In an effort to speed up cases against companies accused of price-fixing, the European Union approved offering out-of-court settlements. In 2007, the EU levied 3.3 billion euros ($5.2 billion) in antitrust fines.

Companies caught operating illegal price-fixing cartels will get a chance to avoid lengthy court procedures and settle the cases, following a European Commission decision on Monday, June 30.

The new method "will reinforce deterrence by helping the (European) Commission deal more quickly with cartel cases, freeing up resources to open new investigations," EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said in a statement.

The European Commission is responsible for enforcing the bloc's competition laws.

Officials say that companies which the commission has found guilty of price-fixing often challenge the verdict in the European court -- not to dispute their guilt, but to get the fine reduced. This has forced commission officials to focus on the court cases rather than on further investigations.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski said he will not ratify the European Union's reform treaty. Ireland's rejection of the Lisbon Treaty last month makes the ratification process a waste of time, he said.

Europe's unity over the reform treaty continued to unravel this week after Poland's president seemed set to abandon his country's approval of the EU's reform treaty.

"At the moment the question of the treaty is pointless," Kazynski told the Polish newspaper Dziennik.

Poland's parliament approved the treaty in April, but Kazynski's signature is needed to finalize the ratification.

EUOBSERVER / WEEKLY AGENDA (30 June - 6 July) - On 1 July France takes over chairmanship of the six-month rotating presidency of the council of the European Union from the out-going EU presidency, Slovenia.

France takes up the helm during one of the EU's - and the world's - most difficult periods in many years as the twin oil and food crises eclipse almost every other policy agenda item, and the fall-out of the negative result in the Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty leaves much of France's plans for its moment in the European spotlight not quite on the shelf but certainly diminished in import.

France takes over the EU presidency on Tuesday

On Tuesday, there will be a working meeting concerning the programme of the French

Presidency between the members of the European Commission and the French president, prime minister and members of the French government.

But the French presidency really kicks off with its first major event, tackling one of the biggest issues on its plate, the food crisis.

The US still has dozens of nuclear war heads stationed throughout Europe, including an estimated 20 in Germany. Yet, hardly anyone thinks this makes sense any more -- apart from those at Germany's Defense Ministry.

Thomas Kossendey, Germany's deputy defense minister, usually has a broad smile on his face when he walks up to speak at the lectern in the Bundestag, the German parliament's lower house. Kossendey is the kind of politician who likes to add a dash of irony to his parliamentary contributions.

Last Wednesday, however, he was in no mood for jokes. As members of parliament debated the stationing of US nuclear weapons in Germany, he seemed somewhat tormented and made sure to stick strictly to his script.

The chances of Germany's grand coalition reaching a consensus on nuclear energy are dwindling. The conservative Christian Democrats want to keep existing nuclear power plants running longer, while the center-left Social Democrats insist on pushing through the phase-out plan.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel hasn't exactly been getting rave reviews from the German business community lately. Executives at corporations and industry groups gripe that the chancellor, who is head of the conservative Christian Democrats, has abandoned her program of reforms and is kowtowing to her coalition partners, the Social Democrats. They call her the "feel-good chancellor."

 The Biblis nuclear power station. The captains of industry were, therefore, all the more pleasantly surprised when Merkel took up one of the corporate world's favorite issues at a recent meeting of the party's Economic Council. "I believe it is wrong to rush into shutting down our nuclear power plants," Merkel said to enthusiastic applause. "Whenever possible, we must reexamine the decision to abandon nuclear energy."

The reports of Merkel's latest shift had hardly been released before officials from both parties were presenting the subject as a hot campaign issue for the next federal election in 2009. CDU General Secretary Ronald Pofalla promptly defined nuclear energy as the "eco-energy of the CDU" and released an environmental position paper calling for Germany's nuclear power plants to remain in operation for longer than originally planned. The Social Democrats were just as prompt in opposing the conservative position. Members of the SPD parliamentary group said that apparently the CDU, and its Bavarian sister party, the CSU, had finally mutated "into a nuclear sect."

Russian prosecutors today began questioning the jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky on a new set of embezzlement charges, which would appear to augur badly for hopes of his early release.

Dmitry Medvedev, the new President, has yet to make his position clear regarding the former oligarch, widely seen as a political prisoner. Observers say that the next steps in the case will show how serious Medvedev really is about battling what he has called Russia's "legal nihilism".

Now in a remand prison in Chita, 4,000 miles east of Moscow, Khodorkovsky was charged all over again, together with his business partner, Platon Lebedev.

"Investigators of the Main Investigation Department have brought new charges against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev: charges of large-scale misappropriation and legalisation of money earned through criminal activity," the Prosecutor General's office said.

The man wanted over the killing of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya is hiding in western Europe, Russia's chief investigator has said.

Politkovskaya, a prominent Kremlin critic, was shot dead outside her home in the capital on 7 October 2006.

Thirty-four-year-old Chechnya resident Rustam Makhmudov is believed to have fired the fatal shot.

Last month, three men - who all come from Chechnya - were charged over Politkovskaya's murder.

Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makhmudov - brothers of Mr Makhmudov - and Sergey Khadzhikurbanov are expected to go on trial soon.

French army chief of staff General Bruno Cuche resigned today after a soldier fired live ammunition instead of blanks at a weekend military show and injured 17 people, the presidential office said.

President Nicolas Sarkozy had pledged to react rapidly and severely and to seek explanations from the army.

"The President, the head of the armies, has accepted the resignation presented by army General Bruno Cuche, head of the land army," said a statement from Sarkozy's office.

Cuche answers to a higher-ranking officer in charge of the overall armed forces. Sarkozy is the ultimate head of the armed forces in France.

Conventional wisdom treated Dmitry Medvedev's inauguration as president of the Russian Federation as a continuation of President Vladimir Putin's two terms of Kremlin dominance and assertive foreign policy.

A visit to Moscow with an opportunity to meet leading personalities of the political world, as well as representatives of various age groups in business and intellectual circles, convinced me that this judgment is oversimplified and premature.

For one thing, the emerging power structure in Moscow seems more complex than conventional wisdom holds. It was always doubtful why, if his primary objective was to retain power, Putin, at the height of a popularity that would have allowed him to amend the Constitution to extend his term, would choose the complicated and uncertain route of becoming prime minister.

My impression is that a new phase of Russian politics is under way. The statement that the president designs foreign and security policy, and the prime minister implements parts of it, has become the mantra of Russian officials from Medvedev and Putin down. I encountered no Russian in or out of government who doubted that some kind of redistribution of power is taking place, although they were uncertain of its outcome.

Like its German competitor Siemens, France's Alstom Group is alleged to have used a system of bribes to buy its way into contracts worldwide. But in France politicians and the media have shielded the company.

 French President Nicolas Sarkozy almost single-handedly saved Alstom from bankruptcy. Pictured here is the company's new high-speed AGV train, the planned successor to the TGV.

The fax was sent in 1998, a time now long past. The corruption scandal that would consume German electronics and engineering giant Siemens was still in the distant future, and public trust in the big names of European industry was still intact.

The fax, from a bank in Liechtenstein, was sent to Oehri Treuhand, a Liechtenstein foundation, and Gerry Oehri, the head of the foundation. The bank wanted Oehri to explain a few things about one of his discreet companies.

Spain's Defence Minister, Carme Chacon, resumed command with a flourish this week after taking six weeks' maternity leave, and announced a clean sweep of all the military top brass.

Before taking time to get to know the country's top generals personally, Ms Chacon said she would remove Spain's most senior officer, General Felix Sanz, the defence chief of staff, in addition to the chiefs of all three armed forces. Her action reportedly defies the advice of her socialist predecessor Jose Antonio Alonso, who urged her to keep General Sanz in post, and the private opinion of the Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

Her wholesale replacement of chiefs of the army, navy and air force was sweetened with expressions of "admiration and pride" in their work, and a desire to count on their "wise advice". She did not name their replacements.

Turkish police have arrested two retired top generals they believe were members of a state-backed gang suspected of a slew of high-profile killings and a plot to murder the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk.

The former military police chief Sener Eruygur and Hursit Tolon, former army number two, were among 25 people taken into custody in Ankara early yesterday in the latest twist in investigations that began last year.

Dozens of people - including another retired general and a prominent ultra-nationalist lawyer - are already in custody on charges of "provoking armed rebellion against the government".

Nicolas Sarkozy's attempts to get France's presidency of the EU off to a flying start with a carefully orchestrated television interview have been undermined since footage of him losing his cool in front of the camera became an instant internet hit.

France 3, the state TV station which broadcast Sarkozy's hour-long interview last night, said it had ordered an immediate internal investigation into the leaking of the tape, which by this afternoon had already been watched more than 440,000 times.

The footage, recorded in the minutes before the prime time interview, shows a visibly irritated Sarkozy struggling to maintain his calm as tensions between the President and state television employees erupt onto the set.

Enraged at the perceived snub by a technician who, while pinning a microphone to his shirt, appears not to have heard Sarkozy address him, the president gives in to a barely controlled outburst of anger.

France's six-month leadership of the EU began turbulently Tuesday, July 1 with President Sarkozy involved in a bitter war of words with the EU's trade chief and Poland refusing to sign the embattled Lisbon Treaty.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy faced mounting troubles as his country assumed the rotating six-month EU presidency on Tuesday, July 1 with grand pledges of moving beyond the crisis triggered by the recent Irish rejection of the treaty meant to reform the 27-nation bloc.

 

The first sign of trouble came early Tuesday when Polish President Lech Kaczynski Kaczynski said it would be "pointless" signing the Lisbon treaty following its rejection by Irish voters in a referendum on June 12. The treaty, intended to overhaul the bloc's institutions, needs the backing of all 27 member states to come into force.

 

Kaczynski, a Eurosceptic, helped negotiate the treaty but his party is now in opposition. Prime Minister Donald Tusk said ratification of the Lisbon Treaty was in Poland's interest.

The French government has budgeted a record-breaking 190 million euros ($300 million) for its six-month EU presidency. The sum is 16 times what the British Foreign Office spent on its presidency in 2005.

The French government has not discussed what the money would be spent on, or whether competitive bids were issued for contracts granted by the office of President Nicolas Sarkozy, according to the French internet daily MediaPart, which initially broke the story.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Jean-Pierre Jouyet said that the large sum was necessitated by expenditures linked to the union's expansion to 27 members.

The budget "corresponds to that of a presidency for an enlarged Europe," Jouyet said, adding that this made comparisons to the costs of previous EU presidencies meaningless.

Ireland's rejection of the EU reform treaty has presented France with a weighty challenge at the start of its six-month presidency. DW-WORLD.DE asked EU experts about the options for the months ahead.

Just days after taking over the rotating EU presidency on July 1, French President Nicolas Sarkozy is set to fly to Dublin for talks over the way forward after Ireland's rejection of the Lisbon Treaty.

It's a crucial visit, according to Hugo Brady, from the London-based Centre for European Reform. And one that the Irishman believes could go either way. "Sarkozy is unpredictable. The trip could make things worse if he's impolitic. But it could also be the start of a way back, an escape from europaralysis."

The reform treaty, which, in part, aims to streamline decision-making in the enlarged 27-member bloc, needs the agreement of all members to come into effect. So what options are open to the EU?

During a one-hour television address, the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, promised to "protect Europeans" during France's time at the EU helm. The French EU presidency, which begins Tuesday (1 July), is saddled with some of the biggest conundrums to face the bloc in years: Ireland's rejection of the Lisbon treaty and the climate of growing discontent among citizens towards what they see as the EU's poor response to growing food and fuel prices.

The Eiffel tower will be lit up in the colours of Europe every evening in the next six months.

"We have to profoundly change our way of building Europe," Mr Sarkozy said during his talk on TV channel France 3 on Monday (30 June).

"There is something wrong, Europe worries today and even worse, [European] citizens are wondering whether in the end they are not better protected at the national rather than at the European level," he added.

Consequently, "we must not be afraid of the word protection... We have to reflect on how to turn Europe into a means of protecting Europeans in their everyday lives," he argued.

The plans were grandiose. But now that Ireland has rejected the Lisbon Treaty, Nicolas Sarkozy will have to scale back his goals for the French EU presidency. His answer? Frenetic activity.

It was a different looking Eiffel Tower that Parisians saw on Monday night: Lit a deep blue, there was a circle of 12 stars dotting its middle. And on Tuesday, the first day of French President Nicolas Sarkozy's six month stint as holder of the European Union presidency, there is more to come. At 6:30 in the evening, a ceremony will be held at the Arc de Triomphe marking the transfer of the office. Later, Sarkozy will receive President of the European Parliament Hans-Gerd Pöttering (more...) and European Commission President José Manuel Barroso. Then comes a gala dinner with European Commissioners in the Élysée Palace -- everything as stately as it gets.

 The Eiffel Tower was lit up on Monday night in honor of France taking over the rotating EU presidency. But it's not just France taking the EU's center stage on Tuesday. It is Sarkozy himself. The French president, with his outsized ego, boorish on-the-job persona and jam-packed agenda, will for the next half year be the political face of Europe's 27-member club.

And a first glance, it looks like the hyperactive Sarkozy is not planning to slow down any time soon. Just the first four weeks is full of trips and appearances: A speech before the European Parliament in Strasbourg on July 10; the Mediterranean Summit in Paris on July 13 followed by the EU-Africa Summit on the 25th; plus four different European Commission meetings between now and July 25. As if that weren't enough, France is hosting no fewer than eight minister-level mini-summits -- with those responsible for space exploration even flying off to visit the rocket launch pad in Kourou, French Guyana.

It is no longer contested that energy is a legitimate security issue. But can a military alliance like NATO address energy security? Perhaps, argues Johannes Varwick, but NATO itself must change in order to do so.

 A US soldier guards an Iraqi oil well. Long gone are the days when raw materials like oil and gas were considered strictly economic goods. Numerous fossil fuel-rich countries struggle with political instability, and new security risks are posed by the suspension or shortage of global energy resources. Energy supplies have been disrupted for strategic reasons (like Russia's interruption of the gas supply to Ukraine in January 2006) and we have witnessed the use of resources as a strategic weapon by undemocratic problem states. Anti-Western energy-producer alliances have formed, for example between Venezuela and Iran, and then there is the threat of international terrorism to energy supplies. Not least, we face the global environmental problems that result from the use of fossil fuels. Climate change could cause hitherto unseen migration, as well as the outbreak of conflict over food, water, and energy. For the first time, in April 2007 at Great Britain's urging, the UN Security Council addressed the implications of energy policy and climate change for security policy.

ZANESVILLE, Ohio: With an eye toward courting evangelical voters, Senator Barack Obama arrived here on Tuesday to present a plan to expand on President George W. Bush's program of investing federal money into religious-based initiatives that are intended to fight poverty and perform community aid work.

"The fact is, the challenges we face today -- from saving our planet to ending poverty -- are simply too big for government to solve alone," Obama is expected to say, according to a prepared text of his remarks. "We need all hands on deck."

On the second day of a weeklong tour intended to highlight his values, Obama traveled to the battleground state of Ohio on Tuesday to present his proposal to get religious charities more involved in government programs. He is scheduled to give an afternoon speech here outside of the Eastside Community Ministry, a program providing food, clothes and youth ministry.

"Now, I know there are some who bristle at the notion that faith has a place in the public square," Obama intends to say. "But the fact is, leaders in both parties have recognized the value of a partnership between the White House and faith-based groups."

Wrong on Russia, by Stephen Cohen

Global security and propaganda, By Dmitry Rogozin

Unconventional wisdom about Russia, by Kissinger

So go read them.

"Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.

Tyson Homosexual easily won his semifinal for the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials and seemed to save something for the final later Sunday.

His wind-aided 9.85 seconds was a fairly cut-and-dry performance compared to what happened a day earlier. On Saturday, Homosexual misjudged the finish in his opening heat and had to scramble to finish fourth, then in his quarterfinal a couple of hours later, ran 9.77 to break the American record that had stood since 1999. [...]

Homosexual didn't get off to a particularly strong start in the first semifinal, but by the halfway mark he had established a comfortable lead. He slowed somewhat over the final 10 meters-nothing like the way-too-soon complete shutdown that almost cost him Saturday. Asked how he felt, Homosexual said: "A little fatigued."

Mongolia imposed a four-day state of emergency after riots in the capital, Ulan Bator, by protesters alleging the June 29 elections won by the ruling party were rigged.

The headquarters of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party was set on fire yesterday, Badral Bayasal, an official with the Mongolian National Mining Association, said by telephone from the city today. Supporters of the Mongolian Democratic Party demonstrated after preliminary results of the ballot showed the MPRP winning a majority in parliament.

...

Mongolia's two main parties campaigned for the election on promises to share profits from mining in the country, which has deposits of gold, coal, iron ore and zinc. The MPRP has been dogged by demands from opposition lawmakers in the landlocked nation of almost 3 million people to distribute more of the wealth generated by mineral reserves.

The number of people out of work in the world's leading economies is expected to rise by 9 per cent to 34.8m by the end of next year under the impact of the credit crunch, the Organisation for Economic Growth and Development reported on Wednesday.

Rising unemployment, however, should dampen fears of inflationary pay rises as workers worry more about retaining their job than using their bargaining power to increase real pay.

"The unemployment rate in the US for example was expected to rise to 6.1 per cent next year a percentage point higher than its recent 10 year average.

The average unemployment rate in Europe by comparison was expected to "remain essentially unchanged during the next two years". The biggest European rises in the jobless rates were likely to occur in Iceland, Ireland, Spain and Turkey while unemployment rates would fall in the Czech Republic, Poland and the Slovak Republic, said the OECD.

Employment growth has already slowed in the OECD area declining from 1.7 per cent in 2006 to 1.5 per cent last year. It is expected to fall to just 0.7 per cent this year and 0.5 per cent in 2009. Increases in the size of the labour force, partly driven by increased migration, however means that the jobless total will rise over the next two years, said Mr Gurría.

As investors digest a recent spate of rating downgrades for the bond insurers, concerns have surfaced about risks that could affect the last remaining insurers with triple-A credit ratings and further darken the outlook for the troubled industry.

Together with heavy losses on subprime mortgage-related bonds they guaranteed, bond insurers such as Ambac and MBIA are exposed to problems in their so-called "guaranteed investment contracts" (GIC) businesses. These problems could result in additional claims on capital at a time when they can least sustain them.

Meanwhile, FSA, one of the last triple-A rated bond insurers because it sidestepped writing protection on so-called collateralised debt obligations, also faces potential problems in its GIC business.

The deepening crisis for the bond insurance industry threatens banks with further writedowns on derivatives contracts they hold with the insurers, and investors with further downgrades and market losses on insured bonds they own.

Meanwhile, GIC funds are also facing pressure from investors pulling out their money, in some cases forcing the GIC to sell assets into distressed markets.

These investors are often structured finance vehicles that are themselves under pressure from market losses and have hit triggers that force them to unwind. Morgan Stanley estimates MBIA, Ambac and FSA have around $15bn of CDO-related funds invested in GICs.

We told you so." The Bank for International Settlements has long warned of the dangers of unrestrained credit growth and asset price inflation. In this year's annual report, ... it felt free to point out how right it had been.

As readers of BIS annual reports would expect, this one gives good answers to four big questions.

First, why did it happen? The report states that "loans of increasingly poor quality have been made and then sold to the gullible and greedy, the latter often relying on leverage and short-term funding to further increase their profits. This alone is a serious source of vulnerability. Worse, the opacity of the process implies that the ultimate location of the exposures is not always evident."

Obviously, internal governance and external oversight were deficient. "How," asks the report, "could a huge shadow banking system emerge without provoking clear statements of official concern?" How, indeed? Moreover, one of the features of the crisis is how widely distributed securitised loans turned out to be. The resulting uncertainty about who owns them, along with parallel uncertainty about what they are worth, has blighted money markets for almost a year (see charts).

Yet, insists the report, the drivers were not so much new inventions as old errors: a long period of easy money, asset price inflation and rapid credit growth.

This then brings us to a second question: how big are the risks now?

The answer is: very large. This is partly because the world economy is poised between deflationary financial and house-price collapses in several high-income countries and an inflationary global commodity price boom. Just as striking are the many huge uncertainties.

The divergence in possible outcomes is so large that nobody can credibly claim to know what lies ahead. The combination of a massive re-rating of risk with global inflationary pressure is unprecedented and still quite scary.

The third big question is what policies we need right now. The BIS view is that the right bias in monetary policy is towards being "much less accommodating". Better, it suggests, a sharp global slowdown than a big inflationary upsurge.

The BIS also stresses the need for policymakers and private actors to recognise reality: "If asset prices are unrealistically high, they must eventually fall. If saving rates are unrealistically low, they must rise. And if debts cannot be serviced, they must be written off."

The most interesting part of the BIS analysis of the lessons is that it focuses not on what is new - the paraphernalia of the modern financial system - but on what is old - "the inherent procyclicality of the financial system and excessive credit growth". The important point here is that fiddling with details of the regulatory regime or tightening supervision of individual institutions is not the heart of the matter. What matters is the operation of the system as a whole.

This is why the BIS takes such a strong stance on the need to tighten monetary policy when credit growth soars and asset prices explode, even if that temporarily reduces inflation below target levels. This, argues the BIS, would be a more symmetrical use of policy instruments. It is also why the report stresses "macroprudential" policies. These would focus not on the misbehaviour of specific institutions but rather on systemic risks, such as their shared exposure to common shocks and possible adverse interactions among and between institutions and markets.

A catfish met an unpleasant fate in Germany when it tried to eat a football floating in the river. Police patrolling the Main River say it's the weirdest case they've seen in 30 years.

 A police handout photo showing the catfish found in a sluice near the southern city of Würzburg. A giant catfish died trying to eat a soccer ball and was found floating in a river with the ball wedged in its large snout, police in Germany said.

The two-meter long fish was found on Monday in a sluice in the Main River with its teeth sunk into the blue and white plastic ball.

A last drink proved one too many for a 78-year-old Swede who fell asleep while trying to row home - from Denmark.

Reports say the man had been drinking in the Danish town of Helsingor but found he did not have enough money for the ferry home to Sweden.

Instead of waiting until morning, he stole a dinghy and tried to row the 5km (three miles) across the Oresund Strait to Helsingborg, police said.

But he fell asleep half-way and drifted until he was rescued by the coastguard.

It may sound funny, but for some Bavarian and Austrian men finger wrestling is no joke. They take it very seriously: For them it's about prestige and honor.

In the old days, people say, it was used to settle disputes. Today it has the standing of a national sport in the Alpine region of southern Germany and neighboring Austria.

But anyone who thinks Fingerhakeln -- "finger wrestling" -- is some kind of amusing time-waster Bavarian men engage in after a few too many beers down at the village inn is very mistaken. The sport's practitioners take it very seriously.

The Royal Air Force has declared its Typhoon jets multi-role capable on the 1st July 2008.

Yep, soon expected in Afghanistan 'winning hearts and minds'.

The struggle of man against tyranny is the struggle of memory against forgetting.(Kundera)

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-reign-of-spain-european-champions-of-nearly-every thing-857602.html

A pleasure

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude

Next week California will try to wrest cell phones from the hands of drivers, telling everyone from movie starlets and dot-com millionaires to surfers and soccer moms that conversations behind the wheel must be on a headset.

Several U.S. states and some two dozen countries around the world already have restrictions on mobile phones while driving but now such a law has come to California--where the car is king and much of life is spent on the famously snarled freeways.

Californians interviewed by Reuters mostly supported the law requiring hands-free phones in cars and outlawing cell phones entirely for drivers under 18, which takes effect on Tuesday--though they were puzzled by a loophole that allows seemingly more dangerous text messaging.