energy for calm days may have found the answer.

The tiny, windswept island of Utsira, situated off Norway's southwestern coast, is home to what is said to be the world's first full-scale system for cleanly transforming surplus wind power into hydrogen.

Perched atop a 40-metre-high wind turbine on a perfectly windstill day, technician Inge Linghammer explains that at times like this or on days when the gales whipping the unsheltered island get too strong the windmill shuts down and stops pumping out power.

"You need to have back-up power when this happens," he says, nodding towards the motionless blades.

A seal has been caught on camera trying to have sex with a penguin.

The roughly 240-pound seal subdued the 30-pound adult penguin by lying on it. The hapless bird of unknown sex struggled, rapidly flapping its flippers and attempting to stand and flee, without luck.

The seal then alternated between resting on the penguin and thrusting its pelvis at the bird in vain attempts to insert its penis for 45 minutes.

More crap journalism from the IHT.

"There is this idea that if we just buy more products that are green, we'll be fine and everything will just go on," [Colin Beavan, the so-called "no impact man," who - as an experiment - lived a completely carbon-neutral life in a New York apartment with his wife, daughter and dog for a year] said. "But the fact of the matter is, to control emissions we have to look at lifestyle change. And that doesn't mean just using differently, it means using less."

Looked at from the perspective of carbon emissions, the fashionista version of green has its limits. <...>

Ultimately green is not an aesthetic. Indeed the best way to lower the carbon footprint of your home, Allwood says, it to turn down the heat.

"If you're not wearing a woollen sweater indoors in winter, your heating is set too high," he said. <...>

Said Beavan, the no-impact man: "Some companies are really trying to make greener products: They'll make a lamp made with LED bulb, but the whole ethos is that you'll buy it cause it's au courant and fashionable, and then get a new one when it's out of style."