EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Billionaire investor George Soros has said the European Union must do more to help its struggling eastern region, including a fast-tracking of member state applications to join the euro currency.

In an interview with EUobserver on Thursday (12 November), he also called on the EU to develop a dedicated strategy to alleviate the difficulties faced by the region's Roma population.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Alliance of National Movements (AENM), the coalition of far-right parties formed last month in Budapest, has failed in its an attempt to get its hands on European Parliament cash, as the jumble of reactionary rightists did not manage to file the application on time.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso on Thursday (12 November) admitted he is unlikely to achieve his aim of getting more women commissioners in the next commission than is currently the case.

To date it is clear that only three member states - Luxembourg, which is returning commissioner Viviane Reding; Cyprus, which is returning EU Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou; and Bulgaria, which is sending current foreign minister Rumiana Jeleva - have proposed women candidates despite several public requests, including a letter, by Mr Barroso.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission has proposed setting aside €3.5 billion of regional, agriculture and administrative aid for Croatia's first two years of EU membership, provided the country manages to join the bloc in 2012. The earmarked sum still needs the approval of the 27 member states.

Geert Wilders wants to ban the Koran, impose a tax on headscarves and calculate the cost of immigration. The Dutch right-wing populist also plans to run for prime minister in 2011 -- and his party is currently leading in the polls.

Geert Wilders is sitting on a plane, glancing at the clouds below and occasionally turning the page of a newspaper. A cameraman from a Dutch news agency is sitting behind him, filming his every movement.

The plane lands in London, after the short flight from Amsterdam. Wilders, 46, the head of the populist right-wing Party for Freedom (PVV), is the first to disembark. This is the first time he has been to Britain in eight months.

He is not detained by a border official this time, as he was in February, when the British government denied Wilders entry into the country after declaring him a "serious threat to one of the fundamental interests of society." He went anyway, with 50 journalists in tow, and he was sent back to the Netherlands immediately. His poll ratings went up dramatically after the London incident, and he owes much of his recent rise in popularity to the British decision. Now that the government has overturned its ban and he is permitted to enter the country once again, Wilders plans to make it a triumphant return.

As European opposition to EU membership for Turkey grows, Ankara is looking to forge closer ties to its neighbors. Turkey wants to once again become a leading power in the Middle East -- but its relationship with Israel may suffer as a result.

He was the last heir to the throne of the Ottoman Empire, a major power that controlled large parts of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East for centuries. But Prince Osman Ertugrul Osmanoglu was a prince without a country, and he was stateless for much of his life. When Turkish officers proclaimed the republic in 1924, they expelled Osmanoglu and his entire family. It wasn't until 2004 that the exiled prince was granted Turkish citizenship.

The prince died in Istanbul on Sept. 23, at the age of 97, and the republic that had once banished him became reconciled with Osmanoglu. The guests at the funeral service included four cabinet ministers from the conservative Islamic AKP government, a deputy minister, several members of parliament, Istanbul's governor and the city's chief of police. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan also sent his condolences -- privately. It was a rare show of republican appreciation for Turkey's Ottoman legacy.

n a major speech Thursday about what it means to be French, President Nicolas Sarkozy said that the burqa and the "subservience of women" had no place in secular France. France has one of Europe's largest Muslim populations.

AFP - President Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday again insisted that the head-to-toe veil worn by some Muslim women had no place in secular France.
  
"France is a country where there is no place for the burka, where there is no place for the subservience of women," he said in a major speech on French national identity.
  
France, home to Europe's biggest Muslim minority, has set up a special panel of 32 lawmakers to consider whether a law should be enacted to bar Muslim women from wearing the full veil, known as a burka or niqab.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has called for a new push to modernise and diversify the country's economy in his annual state of the nation address.

AFP - President Dmitry Medvedev called Thursday for Russia to modernize more quickly, but stressed that it should happen through the development of democratic institutions and a market economy.
  
In his annual address to the nation, Medvedev said Russia must diversify its economy away from raw materials exports and strive to become an influential power in the world.
  
"In the 21st century, our country again requires modernization in all areas, and this will be the first time in our history when modernization will be based on the values and institutions of democracy," Medvedev said.

The European Union plans to hold a special summit next week to fill the new posts of EU president and EU foreign policy chief, but so far there is little agreement on who will get the top jobs.  

Sweden, which currently holds the European Union's rotating six-month presidency, said on Wednesday that the bloc's 27 heads of state and government will meet in Brussels on November 19 to fill the key new positions created by the ratification of the Lisbon reform treaty last month.

However, finding appropriate and acceptable candidates is proving more difficult than expected.

The British government still backs former Prime Minister Tony Blair, despite his unpopularity in some quarters over his support for the Iraq war.

The job application procedure for officials in Brussels is changing in 2010. That is good news for Dutch nationals who would like a job 'in Europe'.

John Wouters (38) was one of only 159 people left in the running after most of the more than 11,000 initial candidates had dropped out. After a 16-month selection process and an extremely difficult exam, Wouters now qualifies for a position in the administration of the European Union in Brussels. But that doesn't mean he is guaranteed a job: people who pass what EU employees call the `concours' are merely placed on a reserve list. Passing the concours means that Wouters is now allowed to apply for a job.

Even though he still doesn't have a job in Brussels, Wouters is already part of a past generation: he was one of the last candidates required to take the infamous European knowledge test. Some of the questions in the test included: `How many presidents has the European Commission had to date?' or 'When was the Single European Act signed?'

Outdated The structure of the concours will change starting at the beginning of next year. The knowledge test, the first round in which the majority of the candidates drop out, will disappear. In its place, the office that carries out personnel selection, EPSO, wants to put more emphasis on candidates' skills.

A top Foreign Office official has accused high court judges of damaging Britain's national security by insisting that CIA evidence of British involvement in torture must be revealed.

The extraordinary intervention in a fierce dispute between David Miliband, the foreign secretary, and the high court has come from Simon Manley, the FCO's director of defence and strategic threats.

In an unprecedented assault on the judiciary, he claims that demands by two judges that the CIA material should be disclosed have already harmed Britain's intelligence and diplomatic relations with the US. In a statement, Manley says the judges have "served to undermine confidence within the US in the UK's ability to protect the confidentiality of diplomatic exchanges and will inevitably have a negative impact on the candour of their exchanges with UK officials".

The impact of the judges' rulings "also undermines our relationships with other foreign services ... and co-operation on operational matters in the field is also at stake", he adds. "What we are facing is an erosion of trust."

Yup, an independent judiciary is a threat to national security because it might not rule how the government wants it to.  Whitehall is increasingly sounding like a tinpot third-world dictator, not the centre of government for a modern democracy...

The Swedish EU presidency has indicated that it favours pay restrictions for hedge fund and private equity managers similar to those currently being debated for European bankers.

The plans will be contained in the latest package of proposed amendments to the draft Directive on Alternative Investment Fund Managers (AIFM), and could be released as soon as this week.

US and European negotiators have completed a draft agreement that would give American law enforcement access to Europeans' financial data to combat terrorism. The deal has consumer and privacy advocates up in arms. 

According to a draft seen by Deutsche Welle, financial records stored by the SWIFT financial data system including "name, account number, address, national identification number, and other personal data", can be shared with American authorities if there is a suspicion that the person is in any way involved with terrorist activity. The system manages international and sometimes domestic bank transfers in more than 200 countries

Current or former heads of government, European commissioners, national energy company chiefs -- in Brussels, the Russian energy giant has fielded a formidable team of lobbyists to defend its interests and projects, which are not always compatible with European initiatives.

In Brussels, they call them the "Gazprommers" -- the heavy hitting group of lobbyists who for diverse reasons ensure that the interests of the Russian gas monopoly Gazprom are well defended in the European Union. The line-up includes current and former political leaders -- like Gemany's ex-chancellor Gerhard Schröder, and Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi -- whose countries have major contracts with Gazprom, EU bigwigs like Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs, and the influential CEOs of Italian, German, Dutch and French national energy companies -- which already have multimillion dollar contracts with the Russians, or are planning to conclude deals soon.

The Gazprommers' influence on European politics extends to issues that have nothing to do with gas. Brussels' climate package is a case in point. Some of the ambitious proposals that feature in the package, which are supposed to make Europe a world leader in the campaign against climate change, are a gift for the Gazprommers. Among the technologies destined to replace coal power generation, natural gas, Gazprom's main product, appears to be the cheapest and the easiest to use.

The latest jobs report shows that the official unemployment took a huge jump to 10.2% -15.7 million jobless workers. If we add to those numbers involuntary part-time workers, plus those who have given up looking for work, the unemployment rate is 17.5%. Even that seriously undercounts those who would be willing to work if decent jobs at decent pay were readily available-a number I put at 25 to 30 million. While there has been some debate about the number of jobs created or saved by the fiscal stimulus package, it is clear that Washington's effort has fallen far short, and all plausible projections show more job losses to come. What perplexes me is that we have been here before, and we know how to solve the unemployment problem: create jobs through a new, New Deal-style jobs program.

I am advocating using those same principles, but creating something both broader and permanent: a universal job guarantee available through the thick and thin of the business cycle. The federal government would ensure a job offer to anyone ready and willing to work, at the established program compensation level (including wages and a healthy benefits package). To keep it simple, the program wage could be set at the current federal minimum wage ($7.25 an hour), and then adjusted periodically as that is raised. The usual benefits would be provided, including vacation and sick leave, and contributions to Social Security.

Let's call this the Job Guarantee (JG) program.

The original New Deal programs included large-scale infrastructure projects with direction coming from Washington. A permanent and universal JG program should be decentralized, with projects created and administered locally-where the workers are, and for the benefit of their communities. The federal government would provide the wages, plus a portion of capital and supervisory expenses (perhaps capped at 25% of total wages paid for each JG project). Local governments and nonprofits would propose projects and cover the rest of the expenses. State unemployment offices would be converted to employment offices, helping to match workers and projects.

Project proposals would be submitted to regional councils and, if approved, would be evaluated by state councils and then by a federal council. Wages and benefits would be paid directly to workers (using Social Security numbers and direct bank deposits) to minimize fraud. Organizations submitting proposals would be prevented from replacing paid workers with JG workers. For-profit business would be excluded, because the temptation to substitute would be too great. At the same time, businesses would be protected from unfair competition because all JG projects would have to demonstrate they'd fulfill unmet public purposes. If at some future date, a for-profit firm decided to provide services that a JG project is performing, the JG project could be phased out. There is neither need nor desire for the JG program to compete with the private for-profit sector.

LRB · Donald MacKenzie · All Those Arrows

Few people's reputations have been improved by the credit crisis. One is the BBC's Robert Peston; another is Vince Cable. A third is Gillian Tett, capital markets editor of the Financial Times. Prior to the crisis, she and her team were the only mainstream journalists who covered in any detail the arcane world of `credit derivatives'. Tett saw - however imperfectly - the huge risks that were accumulating unnoticed within that world, and spoke out about them.

Fool's Gold begins in a conference room in Nice in spring 2005. Tett admits that at that point she was baffled by the technical language - `Gaussian copula', `attachment point', `delta hedging' - used by the participants. However, before joining the FT she had conducted fieldwork in Soviet Tajikistan for a PhD in social anthropology, and the ethnographer in her was now reawakened. The conference reminded her of a Tajik wedding. Those attending it were forging social links and celebrating a tacit world-view - in this case, one in which `it was perfectly valid to discuss money in abstract, mathematical, ultra-complex terms, without any reference to tangible human beings.'

...

The core of Tett's book, which is by far the most insightful of the first wave of books on the crisis, is the story of J.P. Morgan's credit derivatives team. For all the bank's traditionalism - the door staff at its London offices wouldn't look out of place outside the Ritz - it was quietly innovative. One of the team's driving forces was a young Englishwoman, Blythe Masters; another, Terri Duhon, makes no secret of her upbringing in a trailer in Louisiana; central to its technical work was an Indian mathematician, Krishna Varikooty. Boisterousness that would have horrified John Pierpont Morgan was tolerated. At one gathering in Florida, one of the team's managers broke his nose when drunken colleagues were pushing him into a hotel swimming-pool.

Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg said that his country was committed to its mission in Afghanistan, but that President Karzai's new administration must outline a clear plan for the future. 

Defense Minister Guttenberg arrived on an unannounced visit to Kabul on Thursday and quickly said that the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai must show that there is discernible progress in the country. Guttenberg is on his maiden visit to the country, where over 4,300 German troops are deployed.

 

"The Karzai government has to fulfil certain conditions," he asserted, adding that "we must see successes."

BANGKOK, Nov 12 (IPS) - Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen is known for his brash and earthy vocabulary even when, as he did in early April, he talks about himself. "I am neither a gangster nor a gentleman, but a real man," the politician who has led his country for 25 years said in a fit of rage.

The target of his ire at the time was Thai Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya, following comments the latter had made during a parliamentary debate in the Thai capital.

Hun Sen criticised Kasit for calling him a "gangster" during that debate, but Kasit shot back, saying his description of Hun Sen in Thai had got lost in translation. The actual words were "Nak Leng," Kasit had explained, which in Thai means "a person who is lion-hearted, a courageous and magnanimous gentleman."

It was Kasit's second run-in with the Cambodian leader in under a year. In late 2008, when the former veteran Thai diplomat was in the political wilderness as a speaker for a conservative, right-wing protest movement, he had called Hun Sen a "thug" during a speech at a public rally.

If the new Thai government, formed under a cloud of controversy last December, was hoping that Hun Sen would move on from such moments, then the current war of words between the two countries suggests otherwise.

"The Thais seem to have forgotten that Hun Sen has a very good memory. He does not forget easily," a South-east Asian diplomat from a regional capital told IPS on the condition of anonymity. "He unearths details and history he knows well to go after those who criticise him."

But the current war of words between Cambodia and Thailand has degenerated into personal insults and a trading of charges about interfering into each country's judicial and domestic affairs.

KARACHI, Nov 12 (IPS) - As militant attacks in Pakistan continue unabated, there are increasing calls for the government to rethink its strategy--and look deep within.

What is happening in Pakistan today is an "unprecedented" situation and the government's "lack of planning and imagination left it with no alternative," said I.A. Rehman, director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP).

Noted peace activist Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy called the government authorities "irresponsible" for creating paranoia among the people. "They constantly accuse external powers for the present spate of terrorism."

October has seen the worst violence in Pakistan this year as a result of a string of attacks that preceded the army offensive against the militants in South Waziristan on Oct. 17 (see sidebar).

UN special rapporteur says wealthy US ignoring deepening homeless crisis while pumping billions into bank rescues
* Investigator meets homeless victims of American dream

A United Nations special investigator who was blocked from visiting the US by the Bush administration has accused the American government of pouring billions of dollars into rescuing banks and big business while treating as "invisible" a deepening homeless crisis.

Raquel Rolnik, the UN special rapporteur for the right to adequate housing, who has just completed a seven-city tour of America, said it was shameful that a country as wealthy as the US was not spending more money on lifting its citizens out of homelessness and substandard, overcrowded housing. 

"The housing crisis is invisible for many in the US," she said. "I learned through this visit that real affordable housing and poverty is something that hasn't been dealt with as an issue. Even if we talk about the financial crisis and government stepping in in order to promote economic recovery, there is no such help for the homeless."

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - A suicide car bomb devastated Pakistan's main spy agency building in the northwest Friday, killing at least 7 people and striking at the heart of the institution overseeing much of the country's anti-terror campaign.

The blast in Peshawar was the latest in a string of bloody attacks on security forces, civilian and Western targets since the government launched an offensive in mid-October against militants in the border region of South Waziristan, where al-Qaida and Taliban leaders are believed to be hiding out.

....

The ISI agency has been involved in scores of covert operations in the northwest against al-Qaida targets since 2001, when many militant leaders crossed into the area following the U.S. led invasion of Afghanistan. The region is seen as a likely hiding place for Osama bin Laden.

Its offices in Peshawar are on the main road leading from the city to Afghanistan. The agency was instrumental in using CIA money to train jihadi groups to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Despite assisting in the fight against al-Qaida since then, some Western officials consider the agency an unreliable ally and allege it still maintains links with militants.

A misconstrued text message announcing the passing of a beloved pet has sparked a flurry of diplomatic activity in Canada.
Transport Minister John Baird sent a message reading: "Thatcher has died".

Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper was soon informed that 84-year-old former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had passed away.

But it was actually Mr Baird's beloved cat, named after his political heroine, who had died.

Scientists are to begin revolutionary surgery trials that will help breast cancer victims to regrow their breasts after undergoing a mastectomy.

The trial, to begin in Australia within the next six months, will involve implanting a device into a woman that enables fat tissue to grow by using a stem cell technique. The procedure, known as Neopec, could replace reconstructive surgery and breast implants within years.

During the operation, which was developed by scientists at the Bernard O'Brien Institute of Microsurgery in Melbourne, a 5ml dose of the woman's own fat cells are implanted into an artificial, breast-shaped chamber in her chest. The container is attached to blood vessels under the arm enabling the cells to multiply and replace breast tissue.

The scientists have developed the technique over the past decade and have successfully tested it on pigs, which grew new breasts within six weeks. However, they predict that the process could take up to eight months in women.

Dakar (AFP) Nov 10, 2009
The cereal crop will decline sharply in Chad, Niger and Mauritania in 2009-2010 because of drought, the permanent Inter-state Committee to Fight Drought in the Sahel (CILSS) announced Tuesday.

"Compared with last year, drops in cereal production are expected in Chad (34 percent), Niger (36 percent), Mauritania (24 percent), Burkina Faso (10 percent) and Cape Verde (eight percent)," the CILSS said in a statement received in Dakar.

The regional organisation, based in Burkina Faso's capital Ouagadougou, also anticipated a better crop than last year in "Benin (up by 45 percent), Ghana (44 percent), Gambia (18 percent), and Togo (13 percent)."

From a regional point of view, "provisional cereal production in 2009/2010 in the countries of the Sahel and west Africa, with the exception of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Mali, is estimated at 48.2 million tonnes, a drop of four percent compared with 2008/2009," the organisation said.

Mexico City (AFP) Oct 29, 2009
As scientists race the clock to increase food production worldwide, new trials to plant genetically-modified maize have stoked anger in Mexico, the cradle of corn.

Many here are sensitive about meddling with maize, which dates back to pre-Hispanic times, when mythologies held that people were created from corn.

Some fear Mexico could one day lose the wealth of native varieties it still produces, including red and blue, to a few, tough breeds of GM maize, as well the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of subsistence farmers.

The government this month granted its first 22 permits to agribusinesses Monsanto, Dow AgroSciences and Pioneer to carry out tests on GM maize on farms in north and west Mexico.

Mexico is the number one producer of white maize, which is used to make its famous flat tortillas, but it imports increasing amounts of yellow maize from the United States, mainly for cattle feed.

But my prize for the most shameless two fingers to the global community goes to New Zealand, a country that sells itself round the world as "clean and green".

New Zealand secured a generous Kyoto target, which simply required it not to increase its emissions between 1990 and 2010. But the latest UN statistics show its emissions of greenhouse gases up by 22%, or a whopping 39% if you look at emissions from fuel burning alone.

Some countries with big emissions growth started from a low figure in 1990. Arguably, they were playing catchup. There is no such excuse for New Zealand. Its emissions started high and went higher.

They are today 60% higher than those of Britain, per head of population. Among industrialised nations, they are only exceeded by Canada, the US, Australia and Luxembourg. In recent years a lot of Brits have headed for Christchurch and Wellington in the hope of a green life in a country where they filmed the Lord of the Rings. But it's a green mirage.

And he hasn't seen the government's "modified" ETS, which gives farmers a free ride while directly subsidising pollution, yet...

Speakign as someone who wants to see NZ adopt real policy to reduce emissions, I'm glad.  Democratic action has failed due to the power of the polluter lobby (of which our farmers are a key component).  Maybe international blackmail will work better.  So, please distribute widely - and don't buy NZ butter.

(Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Low wooden bleachers grayed by the sun remain on a hill where people sat and watched atmospheric nuclear tests overlooking Frenchman Flat on the Nevada Test Site.

Reporting from Yucca Flat, Nev. -  A sea of ancient water tainted by the Cold War is creeping deep under the volcanic peaks, dry lake beds and pinyon pine forests covering a vast tract of Nevada.

Over 41 years, the federal government detonated 921 nuclear warheads underground at the Nevada Test Site, 75 miles northeast of Las Vegas. Each explosion deposited a toxic load of radioactivity into the ground and in some cases, directly into aquifers. When testing ended in 1992, the Energy Department estimated that more than 300 million curies of radiation had been left behind, making the site one of the most radioactively contaminated places in the nation.

During the era of weapons testing, Nevada embraced its role almost like a patriotic duty. There seemed to be no better use for an empty desert. But today, as Nevada faces a water crisis and a population boom, state officials are taking a new measure of the damage. They have successfully pressured federal officials for a fresh environmental assessment of the 1,375-square-mile test site, a step toward a potential demand for monetary compensation, replacement of the lost water or a massive cleanup.

"It is one of the largest resource losses in the country," said Thomas S. Buqo, a Nevada hydrogeologist. "Nobody thought to say, 'You are destroying a natural resource.' "

In a study for Nye County, where the nuclear test site lies, Buqo estimated that the underground tests polluted 1.6 trillion gallons of water. That is as much water as Nevada is allowed to withdraw from the Colorado River in 16 years -- enough to fill a lake 300 miles long, a mile wide and 25 feet deep. At today's prices, that water would be worth as much as $48 billion if it had not been fouled, Buqo said.

Ikea has been described as the "Teflon multinational" because of its unshakably positive image. But a new book by a former top executive paints a damning picture of corporate practices at the Swedish furniture giant. The author claims the company is run like a sect, complete with spies, lies and rampant racism.

The founder of Ikea, the international Swedish home furnishing chain, is one of the richest men in the world. Yet Ingvar Kamprad is widely considered to be something of an average guy who lives a modest life. He's just like his furniture; simple, honest and a little wooden.

Anecdotes that support that image abound. The Swede from Smaland reportedly still has a 30-year-old "Klippan" sofa in his living room, along with another early classic developed by the furniture giant, the "Billy" bookshelf. These sorts of stories not only illustrate Kamprad's modesty, they also testify to the long-lasting quality of his modestly-priced furniture.

Dutch Youth and Family Minister André Rouvoet wants a culture change on the work floor to make it more acceptable for fathers to take paternity leave.

At the moment it is considered normal for mothers to work less, but fathers hardly ever work one day less after a child is born.

Freedom to choose
The minister has called for research into the reasons why men do not take up paternity leave. He believes the freedom to choose for fathers is limited by fixed perceptions. For instance many men believe they have less chances of promotion if they work part- time. They are also discouraged from using the facilities open to them. According to the minister "A modern labour market means that families should be able to decide for themselves how they want to combine their professional and private lives."

CAPE TOWN, Nov 11 (IPS) - The Anti-Homosexuality Bill under consideration in Uganda was sparked by a conference in Kampala earlier this year at which fundamentalist Christians from the U.S. identified homosexuality as a threat to "family values".

The draconian law will institute the death penalty for "aggravated homosexuality" and criminalise human rights work.

Christopher Senyonjo, a retired Anglican bishop from Uganda, and Reverend Jide Macauley, from Nigeria's House of Rainbow church, told IPS that a conference took place on March 5-7 this year, arranged by Stephen Langa, the director of a Ugandan fundamentalist Christian grouping called Family Life Network (FLN).

The FLN invited speakers attached to U.S.-based religious and "educational" organisations that propagate the idea that homosexuality is an "illness" that can be "cured".

Changing values

The speakers were Don Schmierer, a board member at Exodus International; Scott Lively, president of Abiding Truth Ministries and author of a book that equates Nazism and homosexuality; and Caleb Lee Brundidge who works at the International Healing Foundation which ostensibly "cures" homosexuals.

"They told us all things are going wrong because the family is being neglected. Not having more children is one of the things that they said are going wrong. Homosexuality is a way of stopping us from having more children," said Senyonjo.

It is a subject that would make most governments blush, but officials in the Spanish region of Extremadura have launched a major programme to encourage what could be described as a more hands-on approach to sexuality.

The region's socialist government has launched a €14,000 (£12,600) campaign aimed at teaching young people how best to set about "sexual self-exploration and the discovery of self-pleasure" - or to put it less delicately: masturbation.

France's literary elite was in uproar on Thursday after an MP loyal to President Nicolas Sarkozy told the winner of the "French Booker prize" that she had a duty not to criticise his policies.

There was a chorus of approval last week when Marie NDiaye, 42, a Senegalese-French novelist, became the first black female to win the Prix Goncourt for her best-selling work Trois Femmes Puissantes (Three Powerful Women).

However, Sarkozy loyalists were less than amused when French media re-aired her vitriolic views on his government. In an interview with Les Inrockuptibles, an arts magazine - published before the winner was announced - Miss Diaye said she went to live in Berlin after the 2007 presidential elections "in large part because of Sarkozy".

"I find the police state, vulgar atmosphere detestable. I find (Eric) Besson (the immigration and national identity minister), (Brice) Hortefeux (the interior minister), those people, monstrous," she went on.

A German thief stole a van, only to discover after he sped off that there was a circus lion in the back.

Caesar, Circus Probst's ferocious five-year-old star, was being transported a Mercedes van when the vehicle was stolen.

The thief drove off, but abandoned the vehicle with the engine still running after crashing into a road sign. It was unclear whether the thief's sudden awareness of the animal in the back of the van had inspired him or her to abort the mission.

Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, who is already fighting to avoid imminent trials for tax evasion and bribery, was dealt a further blow today when Veronica Lario, his estranged wife, announced that she was taking him to court in a divorce battle.

At stake is his fortune, estimated at between 5 billion and 8 billion euros (£4.5 billion and £7 billion). It is not yet known whether Ms Lario's divorce action includes a specific demand over the division of his legacy. But Corriere della Sera said experts on inheritance and business law had been included in Ms Lario's legal team, and his business empire would be the crux of the case.

Me Berlusconi, 73, has been seeking a discreet out-of-court settlement with Ms Lario, 53, since she declared she was leaving him six months ago over his relationships with other women. He is known to have wanted to avoid a messy court battle over the division of his wealth between his three children by Ms Lario and his two by his first wife, Carla Dall'Oglio.

However lawyers for Ms Lario said she regarded him as the guilty party, and had applied for a formal separation, the first step in divorce proceedings, accusing her husband of being to blame for the breakdown of the marriage.

A bunch of Finns do their annual naked run through the daylit streets of Southern Helsinki in freezing temperatures. Don't ask me why. But I can't see how it does any harm.

You can't be me, I'm taken