Individual European countries should sign up to a legally-binding security pact that includes Russia in a new structure over-arching the EU and NATO, Russian diplomats will propose at a meeting of NATO ambassadors in Brussels on Monday (28 July).

The pact would be negotiated at a special international forum convened by Russia and could embrace emerging powers Brazil and India, Central Asian states and existing international security alliances such as the EU, NATO, the OSCE, the CIS and the CSTO.

Moscow: keen to formalise its role as a major world player

The treaty would handle "problems" such as NATO enlargement, illegal migration, drug trafficking, organised crime and terrorism, Russian NATO ambassador Dmitry Rogozin told the New York Times, admitting the idea is unlikely to get a warm welcome at first.

"We do not expect immediate reaction on the part of our western partners, or booing or, on the contrary, applause," he said, with western analysts arguing the proposed Russian set-up would weaken NATO by subjecting it to external vetoes.

Almost three quarters of Irish voters are opposed to the idea of a second vote on the EU's Lisbon treaty, according to a fresh poll.

The survey, revealed on Sunday (27 July), was commissioned by the London-based eurosceptic think-tank Open Europe, and carried out among 1,000 respondents between 21 and 23 July, shortly after a visit by French president Nicolas Sarkozy in Dublin.

The Open Europe poll indicates the idea of a second EU vote not popular in Ireland

The leader of France, which currently hold the EU's six-month rotating presidency, last week proposed to the Irish prime minister, Brian Cowen, that a second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty be held on the same day as elections to the European Parliament next June.

But the new poll signals that there is currently not much appetite among Irish voters to be asked about the same document again: 71 percent of respondents said they were against the move, compared to 24 percent who were in favour.

The Macedonian parliament on Saturday (26 July) approved the country's new government led by prime minister Nikola Gruevski and pledged to do its utmost to speed up Macedonia's EU integration.

Mr Gruevski's centre-right VMRO-DPMNE party won 63 seats in the June parliamentary elections, while the Social Democratic Union got 27, and the main parties representing the country's ethnic Albanians - the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI) and the Democratic Party for Albanians (DPA) - won 18 and 11 seats, respectively.

"We will work day and night to become a member of the European Union and NATO," says Macedonia's premier.

The new coalition government consists of VMRO-DPMNE and DUI, while the Social Democratic Union has decided to boycott all parliamentary activity following the arrest of one of its vice-presidents, Zoran Zaev, some 10 days ago, saying the accusations against him of alleged links to organised crime were "politically motivated."

"We will work day and night to become a member of the European Union and NATO," Mr Gruevski told parliamentarians when presenting his new government, AFP reports.

Ground staff and cabin crew at Lufthansa, Germany's biggest airline, went on strike on Monday in a pay dispute. The impact on flights has been limited so far but trade union Ver.di said the effect will be greater the longer the strike goes on.

Lufthansa staff carrying a banner of services union Ver.di walk through the departures hall of Frankfurt airport on the first day of the strike. Some 5,000 employees of Germany's biggest airline, Lufthansa, began a strike on Monday in pursuit of a claim for 9.8 percent more pay, but have failed so far to cause major disruption to the airline's flights because Lufthansa has drafted in additional staff.

Services union Ver.di targeted the airports of Hamburg and Frankfurt on the first day of its open-ended strike but staff at other airports also took part. Lufthansa's technical and catering divisions were initial targets of the action.

The airline is trying to minimize the impact on passengers and has worked out a contingency plan with German railway operator Deutsche Bahn, which said it was well-prepared to handle extra demand.

Serbia's war crimes court is still waiting for delivery of the appeal by former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic against his extradition.

Mr Karadzic's lawyer says he posted the appeal at the last minute, from a remote post office in Bosnia, trying to delay the process as long as possible.

Officials in Belgrade said the document had still not arrived on Monday.

"I wouldn't rule out that my appeal grows a beard and moustache before it gets here," said Mr Karadzic's lawyer.

Locals afraid that the Government will allow parts of the east coast to flood are threatening to cloud Prime Minister Gordon Brown's summer holiday.

Mr Brown, his wife Sarah and sons John, four, and Fraser, two, are taking a break near Southwold, Suffolk, after leaving London on Saturday.

But locals say the choice is ironic because the Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra), may allow parts of the nearby coast to flood as part of long-term sea defence plans.

Protesters say they will stage a demonstration in Southwold on Wednesday to underline their concerns and call for more Government cash to be spent protecting the Suffolk coast.

"Isn't it ironic that Gordon should choose to come to a place that his Government is abandoning to the sea," said a spokesman for the Blyth Estuary Group.

British MPs on Sunday have demanded an investigation into whether an army general and a defence minister misled them over the use of banned interrogation techniques in Iraq.

The MPs were told by Adam Ingram, the armed forces minister in 2004 and Lt. Gen. Robin Brims in 2006 that torture techniques were not being used in Iraq, said a report published by parliament's Joint Committee on Human Rights.

Andrew Dismore, the committee chairman, said: "On the ground, that wasn't what was happening in Iraq."

The use of "conditioning" techniques such as hooding and stress positioning was exposed by the abuse and torture of Baha Mousa, an Iraqi hotel receptionist.

The public is increasingly writing off Labour as a general election force with fewer voters believing that a change of leader or policy could help it.

The latest Populus poll for The Times, undertaken over the weekend after Labour's defeat in Glasgow East, suggests that its dramatic slide in popularity is being driven by a collapse in economic confidence.

Labour is now on 27 per cent, down one point on the last Populus poll three weeks ago, and around the level it has been for the past three months, the lowest since the early 1980s.

The Conservatives are on 43 per cent, plus two points, and its strongest position for 20 years, with the Liberal Democrats down one point at 18 per cent. Other parties are unchanged on 12 per cent.

Gently squeezing the brakes on biofuels policy is the growing consensus amongst European diplomats regarding the controversial energy source, with Ireland the latest member state to pull back from short-term targets on its use in transport fuel.

While not wanting to abandon the mid-term goal of 10 percent use of biofuels by 2020, the Irish energy minister is now pushing for an abandonment of the already agreed EU biofuels target of 5.75 percent of what fills the tanks of cars and lorries by 2010.

Electric cars are slowing winning favour in the council.

In an interview with the Irish Times, energy minister Eamon Ryan said that his government has dropped the earlier target in the wake of a slew of reports released in the last six months that have shown strong links between EU and US biofuels policies and increased greenhouse gas emissions and skyrocketing food prices.

"There's been an avalanche of these reports, but it was the [UK Renewable Fuel Agency's] Gallagher Report that in particular had an impact on our thinking," an Irish official told the EUobserver.

Turkish police are studying security camera footage of two men carefully placing white plastic bags in rubbish bins in their search for clues after two bombs exploded in a busy Istanbul suburb, killing 17 people. The blasts on Sunday evening further raised tensions in this divided country.

Nobody has claimed responsibility for the attack, the deadliest in Turkey's biggest city since more than 60 people died in four co-ordinated car bomb attacks on British and Jewish targets in November 2003. And the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, has denied that it played any role in the blasts. Istanbul's Governor, meanwhile, linked the bombings to the PKK. "There appears to be a link with the separatist organisation," said Muammer Guler. And when the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, visited the scene of the yesterday, crowds greeted him with shouts of "Down with the PKK". The PKK, whose war against the Turkish state has resulted in 40,000 deaths since 1984, has bombed Turkish cities in the past.

Analysts speculate that the PKK may have been seeking revenge for aerial and ground attacks against its bases in northern Iraq. "The group is weak," said Sedat Laciner, a specialist in terrorism. "I think it is trying to bring itself to the top of the agenda again." But those most affected by the bombs appear to be sceptical of the official Turkish media line. "They say it was the PKK," said Ibrahim Culhaci, whose wrecked shoe shop is metres from where the second, bigger blast occurred. "But everybody in this country is playing funny games. The PKK could just be a tool."

Four days after Sen. Barack Obama called on a reluctant Germany to get more involved in Afghanistan, German commentators are still debating who has a clearer vision of Afghanistan's real needs.

 A column of German vehicles serving as part of the Quick Reaction Force in Afghanistan. The estimated 200,000 people who gathered in Berlin last Thursday to hear US presidential candidate Barack Obama speak (more...)are a testament to both his personal popularity in Germany and the country's hope that US voters will embrace his promise of change when they go to the polls in November.

When it comes to the touchy subject of NATO obligations and Afghanistan, however, Germans were hoping Obama's speech would tread lightly (more...). "Obama should only ask of us what we are able to deliver," Niels Annen, a member of Germany's federal parliament within the left wing of the SPD, told SPIEGEL ONLINE three days before Obama spoke.

In the end, though, Obama did not steer clear of the topic, saying: "This is the moment when we must renew our resolve ... in Afghanistan. .... America cannot do this alone. The Afghan people need our troops and your troops; our support and your support to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda...."

WASHINGTON: 'Iran is not in a revolutionary or even prerevolutionary stage." That was the assessment of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in August 1978, at a time when Iran's ruler was America's closest ally in the Middle East. The Defense Intelligence Agency, a month later, predicted that the shah of Iran "is expected to remain actively involved in power over the next 10 years."

Famous last words. The shah fled into exile four months later, forced out by increasingly violent demonstrations against his autocratic rule. An estimated six million people massed in Tehran to greet the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the elderly cleric who had rallied opposition against the shah, on his triumphant return from exile in February 1979.

Later that year, Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, beginning a 444-day crisis in which 52 Americans were held hostage. Washington broke off diplomatic relations in 1980, and they have yet to be restored.

If U.S. intelligence on Iran was bad in the 1970s, when the United States had a sizable embassy and officials could move freely around the country, how is it now, after 28 years without official contacts and no American presence on the ground? Just as bad? Very bad? Barely there?

JAKARTA, Indonesia: To understand why fuel prices around the world have soared over the last year, it helps to talk to the captain of a battered wooden freighter here.

He pays just $2.30 a gallon for diesel, the same price Indonesian motorists pay for regular gasoline. His vessel burns diesel by the barrel, so when the government prepared for a limited price increase this spring, he took to the streets to protest.

"If the government increases the price of fuel any more, my business will collapse totally," said the boat captain, Sinar, who like many Indonesians uses only one name.

From Mexico to India to China, governments fearful of inflation and street protests are heavily subsidizing energy prices, particularly for diesel fuel. But the subsidies -- estimated at $40 billion this year in China alone -- are also removing much of the incentive to conserve fuel.

The oil company BP, known for thorough statistical analysis of energy markets, estimates that countries with subsidies accounted for 96 percent of the world's increase in oil use last year -- growth that has helped drive prices to record levels.

Syria has said it wants direct talks to seal a peace deal with Israel if the Jewish state withdraws from the strategic Golan Heights border region it captured in the Six Day War 40 years ago.

The peace overtures from Syria's ambassador to the United States came as Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, poured cold water on hopes of a quick deal with the Palestinians, ruling out an agreement on the key issue of Jerusalem by the end of this year.

Mr Olmert's statement was the first public admission by an Israeli leader that President George Bush's prediction of an accord being signed by the end of 2008 was overly optimistic.

He was also cautious about the offer of face-to-face talks with Syria, telling a weekly cabinet meeting that Damascus continued to support the Hezbollah militia movement in Lebanon and had close ties to Iran.

The next US president is expected to face a record federal budget deficit of almost half a trillion dollars.

The White House has lifted its deficit forecast for 2009 to $482bn (£242bn) up from $407bn.

The budget deficit measures how much more the government is spending than it is raising through taxes.

The slowing economy is reducing the tax take and the government has launched a stimulus plan by making payments to 130 million households to boost spending.

The forecast figure excludes about $80bn of war costs.

The budget deficit is measured from the beginning of October to the end of September.

A clash between the United States and two big emerging markets, China and India, over cutting farm and industrial tariffs threatened to derail more than a week of work to salvage a world trade deal today.

"We are very much concerned about the direction that a couple of countries are taking," US Trade Representative Susan Schwab said during a break on the eighth day of World Trade Organisation talks.

"I am very concerned it will jeopardise the outcome of this round," she told reporters.

Pickens' Pampa Project could be the world's largest wind power plant when construction is completed, but power projects currently under construction in Asia are also vying for that particular honor.

"China is witnessing the start of a golden age of wind power development, and the magnitude of growth has caught even policymakers off guard," Junfeng Li, secretary general of the China Renewable Energy Industries Association, wrote in a paper last month, The Guardian reported. "It is widely believed that wind power will be able to compete with coal generation by as early as 2015. That will be the turning point in China, which by then will be the world's largest energy consumer."

That's no small claim, as China is currently the global leader in coal consumption, which also makes the Asian giant the world's leading emitter of greenhouse gases. But the Beijing government seems to be taking its alternative energy policy a bit more seriously of late, forgoing its previous preference for "cheap" over "clean" energy sources.

"Our task is tough, and our time is limited. Party organizations and governments at all levels must give priority to emission reduction and bring the idea deep into people's hearts," President Hu Jintao was quoted as saying by the state-run Xinhua news agency, after the meeting with several energy experts during a recent politburo study session on climate change.

If the Chinese government enacts policies to favor wind power investments, China could reach a wind power capacity of 122 GW by 2020, according to the environmental group Greenpeace. That would be enough power to meet 10% of China's energy needs and be equivalent to five times the output of the Three Gorges Dam, the country's massive hydroelectric plant.

Banks struggling to recover from multibillion-dollar losses on real estate are curtailing loans to American businesses, depriving even healthy companies of money for expansion and hiring.

Two vital forms of credit used by companies -- commercial and industrial loans from banks, and short-term "commercial paper" not backed by collateral -- collectively dropped almost 3 percent over the last year, to $3.27 trillion from $3.36 trillion, according to Federal Reserve data. That is the largest annual decline since the credit tightening that began with the last recession, in 2001.

"The second half of the year is shot," said Michael T. Darda, chief economist at the trading firm MKM Partners in Greenwich, Conn., who was until recently optimistic that the economy would continue expanding. "Access to capital and credit is essential to growth. If that access is restrained or blocked, the economic system takes a hit."

And the beat goes on.

Jag gillar lite målade hästar, ge mig massor av dem

It is important to understand that monetary orders do not fall because of a problem, but two problems one of which breaks the other. Inflation has been solved over the last 30 years by offshoring and reduction in wages in developed nations. This meant the increase in capital aimed at producing consumable goods. However, no matter how many car parts are made in China, it will not increase the amount of oil in the world. Quite the contrary, if the objective is to reduce energy, investing in China is almost the worst thing that can be done, since China uses more energy to make the same GDP, and the energy they use is dirtier.

The correct response is to dramatically shift incentives for consumers away from borrowing and consuming, and towards saving and investing. However to do this, there has to be - surprise - an incentive. Presently they have no incentive, political, social, or economic. Instead they have every incentive to consume now, before consumption later is too expensive, every incentive now to not vote for political change now of any meaningful sense, because none is on offer, and every social incentive to continue to put up appearances so they can sell their houses and get out.

It is this social revolution which is the ultimate preventative to violent revolution. The country is ripe for it, and wants it, but is not being offered it, because the powers that be, and the powers that wannabe, all want the American public to go back to chewing the cud of entertainment and consumption. From Ron Paul to Barak Obama, every figure now being talked about is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

However, Obama, alone, of all of the major figures being offered, has at least an incentive to look at the problem in a longer term, and an incentive to change the direction. Public investment is the key to the solution, and not public investment in wars in the Middle East. To get public investment means to tax, and not just tax domestically, but globally. To tax globally is to work through the G-7.

A senior International Olympic Committee (IOC) official on Tuesday played down concerns about Beijing's air quality, saying that the possibilities of rescheduling outdoor endurance events would be low.

Felli said the low visibility doesn't necessarily mean the air quality is bad.

"Most of the people see the fog, they say it's pollution. But we know here it's not pollution. It's mist, a fact of the nature," Felli told Xinhua during an exclusive interview.

Felli expected the air quality to be up to par with more rains in the coming days.

"Probably more rains will come, and it will get better," he said.

Right.  While I have not been to Beijing myself, everyone I have talked to who has been there recently -- both Chinese and foreigner -- say the air is utter shite.

Cynicism is intellectual treason.

Power-sharing talks between Zimbabwe's opposition and negotiators for President Robert Mugabe have broken off, officials said on Monday. One said the main sticking point was Mugabe's insistence that he be president of any new government.

Two officials said the chief negotiators for Mugabe -- Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa and Social Welfare Minister Nicholas Goche -- were flying home. They were expected to consult Mugabe about their mandate, one of the officials said.

snip

The agreement to hold power-sharing talks was reached a week ago with increasing violence putting pressure on the opposition while intense international disapproval -- including some African governments saying they could not recognise Mugabe as president of Zimbabwe -- appeared to sway Mugabe's ruling party.

Tsvangirai has been criticised by his own party members for agreeing to the talks without insisting that his followers, including some newly elected legislators, be freed from jail.

Last week's agreement called for an end to all violence. Though beatings and abductions of opposition activists have diminished, the violence still continues, according to doctors and analysts in Zimbabwe.

The agreement also calls for the government to reverse an order barring NGOs from distributing food.

This is Zimbabwe

Two MDC activists, Witness Maambire, who was Chief Election to Samuel Muzerengwa (MDC senator for Buhera), and a friend were abducted at gun point by Colonel Morgan Mzilikazi at Chapanduka Business Centre on 24 July 2008. The MP elected for the area Mr. Naison Nemadziwa, who was in the company of the abductees, had to run into the mountains for his safety.

The three had gone to fetch 17 MDC activists who were tortured on 17 July 2008 and were injured with  bad cuts all over their bodies and broken legs and arms.

The newly ordered planes, A350 and A330-300 models, are smaller than the two-deck A380, the world's biggest passenger plane. At official list prices, the value of the 60-plane order is some $13 billion (8.25 billion euros).

The colorful handover ceremony Monday was the first from a new A380 delivery centre set up by Airbus in Hamburg to accommodate airlines during the weeks of testing before the money is handed over and a jet is flown away.

The only other A380s yet in service are two with Singapore Airlines. They were picked up from the Airbus fuselage factory in Toulouse, France, which divides up the tasks of manufacture with the Hamburg factory.

The chief of the United Arab Emirates airline, Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al-Maktoum, said the airline had ordered 30 of the A350 model and 30 of the A330-300 jets.

It had already ordered 58 of the biggest in Airbus' range, the A380.

LONDON: The traditional British pub is in peril.

Squeezed by a nationwide smoking ban, rising costs, competition from supermarkets and the economic downturn, the pub industry reported Monday that beer sales have fallen to their lowest level since the Great Depression.

Pub managers around the country are now pulling some 14 million pints a day, 1.6 million fewer than last year and 7 million less than at the height of the market in 1979.

The pressures on the industry are speeding up a long-term decline -- more than 1,400 pubs called last orders for the final time in 2007 and the Campaign for Real Ale claims that more than half Britain's villages are "dry" for the first time since the Norman Conquest of 1066.

Rob Hayward, the chief executive of the British Beer and Pub Association, whose members brew 98 percent of Britain's beer and include nearly two-thirds of the country's pubs, urged the government to rethink heavy taxes which the industry blames in large part for its woes.

Severe storms and floods in Ukraine and Romania has killed at least 18 people.

Five days of heavy rainfall in Ukraine's Carpathian Mountains killed 13 people, including five children. At least two people are missing.

The floods damaged more than 21,000 houses, the emergency ministry said in a statement.

The government has evacuated more than 7,000 people and more than 300 towns and villages have been left without electricity.

With damages estimated at more than $300mn, the flooding was declared a national disaster by Viktor Yushchenko, the Ukrainian president.

Beijing's Olympic organisers are planning a new set of emergency measures to reduce pollution after the draconian steps introduced a week ago failed to halt a grimy haze from smothering the host city.

The air quality has failed to reach national standards for four of the seven days since the city took more than a million cars off the roads and shut down hundreds of factories.

With less than two weeks until the opening ceremony, the organisers are preparing more drastic step to ensure that the "Greyjing" tag does not undermine its promise of a "Green Olympics" and force the postponement of endurance events like the marathon, triathlon and 10km open-water swim.

According to the China Daily, all construction sites and more factories in and around Beijing may be temporarily closed if the air quality deteriorates during the games.

PARIS: Parisians and tourists so eagerly embraced a citywide bike-sharing plan that was begun a year ago that Mayor Bertrand Delanoë is proposing a four-wheeled version, using electric cars.

Under the plan, a driver could pick up a car on the Right Bank, snake up the slopes of Montmartre, then drop it off -- and pay only for the minutes spent behind the wheel. But cars, even electric ones, are already proving more divisive than bikes.

With the price of gas steadily rising and parking in Paris a chronic headache, some drivers are delighted by the new project. Others, though, see it as a step backward, fearing it would produce more traffic and dependence on cars in an already congested city.

The program, called Autolib', is expected to begin in late 2009 or early 2010 with a fleet of 4,000 electric cars, 2,000 within Paris and 2,000 in the suburbs.

A city council has blocked its staff from looking at websites about atheism.

Lawyers at the National Secular Society said the move by Birmingham City Council was "discriminatory" and they would consider legal action.

The rules also ban sites that promote witchcraft, the paranormal, sexual deviancy and criminal activity.

The city council declined to comment on the possible legal action, but said the new system helped make it easier for managers to monitor staff web access.

The authority's Bluecoat Software computer system allows staff to look at websites relating to Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and other religions but blocks sites to do with "witchcraft or Satanism" and "occult practices, atheistic views, voodoo rituals or any other form of mysticism".