Serbia is to file a formal application today to join the European Union according to officials. President Boris Tadić is to fly to Stockholm to submit the application to Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt.

"President Boris Tadic will go to Stockholm on Tuesday to submit the application for EU membership," announced Serbian presidency spokeswoman Jasmina Stojanov.

Reinfeldt called the announcement "a historic step". In a statement he welcomed the bid, saying "I look forward to receiving President Boris Tadic in Stockholm on Tuesday, December 22, when he officially hands over the application."

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Cool-tempered and efficient, Swedish officials in the past six months managed to steer the EU out of the institutional crisis surrounding the Lisbon Treaty and to mitigate infighting between member states on the bloc's top jobs, climate change and financial supervision.

Having kicked off on 1 July, the Swedish chairmanship of the EU came at a time of institutional limbo which hijacked politicians' and media attention from the issues of climate change and the economic crisis, which formed Sweden's original priorities.

"The Swedish EU presidency was effective in securing the Lisbon Treaty to come into force on 1 December and in managing the transition from the old treaty," EU commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said earlier this month in Strasbourg.

After a second Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty in September approving the document, "the unexpected happened" when Czech President Vaclav Klaus tabled fresh demands in order to complete the ratification of the document in all 27 member states, said Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt in the EU parliament in December.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Widespread declining sperm counts, increased rates of breast and testicular cancer, earlier onset of puberty and children's behaviour problems are a handful of the health effects attributed to so-called chemical cocktails, a growing concern amongst European Union governments.

The effects of endocrine disruptors are thought to have their greatest effect on animals in their infancy

On Tuesday (22 december), environment ministers from across the bloc ordered the European Commission to take action on the matter and investigate where current legislation is lacking and to plug the holes.

The EU, like most other powers, focuses on the benefits and dangers of chemicals on a "chemical-by-chemical" basis. That is, regulators look at the effects of each individual chemical. Only recently have scientists begun to be concerned about the combination effects of chemicals that otherwise appear safe in isolation but when absorbed together - in a "chemical cocktail" - could have unexpected and dangerous consequences.

"Chemicals that we surround ourselves with every day can be dangerous to public health in combination. Evaluating the risks posed by individual chemicals on their own is not enough," the ministers said in a statement after meeting in Brussels.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso will after the Christmas holidays propose that the executive takes member states to court over a decision to slash a pay rise for EU officials.

Member states on Wednesday (23 December) unanimously agreed to cut the planned 2010 wage increase from 3.70 percent to 1.85 percent.

President Barroso will propose that the commission takes court action.

The move follows a push by EU budget paymasters Germany, the UK and the Netherlands, as well as poorer countries, such as Poland, to reduce the hike amid negative public opinion caused by the recession.

Lawyers in the commission and the EU Council have said that the cutback is illegal, as it violates the terms of an earlier agreement on calculating EU officials' wages.

"The president [Mr Barroso] and vice president Kallas are going to inform the college of the state of play at the first college meeting in January," commission spokesman Amadeu Altafaj Tardio said on Wednesday.

Commissioner Margot Wallström has announced that she is stopping writing her weblog that she started in 2004. She was the first Commissioner to use the online diary as a way of communicating with the public. Since then many others, including MEP's, Commissioners and others in the European Union political and policy scene have followed her. In her post announcing the end of her blog she said "I really enjoyed it but it was more time consuming than I had expected.  It sounds easy to sit down and write a piece per week but finding the time to do this when you have to do a lot of travelling and many many meetings to prepare for and attend is not as easy as it sounds." It is also not easy to write an interesting weblog either, but the Commissioner has managed to do that, by mixing the professional with the personal and lifting the curtain a little on what goes on behind the scenes. She says that "I have managed to write 265 blog posts since the beginning, covering everything from the EU to dancing, music, books, Chinese mining, jam and wars." As Nosemonkey, a journalist and fellow blogger said "Not sure if the experiment entirely worked, but the blog did make you seem like one of the more human Commissioners...

"seem" being the operative word, since she didn't even acknowledge open letters signed by EU citizens. Goodbye Margot.

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that provisions in the constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina reserving certain offices of state for members of Bosnia's three `constituent peoples' are discriminatory and unlawful.

The case had been brought in 2006 by Dervo Sejdić, a Roma, and Jakob Finci, who is Jewish. The court today (22 December) ruled in their favour by 14 votes to three.

Bosnia's constitution was drafted as part of the 1995 Dayton peace accords, mostly by lawyers from the US Department of State with input from EU diplomats. It established a three-member presidency with one representative for each of Bosnia's `constituent peoples' - Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), Serbs and Croats. The upper house of parliament is also made up of representatives of the three communities. Members of other communities and those who do not claim any particular ethnic affiliation are excluded from holding such positions of power.

Finci, Bosnia's ambassador to Switzerland, is a former head of the country's small Jewish community, which dates back to the15th century.

Finci told European Voice: "This ruling was against Bosnia and Herzegovina, but at the same time I am sure that it was in favour of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The court's ruling is a major step towards an end to discrimination on ethnic grounds, and I am glad that the court has recognised the wrong that was done in the constitution 14 years ago.

The Socialist majority in the Greek parliament appeared set to approve the country's 2010 Budget last night.

After a tense, five-day debate in the 300-seat chamber, the 160-strong Pasok party was set to back the Government's line that economic recovery can best be achieved by addressing tax evasion and corruption rather than by slicing public sector pay.

However, the risk that Greece could default on its growing public debt next year still looms large after this week's move by Moody's, the ratings agency, to downgrade the country's credit status. That followed similar moves by Standard & Poor's and Fitch.

George Papandreou, the Prime Minister, has given few details of his much-heralded tax reform programme so far. His Government's plan to raise the corporate tax rate is still vague and jittery money is already leaving the country. About €5 billion (£4.5 billion) is believed to have fled to the friendlier business environment of Cyprus over the past two months.

BOSTON (Reuters) - The unexpected sharp drop in new home sales in the United States last month, coupled with rising mortgage delinquency rates, illustrates the delicacy of the current economic recovery after a brutal downturn.

The bursting of the housing bubble -- which had been inflated by a lax credit environment -- set off the worst U.S. recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

While the economy shows signs of bottoming out, the surprise 11.3 percent drop in new home sales in November suggests Americans are still treading cautiously around major purchases, with recovery still tied to government money, analysts and investors said on Wednesday.

"Many people are looking at the rally in the stock market as a typical V-shaped recovery, that what worked before is going to work again," said Keith Springer, president of Capital Financial Advisory Services, a money manager in Sacramento, California. "They are not taking into account the demographic cycle that is changing. The biggest thing going on is you have an aging demographic turning from net spenders to net savers."

Retirement-age Americans, many of whom have seen the value of their savings decimated by the drop in stock and house prices, are selling the large homes they raised their families in and buying smaller, more affordable dwellings.

The Dow Jones U.S. homebuilders index was flat on Wednesday after running up 10 percent over the previous five trading days, sharply outpacing the 1 percent rise in the Standard & Poor's 500 index.

BEIJING/DETROIT (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co (F.N) said on Wednesday it is nearing an agreement to sell its Volvo Swedish cars unit to China's Geely in a deal that underscores China's arrival as a major force in the global auto industry.

The deal, which Ford said it expects to sign in the first quarter and close in the second quarter of 2010, would be the largest acquisition of an auto brand by a Chinese company.

It comes at the end of a year that has seen China overtake the United States as the world's biggest auto market in a reversal of fortune that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago.

Traditional Ford rival General Motors Co GM.UL, meanwhile, is moving to abandon its own Swedish brand, Saab, after selling some assets to another Chinese automaker, Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Corp or BAIC, for $200 million (125 million pounds).

Beijing has imposed a tariff on European steel products, such as nails and bolts, as a trade row with Brussels escalates. A day earlier, the EU had decided to extend a levy on the import of shoes from Asia.  

The Chinese commerce ministry said Beijing was "strongly dissatisfied" with the European Union's decision to extend a ban first imposed three years ago by a further 15 months. It said that the country would take the matter to the World Trade Organization (WTO).

"The Chinese government ... will appeal to the WTO dispute settlement mechanism and take measures accordingly to seriously protect the legitimate interests of the Chinese industry," ministry spokesman Yao Jian said.

The European Commision said that contining with import taxation into 2011 would give European firms the necessary protection to adjust and be competitive in global markets.

In a SPIEGEL interview, London banker and lay preacher Stephen Green, group chairman of HSBC, discusses the divide between his Christian faith and the pursuit of profit, the morality of being involved in the subprime mortgage business and whether he and his fellow bankers have learned anything from the financial crisis.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Green, when was the last time you were ashamed to be a banker?

Green: I haven't felt ashamed when it comes to my own work. However, over the past few years there has been a portion of the global business that was simply unacceptable. Some financial products were much too complicated and not transparent enough. Moreover, they were sold to people who often had no idea what they were buying. This sort of business was very successful for a few years, but it resulted in catastrophe. In this respect, it was disgraceful for all of us.

SPIEGEL: You are not just the group chairman of Britain's HSBC, the world's largest private bank. In your free time, you also serve as a lay preacher in the Anglican Church. Have you ever prayed: "Please God, rescue capitalism"?

Green: Well, I was certainly never at a point at which I felt that it was so diabolical that it ought to be abolished. All economic systems have their faults and capitalism is the best of a bad bunch -- that is even though, only a year ago...

The Brits usually aren't too thrilled about anything German trying to make its way across the English Channel. But there is one exception. Each year, German Christmas markets take over the downtown pedestrian zones of a growing number of British cities. The biggest one -- and perhaps the biggest one anywhere outside Germany -- is in Birmingham.

"Smells good," the man in the gray trench coat says. But is he talking about the Glühwein or the bratwurst? "The mix," he says, as he breathes in the cold winter air -- this matchless "German mix." The city hall of this British metropolis of more than a million people bears a sign with large lit letters reading: "Happy Christmas Birmingham." In front, a German flag is waving, and a yellow pennant flying above the "Knobi Satt" stand promises filling garlic bread.

Each year, dozens of small wooden stands are set up in the pedestrian zone of Birmingham, England. The Frankfurt Christmas Market is imported in toto by container ship from Germany -- bringing a touch of Germany to Victoria Square. You can find Aachener Printen ginger bread treats, Christmas Stollen cakes, nutcrackers, lambskin slippers and wooden toys -- just as you would at the real Frankfurt Christmas Market on the city's Römer square. Glühwein -- which is German for mulled wine -- is even served up in mugs emblazoned with the Christmas market's logo. Heart-shaped Lebkuchen ginger bread hearts are frosted with words like "Schatzi," or "sweetie." The price lists are even written in German. The only difference between a Christmas market here and one back in Germany is that you have to pay in pounds.

Although there is always a risk in making projections into the future, it is evident to me, anyway, that the US is no longer the principal motor of the Latin American region as a whole. Perhaps we have finally become immune from catching the flu every time the United States sneezes.

"As we have seen so illustriously over the past year, all Ponzi schemes eventually fail under their own weight. The US debt scheme is no different. 2009 has been witness to spectacular government intervention in almost all levels of the economy. This support requires outside capital to facilitate, and relies heavily on the US government's ability to raise money in the debt market. The fact that the Federal Reserve and US Treasury cannot identify the second largest buyer of treasury securities this year proves that the traditional buyers are not keeping pace with the US government's deficit spending. It makes us wonder if it's all just a Ponzi scheme." Eric Sprot

Readers may have noticed Janet Tavakoli's recent article at Huffington Post on Goldman Sachs and AIG. While much of it covers territory that Yves and I already wrote about previously, Ms. Tavakoli stops short of telling the whole story. While she is very knowledgeable of this market, perhaps she is unaware of the full extent of the wrongdoings Goldman committed by getting themselves paid on the AIG bailout. The Federal Reserve and the Treasury aided and abetted Goldman Sachs in committing financial and ethical crimes at an astounding level.

She notes, accurately, that Goldman used AIG to hedge its bet on CDO's, either for itself with the Abacus deals, or for its clients, with the Davis Square deal. Had AIG failed, Goldman would have been on the hook for the losses: to execute the CDO with synthetic mortgage bonds, Goldman went "long" the CDS and then turned around and went "short" with AIG, effectively taking the risk of the mortgage bonds defaulting and then transferring it to AIG.

But Ms. Tavakoli fails to note that the collapse of the CDO bonds and the collapse of AIG were a deliberate strategy by Goldman. To realize on their bet against the housing market, Goldman needed the CDO bonds to collapse in value, which would cause AIG to be downgraded and lead to AIG posting collateral and Goldman getting paid for their bet. I am confident that Goldman Sachs did not reveal to AIG that they were betting on the housing market collapse.

To help hasten the housing market collapse, Goldman ran a huge mortgage lending and issuance program with low quality loans virtually designed to fail, including dozens of deals backed by completely toxic non-prime second lien loans (these loans help pump up the housing bubble and let borrower's suck the equity out of their homes). In soliciting AIG's insurance for the CDOs, Goldman was not disclosing that the transaction was highly speculative. Goldman was offering AAA, or even super AAA bonds. Goldman designed and sold these bonds and purchased a rating from the rating agencies that represented the risk to be AAA. In fact, the bonds did not provide real protection, despite their AAA rating, and when the housing market turned down, the AAA CDO bonds collapsed in value exactly as they were designed to do.

Goldman never wanted these CDOs to succeed - their bet depended on them failing. This is why they used AIG as their insurer - AIG posted collateral, which enabled Goldman to still get paid even when AIG inevitably got downgraded for taking on such toxic deals.

WASHINGTON, Dec 23 (IPS) - Lebanese President Michel Sleiman visited Washington last week, for his first visit with President Barack Obama. The meeting was a quick one, tucked in amongst the myriad of domestic issues that are demanding Obama's attention.

Yet despite its brevity, the meeting touched upon issues that strike at the heart of the U.S.-Lebanon relationship - U.S. military aid to Lebanon, the implementation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, Palestinian refugees, and Hezbollah's arms.

In a press conference following the closed-door meeting, Pres. Obama emphasised the historical relationship between the two countries, but also told the gathered reporters, "President Sleiman and I aren't going to agree on every issue with respect to how Israel, Lebanon, the Palestinians, Syria, are interacting."

He went on to say, "What we do share is a commitment to resolve these issues through dialogue and negotiations, as opposed to through violence."

The U.S. president's comments reflect both the contentiousness of the issues on the table as well as the many factors that tug at the threads of this bilateral relationship.

...

Obama reportedly pressed Sleiman about the enforcement of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between Israel and calls for the disarmament of Hezbollah.

Hezbollah's arms also impact another issue that topped the agenda of the meeting: Sleiman's request for additional military aid. While Lebanon has been a top recipient of aid from the United States, falling just behind Israel on a per capita basis, the U.S. has been reluctant to supply the Mediterranean country with more sophisticated weapons given its proximity to Israel and the fear that such equipment could fall into the hands of Hezbollah's militia.

Media reports following the meeting indicated that Pres. Obama supported strengthening the Lebanese Army but also tied any additional military aid to compliance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701. He also pressed Sleiman about stopping the flow of smuggled arms that supplies Hezbollah with their increasing arsenal of weapons.

Victims of poisonous gas attacks on the Kurds in northern Iraq have demanded compensation from a Dutch businessman.

A Dutch court began hearing a suit Wednesday filed by 16 Iraqi Kurds seeking compensation from Frans van Anraat. The Dutchman sold chemicals for making poison gas to Saddam Hussein's regime. This gas was unleashed on Iranians and Kurds, including relatives of the plaintiffs, according to the claim.

Frans van Anraat was convicted of war crimes in the Netherlands and sentenced to 16.5 years in prison. The victims' lawyer, Liesbeth Zegveld, said the suit is strong, given that Van Anraat's 2005 conviction has been upheld by the Dutch high court.

The United States-led counternarcotics effort in Afghanistan, which is critical to hopes of cutting off the flow of money to the Taliban and curtailing rampant corruption in the central government, lacks a long-term strategy, clear objectives and a plan for handing over responsibility to Afghans, the State Department inspector general said in a report issued Wednesday.

"The department has not clarified an end state for counternarcotics efforts, engaged in long-term planning, or established performance measures," said the 63-page report, an audit of work done by the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.

Among other things, the report found that the military and civilian lacked clear delineation of roles; that civilian contracts for counternarcotics work were poorly written and supervised from thousands of miles and many time zones away; and that the United States embassies in Afghanistan and Pakistan did not coordinate well on the problem.

The effectiveness of drug-control efforts is critical to President Obama plan for the Afghanistan war, which entails sending additional troops to Afghanistan.

Poverty trumps smoking, obesity and education as a health burden, potentially causing a loss of 8.2 years of perfect health, according to a new study.

Researchers looked at health and life expectancy data from the National Health Interview Surveys and the Medical Expenditure Panel Surveys and came up with various behavioral and social risk factors that affect quality of life, then used a formula to estimate the quality-adjusted years of life that would be lost.

Five people have been taken hostage in a post office in the US by a man in a wheelchair claiming to be carrying explosives, say reports.

Local media reports say grenades have been found in the man's vehicle parked outside the post office in Wytheville.

The town mayor of Wytheville, Trent Crewe, told the Associated Press news agency the man had fired shots from the building but no injuries were reported.

Police are at the scene and people have been told to evacuate the area.

Reporting from Tehran and Beirut - Large-scale protests spread across central Iranian cities Wednesday, offering the starkest evidence yet that the opposition movement that emerged from the disputed June presidential election has expanded beyond its base of mostly young, educated Tehran residents to at least some segments of the country's pious heartland.

Demonstrations took place in cities including provincial capital Esfahan, Iran's cultural center, and nearby Najafabad, the birthplace and hometown of Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, whose death Saturday triggered the latest round of confrontations between the opposition movement and the government. The central region is considered by some as the conservative power base of the hard-liners long in power. Iranian authorities are clearly alarmed by the spread of the protests. Mojtaba Zolnour, a mid-ranking cleric serving as supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's representative to the elite and powerful Revolutionary Guard, acknowledged widespread unrest around the country.

"There were many [acts of] sedition after the Islamic Revolution," he said, according to the website of the right-wing newspaper Resala on Wednesday. "But none of them spread the seeds of doubt and hesitation among various social layers as much as the recent one."

A reformist website, Rahesabz, or Green Path, reported that Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security issued a statement banning governors from issuing permits for further memorial services for Montezari across the country.

There were also reports Wednesday of protests breaking out on university campuses in Tehran and the eastern city of Mashhad, Iran's second largest, and a violent clash broke out in the southern city of Sirjan over the execution of two men accused of criminal activity. Tehran's postelection mass protests, which were crushed by authorities, drew Iranians from all walks of life.

This morning, after a year-long fight with Republicans, and a weeks-long debate, which ultimately pitted Democrat against Democrat, and liberal against liberal, the Senate passed a historic bill calling for major reforms of the U.S. health care system by a vote of 60-39.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City urged state lawmakers on Wednesday to ban natural gas drilling in its watershed, saying the process used to extract the shale gas threatened the city's drinking water.

U.S.  |  Green Business

Shale gas trapped deep underground is considered one of the most promising sources of U.S. energy, and the biggest city in the United States has joined environmentalists and small-town neighbors of drilling operations in trying to limit its exploitation.

The drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," involves blasting through rock with a mixture of water, sand and a proprietary list of chemicals that are used to split the shale formation and free trapped gas.

"Based on the latest science and available technology, as well as the data and limited analysis presented by the state, high-volume hydrofracking and horizontal drilling pose unacceptable threats to the unfiltered fresh water supply of nine million New Yorkers," the city's acting Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner, Steven Lawitts, said in a statement.

"These activities cannot be permitted in the watershed. The risks are simply not worth it," Lawitts said, putting the city at odds with the gas industry, which considers shale drilling completely safe.

BERLIN -- Joschka Fischer, the former student radical, Green Party leader, German foreign minister and Princeton professor, is aware of the irony in his latest career move: strategic consultant for a transnational pipeline.

But as he often did with his previous positions, Mr. Fischer is mixing a bit of idealism with a heavy dose of realism.

Mr. Fischer is convinced that Europe's energy shortages last January, caused by a pricing dispute between Russia and Ukraine over natural gas, were the turning point for the new European gas pipeline. Called Nabucco and stretching for 2,050 miles, the new pipeline is expected to cost 8 billion euros ($11.4 billion). Europe cannot wait for another crisis to begin to diversify its suppliers, he argues, as another cold wave grips the Continent.

Beyond the imperative of supplying energy, however, Mr. Fischer sees immense strategic implications in Nabucco for the European Union, and especially its relations with Turkey -- a NATO member and candidate to join the bloc -- as well as its eastern neighbors Azerbaijan and Iraq, where Nabucco hopes to buy its gas.

CAMBRIDGE, UK, December 22, 2009 (ENS) - Sea pigs, giant sea spiders, ice fish, octopus, rare rays and basket stars that live in the seas of Antarctica's continental shelf are revealed in a series of new photographs released today by the British Antarctic Survey.

A research team from across Europe, the United States, Australia and South Africa onboard the BAS Royal Research Ship James Clark Ross sampled and photographed marine creatures from the Bellingshausen Sea, West Antarctica - one of the fastest warming seas in the world.

Research cruise leader Dr. David Barnes of British Antarctic Survey said, "Few people realize just how rich in biodiversity the Southern Ocean is - even a single trawl can reveal a fascinating array of weird and wonderful creatures as would be seen on a coral reef."

"These animals are potentially very good indicators of environmental change as many occur in the shallows, which are changing fast, but also in deeper water which will warm much less quickly," said Dr. Barnes. "We can now begin to get a better understanding of how the ecosystem will adapt to change."

"Our research on species living in the waters surrounding the BAS Rothera Research Station on the Antarctic Peninsula shows that some species are incredibly sensitive to temperature changes," he said.

Marine algae distribution and sea ice retreat are two of the strongest impacts of climate change measured in the region to date.

I researched this subject in a very particular way. I deliberately chose not speak directly to any climate experts or leading scientists in the field. I used only publicly available web sources.

Why? Because I wanted to simulate what it's like for people trying to learn about climate change online.

My conclusion is "what a nightmare". I was generally shocked and appalled by how difficult it was to source counter arguments. The data was often tucked away on extremely ancient or byzantine websites. The key counter arguments I often found, 16 scrolls down, on comment 342 on a far flung realclimate.org post from three years ago. And even when I found an answer, the answers were excessively jargonized or technical.

KATHMANDU, Dec 23 (IPS) - Just 40 kms away from the capital Kathmandu, in Thasingtole, Lalitpur District, Kalli Kumari B.K., 46, a local Dalit woman, was mercilessly beaten up. She was accused of being a 'witch', imprisoned in a shed and forced to eat her own excreta

The headmistress of a local school along with a local shaman accused her of practicing witchcraft and tortured her for two days.

"They kept hitting my head and my bruises. They fed human excreta and then they took a blade out and started cutting my skin. I couldn't bear it anymore and was forced to admit that that I am a witch so they would stop giving me so much pain," said B.K. in a public forum here in Kathmandu.

They let her go when she accepted that it was because of her that the village cattle was dying and signed a paper, which said that if any more animals died it was her responsibility.

After being freed, she rushed to the police and filed a complaint at the area police office. For days the administration did nothing. After pressure from local rights group the police finally apprehended the local headmistress.

However, the accused was let off after she paid a fine. Now she has been reinstated at the school and lives in the same village as B.K. "I live in fear, the people who tortured me are still in this village, what if they come at night and take me away again?" said B.K.

PARIS, Dec 20 (IPS) - They huddle in the doorways of buildings with their few belongings, trying to keep warm. Or they sleep in covered shopping centres, accompanied by their pets - usually dogs. Some, reluctantly, make their way to government-run shelters.

These are France's homeless people (or SDFs as they're called from the French sans domicile fixe), an estimated 200,000 of whom live on the streets throughout the country.

Their plight, often ignored by both officials and citizens going about their business, is now arousing concern as freezing weather sets in, blanketing the country in snow.

Already one homeless man in Bordeaux has died of the cold, raising to 326 the number of people who have died this year as a consequence of living on the street, according to Les Morts de la Rue (The Dead on the Street), a collective pressure group.

"It's unacceptable for people to be living on the streets and for them to be dying there," says Christophe Louis, president of the group, which comprises 40 associations working to help the homeless. "The government needs to provide long-term shelters. Temporary solutions aren't working."

Schools across France are facing revolts from students demanding the right to wear raunchy clothing banned by educators.

The protests, which some observers say signals a new sexualisation of French teenage life, began at Lycée Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire in Essonne, south of Paris, where teenagers protested by coming into school for two days running in skimpy clothes. At Lycée Condorcet d'Arcachon in Gironde, 200 students recently took to the town to protest against a new dress code, which stated that students could not wear low-slung trousers, short garments or piercings. "We're at school, we don't want to feel like we are in a prison," one student said.

The protest in Essonne was in retaliation to the rules imposed by a new headteacher, who banned holes in trousers and in garments above the knee.

Léa Dedieu, 17, persuaded 300 of the 2,100 students to come to school wearing revealing shorts or mini-skirts for the girls and Bermuda shorts for the boys. She said the protest was intended to make a philosophical point about freedom rather than to "draw attention to ourselves".

For more than 40 years, Hungary has been fighting to have the Tokaj wine region recognized as a protected designation of origin (PDO). Having battled with the Soviet Union, France and Italy, it is now in dispute with neighbouring Slovakia, which is putting up stiff resistance.

The French monarch Louis XV dubbed the most famous of the Tokaji sweet wines vinum regum et rex vinorum (the wine of kings and the king of wines). Along with France's Saint-Émilion (Bordeaux) and Portugal's Alto Douro and Pico island regions (Port), the narrow 87-km long area in the Tokaj hills is one of the few wine regions to feature on the UNESCO World Heritage List--a fact which reflects Hungarian pride in the Tokaj name which it has sought to protect against forgery and imitation.

Quarrel with the USSR

The international career of sweet Tokaji Aszu wine, often referred to as Tokay in English, began in the 16th century when Polish merchants began exporting it on a grand scale. The Russian Tsar was extremely fond of Węgrzyn (Wegry meaning "Hungary" in Polish) and made sure he had adequate supplies by purchasing several acres of vines in the Tokaj hills and sending special convoys of Cossacks to transport casks of Tokaji to Moscow. After the Russian Revolution, these deliveries continued by train until communist nationalization of vineyards in the wake of the Second World War resulted in a diplomatic crisis, which was only resolved when the Hungarian government gave Moscow back its vineyards. Tokaji was very popular in the Kremlin: Stalin liked it almost as much as Georgian Tsinandali--which he claimed had great medicinal properties-- and his successor Nikita Khrushchev even had Tokaj vine stocks planted on the basaltic hills of Crimea, but they soon fell victim to rot and the wine bore no resemblance to the Hungarian vintage.

In an effort to calm growing tensions with Jewish groups, the Vatican said Wednesday that Pope Benedict XVI had not moved the wartime Pope Pius XII closer to sainthood as an "act of hostility" against those who believe Pius did not do enough to stop the Holocaust.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, issued a statement saying that the beatification process evaluated the "Christian life" of Pius, who ruled from 1939 to 1958, and not "the historical significance of his choices."

Moving Pius toward sainthood "should not in any way be read as a hostile act against the Jewish people, and we hope it will not be considered an obstacle in the path of dialogue between Judaism and the Catholic Church," Father Lombardi wrote.

ScienceDaily (Dec. 23, 2009) -- The use and control of fire are behavioral characteristics that distinguish humans from other animals. Now, a new study by Iowa State University anthropologist Jill Pruetz reports that savanna chimpanzees in Senegal have a near human understanding of wildfires and change their behavior in anticipation of the fire's movement.

On the last day, they gathered for a group photo. They were videogame programmers, artists, level builders, artificial-intelligence experts. Their team was -- finally -- giving up, declaring defeat, and disbanding. So they headed down to the lobby of their building in Garland, Texas, to smile for the camera. They arranged themselves on top of their logo: a 10-foot-wide nuclear-radiation sign, inlaid in the marble floor.

To videogame fans, that logo is instantly recognizable. It's the insignia of Duke Nukem 3D, a computer game that revolutionized shoot-'em-up virtual violence in 1996. Featuring a swaggering, steroidal, wisecracking hero, Duke Nukem 3D became one of the top-selling videogames ever, making its creators very wealthy and leaving fans absolutely delirious for a sequel. The team quickly began work on that sequel, Duke Nukem Forever, and it became one of the most hotly anticipated games of all time.

Water is turning up in unexpected places on the moon, controversial new observations suggest.

According to theory, water is not stable on the moon's surface above -167 °C. As a result, ice should be concentrated in "cold traps" near the lunar poles, in craters that never get any sunlight. NASA's LCROSS spacecraft found water when it crashed into one such crater, called Cabeus, in October.

But new observations from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) suggest that many of the permanently shadowed regions near the south pole are dry and several potentially wet regions are sunlit. The observations come from the Lunar Exploration Neutron Detector (LEND) experiment, which looks for possible water deposits by measuring neutrons emitted from the moon. Water or other hydrogen-bearing compounds reduce the number of fast neutrons.

LEND examined 37 permanently shadowed craters near the south pole and found that only three of them - Cabeus, Faustini, and Shoemaker - showed significant amounts of hydrogen. Several illuminated regions also appear to be hydrogen rich.

"I think we have a paradigm-busting set of observations here," says Jim Garvin, the chief scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Medications frequently prescribed for depression may not lighten a person's mood until they brighten his or her personality. A new study suggests that the antidepressant medication paroxetine, or Paxil, fights depression most effectively when it first modifies two personality traits that predispose people to this mood disorder.

The two traits, high neuroticism and low extraversion, have already been linked to depression. Depressed patients taking Paxil reported much greater change in these traits, as assessed via scores on personality tests, than patients given placebo pills. The difference was notable even after accounting for the extent to which each treatment diminished standard measures of depression, says psychologist Tony Tang of Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. Patients who experienced especially pronounced personality change during four months of Paxil treatment displayed a particularly low depression relapse rate over the next year of treatment, Tang's team reports in the December Archives of General Psychiatry.

"We propose that modern antidepressants work partly by correcting the long-term personality risk factors for depression," Tang says.

Like many other researchers and clinicians, Tang's group initially suspected that personality changes observed during treatment with SSRIs (short for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) such as Paxil occur as a result of alleviating depression. But the new findings suggest that Paxil exerts an independent effect on personality that contributes to the lessening of depression.

"This is more evidence than I've seen before that personality changes drive antidepressant responses, but it's still a small study," remarks psychiatrist Andrew Leuchter of the University of California, Los Angeles.

The chairman of Leicester City Football Club is set to face legal proceedings from HM Revenue and Customs in connection with tax evasion.

Milan Mandaric is accused of what tax officials have described as "cheating the public revenue".

Mandaric strenuously denies the allegations, which date to his time as Portsmouth FC chairman from 1998 to 2006.

He will face the charges in January alongside Tottenham Hotspur manager Harry Redknapp, who was in charge of the first team at Portsmouth at the time.

A statement issued by Cartwright King solicitors, which represents Mandaric, read: "Milan Mandaric is astounded and dismayed... [cont'd p 94]

Several hundred workers at a troubled Spanish travel agency who are worried about their jobs have won the top prize in El Gordo - the world's oldest and richest lottery.

Just as the government was closing down the bankrupt Air Comet division of Viajes Marsans, putting 640 people out of work and over 7,000 passengers without flights to South America, the staff lottery number hit the jackpot.

The phones never stopped ringing at Marsans' 200 offices in Madrid, around central Spain and in the Canary Islands after number 78294 was called during the morning ceremony and 584 millions euros of Christmas cheer was up for grabs for those who shared winning tickets.

The Jamaica Plain Green House today released its second annual list of "Top 10 Worst Christmas Gifts."  The list ranges from $2 stocking stuffers to baubles of the super-rich.  JP Green House co-founder Ken Ward said, "These ten items achieved high scores on each of three criteria--profligate, unnecessary, and tasteless energy use--in our rigorous testing protocol." Ward described the gift ranking methodology as "half an hour of random Googling around."

Take a look if you're still present-hunting.

A seven-year-old boy was stopped by police in northern Germany while trying to plough snow with a front loader he borrowed from his parents' business, authorities said.

Officers on patrol found the boy atop the 3.5-metre-tall (11.5-foot-tall) excavator after he had cleared the street in the town of Reinfeld and was driving back to the parking lot.

The child noticed the police car behind him and stopped immediately.

"He opened the door, got out and admitted immediately that he did not have a driving licence," the police report said.

Our neighbours have a boy about that age who's quite capable of doing the same.

Now Silvio Giova' the First has written a letter to his fellow pope to to assure him that Christian Values are always guiding his government's actions, such as sinking Saracen ships full of heathens before they invade St. Peter's.

Naturally the heart of his reflections go to all men of goodwill: "Christ's message of peace and fraternity, which should reign among men, unfortunately is forgotten when the force of ideas is countered with verbal violence or even physical [violence]."

I guess he was thinking about the time he sent his thugs to kidnap and rape with a broomstick Gianfranco Mascia, the guy who launched a successful campaign to boycott Silvio's companies.

Or when he sent a skinned rabbit as a gift to Stefania Ariosto for testifying against him and his buddies.

Or the editor who had his country house burned down after publishing a dossier on him.

A former illicit still has been put back into use by an island's whisky distiller.

Mark Tayburn, who runs the Abhainn Dearg Distillery in Uig, on Lewis, is able to operate the small still under the distillery's licence.

Whisky was illicitly produced across the Highlands and Islands until distilling was legalised by the Excise Act of 1823.

Mr Tayburn hopes to make a distinctive whisky using the old still.

He was granted a licence for his distillery by HM Revenue and Customs in November 2008.

In honour of European Tribune, I'll be putting on the Brussels in about an hour. I'm also in charge of the salad, the cheese, crackers, coffee and avecs. I have to relinquish command of the kitchen come Yule. My desire to experiment is not appreciated at this most traditional of times. I will be slipping in some congura pickle and some brinjal pickle in protest ;-)

You can't be me, I'm taken