Normans are ready for reunification and Paris will grow under ambitious plans

The political map of France may be radically redrawn under ambitious, intriguing - and explosive - proposals which will be presented to President Nicolas Sarkozy next week.

Paris would become part of a "Greater Paris" of six million people, copying the model of Greater London. Normandy might be unified for the first time in 805 years (since King John carelessly lost William's dukedom to the French in 1204).

Brittany could, finally, reclaim its "lost" territory around Nantes and might expand eastwards for another 100 miles. Fury is erupting in Picardy, which would be one of two regions broken into pieces and wiped off from the administrative map.

Several other regions may be merged but only one other is threatened with dismemberment and oblivion. This is - perhaps coincidentally - Poitou-Charente, the fiefdom of the unsuccessful Socialist presidential candidate, Ségolène Royal.

The ideas will be formally presented to President Sarkozy next week by a committee chaired by the former prime minister Édouard Balladur. The President commissioned the report last year after promising to rationalise the multiple layers of governance in what is the most minutely administered nation in the world (100 départements, 22 regions, 36,000 communes).

Animal rights activists have succeeded in obtaining a ban on horse-drawn carriages in Rome's historic centre following several traffic accidents.

The 44 horse-drawn carriages will be confined to parks during the week, under plans drawn up by the city, and allowed in the centre only at weekends.

They will be replaced on weekdays by electrically-powered vintage cars.

Last year, a horse had to be put down after being hit by a truck and breaking its leg on a street near the Colosseum.

Italy's deputy tourism minister said the plight of horses drawing the carriages in polluted and crowded streets had become a scandal, leading to the deaths of several animals among the 90 employed.

MALBORK, Poland: The damp mud falls away easily from the long thighbone jutting out of the dirt wall of the trench at the gentle prod of the shovel's tip. Beyond the mass grave filled with the skeletal remains of some 2,000 people, presumed to be Germans who died in the closing months of World War II, stands the red-brick fortress of the Teutonic Knights that was once one of Germany's greatest landmarks until it was forced to cede the territory to Poland after the war.

Until then, Malbork was the German town of Marienburg, and the authorities believe the dead men, women and children buried together here were inhabitants of the city, along with refugees from places farther east, such as Königsberg, now Kaliningrad, fleeing the devastating Soviet counterattack that would eventually capture Berlin. Several dozen of the skulls have bullet holes, which prompted speculation of a massacre when the first bodies were found last October, whereas now the talk centers on cold, hunger and most of all typhus, which was rampant at the time.

Europe has more than its share of mass graves, a reflection of the extraordinary scale of violence of the previous century. But throughout the Continent the public is far more used to Germans as perpetrators rather than victims, and perhaps nowhere is that more true than in Germany itself.

PRAGUE: Bosnian Serb leaders have threatened to pull out of state institutions and are pressing anew for independence from Bosnia and Herzegovina, threatening to throw the fragile, multiethnic country into political crisis once again.

Analysts and observers of the region said the situation could unravel the United States-brokered Dayton accords of 1995, which ended a savage war that killed more than 100,000 people, most of them Muslims, between 1992 and 1995. The pact divided Bosnia and Herzegovina into a Muslim-Croat Federation and a Serb Republic, presided over by a decentralized political system that reinforced rather than healed ethnic divisions.

The crisis comes at a critical time, just a few weeks after the United Nations and European Union envoy to Bosnia, Miroslav Lajcak, was appointed foreign minister of his native Slovakia, creating what analysts called a potentially dangerous power vacuum. United Nations officials stressed Tuesday that Lajcak would continue to exercise his powers until a replacement was found.

The European Union has put the issue of whether to accept former Guantanamo inmates at the top of its agenda. Human rights groups say Europe also needs to shoulder some of the blame for what has happened. 

When US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton travels to meet with top European officials in Brussels next week, Guantanamo is likely to be a major topic of discussion. It will come up again in mid-March, when the European Union sends a high-level delegation to Washington to find out more details about US plans to close the controversial US military detention facility in Cuba.

Yet there are new indications that European countries continue to struggle on whether or not to to provide refuge to former Guantanamo inmates.

The European Union has welcomed the decision by US President Barack Obama to close down the facility, which holds about 240 prisoners who were sent there as part of the US-led effort to combat terror. But at a meeting on Thursday, Feb. 26, the bloc stressed it simply doesn't have enough information to decide which, if any, inmates its members should take in.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Ethnic discrimination on the Belgian labour market, neo-Nazi extremism in Austria and abuses against Roma in nine EU countries are some of the findings of the 2008 US government report on human rights.

The report, issued on Wednesday (25 February) by the State Department for each country of the world, says that the Belgian government "generally respected the human rights of its citizens," but found several problems, such as overcrowded prisons, lengthy pre-trial detention, poor detention conditions prior to expulsion and "ethnic discrimination in the job market."

Roma are discriminated against and excluded in a number of EU societies

Labour discrimination was directed particularly against young men from the Muslim community, estimated at 450,000 people, principally of Moroccan and Turkish origin.

Discrimination regarding housing, restaurant access and an increase of racism on the internet were also noted.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Germany's centre-right CSU party is hoping to tap into anti-European sentiment in the influential state of Bavaria to attract votes for the June European elections.

Horst Seehofer, head of Bavaria's Christian Social Union, on Wednesday (25 February) made a campaign speech that was notable for its break with the more pro-European stance of its sister party, the CDU, currently the major party in Germany's governing coalition.

German people need more direct democracy on European issues, says the CSU

In the speech, Mr Seehofer said Europe must become much closer to its citizens and that citizens should have the right to decide on important questions, specifically naming Turkish EU membership as a referendum-worthy issue.

"I want German citizens to be asked whether the European family should be extended to Turkey. Citizens should decide on that," he said.

Are such things done on Albion's shore?

The image of this nation that haunts me most powerfully is that of the sleeping giant Albion in William Blake's prophetic books. Sleep, profound and inveterate slumber: that is the condition of Britain today.

We do not know what is happening to us. In the world outside, great events take place, great figures move and act, great matters unfold, and this nation of Albion murmurs and stirs while malevolent voices whisper in the darkness - the voices of the new laws that are silently strangling the old freedoms the nation still dreams it enjoys.

We are so fast asleep that we don't know who we are any more. Are we English? Scottish? Welsh? British? More than one of them? One but not another? Are we a Christian nation - after all we have an Established Church - or are we something post-Christian? Are we a secular state? Are we a multifaith state? Are we anything we can all agree on and feel proud of?

The piece seems to have vanished with a 404 from the website of The Times [Murdoch Alert] , so I am very tempted to repost Pullman's essay in its entirety here. However until I get an ET moderator okay, here's Pullman's conclusion:

It will be no use bleating that you know of no offence you have committed under British law

It is for us to know what your offence is

Angering our friends is an offence

It is inconceivable to me that a waking nation in the full consciousness of its freedom would have allowed its government to pass such laws as the Protection from Harassment Act (1997), the Crime and Disorder Act (1998), the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000), the Terrorism Act (2000), the Criminal Justice and Police Act (2001), the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act (2001), the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Extension Act (2002), the Criminal Justice Act (2003), the Extradition Act (2003), the Anti-Social Behaviour Act (2003), the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act (2004), the Civil Contingencies Act (2004), the Prevention of Terrorism Act (2005), the Inquiries Act (2005), the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (2005), not to mention a host of pending legislation such as the Identity Cards Bill, the Coroners and Justice Bill, and the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill.

Inconceivable.

And those laws say:

Sleep, you stinking cowards

Sweating as you dream of rights and freedoms

Freedom is too hard for you

We shall decide what freedom is

Sleep, you vermin

Sleep, you scum.

The whole piece ought to be read. The central part of the essay is like a poem. Another part of the piece is at boingboing.

I wonder why it was disappeared from Murdoch's newspaper?

Controversial surveillance powers employed to fight terrorism and combat crime have been misused by civil servants in undercover "spying" operations that breach official guidelines, the Guardian has learned.

Documents obtained under Freedom of Information show some government departments and agencies have used these powers incorrectly or without proper controls. They also show the official government watchdog set up to monitor the use of such clandestine techniques criticised the departments for their behaviour.

The watchdog twice threatened to inform Gordon Brown about the serious abuses of powers under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA).

AMSTERDAM (AP) -- Investigators are examining turbulence as one of the possible causes of the Turkish Airlines crash that killed nine people and injured more than 100 near Amsterdam's main airport, a spokesman said Saturday.

Wake turbulence is the vortices of disturbed air that planes leave behind them. Another plane had landed on the same runway 120 seconds earlier.

Wind shear, is a change in wind speed and/or direction over short distance - and as such a hazard to planes taking off or landing. A Finnair pilot friend said that wind shear was a problem at certain airports and can be very nasty to deal with.

Many airports have installed the Vaisala Wind Shear doppler radar detection systems: Vaisala LAP®-3000 Lower Atmosphere Profiler

Vaisala is a €250 m Finnish company acknowledged as leader in environmental and industrial metrics. Many years ago I made a corporate movie for them that got me around 2 continents filming their weather installations and the weather itself. It was on my trip to the US that I filmed the first wind farm (in California). I was mightily impressed with the beauty of it. And now full circle I meet the man responsible for it here at ET! Take a bow, Crazy Horse...

You can't be me, I'm taken

For at forhindre den svenske efterretningstjeneste i at lytte med i Danmark, opfordrer justitsminister Brian Mikkelsen nu alle borgere og myndigheder til at overveje at kryptere deres brug af e-mails, internet og telefoni.

[...]

Justitsminister Brian Mikkelsen vil ikke foretage sig noget overfor den svenske regering - for at forhindre, at svenske efterretningstjenster nu er begyndt at overvåge danskernes helt interne trafik af e-mails, internet og telefoni, når den løber gennem svenske kabler.

Five-minute translation: The Danish minister of (miscarriage of) justice will not lodge a protest against the new Swedish law saying that the Swedish secret police is allowed to spy on all data traffic that they can lay their hands on. That includes foreign traffic that's just passing through Swedish infrastructure. However, the minister of (miscarriage of) justice recommends that all users who are concerned about their privacy should encrypt their communications.

- Jake

"Terraforming your own planet to make it uninhabitable hardly counts as epic win." - ThatBritGuy

So the Obama administration just exchanged $25 billion worth of dividend paying preferred stock for not dividend paying common stock paying $3.25 a share while the market price for Citi common stock is $1.80.

Somehow that deal does not make sense to me ...

Divorced bankers who have had their bonuses cut are trying to wriggle out of millions of pounds worth of maintenance payments they promised to pay their children and former wives. Dozens of ex-husbands in the City are going back to court to ask judges to reduce divorce settlements that were agreed in much rosier economic times.

Two of the City's leading law firms advising bankers and wealthy businessmen confirmed that they were helping husbands get better maintenance deals in light of their clients' reduced financial circumstances.

Sandra Davis, head of family law at Mishcon de Reya, told The Independent: "We have had a number of male clients who have been forced to renegotiate settlements where maintenance awards were substantial. These were based on projected bonuses and salary levels which have not been sustained in the economic downturn."

The head of General Motors Europe, Carl-Peter Forster, said on Friday that Opel would become a semi-independent company, adding that the stricken German carmaker needed 3.3 billion euros ($4.2 billion) to survive.  

Forster, said on Friday that the US company envisioned Opel becoming an "at least partly an independent business unit."

He also confirmed that Opel needed 3.3 billion euros to to help it through the current downturn in the car market. He made the comments at a press conference at Opel's headquarters in the western city of Ruesselsheim after presenting its board with a plan to save the German car maker.

Forster said GM Europe would present the plan to German authorities on Monday.

Earlier on Friday, German Economics Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg warned that the degree of integration between Opel and the Detroit-based GM would make Opel 's push to part company with its troubled US parent very difficult.

German chancellor Angela Merkel has given the strongest signal to date that her country may come to the rescue of embattled eurozone economies.

"We have shown solidarity and that will remain so. We should use Sunday's summit [in Brussels] for member states affected to give an honest report of their situation," she said on Thursday evening (26 February) at a press conference in Berlin.

Ireland's banking sector makes it particularly vulnerable, said Angela Merkel

"We will have to discuss the situation in each individual country. It all depends on whether we are able to speak openly and honestly about the situation because there are a lot of rumours flying around."

Certain conditions are likely to be attached to any support plan offered by Berlin.

While Ms Merkel refused to be drawn on the exact nature of financial support, she made it clear that action to tackle excessive budget deficits would be a stipulation for receiving aid.

EUOBSERVER / BLAA LONID - As the debate over the issuance of eurozone-level bonds heats up, Nordic prime ministers are lukewarm on the idea, with Sweden saying there are "better answers" to deal with the problem of spreads in the cost of borrowing across the union.

"[The EU] should try other things," Swedish prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt told reporters on Thursday (26 February) after a meeting in Iceland of the Nordic Council of Ministers - which brings together the premiers of Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Iceland and Norway - on Wednesday (26 February).

Th Hallgrimskirkja church in Iceland - Nordic leaders were lukewarm on the eurobond idea

"There was a co-ordinated answer to the crisis decided [by the European Council] last autumn, many of which measures are still not in place," he continued. "That should be the road forward. When these measures are in place thoroughly, that will open up credit markets."

Mr Reinfeldt added that public funds used to stabilise western European banks are not only there to aid the "mother banks, but also the daughter banks" in eastern Europe.

"That is also sending a message of stability, especially in the Baltics in the Swedish case."

The banking sectors in Central and Eastern Europe are to get a 24.5bn euro ($31bn; £21.8bn) rescue package to support them in the economic crisis.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the World Bank have pledged the investment.

The funds are particularly aimed at helping small firms survive.

Countries such as Latvia and Hungary have seen their economies particularly hit by the global economic slump.

The official European data agency released new figures for January showing more than 13 million people were jobless in the eurozone, with a 8.2% unemployment rate, the highest since September 2006.

AFP - The battered eurozone economies suffered more bad news on Friday with a quarter of a million jobs lost in January bringing the unemployment rate to 8.2 percent, the highest level in over two years.
  
The European Union's Eurostat data agency also confirmed that the inflation rate in the 16-nation zone recorded its sharpest fall on record in January, from 1.6 percent to just 1.1 percent, well below the European Central Bank's comfort zone of close to but less than 2.0 percent.
  
The official figures bore out a widely-watched EU study released Thursday which showed European consumer and business confidence at record lows as the recession gets longer and deeper.

Shares across the UK, America and Europe tumbled today after it emerged that the US economy shrank at the fastest rate since 1982 in the final three months of last year, far worse than the US Government had initially estimated.

Gross domestic product (GDP) fell at an annual rate of 6.2 per cent between October and December, above initial estimates of a 3.8 per cent decline during the fourth quarter of 2008.

In response, London's FTSE 100 index plunged further below the 4,000 level today, losing 127.35 points to 3,788.29 and America's Dow Jones industrial average fell 132.45 points to 7,049.63.

Investors in Germany and France also took fright - Frankfurt's Dax fell 4.1 per cent while French-listed stocks dropped 3.3 per cent to 2,654.52.

Irish gangsters have staged the biggest cash robbery in the history of the Republic, stealing up to €7 million from the Bank of Ireland in Dublin's College Green early today.

The Garda Siochana said an armed gang took the family of a Bank of Ireland worker hostage at their County Kildare home on Thursday night...

Security sources in the Republic today told the Guardian that the chief suspect in the robbery was a career criminal in his early 60s based in north County Dublin. He is out on bail on other charges.

The Guardian's sense of irony was harmed with the publication of this story.

When Deutsche Bank determined that strategist Rod Manalo was, in the merciless language of hard times, "redundant," it was an abrupt and humbling end to a seven-year career in finance.

But Manalo, 30, has not been trudging the gray streets of London where he was based looking for work. This week, he was in the sun-drenched Brazilian resort city of Florianopolis, taking surfing lessons and dancing in throbbing nightclubs amid Carnival revelers...

"Decent finance jobs are nonexistent. Few hedge funds and no investment banks are hiring. If I were to find a job, I'd just fear losing it again, would continue to watch markets drop and would expect little or no bonus," said Manalo, who was fired in December from his position as a vice president in risk arbitrage.

Apart from occasionally watching his investments, he said, "I am fully focused on traveling."

After eight years in finance, Jessica Alberti, 32, said she abandoned her work on emerging markets at a major New York hedge fund in October when people were losing so much money that she now has trouble finding sufficient pejoratives to describe it.

"It was so negative, it was horrible. It was tense, extremely negative. Miserable," she said. "It was so bleak."

So after getting her bonus, factoring in the weather and world currencies, and deciding that Europe was too expensive and that she'd already seen Asia, she headed for South America...

She plans to return briefly to New York to deal with her taxes and refinance her apartment, but then she wants to return to Argentina and start a new life abroad.

"Right now I don't want to be in New York pedaling my feet. I'd rather look for interesting investments down here," she said.

A lot of people who have been fired due to harsh economic times cannot afford to become world travelers... just saying.

Germany's "scrapping bonus" where people are offered 2500 euros (£2231.9) to dump cars nine years old or more appears to be working after a host of carmakers reported a boost in sales this month.

Volkswagen reached its highest sales figures ever for February of 120,000 vehicles.

Even Opel, teetering on the brink of extinction, sold 40,000 cars, its best results in five months and the Romanian auto manufacturer Dacia has even had to boost production lately to keep up with high demand in Germany.

"There has never been a state promotion that has had such a positive effect as the scrapping bonus," said Robert Rademacher, president of the German Association for Motor Trade and Repairs. He added it was a far more effective stimulus than the UK decision to lower VAT on goods.

Most of the cars being sold as a result of the bonus are smaller, cheaper models like the VW Polo, Dacia Sandero or Opel Corsa.

LISBON, Feb 27 (Reuters) - The International Energy Agency fears that an expected recovery in oil demand from 2010 and oil project cancellations due to low crude prices and the credit crisis will mean no spare oil capacity at the end of 2013.

"That is our concern. Investment, investment, investment, that is what we are asking," IEA Executive Director Nabuo Tanaka said at a conference in Lisbon on Friday.

The Paris-based IEA, which advises 28 industrialised countries, earlier this month said global oil demand would drop by 980,000 barrels per day (bpd) this year but would rise again by about 1 million bpd in 2010 with an expected economic recovery.

Tanaka said that there was no room for complacency on spare oil capacity.

"We now see many cancellations or postponements of supply investment projects...and we learned the lesson last year when we didn't invest, the market became volatile and oil prices reached $147 per barrel," he said.

He added that supply from producing oil fields will decline dramatically, and that to offset the decline by 2030 "we need 45 million barrels per day of new capacity, or the equivalent of 4 Saudi Arabias".

Western officials, the Afghan government and Taliban-linked mediators have been engaged in secret negotiations to bring elements of the group into Afghanistan's political process, Al Jazeera has learned.

The talks, which have been taking place in Dubai, London and Afghanistan since the beginning of the year, have proposed the return of Gulbaldin Hekmatyar, the former Afghan prime minister, who has been in hiding for seven years, to Afghanistan.

Hekmatyar is the leader of the Hezb-i-Islami forces, a faction of Afghanistan's Hezb-i-Islami party, and is purported to be in the northwest tribal region of Pakistan.

His forces fight alongside the Taliban and are considered a terrorist organisation by the United States forces in Afghanistan.

DON SAO HONG, Thailand: After months of clinging to the hope that Southeast Asia might avoid the worst effects of the global economic crisis, layoffs across the region have gathered pace, governments are announcing sharp falls in economic growth and lawmakers are passing a raft of stimulus packages. Economic woes are high on the agenda at the summit meeting of the 10 countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations this weekend.

Here in the northeastern corner of Thailand, the unemployed, still paunchy from lives in the big city, have begun to trickle back to their villages.

While the crisis in the West centers on insolvent banks, home foreclosures and swelling unemployment, in Southeast Asia economists predict that one hallmark of the downturn will be the exodus of workers back to the family farm.

RAMALLAH, Feb 27 (IPS) - Red-faced and unusually tongue-tied Israeli officials were forced to try and explain to U.S. Senator John Kerry during his visit to Israel last week why truckloads of pasta waiting to enter the besieged Gaza strip were not considered humanitarian aid while rice was.

Kerry, chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, visited the coastal territory on a fact-finding mission.

The purpose of the visit was to assess the humanitarian situation on the ground and the level of destruction wrought by Israel's three-week military assault on Gaza, codenamed Operation Cast Lead.

During his visit to Gaza it came to the senator's attention that Israel had prevented a number of trucks loaded with pasta from entering the territory.

The bodies of dozens of officers have been found stuffed into drains and buried in shallow graves at a border compound in Dhaka, the Bangladesh capital, following a mutiny by hundreds of guards.

The corpses of at least 66 people were unearthed at the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) headquarters on Friday, two days after a revolt by hundreds of border guards protesting over pay and conditions.

Al Jazeera's Nicolas Haque in Dhaka said: "The senior officers killed are just the first out of the mass graves.
 
"There are flies all over the place, you can smell gun powder. There is an eerie feeling ... the smell, the tension and the drama are palpable."

President Barack Obama has announced the withdrawal of most US troops in Iraq by the end of August 2010.

In a speech at a Marine Corps base, he said the US "combat mission" in Iraq would officially end by that time.

But 35,000 to 50,000 of the 142,000 troops now in Iraq will stay on into 2011 to advise Iraqi forces, target terror and protect US interests.

Mr Obama praised the progress made but warned: "Iraq is not yet secure, and there will be difficult days ahead."

Some Democrats are concerned that the timetable falls short of his election pledges on troop withdrawal.

White House aides told Jewish leaders on a conference call today that the United States will boycott the United Nations' World Conference on Racism over hostility to Israel in draft documents prepared for the April conference.

The aides, including an advisor to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, Jennifer Simon, and longtime Obama advisor Samantha Power, said the administration will not participate in further negotiations on the current text or participate in a conference based on the text, sources on the call said.

They left open the option of re-engaging on a "much shorter, much different text," a source said.

Chrysler and General Motors (GM) took the bottom two spots, respectively, in Consumer Reports magazine's new automaker for reliability, even as the pair seek billions more in federal loans to stay afloat.

The third of Detroit's Big 3 automakers, Ford Motor, fared better at fourth from the bottom, also beating Suzuki.

First place went to Honda (HMC) for the third-consecutive year, followed by Subaru, Toyota (TM) and Mazda. Next came a tie by Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Volkswagen and BMW, among the 15 makers rated. They were followed by Hyundai, Volvo and Mitsubishi.

You know, I got chewed out by quite a few people at dKos for pointing out that the Big Three made shitty cars.  They told me to go read Consumer Reports.

Oops.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

"The survival of the human species is by no means an obvious thing. There are very severe threats to survival. We learn about them all the time. The threat of environmental destruction is much too real to put to the side. The threat of destruction by weapons of mass destruction -- that has come very close many times. We just learned at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, a terminal nuclear war was averted by one word by one submarine commander who countermanded the order to send off nuclear missiles.

Chomsky

Grabbing what you can, as John Ruskin said, isn't any less wicked when you grab it with the power of your brains than with the power of your fists.

The Winter Games are set to be held in Sochi in 2014, heralding Russia's 21st century coming out. But the path to the celebration isn't an easy one -- the project has been plagued by construction delays, homeowner protests and oligarch investors hit by the economic downturn. The countdown to Sochi has begun, but it is already clear it will be a thorn in the eye of the IOC for the next five years.

At 10 a.m. in the Caucasus Mountains, backhoes dig their way through the snow and trucks dump loads of sand. The sun is a yellowy white and it's -4 degrees Celsius (25 degrees Fahrenheit). Russian men with cigarettes dangling from the corners of their mouths reach for their helmets, shovels and wheelbarrows, then they begin to hammer, weld and saw.

There are 500 people working here at an elevation of 563 meters (1,847 feet) at the foot of the Aibga mountain range. Two helicopters, a white Ka-27 and a red Mi-8, rise into the air overhead. One flying hour per helicopter costs €3,800 ($4,830), and each can carry four tons of cargo. Right now they're flying cement bags and steel pylons up to the north slope of Black Pyramid mountain, where all alpine ski events will be held during the Olympic Games in February, 2014.

A psychedelic fish that bounces on the ocean floor like a rubber ball has been classified as a new species, a scientific journal reported.

The frogfish - which has a swirl of tan and peach zebra stripes that extend from its aqua eyes to its tail - was initially discovered by scuba diving instructors working for a tour operator a year ago in shallow waters off Ambon island in eastern Indonesia.

The operator contacted Ted Pietsch, lead author of a paper published in this month's edition of Copeia, the journal of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists, who submitted DNA work identifying it as a new species.

The fish - which the University of Washington professor has named "psychedelia" - is a member of the antennariid genus, Histiophryne, and like other frogfish, has fins on both sides of its body that have evolved to be leg-like.

The legendary Bauhaus movement turns 90 this year and the anniversary is being marked by exhibitions from Tokyo to New York. The school that created the image of the modern age was created when a young architect, Walter Gropius, set out to not only shape products for the future but to create a more just society.

In times of gloom and doom, there is often a need for the charismatic energy of great ideas. Back in 1919 German architect Walter Gropius regarded the miserable period following the end of the World War I as a "catastrophe of world history." His response was a bold and yet surprisingly pragmatic utopian vision -- the Bauhaus. By establishing this new kind of art school he managed to create a cultural wonder that continues to have a profound impact to this day.

This year marks the 90th anniversary of the founding of the school and a series of events and exhibitions are about to remind us once again that without Gropius the world of architecture and design would look very different today.

Christian Faur is an artist based in Granville, Ohio. Looking for a new technique, he experimented with painting with wax, but he didn't feel the results were satisfactory. Then, at Christmas in 2005, his young daughter opened a box of 120 Crayola crayons he'd bought her, and everything clicked into place...

A US fireman who lost his power of speech in a traffic accident has been taught to speak again by parrots.

Brian Wilson, from Damascus, Maryland, suffered life-threatening injuries in the accidnet 14 years ago. He also lost his ability to speak.

But he now claims that the chatter of pet parrots confounded the bleak outlook of doctors, who were convinced that he would spend the rest of his life in bed at a nursing home.

"Two birds taught me to talk again," he said. "I had such a bad head injury I was never supposed to talk any more than a two-year-old."

But two of the birds that he had had as pets since he was a child "just kept talking to me and talking to me".

"Then all of a sudden, a word popped out, then two, then more."

A prominent Saudi scholar warned youths studying abroad of using ethanol or other fuel that contains alcohol in their cars since they could be committing a sin, local press reported Thursday.

Sheikh Mohamed Al-Najimi, member of the Saudi Islamic Jurisprudence Academy, based his statement on a saying by the prophet that prohibited all kinds of dealings with alcohol including buying, selling, carrying, serving, drinking, and manufacturing, the Saudi newspaper Shams reported Thursday.

Saudi and Muslim youth studying abroad would violate the prohibition if they used bio fuel, he said, since it "is basically made up of alcohol."

Majimi stressed that his statement should not be considered an official fatwa, but is rather a personal opinion. He noted that this is an important issue that needs to be studied by the relevant religious bodies.

It is a hidden, taboo subject, widely known about within the music world but barely discussed. Little research into the area has been done and the full extent of the problem is incompletely understood. But inappropriate use of alcohol in Britain's great orchestras is, according to musicians, endemic - ranging from drinking a pint before a concert to steady the nerves, to full-blown inebriation on stage.

Gives a new meaning to Beethoven's Fifth.

You can't be me, I'm taken

This week in the UK saw the beta launch of Creative Spaces. An online community and federated search project across nine National Museums, part of the National Museums Online Learning Project (NMOLP) and involving the Tate, V&A, British Museum, National Portrait Gallery, Natural History Museum, Imperial War Museum, Royal Armouries, Wallace Collection and Sir John Soanes' Museum. The core idea is to provide a way for people to find, discuss and be inspired by the collections of all these museums.

See you Sunday night. :-)