Europe's attempts to keep religion away from the public domain was one of the reasons the Irish rejected the EU's new Lisbon treaty, the country's top Catholic church figure, cardinal Sean Brady, has suggested.

Speaking at the Humbert Summer School in Co Mayo on Sunday (24 August), the cleric said the EU's prevailing culture and social agenda seems to be driven by the secular tradition "rather than by the Christian memory and heritage of the vast majority of member states," the Irish Times reported.

 "As the recent referendum on the Lisbon treaty in Ireland suggests, at least some of those who were previously enthusiastic about the founding aims of the EU, both social and economic, are now expressing unease," he added.

Prosecutors in Poland are investigating allegations that the American CIA interrogated terrorist suspects at a secret jail on Polish soil.

The investigation began three weeks ago, one prosecutor told Polish media.

A report released in June 2007 by the Council of Europe said the CIA ran secret jails in Poland and Romania in 2003-2005, to hold al-Qaeda suspects.

Polish and Romanian officials denied the claim. The secret CIA operation was known as "extraordinary rendition".

French President Sarkozy wants to present a united Europe at an upcoming summit on Georgia but risks inflaming differences between members. Warsaw, in particular, wants the EU to take a hard line in EU-Russia relations.

By announcing the EU summit in Brussels next Monday, Sept. 1,  Sarkozy  wants to say clearly to Moscow that the European Union is "a force  which has to dealt with," and that agreements made with him by  Russian President Dmitry Medvedev must be honored, a French  diplomat told the AFP news agency on Monday, Aug. 25.

 

The six-point peace plan brokered by Sarkozy, whose country currently holds the EU's rotating presidency, has been criticized in some European capitals as being too vague, too Moscow-friendly and organized with too little consultation.

 

After Russia failed to withdraw all its troops from Georgia, a key point of the cease-fire, the French president "realized that the Russians were exploiting the ambiguous margins of the text and that there was a risk of a loss of credibility for the EU and the French presidency," European Policy Center analyst Antonio Missiroli told AFP.

 

When he visits Kiev, the Foreign Secretary should remember the threats posed by Nato's drive eastwards

Before making his speech on policy towards Russia in Kiev, Ukraine, later this week David Miliband would do well to ponder some wise advice from a great predecessor. Lord Salisbury, Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister in the days of the British Empire, dispensed immense global power; but that did not mean that he liked playing about with that power.

Faced with proposals for British policy that he understood to be deeply damaging to the interests of other great powers, Salisbury would look his colleagues in the eye and ask simply: "Are you really prepared to fight? If not, do not embark on this policy."

If the events of the past fortnight in Georgia have demonstrated one thing clearly, it is that Russia will fight if it feels its vital interests under attack in the former Soviet Union - and that the West will not, and indeed cannot, given its conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

President Medvedev says Russia is ready to break off relations with NATO if necessary. His comments came after a meeting with Russia's ambassador to the alliance, Dmitry Rogozin. NATO has been highly critical of Russia's handling of the conflict between Georgia and South Ossetia.

Speaking after a meeting with Rogozin in Sochi, Medvedev said there could be no confusion about NATO's plans. He also said that Russia could see through "the illusion of partnership".

"When they are building up their military forces, surrounding us with bases and drawing into the alliance more and more countries - convincing us that everything is ok... Of course we don't like it," President Medvedev said on Monday.

NATO vessels are in the Black Sea to provide humanitarian aid for Georgia and give a helping hand. Russia views their presence with suspicion.

NATO had warned that relations with Russia would not improve until it pulled all its troops out of Georgia.

EUROPEAN Affairs Minister Dick Roche raised the prospect of a second Lisbon Treaty referendum last night, saying he believes it is "the appropriate response" to the country's continuing political crisis.

Mr Roche's controversial comments, in an interview with the Irish Independent, came as the Catholic Primate of All Ireland yesterday voiced fears that some Christians had voted against the treaty because the EU was becoming ever more secular in its outlook.

Mr Roche said: "My personal view is that a referendum is the appropriate response to the position we are in. This is very much a personal view at this stage."

He added: "If we want to retain our position as a constructive EU member state, we cannot simply sit on our hands, as some would have us do, and keep saying that 'No' means 'No'."

BAGHDAD (AP) -- Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki dug in his heels Monday on the future of the U.S. military in Iraq, insisting that all foreign soldiers leave the country by a specific date in 2011 and rejecting legal immunity for American troops.

Despite the tough words, al-Maliki's aides insisted a compromise could be found on the two main stumbling blocks to an accord governing the U.S. military presence in Iraq after a United Nations mandate expires at the end of the year.

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has pulled his PML-N party - the country's second biggest - out of the multi-party governing coalition.

He has been in dispute with the country's biggest party, the PPP, on the reinstatement of judges sacked by former President Pervez Musharraf.

The two sides also disagree over who should be the next president.

MOSCOW, Aug 25 (Reuters) - Russia's flagship cruiser re-entered the Black Sea on Monday for weapons tests hours after the Russian military complained about the presence of U.S. and other NATO naval ships near the Georgian coast.

The 'Moskva' had led a battle group of Russian naval vessels stationed off the coastline of Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia during Russia's recent conflict with Georgia and sank smaller Georgian craft.

The assistant to the Russian Navy's commander-in-chief told Russian news agencies the cruiser had put to sea again two days after returning to its base at the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol.

"'Moskva' has today departed toward the Black Sea Fleet's naval training range to check its radio-controlled weapons and onboard communications systems," Captain Igor Dygalo was quoted as saying by Interfax.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- The Afghan Council of Ministers decided Monday to review the presence of international forces and agreements with foreign allies, including NATO and the United States, after a series of military operations that have caused heavy civilian losses. Skip to next paragraph Related Two Afghans Lose Posts Over Attack (August 25, 2008)

The ministers demanded a status of forces agreement, which would stipulate that the authority and responsibilities of international forces be negotiated, and said aerial bombing, illegal detentions and house raids by international forces must be stopped.

The declaration came after several military operations involving American forces resulted in heavy civilian casualties, most recently air strikes in western Afghanistan that killed more than 90 people, most of them women and children, according to a government commission.

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Israel on Monday released 198 Palestinian prisoners in a move intended to bolster the Palestinian president, Israel's negotiating partner, hours before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in the region to try to nudge forward Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.

Before embarking on two days of talks with top Israeli and Palestinian officials, Ms. Rice told reporters on the plane to Tel Aviv that there was a "lot of work ahead" if the sides hoped to reach a peace agreement by the end of the year.

BANGKOK, Aug 25 (IPS) - A United Nations-led effort to push political reform in military-ruled Burma plunged to a humiliating low on the weekend, raising questions about the effectiveness of the world body's special envoy to the country, Ibrahim Gambari.

This shift was conveyed in the way Aung San Suu Kyi, the detained pro-democracy leader, treated Gambari during his six-day mission, which ended on Aug. 23. She refused to see him on at least two occasions. It was a silence of Gandhian proportions for the Nobel Peace laureate and, for the U.N. envoy, an unprecedented snub.

Deprived, as a result, was the photo opportunity that Gambari had used after his three previous visits to Burma, over the past year, to give the impression that he was making headway with Suu Kyi in paving the road for political reform. The images of the Nigerian diplomat posing with the 63-year-old Suu Kyi, who has spent over 13 of the past 18 years under house arrest, suggested she had confidence in the U.N.

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Other Burma watchers are as scathing. `'Unlike Gambari, Aung San Suu Kyi refuses to be a pawn in the junta's game,'' says Debbie Stothard of ALTSEAN, a regional body campaigning for human rights in Burma. `'This confirms that she has lost confidence in Gambari. She has said so through the only peaceful form of resistance available to her.''

Gambari's failure should `'be a wakeup call to the Security Council's members that they can no longer be conned by the junta,'' Stothard told IPS. `'Most of the key decisions makers at the U.N. used Gambari's shuttle diplomacy as an excuse not to act on Burma. But nothing has moved, and now there is little left to hope for.''

Speaking to Walter Isaacson at the Aspen Institute in Colorado on Thursday, McCain found himself explaining a recent interview with Blender Magazine in which he selected ABBA's 1976 track "Dancing Queen" as his favorite song.

"What were you thinking?," Isaacson asked him, looking incredulous.

"If there is anything I am lacking in, I've got to tell you, it is taste in music and art and other great things in life," McCain joked. "I've got to say that a lot of my taste in music stopped about the time I impacted a surface-to-air missile with my own airplane and never caught up again."

Should we have a moratorium on stories like this, and post instead on those rare occasions when he says something right?

At least three people have been arrested in the US over an alleged plot to kill US Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama, reports say.

The suspects planned to shoot Mr Obama in Denver, Colorado, during his speech accepting the nomination to run for US president, CBS4 TV station reports.

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Democrats praise 'new hope' Obama

I thought Michelle Obama's speech was effective but not a knock-out; it doesn't settle the matters of perceived lack of patriotism and oddness and effeteness (if that is a word)

In JustinWorld, 'black' = 'odd', apparently. Also, a girly speech from a girly girl - kiddies and smiles instead of properly manly bombs and threats of nukular war.

Very unpatriotic. And effete.

Burgeoning demand for food to feed the world's swelling population, coupled with increased use of biomass as fuel is putting a serious strain on global water reserves, experts said

"If we look at how much more water we will need for food and how much more for biomass for energy going forward ... it is quite worrying," said Jan Lundqvist, who heads the scientific programme at the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI).

Global food needs are expected to roughly double by 2050, at the same time as climate change and dwindling oil reserves are pressuring countries to set aside ever more land for producing biomass to replace greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuels.

These parallel global trends risk colliding with "the water-constrained biophysical reality of the planet," according to SIWI, which hosted the the World Water Week in the Swedish capital last week.

Umbra Fisk's no-nonsense, no-embarrassment voice resonates with the left-leaning people in their 30s who were the first generation to take environmental studies for granted as a part of a college curriculum. Judging from the questions, the readers, like Umbra's creators, are forming families (or choosing not to), buying cars (or choosing not to) and having babies (or choosing not to). Her view on the old argument about cloth versus disposable diapers? A tossup, environmentally speaking.

The readers also appreciate frankness about everything from phosphates to condoms, and a knowledgeable voice on questions about atmospheric science and shower urination (is it more environmentally correct than using a toilet?) .

Here, for example, is Umbra's take on yoga mats: "They seem so soft and friendly, but they are another product for our list of Things That Contain Vinyl. Vinyl and phthalates. How I wish to never need spell phthalates again." She suggested a jute and rubber alternative.

She also assures the party set that yes, you can recycle a beer bottle with a lime in it.

Have you ever noticed that herds of grazing animals all face the same way?

Images from Google Earth have confirmed that cattle tend to align their bodies in a north-south direction.

Wild deer also display this behaviour - a phenomenon that has apparently gone unnoticed by herdsmen and hunters for thousands of years.

In the Proceedings for the National Academy of Sciences, scientists say the Earth's magnetic fields may influence the behaviour of these animals.

Now it so happens that some cultural narratives are myths in both senses of the word: they are crucial elements of a society's view of the world, and they also make statements about the world that can be shown to be untrue. The myth of the market falls into this interesting category. Just now, in America and some other industrial nations, it plays a central role in defining how people think about the economic dimension of their lives. At the same time, some of its core assumptions, and many of the statements about the world that derive from it, are hard to support on any basis but blind faith.

This is where the intemperate passions I mentioned earlier enter the picture, of course, because the myth of the market is not simply a cultural narrative; it's also an ideology supported by a great many people just now. There's a complicated history behind its current ideological role. The grand geopolitical struggle between the American and Russian empires that occupied most of the twentieth century, and still makes headlines today, followed the usual custom and borrowed ideological garments to provide a scrap of decency to the clash of naked ambitions.

...

A secular ideology had to be coined, and free market capitalism filled that need. It's not accidental that many of its active proponents in recent years were Marxists during their years of adolescent rebellion in the 1960s; much of what now passes for economic thought in America simply takes Marxist assumptions and stands them on their head, in the same way that Satanists borrow most of Christian theology but root for the other side.

LONDON, Aug. 25 -- The daughter of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher said Britain's "Iron Lady" is suffering from dementia, the family's first public confirmation of what has been widely rumored in Britain for several years.

Thatcher's condition has deteriorated so much that she forgets that her husband, Denis Thatcher, died in 2003, her daughter said in a memoir that is to be published next month and was serialized over the weekend in the Mail on Sunday newspaper.

"I had to keep giving her the bad news over and over again," Carol Thatcher wrote. "Every time it finally sank in that she had lost her husband of more than 50 years, she'd look at me sadly and say 'Oh' as I struggled to compose myself. 'Were we all there?' she'd ask softly."

Thatcher said she first noticed her mother's failing memory over lunch in 2000, a decade after she left 10 Downing Street after leading Britain from 1979 to 1990.

"I almost fell off my chair," wrote Thatcher, a journalist and television personality. "Watching her struggle with her words and her memory, I couldn't believe it. She was in her 75th year but I had always thought of her as ageless, timeless and 100 per cent cast-iron damage-proof. From the fateful day of our lunch, tell-tale signs that something wasn't quite right began to emerge."

I also hope to get some sense of how the election is going in a red state.

"I said, 'Wait a minute, Chester, You know I'm a peaceful man...'" Robbie Robertson

Ten years after Frank Sinatra's death the small town of Lercara Friddi, near Corleone in northwest Sicily, has created a music festival in his honour -- even though the singer refused to acknowledge that his family hailed from the area.

Throughout his life "Ol' Blue Eyes" maintained that his grandfather Francesco came from Catania. However, in Sinatra -- The Life, Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan say this was because the singer was keen to distance himself from anything that would suggest he was close to the Mafia. Lercara Friddi was also the birthplace of Charles "Lucky" Luciano, regarded as the father of modern organised crime.

According to the biographers, local church records and the testimony of relatives prove that Francesco was born in the town in 1857. The family for a time lived in the same street as the Luciano family. Francesco emigrated to New York in 1900 and sent for his family eventually.

Silvio Berlusconi has once again put his summer holiday in Sardinia to good use, slamming the door temporarily on Italy's teeming problems to collaborate on another collection of Neapolitan love songs with his favourite singer and guitarist, Mariano Apicella.

Apicella, 44, who has been the Italian Prime Minister's regular and faithful summer accompanist since the two met in 2001, said that the CD contains 14 songs, with words by Mr Berlusconi and music by himself. He hopes it will be released in time for Christmas - "but the Prime Minister has many other commitments, so that may not be possible". Its title has yet to be made public.

The CD will be their third collaboration. The first, Meglio 'na canzone (Better a song), was released in 2003, during Mr Berlusconi's second term as premier. A second disc, L'ultimo amore (The last love), was released in 2006.