Nine EU states are getting ready to reinforce their legal co-operation at the EU level by agreeing a common divorce law, by-passing Sweden's veto and posing questions about a "two-speed Europe."

France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, Luxembourg and Romania are set to implement the so-called enhanced co-operation procedure, while other countries - including Germany, Belgium, Portugal and Lithuania - are also currently considering joining the initiative, according to the AFP news agency.

International divorces amount to some 20 percent of all divorces taking place in the EU each year.

If the nine countries go ahead, it will be the first time the legal mechanism - allowing a minimum of eight EU states to present the European Commission with a demand for "enhanced co-operation" - will have been activated.

Provided that the commission accepts the move, it then has to be approved by a qualified majority of the bloc's 27 member states.

A chemical commonly found in baby bottles and teethers that has been taken off the shelves in Canada is safe for European infants, the EU's food safety monitors have found.

The levels of bisphenol A, or BPA, found in such items is safe for infants in small amounts, according to a European Food Safety Authority (EFSA)scientific opinion issued on Wednesday (23 July), which stated that the substance "provides a sufficient margin of safety for the protection of the consumer, including fetuses and newborns."

Bisphenol A, a chemical commonly found in baby bottles, is safe in small amounts, European food safety experts have found

"After exposure to BPA, the human body rapidly metabolises and eliminates the substance," the report added. "The exposure of the human foetus to BPA would be negligible because the mother rapidly metabolises and eliminates BPA from her body."

"The scientists also concluded that newborns are similarly able to metabolise and eliminate BPA at doses below 1 milligram per kilogram of body weight per day."

Controversy surrounding the chemical exploded in April this year, when EFSA's Canadian counterpart, Health Canada, released an assessment of BPA that concluded it may pose some risk to infants and proposed reclassifying the chemical as "toxic" to human health and the environment.

With summer break having arrived, German Chancellor Angela Merkel sat down with the press on Wednesday. Her government, she insisted, was still on the right track. With her personal approval rates soaring, one can forgive her optimism.

 German Chancellor Angela Merkel answered the questions of the press on Wednesday. It was as if the months of political bickering between the Social Democrats and Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats never happened. Forget about the only recently ended quarrel over minimum wage. Ignore the recent flare up over nuclear energy. And complaints about the CDU not allowing their coalition partners from the SPD to take any credit? Not important.

On Wednesday, at her traditional press conference just before the government goes on summer break next week, Merkel insisted that her cabinet cooperated well. "As for how we work together," she said, "I think we do so very, very well; the various ministers with their different profiles and possibilities -- whether or not they come from the Union (eds: CDU plus the Christian Social Union) or the SPD -- all have the possibility to take their part of the credit."

But even as Merkel ran down a list of her government's accomplishments this year and pointed to the challenges remaining ahead, she also had a message for her coalition: With general elections still well over a year away, it is far too early to begin campaigning. "After the summer break, we need to continue working," she said. "There will be plenty of time for campaigning, but not in the coming months."

The EU has rebuked Iran for the sentencing of nine people to death by stoning even as a new report by a European rights group shows the number of executions worldwide is on the rise.

The European Union said this week it was deeply worried about news that Iran had sentenced nine women and one man to death by stoning for separate adultery convictions in different Iranian cities.

A statement issued by France, which currently holds the EU presidency, on Thursday, July 24, reminded Tehran it had pledged to introduce a moratorium on stoning and urged it to abide by its commitments and international standards.

"The European Union calls on the Iranian government and parliament to abolish, in law and in practice, recourse to cruel and degrading punishment and, in particular the use of stoning, as a method of execution," the statement read.

Libya's state shipping company says it has halted oil shipments to Switzerland in protest at the brief arrest of leader Muammar Gaddafi's youngest son.

It threatened further action if the Swiss did not apologise for the arrest.

Geneva police held Hannibal Gaddafi for two days after he and his pregnant wife allegedly hit two of their staff.

The couple face charges of bodily harm, threatening behaviour and coercion. They have denied any wrongdoing over the alleged incident on 15 July.

The UK's business department, BERR, has been accused of trying to sabotage Europe's rules on renewable energy.

BERR is trying to change a line in an EU Directive which mandates that energy sources such as wind and wave should get priority connections to the grid.

Problems with getting electricity grid connection to windy sites is one of the biggest reasons for the UK failing on its current renewables targets.

Greenpeace says BERR has been caught "red-handed" undermining clean energy.

BERR's attempt to weaken the terms of the mandate was revealed in a leaked document.

The European Union experienced a record number of food safety warnings in 2007, the EU's health commissioner has revealed.

In its annual report, the EU's Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF), released by commissioner Androulla Vassiliou on Wednesday (23 July), recorded 7,354 notifications of health risks from food or animal feed that were passed on to the European Commission in 2007 - an "all-time high", according to the commissioner, and up 13.5 percent on the previous year.

Fish products were the biggest offenders with some 21% alerts originating with seafood

In 2006, the total came to 6,840 such notifications.

However, Ms Vassiliou cautioned that an increase in warnings does not mean a decline in food safety.

"Does the increase of notifications signify that our food is getting less safe? No, it doesn't. It may well mean the contrary," she said.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - EU member states remain divided over a European Commission proposal aimed at setting out EU-wide minimum rules on criminal sanctions against employers who hire undocumented immigrants from outside Europe.

A Thursday (23 July) debate by EU interior ministers revealed that it was mainly countries under the biggest pressure from clandestine migration - such as Italy and Spain - which had thrown their weight behind tougher penalties, including criminal ones.

The European Commission proposal on sanctions against employers who hire illegal non-EU immigrants dates back to May 2007

Italian interior minister Roberto Maroni - whose country has gained a negative reputation for having many illegal workers in the agriculture and construction sectors - suggested further beefing up criminal sanctions by targeting firms' "assets and wealth."

On the other hand, a group of seven countries - including Germany, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, the Netherlands and Sweden - said the criminal measures would be unjustified.

A majority of EU member states, including Britain and Ireland, have voted to reform rules like EC Commission Regulation No 2257/94, which caused international ridicule by stating that all bananas must be "free of abnormal curvature" and at least 14 cm in length.

Imperfectly-shaped fruit and vegetables may now be back on supermarket shelves by 2009.

France, Italy, Spain and Greece opposed the reforms and were accused by officials of unfairly seeking to protect the interests of their farmers.

France is to close 83 of its military units in a major shake-up of its defence strategy, the French prime minister has said.

Speaking at a press conference, Francois Fillon said money saved would be poured back into the armed forces.

He also promised the government would help towns and villages cope with the economic fall-out when the local garrison moved on.

The changes are the biggest shake-up of defence policy in 14 years.

Mr Fillon announced that the military sites which face closure include regiments, logistic centres and air force bases.

The Italian senate's unanimous support for the Lisbon treaty on Wednesday (23 July) should help force Ireland into a revote, Italian politicians have said, with Ireland looking increasingly likely to stand out as the only EU country not to ratify the text.

"If ratification takes place in the other 26 states, in the autumn we will be able to ask Ireland to find a solution which will not block the integration process and go to the European elections with the new rules foreseen in the Lisbon treaty," the senate's foreign affairs committee head, Lamberto Dini, indicated.

Rome: the founding EU treaty was signed in the Italian capital in 1957

"The challenge [of solving Europe's political problems] will begin on the day when the treaty enters into force and when the [EU] countries find out they can no longer rely on the right to veto by one of them," Italian foreign minister and former EU commissioner, Franco Frattini, added.

The remarks came as all 286 Italian senators who turned up for the Lisbon vote on Wednesday afternoon gave their backing to the text, with the Italian lower house also expected to approve the treaty by a large majority when it votes next week.

BRUSSELS: The European Food Safety Authority pulled back Thursday from giving milk and meat from cloned animals a clean bill of health, making it less likely that such products could reach store shelves in Europe anytime soon.

The final report from the authority, an independent advisory body, was less reassuring about safety than a draft in January. It comes after an earlier, negative assessment from a European ethics committee. The European Commission, which must decide whether to approve such products, will take both reports into account.

The findings also contrast with those of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which concluded this year that such products were safe - although a voluntary moratorium on marketing them remains in place.

Europeans seem likely to take an even more cautious approach similar to that followed with genetically modified crops - which has led to years of trade friction with the United States. Surveys show resistance in Europe to biotechnology remains high, especially when it comes to food.

There has also been a 10-fold increase in the number of incidents reported by people working in the French nuclear power industry, Criirad director Corinne Castanier said.
...
Electricite de France says Wednesday's incident at Tricastin - a huge nuclear complex near the town of Avignon - was not connected to the earlier uranium leak at the plant.
...
The rise in radiation prompted 97 EDF and maintenance subcontractors to be evacuated and sent for medical tests.

"Seventy of them show low traces of radioelements, below one 40th of the authorised limit," EDF said, adding that the incident would not affect people's health or the environment.
....
On Friday, energy company Areva said liquid containing slightly enriched uranium leaked at another of its sites in south-east France.

The same day, 15 EDF workers were exposed to what the company called "non-harmful" traces of radioactive elements at the Saint-Alban plant in the Alpine Isere region.

In Spain last May we heard about a leak that occurred in November 2007, Endesa had not reported it and had continued the plant visits scheduled for students!  There have been 2-3 more since then.  

Is there any country on earth that takes its regulation and supervision duty seriously?

Our knowledge has surpassed our wisdom. --Charu Saxena.

Remarks of Senator Barack Obama (as prepared for delivery)
"A World that Stands as One"
July 24th, 2008
Berlin, Germany

Thank you to the citizens of Berlin and to the people of Germany. Let me thank Chancellor Merkel and Foreign Minister Steinmeier for welcoming me earlier today. Thank you Mayor Wowereit, the Berlin Senate, the police, and most of all thank you for this welcome.

I come to Berlin as so many of my countrymen have come before. Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen - a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world.

I know that I don't look like the Americans who've previously spoken in this great city. The journey that led me here is improbable. My mother was born in the heartland of America, but my father grew up herding goats in Kenya. His father - my grandfather - was a cook, a domestic servant to the British.

At the height of the Cold War, my father decided, like so many others in the forgotten corners of the world, that his yearning - his dream - required the freedom and opportunity promised by the West. And so he wrote letter after letter to universities all across America until somebody, somewhere answered his prayer for a better life.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she is looking forward to her meeting with US presidential hopeful Barack Obama on Thursday but will resist any pressure to send more troops to Afghanistan.

In a press conference that ran over an hour a day before the Thursday, July 24, meeting with the presumed US Democratic Party's presidential candidate, Merkel responded to numerous questions about Obama as anticipation mounted for the senator's arrival in Berlin.

 

Tens of thousands of spectators were expected to attend his speech Thursday afternoon at the Victory Column in central Berlin.

 

While Berlin was in Obama fever ahead of the visit, political commentators stressed that the main aim of the visit was to boost the senator's fortunes in the US presidential race.

Obamania took over Berlin Thursday as the US presidential hopeful came to the German capital for meetings with Chancellor Merkel and Foreign Minister Steinmeier. But his main appointment was scheduled for early evening.

US presidential hopeful Barack Obama met German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Thursday for talks on key international issues.

  

German government spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm described the talks as "very open and in depth," adding they were held in a good atmosphere.

The Democratic candidate for US President embarks today on the second half of a foreign tour designed with two objectives in mind: to convince US voters that he is no innocent abroad and to show his foreign hosts how much more amenable an ally he would be than either George Bush or John McCain. Between now and Saturday, Barack Obama will find out whether the same magic that won him his party's nomination can work for him in Berlin, Paris and London as well.

In a well-judged speech before he left the US, Mr Obama pressed all the right buttons for this second, European, section of his journey. He extolled George Marshall and the plan that helped rebuild Europe after the Second World War. He spoke of the need to listen and show respect; he praised the European preference for patient negotiation over force, and he pledged himself to cooperative efforts to combat climate change and to reform - not disband - the United Nations. The contrast with George Bush, especially the first-term George Bush, could hardly have been greater.

It is no exaggeration to say that relations with Europe have been among the most egregious, and most avoidable, failures of Mr Bush's presidency. It was not just his hubris over Iraq - although that war served to reinforce European hostility. It was his early US-centrism, his woeful inexperience of abroad, and his apparent lack of interest in how other people perceived the world. The gung-ho language and manners, as he has recently come close to acknowledging, only made matters worse.

White House hopeful Barack Obama has told Berliners the US and Europe have drifted apart and it is time for them to come together again.

"If we're honest... we know that sometimes, on both sides of the Atlantic, we have drifted apart and forgotten our shared destiny," he said.

Thousands of people turned out to hear him make the only public speech of his current world tour.

His words were broadcast live in Germany, where he is a popular figure.

No nation can face global challenges such as terrorism and climate change alone, Barack Obama told a cheering crowd of some 100,000 in Berlin Thursday, July 24, calling for a new partnership between the US and Europe.

In front of a crowd that Berlin police estimated to be as large as 100,000, Obama acknowledged differences between America and Europe, adding that "no doubt there will be differences in the future.

 

"But the burdens of global citizenship bind us together," he said, speaking under the central Berlin landmark of the Victory Column facing towards the Brandenburg Gate.

 

Partnership among nations was not a choice but the only way to protect the security of Europe and the US, the Democratic Party presidential hopeful said.

Although it appears most of Berlin is heading to Obama's speech today, US Foreign Service personnel will be banned from the event. And they are not happy. The American Foreign Service Association, a union of Foreign Service workers are opposing the rule. Read more from The Washington Post. And watch the speech live here.

The U.S. Embassy in Berlin has instructed Foreign Service personnel stationed there not to attend Sen. Barack Obama's public rally today, which the State Department this week labeled a "partisan political activity" prohibited under its regulations for those serving overseas.<