The EU's external relations commissioner, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, looks set to swap portfolios with her trade colleague Catherine Ashton once the Lisbon Treaty comes into effect on 1 December.

The imminent switchover, divulged by a number of EU officials on Monday (23 November), will facilitate Ms Ashton's move to her new foreign policy job as the EU's high representative.

Ms Ashton's departure had raised a question mark over who would take over in the important trade post, with a World Trade Organisation (WTO) ministerial conference set to take place in Geneva between 30 November and 2 December.

Losing to Belgium is always painful for the Dutch, whether in football or in politics. On Thursday night a Dutch TV news anchor gave voice to the hurt national pride when he said: "Why Van Rompuy and not Balkenende? How could this happen?" The Brussels correspondent offered that the EU leaders preferred someone "with a blank slate" to someone with "experience". Herman Van Rompuy had only been prime minister of Belgium for less than a year, whereas Balkenende is leading his fourth government in a row. The TV audience was reassured: our compatriot had simply been overqualified.

The reality is that the Belgians once again demonstrated that they know how to play the European game down to their fingertips. First of all the Belgian media strategy was brilliant. Belgian editorials emphasised Van Rompuy's qualities as a statesman and pointed out Balkenende's shortcomings. The latter is in charge of an increasingly eurosceptic country, which voted against the European constitution, and he his leadership at home has been weak, it was said. This analysis soon found its way to international papers like Le Monde. Let it be a lesson to Dutch diplomacy: yes, the ultimate decisions are taken in the very closed circle of the 27 heads of governments, but the media do play a role in the run-up. Belgium's candidature was a clever balance between discretion and publicity.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, 49, talks to SPIEGEL about the European Union's new president and foreign minister, Spain's goals for its upcoming EU presidency and hopes for a new beginning in Europe.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Prime Minister, the Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy has been appointed as the first permanent European Council president and the British EU Trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton is to become the EU's first foreign minister. Can this really be the outcome of close to 10 years of tough battles to reform the EU?

Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero : That's your interpretation. I, at any rate, congratulate the Swedish council presidency, because its proposal was accepted unanimously. The Belgian prime minister is a European through and through, and he has demonstrated leadership ability as the head of his government. I am also very pleased that we have found a woman for the post of foreign minister. I know her from the family of socialists within the EU, and I supported her. I have always been convinced that we need women in top offices.

SPIEGEL: Spain was the first country in the union that approved the European constitution, which later failed, in a referendum. And now it will be the first country, starting in January, that will have to implement, together with the new EU leadership, the rules of the Lisbon Treaty during its presidency of the European Union. Will you be giving Europe a new start?

Zapatero: The Lisbon Treaty must give Europe fresh energy. The new stage begins with three main goals. Our economic policy must become more efficient. Europe must play a much more active and more important role in the world. And, finally, Europe must be a greater champion of more civil rights and a policy of equality. This, most of all, is what characterizes our European identity. This large democratic zone cannot lose its appeal.

Leading the E.U. is basically a process of consensus-building, and here both Mr. Van Rompuy and Mrs. Ashton have fairly solid credentials. A veteran of Belgian Christian Democratic politics, the low-key, ascetic Mr. Van Rompuy was tapped by Belgium's King Albert II last December to heal a serious rift between the Flemish and French-speakers. To a great extent he did (leading to no small anxiety in Belgium over what will happen when he moves on next month).

Mrs. Ashton, for her part, was credited with steering the Lisbon Treaty, intended to streamline and strengthen the E.U., through a hostile British House of Lords, and she has won considerable respect in her current E.U. trade job.

These achievements, of course, do not amount to a wealth of experience on the world stage, and the debate over how strong the E.U.'s leadership should be will rage on. But that debate is really over how much power its members are willing to cede to Brussels. So far they've preferred to remain a relatively loose coalition, and that requires leaders more adept at coordinating and cajoling than at summiteering. Mr. Van Rompuy and Mrs. Ashton seem to fit the bill, and we wish them well.

A row over cats has erupted between Cyprus and Turkey, adding a surprising new flavour to a long-standing stalemate between the communities of the divided island and its difficult relationship with Turkey, the divided EU country's biggest neighbour.

The Cypriot Feline Society is fighting for the recognition of two separate breeds of Cypriot cats, but groups from Turkey and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus are also trying to lay claim to the island's feline legacy, the Cyprus Mail reports.

"This cat belongs to its country," said Rania Razorenova, president of the Association of Cyprus Purebred Cats. "There is a real danger that foreigners - and particularly groups from Turkey - will try to officially register a Cypriot breed of cat outside Cyprus," she said.

Germany plans to have immigrants sign "integration contracts" that would oblige foreigners seeking to live in the country to avow certain values, such as freedom of speech and equal rights for women.

German Integration Commissioner Maria Boehmer has said that she wants to move on plans to have new immigrants sign a contract with the state. Such a move, she argues, would make integration efforts more binding.

Boehmer said the contracts would explain what services and assistance were available to new immigrants, and at the same time would clarify "what we expect from them."

AFP - A long-awaited public inquiry into Britain's role in the Iraq war opens Tuesday, with former civil servants first to appear in hearings set to climax with Tony Blair taking the stand.
  
One-time top officials from the foreign and defence ministries will outline Britain's policy towards Baghdad in the early 2000s as a five-member committee begins investigating what lessons can be learned from the US-led war.
  
Inquiry chairman John Chilcot, a former civil servant, said he was confident of producing a "full and insightful" account of the decision-making that led Britain to join the 2003 invasion against strong opposition at home and abroad.
  
An appearance by former prime minister Blair, who took Britain into the conflict, is likely to be the highlight of the inquiry, although he and other Labour government figures are not due to give evidence until next year.
  

The Basescu camp were all smiles, Mr Geoana's team looked calm and determined. The photographs of the victory celebrations splashed across Romanian newspapers' front-pages reflect the strange enigma of this presidential election - the top three candidates all claimed victory.

Traian Basescu won 32.8%, according to partial official results. It is a big fall from his former position as the darling of the majority of Romanians, but a good enough result to make him confident for the run-off on 6 December.

The result of the referendum held at the same time as the presidential vote was also a boost for Mr Basescu.

Around 80% voted in favour of his proposal to axe the Senate, the upper chamber of the Romanian Parliament, and reduce the lower house from 471 to 300 seats.

President Traian Basescu led by a slim margin in the first round of Romania's presidential election on Monday, but the close results pointed to tough talks ahead on forming a new government.

Failure to form a new government rapidly could further endanger a 20-billion-euro aid package led by the International Monetary Fund and hamper efforts to move the country quickly out of recession.

Partial results from 74 percent of polling stations showed centrist Basescu had 33 percent of the votes cast in Sunday's ballot. Social Democrat (PSD) leader Mircea Geoana 30 percent.

Romanian voters culled the presidential field with a vote Sunday that propels the two finalists, incumbent Traian Basescu and Mircea Geoana, the head of the Social Democrat Party, into a Dec. 6 runoff election.

Basescu appears to have won the first round, according to partial results form the Central Electoral Bureau in Bucharest, but Geoana is narrowly favored by most opinion polls to win the decisive second round.

The election should break an impasse that began early last month when Geoana pulled his party out of a coalition government, leaving Prime Minister Emil Boc--a Basescu appointee--a lame duck as he negotiates budget conditions dictated by the International Monetary Fund. The IMF, flanked by the European Union, loaned Romania EUR20 billion earlier this year to preempt a balance-of-payments crisis as Romania's economy lurched into a severe contraction.

The IMF has declined to disburse the second tranche of its standby loan until Romania has a new government.

Liberal candidate Crin Antonescu, who came third in presidential elections on Sunday thus failing to go into a second round of elections, said on Monday that any collaboration with incumbent President and rival candidate Traian Basescu was out of question. The statement comes as parties are fighting over support of the electorate for the second round of the presidential poll, due on December 6, when Basescu will face Social Democrat Mircea Geoana.

Antonescu said Basescu was not a rightist candidate as he tried to depict himself on Sunday night, but "a populist candidate, a man who would abuse anything".

The President vs. Parliament war is heading for an unexpected end: mutual knockout!

...that is: while Băsescu succeeded with his referendum idea (voters overwhelmingly voted to change the bicameral parliament to unicameral, with much less seats), there is now a realistic chance that he will lose in the second round of the Presidential elections.

This is insane. I wonder if any new forces/personalities can grow out of this (beyond Klaus Johannis).

*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.

Warehouses holding enough aluminum to build 69,000 Boeing 747 jumbo jets are why Peter Sorrentino says the most abundant metallic element in the earth's crust is too expensive.

"I don't see why the aluminum price has gotten so high," said Sorrentino, who helps manage $13.8 billion at Huntington Asset Advisors in Cincinnati. "There's plenty of supply around and demand is still quiet. There's a disconnect between the price and reality."

[...]

Investors are "chasing commodities" and there is a risk of bubbles emerging, Nouriel Roubini, the New York University professor who predicted the global financial crisis, said Nov. 20 in a speech in Lisbon.

Courtesy of Steve Keen and other via his blog DebtWatch.

I have read Michael Hudson's writings, but never seen him speak. His presentation is lucid and alarming.  He starts by describing the stripping away of economic history and all other tools in academic economics that could serve to provide a context for understanding the effect of the current ongoing economic policy of deregulation, the intent of which is to concentrate all regulatory policy in one body, The Fed, to the head of which can be appointed a Greenspan, Bernanke or another in that mold who will refuse on principle to regulate.

That was the goal of Bush 43 and remains the goal of Obama.  He describes Obama as being the front man for the dismantling of public housing in Chicago and the sale of the property to developers, including the Crown and Pritzker families, supporters of Obama, for redevelopment, gentrification and profit.

Hudson asserts that the end goal is rolling back all of the gains made since the end of feudalism, undoing all of the work of the Enlightenment, of the Physiocrats, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and of the Progressives in the first half of the 20th century so as to accomplish through financialization essentially the re-feudalization of the world with the financiers as the new nobility with individuals bound to their homes by underwater mortgages from which they cannot walk away.

He asserts that this is the case in much of Europe and in Iceland, where the homeowner is personally responsible for the debt and cannot wall away as they can in the USA and Australia.  In the USA it would seem that the financiers have gotten around this by the expedient of putting the "full faith and credit" of the US taxpayer underneath the gambling debts of the financiers.  In Australia the situation appears to be similar to that in the USA in 2006.

If Australia is the USA circa 2006, the smart move would be to sell your real estate before the crash and rent or move elsewhere until real estate prices decline by half or more.  And do not let the banks stampede the government into bailing them out.

When governments guarantee the bad speculative bets of the financial class what they are guaranteeing is that their taxpayers will make the wealthy speculators whole.

That is the first five minutes of an approximately one hour speech.  WOW!  Listen to the speech. Just click on the link at the top of this comment.

If sanity be culturally normative, then by the norms of this culture I claim insanity.

(Bloomberg) -- The most accurate dollar forecasters predict the world's reserve currency will continue sliding even when the Federal Reserve begins to raise interest rates, which policy makers say is an "extended period" away.

Standard Chartered Plc, Aletti Gestielle SGR, HSBC Holdings Plc and Scotia Capital Inc. say the dollar will depreciate as much as 6.4 percent versus the euro. About $12 trillion of fiscal and monetary stimulus, the world's lowest borrowing costs and a record $4 trillion of government bond sales between 2009 and 2010 will weigh on the currency, they said. So will the nation's 10.2 percent unemployment rate and signs that the economic recovery may falter, they said.

"History tells us the dollar shouldn't start rising on a sustained basis until 12 months after the Fed starts to lift rates," said Callum Henderson, the Singapore-based global head of foreign-exchange strategy for Standard Chartered.

The best forecaster of the dollar against the euro in the six quarters ended June 30 in Bloomberg's ranking of 46 firms last month predicts the greenback will weaken 5.3 percent to $1.58 per euro in 2010, from $1.4970 today.

"It'll take time to drain the oversupply of dollars from the market," Henderson said. "The dollar will remain weak until the Fed's rates rise above the competitors'."

There were growing indications on Monday that Israel and the Islamist group Hamas were close to a deal to exchange an abducted Israeli soldier for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, a move with far-reaching implications not only for stalled Middle East peace talks but for a range of strategic regional relations.

Leaders on both sides were offering few details but a round of meetings in Cairo sponsored by the Egyptian government and a number of statements by senior officials have heightened anticipation that the swap could occur in the coming week.

"Those who don't know can talk," said Dan Meridor, Israel's intelligence minister, on state radio on Monday. "Those who know should keep silent."

In one of the worst incidents of election- related violence in the Philippines in recent memory, a group of more than 40 people -- including lawyers, journalists and relatives of a local politician -- were kidnapped by armed men Monday, and military officials said at least 21 of them had been killed.

Lt. Col. Romeo Brawner, a military spokesman in Manila, said 21 bodies had been recovered in Maguindanao, a province on the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines that has often been wracked by election violence. Thirteen of the dead were women, according to the military. Twenty-two people were unaccounted for, according to military officials.

Maj. Gen. Alfredo Cayton, a security official in the province, said in a radio interview that the victims had been shot. But relatives of most of the victims said at least 30 abductees had been killed and many of them beheaded by a group of about 100 men.

REBEL Liberal MPs are threatening to call for a leadership spill in today's partyroom if Malcolm Turnbull refuses to offer a secret ballot on an emissions trading scheme.

The wild tactics are being threatened when talks resume this afternoon and could "paralyse" Mr Turnbull's hopes of securing a deal.

"If he doesn't agree to a secret ballot we will call a spill," a Liberal MP told The Australian Online.

Any vote would not take place today but within 24 hours, with climate change sceptics touting Kevin Andrews as a candidate in their attempt to stop negotiation talks in their tracks.

And so the Australian opposition disintegrates over climate change denial...

Initial findings from a study of 51 homes by the Consumer Product Safety Commission links corrosion in homes with Chinese drywall to the imported product, the agency said Monday.

Several federal agencies have been investigating complaints from thousands of homeowners -- many in Florida -- whose homes were built with Chinese drywall who have complained that copper tubing in their air conditioning units and electrical wiring have corroded, their homes smell like sulfur and they are having trouble breathing.

Until now, the government had not made a direct link between the complaints and the import. But in a report Monday, the federal government said, ``There was a strong association between the problem drywall, the hydrogen sulfide levels in homes with that drywall, and corrosion in those homes.''

When he entered office, US President Barack Obama promised to inject US foreign policy with a new tone of respect and diplomacy. His recent trip to Asia, however, showed that it's not working. A shift to Bush-style bluntness may be coming.

There were only a few hours left before Air Force One was scheduled to depart for the flight home. US President Barack Obama trip through Asia had already seen him travel 24,000 kilometers, sit through a dozen state banquets, climb the Great Wall of China and shake hands with Korean children. It was high time to take stock of the trip.

Barack Obama looked tired on Thursday, as he stood in the Blue House in Seoul, the official residence of the South Korean president. He also seemed irritable and even slightly forlorn. The CNN cameras had already been set up. But then Obama decided not to play along, and not to answer the question he had already been asked several times on his trip: what did he plan to take home with him? Instead, he simply said "thank you, guys," and disappeared. David Axelrod, senior advisor to the president, fielded the journalists' questions in the hallway of the Blue House instead, telling them that the public's expectations had been "too high."

The mood in Obama's foreign policy team is tense following an extended Asia trip that produced no palpable results. The "first Pacific president," as Obama called himself, came as a friend and returned as a stranger. The Asians smiled but made no concessions.

As world leaders prepare for climate talks in Copenhagen next month, developing nations have tabled a controversial proposal which would effectively end patent protection for clean technologies.

China and India have floated the idea of making new green technology subject to 'compulsory licensing', which critics say amounts to waiving intellectual property rights.

The idea of adapting or liberalising patent rules for crucial new inventions which can help reduce carbon emissions is not new, but the EU and US are unhappy with compulsory licensing, fearing it would dramatically reduce the incentive for businesses to innovate and stifle green job creation.

As the UN Copenhagen climate change summit next month threatens increasingly to be a flop, the Swedish prime minister has begun laying the blame for failure at Washington's doorstep.

In Saturday's (21 November) edition of centre-right Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet, premier Frederick Reinfeldt defended his work on a global climate pact while at the helm of Europe and expressed his disappointment in the new American administration.

He described a "pronounced difficulty from several sides" but then went on to salute all major global blocs other than the US and Canada.

After bountifully praising the offers on the table from Australia, Japan, South Korea, Russia, China, Indonesia and Brazil and developing nations in general, Mr Reinfeld bluntly stated that the US position is "not enough."

The UN's top climate official has called on the European Union to clarify its greenhouse-gas emissions-reduction targets and financial offer to help developing countries deal with climate change.

Speaking in Brussels, Yvo de Boer, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, said that Europe needed to provide clarity on a pledge to cut emissions by 30% by 2020, a target that EU leaders have promised to adopt if they see similar commitments from other countries.

De Boer also singled out financial support to developing countries, describing clarity on finance as "a lynchpin of the Copenhagen agreement".

Albert Prinz of Thurn and Taxis, the German billionaire known for his car racing exploits, wants to build the world's largest solar farm in Bavaria. The 115 million euro project could generate handsome earnings in green electricity sales for the family. First, though, they have to overcome local resistance.

One of Germany's wealthiest families, known from the 16th to the 18th century for delivering mail, is trying its hand at delivering something new: power.

The House of Thurn and Taxis, headed by 26-year old Albert Prinz of Thurn and Taxis, wants to build the world's largest solar energy park using farmland in the southern German state of Bavaria, according to the Financial Times Deutschland. The family plans to invest €115 million ($171 million) to build solar panels across 1.9 million square meters (20.5 million square feet) of land, equal to 280 soccer fields, in the town of Harthof near Straubing. The farm would provide up to 65 megawatts of peak power, making it the world's largest.

"Even in the Sahara, there are no areas with topography as capable as here," says Stefan Stehl, a representative for the family told the FT Deutschland.

Many in Germany associate McDonald's with obesity and litter. But the company is now trying to change its image -- by changing its colors. The burger joint has swapped out red for green in an effort to demonstrate its commitment to the environment.

No matter what you think of McDonald's, the company's shrill colors are certainly not easily forgotten. A bright, mustard-colored M on a ketchup-hued background, the signs are almost blinding in their gaudiness.

In Germany, though, the company's colors are changing. While the iconic golden arches will keep their color, they will now be on a green background instead of the bright red one. The reason? McDonald's Germany wants to reposition the restaurant as a bastion of environmental friendliness. Ronald McDonald is becoming a tree hugger.

Climate change sceptics and fossil fuel companies that have lobbied against action on greenhouse gas emissions have squandered the world's chance to avoid dangerous global warming, a key adviser to the government has said.

Professor Bob Watson, chief scientist at the Department for Environment and Rural Affairs, said a decade of inaction on climate change meant it was now virtually impossible to limit global temperature rise to 2C. He said the delay meant the world would now do well to stabilise warming between 3C and 4C.

His comments come ahead of key UN negotiations on a new global climate treaty in Copenhagen next month that the UK government insists should still aim for a 2C goal, despite doubts over whether a meaningful deal can be sealed.

At a recent solar energy conference in Anaheim, economic development officials from Ohio talked up a state that seemed far removed from the solar panels and high-tech devices that dominated the convention floor. Ohio, long known for its smokestack auto plants and metal-bending factories, would be an ideal place for green technology companies to set up shop, they said. "People don't traditionally think of Ohio when they think of solar," said Lisa Patt-McDaniel, director of Ohio's economic development agency. But in fact, the Rust Belt goes well with the Green Belt, she said.

In years past, Sunbelt governors recruited Midwestern businesses to set up shop in their states, dangling tax breaks and the lure of a union-free workforce. Now the tables have turned as solar start-ups, wind turbine companies and electric carmakers from California and the Southwest migrate to the nation's industrial heartland. They're looking to tap its manufacturing might and legions of skilled workers, hit hard by the near-collapse of the United States auto industry and eager for work.

For all of green tech's futuristic sheen, solar power plants and wind farms are made of much of the same stuff as automobiles: machine-stamped steel, glass and gearboxes. That has renewable energy companies hitting the highway for Detroit and Northeastern industrial states, driven in part by the federal stimulus package's incentives and buy-American mandates.

Irvine's Fisker Automotive, for instance, will manufacture its next plug-in electric hybrid car at a defunct General Motors assembly plant in Wilmington, Del. And Stirling Energy Systems, which is building two massive solar power plants in Southern California, has signed deals with two automotive companies to make components for its giant solar dishes.

AP Arkansas farmers say that a record amount of rainfall and flooding this year has put a strain on their crops and their infrastructure.

Farmers and farming advocacy groups on Monday detailed the problems that the year's weather have caused during a U.S. Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry hearing. The hearing, held at the Clinton presidential library and hosted by the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service, was the first held in Arkansas since Sen. Blanche Lincoln took over as committee chairman earlier this year.

Lincoln has introduced legislation along with U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., that would provide an estimated $1.3 billion in direct payment assistance to producers in counties declared primary disaster areas by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

(AFP) Flooding in the world's major port cities caused by melting icecaps could cause up to 28 trillion dollars (18 trillion euros) in damage in 2050, environmental group WWF said in a report Monday.

"If the temperature rises between 0.5 and 2 degrees (Celsius) between now and 2050, it's possible that the sea level would progress by half a metre (nearly two feet) bringing major financial damage," Ulrike Saul, in charge of climate and energy for WWF Switzerland, told AFP. Such a rise in the sea level would cause up to 28 trillion dollars in damage in the world's 136 biggest port cities, according to the study in which German insurance company Allianz took part.

Saul warned: "If the current climate protection policies do not change, it is more probable that we will register a rise of 2 degrees in 2050." The northeast coast of the United States could see a rise in sea levels 15 centimetres higher than the world average, the study said.

A report on carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide fluxes in the European Union shows that greenhouse gases produced by agriculture are in excess of ecosystem absorption capacity. Le Figaro highlights the inherent dangers of intensive agriculture.

With two weeks to run to the Copenhagen Summit on climate change (COP 15), which will be attended by 64 heads of state, a new report has presented detailed estimates of carbon fluxes in the European Union (Nature Geoscience, 22 November 2009). The figures included in the report are not limited to greenhouse gas emissions caused by industry, transport, and residential dwellings, but also cover exchanges of carbon between land, vegetation and the atmosphere, which, on land, mainly result from photosynthesis and respiration. These natural fluxes are important because forests, grasslands and peat bogs have the capacity--just as oceans do--to act as sinks for CO2 which accumulates in the atmosphere and contributes to global warming.

Whereas exchanges in most parts of the world result in the sequestration of a proportion of anthropogenic CO2, the report shows that in Europe, emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4)--two powerful greenhouse gases--produced by the cultivation of crops and the raising of livestock exceed the CO2 sink capacity of forests and grasslands in the region. Nitrous oxide is produced by the interaction of chemical fertilizers and bacteria, while methane is generated by the digestive systems and excrement of livestock. The prevalence of these gases has meant that the EU's terrestrial ecosystems now produce more CO2 than they are able to absorb. In fact, they add 3% of "carbon dioxide equivalent" to emissions caused by fossil fuels-- and there is hardly any improvement in this balance elsewhere on the continent in countries like Turkey, Ukraine and Belarus.

For 23 years Rom Houben was trapped in his own body, unable to communicate with his doctors or family. They presumed he was in a vegetative state following a near-fatal car crash in 1983.

But then doctors used a state-of-the-art scanning system on the brain of the martial arts enthusiast, which showed it was functioning almost normally.

"I had dreamed myself away," said Houben, now 46, whose real "state" was discovered three years ago and has just been made public by the doctor who rescued him.

Steven Laureys, a neurologist at the University of Liège in Belgium, has published a scientific paper saying Houben could be one of many falsely diagnosed coma cases around the world.

In Germany, they're called "currant-crappers" and in Spain "chick-pea counters". This week, Tower of Babel takes issues with nitpickers of all nations.

A person who is overly fastidious - and has to broadcast it aloud to boot - is occasionally referred to in German as a Korinthenkacker - i.e. "currant crapper". No offence to the Greek townsfolk of Corinth, needless to say. That's where currants, tiny-type raisins, come from. Korinthenkacker are so punctilious even their droppings come in raisin-size portions.

The French denote such a fussy customer in similarly vulgar terms as an enculeur de mouches (fly-fucker), for whom currants give way to flies. No lesser luminary than the novelist Louis-Ferdinand Céline is said to have given this expression currency.

Never, in The Netherlands, call someone a Mierenneuker, suggesting he has intercourse with ants could be deemed a deadly insult, and trigger a fuming formic acid reaction.

The review of the national DNA database by the government's human genetics commission also raises the possibility that the DNA profiles of three-quarters of young black males, aged 18 to 35, are now on the database.

The human genetics commission report, Nothing to hide, nothing to fear?, says the national DNA database for England and Wales is already the largest in the world, at 5 million profiles and growing, yet has no clear statutory basis or independent oversight.

The highly critical report from the government's advisory body on the development of human genetics is published as the number of innocent people on the database is disclosed to be far higher than previously thought ‑ nearing 1 million.

Following several weeks of speculation, we are beginning to learn what Murdoch might actually be up to, according to a report in the Financial Times. No, it's not about pay walls. He may not have given up on the idea, but presumably he'll come to see that it's a loser's game. Rather, Murdoch - and possibly other media players - are cosying up to Microsoft, whose newish search engine, Bing, has quickly established itself as Google's main competitor.

The idea is that Microsoft may be willing to do what Google, so far, has resisted: pay news organisations for the privilege of featuring their content on its site.

There is no advertising on the home page of Google News, the Googletron's automated aggregation site. But if you search Google News, contextual ads will pop up. Search for news about Indonesia, for instance, and you'll be shown ads for Indonesian vacation services and hotels. Google keeps that money to itself, arguing that it's driving considerable traffic to the news sites to which it links, and that it's up to those sites to monetise that traffic.

Danielle Chiesi spent a lot of time in hotel ballrooms and bars during the past decade.

As an analyst at New Castle Funds LLC, a New York hedge fund firm that manages about $1 billion, she was a regular at conferences on technology stocks, where she could get face time with executives and press them on how many microprocessors and how much software they were shipping that quarter.

Chiesi wore short skirts and low-cut tops, according to people who saw her over the years. One ploy was to go barhopping with a group, and then peel someone off to talk to on the dance floor, says a person who attended conferences with her.

Edgar Mueller, the street artist, has broken a new Guinness World Record after creating the world's biggest 3D pavement art featuring characters from the movie Ice Age.

He beat his own world record by covering an area of 330 square metres with a wintry scene to coincide with the DVD launch of Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs.

Taking six days to create, the pavement art, at Westfield London, features characters Manny, Buck, Sid, Diego, Scrat and Scratte edging over an icy crevasse.

President Sarkozy and Carla Bruni appear in unauthorised episode of US show that coined 'surrender monkey' phrase

First it coined the insult "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" to describe the French. Now America's cult television series The Simpsons has taken a satirical shot at France's president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and his wife, the supermodel turned singer Carla Bruni.

An unauthorised cartoon parody of the couple, screened in the US more than a week ago, has become a surprise hit as tens of thousands of French web users viewed pirated clips of the episode.

The caricature contains the usual cliches Americans - and Britons - attribute to the French, portraying Bruni as a beautiful, cigarette-puffing, man-eating woman who quaffs red wine and has a husband who loves smelly cheese.