EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Ten years after the end of the war in Kosovo, the EU needs to step up pressure on both Kosovo and Serbia in order to have a number of blocked war crimes cases solved, according to a fresh report by human rights group Amnesty International.

During the 1998 - 1999 war in Kosovo, more than 3,000 ethnic Albanians were victims of "enforced disappearances by Serbian police, paramilitary and military forces."

The EU's rule of law mission should help investigate and prosecute "those responsible for enforced disappearances and abductions" in Kosovo, says the report

Similarly, "an estimated 800 Serbs, Roma and members of other minority groups were abducted, reportedly by members of the Kosova Liberation Army (KLA), the majority after the international armed conflict ended in June 1999, under the eyes of the NATO-led peacekeeping Kosovo force," Amnesty International said in a report published on Monday (8 June).

"A decade after the end of the war, around 1,900 families across Kosovo and Serbia still have no details about the fate or whereabouts of their missing relatives, said Amnesty's Balkans expert Sian Jones.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - In an effort to counter increasing worries about infringement of press freedom by governments in Europe, both within the EU and beyond, the editor-in-chief of Germany's weekly Stern magazine, together with EU media commissioner Viviane Reding on Tuesday (9 June) celebrated the launch of the European Charter on Freedom of the Press.

Stern editor Hans-Ulrich Jörges hands over the Charter to media commissioner Viviane Reding

Speaking to journalists in Brussels, Ms Reding expressed her concern about threats to media freedom in "the east" but was reluctant to acknowledge similar worries emanating from Italy.

The charter, while having no legal teeth and being largely a symbolic document, should begin to have some effect at the point of accession to the EU, as it is intended to be made a condition of entry for EU candidate countries in future accession negotiations.

"[The commission does] not have a direct competence to make the charter legally binding," said Ms Reding, "but the journalists will give the charter to the politicians, who will have to see that the charter is applied in real terms."

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi visits former colonial ruler Italy this week to forge deeper trade and investment ties amid criticism by right groups of Tripoli's treatment of African migrants. 

Gadhafi will receive guests in his tent pitched in the Villa Doria Pamphili, Rome's biggest public park, including some of the Italians he kicked out in 1970 to punish Italy for its 1911-1941 colonization.

As well as meeting with the Italian expellees, Gadhafi's three-day visit will also include a series of meetings with Italian officials, including Premier Silvio Berlusconi, and audiences with university students, businesspeople and a delegation of prominent Italian women.

The Italian Foreign Ministry said Gadhafi and Berlusconi are expected to sign a number of bilateral agreements.

Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan say they intend to seek World Trade Organization membership as a single customs bloc. The move would end their membership bids to join the global trade group as individual states.  

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that Moscow would only join the WTO, if the three former Soviet bloc countries are accepted as a single applicant.

Putin was quoted by the ITAR-Tass news agency after a meeting of the Eurasian Economic Community in Moscow as saying that he, along with the prime ministers of Belarus and Kazakhstan would "notify the WTO of their intention to start negotiations on the accession of the tripartite customs union to the organization and the end of national negotiations."

In a landmark decision on domestic violence, the European Court of Human Rights has said Turkey failed to protect a woman from being murdered by her son- in- law and ordered Ankara to pay damages.  

The Strasbourg-based court ruled that Turkey had denied a citizen the "right to life" by failing to prevent her murder by her son-in-law. The case marks the first time that the European Court of Human Rights has ruled against a state in a case of domestic violence.

The court also ruled Turkey had violated the convention on human rights which prohibits torture, inhumane treatment and discrimination.

The government in Ankara was ordered to pay 36,000 euros ($50,000) in compensation to a applicant whose former husband shot her mother.

"This is a precedent for further cases in countries of the European Council," a court spokesperson said.

It would take a Barack Obama to unseat Angela Merkel in the September election. Her rival Frank-Walter Steinmeier is anything but. The dour bureaucrat lacks the campaign skills needed to offset waning confidence in his Social Democrats.

They say it will take a miracle. Germany's center-left Social Democrats are faced with a challenge that will likely prove insurmountable. Conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel, analysts and commentators agree, is destined to win a second term in Germany's general election on Sept. 27.

 German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier would like to become chancellor. Analysts say it's unlikely. The SPD failed miserably in Sunday' European parliamentary election, managing just 20.8 percent in Germany. The party is languishing in opinion polls and with just three and a half months left until the general election, it faces an even steeper climb than in 2005. Back then, the SPD almost pulled it off, with then Chancellor Gerhard Schröder -- the SPD's tub-thumping, baby-kissing, football-kicking, soundbite-coining campaign warhorse -- losing to Merkel by the narrowest of margins.

LONDON, June 10 (Reuters) - Commuters endured rush-hour chaos on Wednesday as a 48-hour strike shut down most of the capital's underground rail network.

Faced with closed stations and enormous bus queues, millions of people either walked, cycled or even roller-skated into work.

Transport for London arranged taxi-sharing at major rail termini and laid on free river services and guided commuter cycle routes.

The 250-mile underground network normally runs over 500 trains at peak hours and carries some 3.5 million passengers a day.

But not all lines were closed. London Underground said there was a good service on the Northern Line and reduced services running on sections of the District, Jubilee, Victoria, Metropolitan and Piccadilly lines.

Six Metropolitan police officers have been suspended from duty following ­allegations they used a form of water-based torture on suspected drugs ­smugglers, it emerged last night.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) said it was investigating the conduct of officers based in Enfield, north London, during drugs raids in the borough last November.

Neither the IPCC nor Scotland Yard would comment on the nature of the ­allegations but sources said the officers were accused of pushing suspects' heads into buckets of water.

One IPCC document is said to use the word "waterboarding" - the CIA technique condemned as torture by Barack Obama - in connection with the allegations.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin says Russia could consider getting rid of its nuclear arsenal if all other countries agreed to do so as well. 

After meeting with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Putin was asked if he could imagine a Russia without nuclear weapons.

"Of course," he answered. "What do we need nuclear weapons for?"

Steinmeier is visiting leaders in Moscow and has been encouraging the Kremlin to take part in a global disarmament initiative proposed by US President Barack Obama.

Putin's answer did have one caveat, however.

"If those who invented the atomic bomb, and used it, are prepared to do away with atom boms, then we would welcome this," he said, suggesting his country's involvement is dependent on US disarmament.

A card-carrying member of Italy's anti-immigration Northern League has been elected the country's first black mayor.

Sandy Cane, a 47-year-old Italian-American, becomes the mayor of the northern town of Viggiu, near Varese, east of Milan, after winning 30 per cent of votes cast by the town's 5,000 residents.

The translator and hotel director, who has a black American father and an Italian mother, voted for Barack Obama in the US presidential elections. She said there was no contradiction in a black woman representing the Italian anti-immigration party. "To tolerate illegal immigration above all harms those who enter our country with the desire to work and integrate themselves and to have a normal life," she said. "In America I voted for Obama, in Italy for Bossi."

Today at 2:30 pm I was received by the Committee for Constitutional Affairs of the Senate to discuss the popular initiative proposed law "Clean Parliament" that has being lying in the Senate for 18 months.

The text of my presentation:
"Almost two years after the collection of signatures for the popular initiative law called "Clean Parliament" I have the honour of being received and heard as the first signatory of the proposed law. Two years to talk at the Committee for Constitutional Affairs. A Committee that will weigh up the three requests: no convicted person in parliament, a limit of two legislatures for every parliamentarian, nominal elections of the candidates. Two years wait for a law signed by 350,000 people. It's a scandal that 350,000 Italian citizens haven't even been considered for 2 years. It's a scandal that in Parliament there are 20 people definitively convicted and statute-barred like Berlusconi, D'Alema, and Andreotti. It's disgusting that 70 of our representatives are convicted at the first or second level or are under investigation. Cuffaro and Dell'Utri are senators because of judicial merits, being convicted at the first level for mafia relationships. This Committee, this parliament has nothing to do with democracy. Six people have decided the names of who became a deputy or a senator. They have chosen 993 friends, lawyers and excuse the term, a few "zoccola" {sluts} and they elected them. They elected them, not the citizens who couldn't even choose their representatives. Dear members of the Committee, you are illegal, unconstitutional, and anti-democratic. Out of respect for yourselves and for the Italians, you should resign as soon as possible. Luigi De Magistris and Sonia Alfano are two respectable Italians elected by so many respectable citizens. You should start to get worried about these citizens. De Magistris had 450,000 votes, the second in Italy, Alfano 165,000 votes, the top woman in Italy. Those who went to vote were able to choose them. Why is this not possible for the Italian Parliament as well?

why indeed?

"Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do." Jim Hightower

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Sweden has said it needs Jose Manuel Barroso to be given full and clear backing for a second term as commission president or its term as EU presidency country, beginning in July, will be weakened.

Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt dismissed proposals - said to come from France - that Mr Barroso be given interim backing next week until October when the commission's current term expires and a new set of institutional rules is possibly in place.

'Yes I am' a candidate for a second term, says Jose Manuel Barroso (r)

"We intend to elect Mr Barroso as president of the commission ... but it should be a full mandate," said Mr Reinfeldt, on Tuesday (9 June).

He said a half endorsement while the EU waits to see ratification of the Lisbon Treaty is completed would "put pressure on the capacity of the Swedish presidency" to react to major issues such as the financial crisis and climate change - with the latter due at an international CO2-reduction agreement by the end of the year.

EUOBSERVER/BRUSSELS - Romania's two newly elected right-wing extremist MEPs may not take up their seats in the EU assembly, as one has been ordered by court not to leave the country and the other one wants to show "solidarity" with his colleague.

A court in Bucharest ruled on Tuesday that newly elected MEP George "Gigi" Becali, a millionaire football-club owner known for his burlesque TV appearances, is not allowed to leave the country as he is charged with ordering his bodyguards to capture and threaten three men who tried to steal his car.

Extremist leader Corneliu Vadim Tudor says he will give up his MEP mandate in solidarity with his colleague

The court had earlier agreed to release Mr Becali from pre-trial detention under electoral rules which guaranteed his freedom during the run-up to last weekend's European Parliament election.

He is also under investigation in a separate case for trying to bribe a football team playing against his club's main rival to the tune of €1.6 million.

Analysis of the results of European elections from a national perspective often overlooks the impact that the new balance of power will have on the structure of the majorities that control the policies of the Union.

When the new parliament is inaugurated on 14 July, the traditional EPP and PES grand coalition may be laid to rest, and its demise will likely be accompanied by an end to long-standing cross-party deals on economic directives and the appointment of commissioners. It would be unwise to under-estimate the potential for change in a Parliament which has in the past provided the venue for some highly innovative political experiments. It could even be argued that it was the alliance between the European Peoples' Party and the socialists in Strasbourg that provided the inspiration for the German CDU-SPD grand coalition.

Notwithstanding the relatively disappointing performance of Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom party in Italy, the victory of the EPP has confirmed the rise of the centre-right in Europe, and social policies will certainly change as a result. The decline of the PSE and the extreme left will put an end to the secular majority formed by the socialists along with the ALDE (liberals), Greens and the GUE (left), to marginalize the Christian Democrats of the EPP on the occasion of votes on ethical issues such as homosexual union, or the use of stem cells. But the EPP, which is still 100 votes short of an absolute majority of 369 seats out of 736, will not have complete control.

One of the big surprises of the European election came from Scandinavia. On 7.1% of the vote, the Pirate party is setting sail for Brussels, with the aim to legalise file sharing on the Internet, and presenting itself as a defender of citizens rights.

In Sweden, the question of file sharing had been on the agenda for public debate since 2005. On the Web, a growing number of Internet users wanted politicians to take an interest in the issue. For Rick Falkvinge, it was obvious that file sharing -- an activity in which he had been involved for over 20 years -- should be legal. At the same time, he was also aware that the politicization of file sharing amounted to a historic opportunity to put Sweden on the cutting edge of political change. But the politicians would not listen. What was needed was a more forceful method of attracting their attention. "You cannot convince politicians of anything if it doesn't affect them personally. So we had to target their power base directly and threaten their jobs."

On the evening of 1st January 2006, he hastily threw together a website for a new political party, and left a link in a chat room. The next day, he went to work as usual to his job as a departmental head in a research institute. The Pirate Party had been born.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - EU commissioners, impressive justice campaigners or just young and splashy, they are the famous women who scored big in the European elections.

She always wears Dior and has made a name for herself as France's first justice minister with an immigrant background. Rachida Dati, the 43-year old single mother who went back to work five days after giving birth to her daughter, secured a safe victory for Nicolas Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement (UMP). The party scored 27.8 percent of the votes, eleven percentage points ahead of the rival Socialist party.

Meglena Kuneva has won her seat as a MEP but could be sent again as EU commissioner.

A big winner in the French elections was also the Green Eva Joly, second on the Europe Ecologie list after Daniel Cohn-Bendit. A Norwegian-French magistrate specialised in financial affairs, the 65-year old Ms Joly played a key role in exposing high-level corruption in the French state-owned oil giant, Elf Aquitaine. Ms Joly said she hoped to gain a majority in the new EU legislature to seriously combat fiscal paradises and for "more justice between the North and the South."

Earlier this year she was employed by the Icelandic government to investigate the possibility of fraud and embezzlement in the financial crisis which paralysed the country since 2008.

For writer and critic George Steiner, the café made Europe. In the light of disappointing turnout for this year's European elections, La Vanguardia laments the disappearance of these places of debate.

There's a lot more to a cup of coffee than a break and a stimulant. The very blackness of this bracing brew holds a refreshing sensation, the beat that begins the day, the highlight of lunch, or the passing of idle hours. It represents the illusion of opening up the doors of perception, clearing up confusion, or providing a painless panacea for the occasional indisposition. "Let's have coffee" remains an excellent and concise formula to express the desire for a get-together replete with confidences, closeness - in a word: sociability. "A little cup of coffee", we say with a touch of tenderness. The important thing is to utter this magic word, which gives meaning to a social engagement and fosters the culture of conversation.

At a talk he gave in Amsterdam five years ago entitled "The Idea of Europe", George Steiner ventured a seemingly frivolous assertion: "As long as cafés are still around, the idea of Europe will endure." So in view of the massive abstention and electoral autism exhibited in the latest elections - only 43.1% voted, 59.6% didn't bother, beating the 2004 record for abstention - I can't help wondering what has become of the great European café.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Finance ministers meeting in Luxembourg on Tuesday (9 June) made progress on a new financial supervisory framework for the European Union but failed to reach an agreement on several of its most contentious issues.

Division over who should chair a new body designed to monitor overall risk levels in the European financial system mean EU leaders will be left to make the tough decisions when they meet in Brussels on 18-19 June.

What role for Trichet and the European Central Bank in a new European Systemic Risk Council?

At stake is the chairmanship of the proposed European Systemic Risk Council, with the European Commission last month suggesting the position should be filled by the president of the European Central Bank.

The UK and a number of other member states outside the Eurozone however, fear their interests will not be represented sufficiently if this is the case, with wrangling now likely to continue all the way up to the next European summit in just over one week.

The implications of the downturn will be the focus of this week's World Economic Forum on Africa in Cape Town. A host of business and political leaders are to try to assess Africa's challenges and opportunities.  

Just a year ago at the same gathering African leaders were upbeat about their economies with the continent enjoying a prolonged period of strong growth of up to five percent over the past five years.

All that appears to have been snuffed out almost overnight and has left the continent reeling in the wake of the global economic crisis. 

Dr. Dirk Kohnert, a researcher with the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) in Hamburg, told Deutsche Welle that it's a recurring theme: "It's always the same. The poor are affected foremost. And most of the poor countries worldwide are in sub-Saharan Africa. In addition to the 400 million poor there, there will be 27 million new poor at the end of this year."

A new government report shows that the former East Germany has been less bruised by the economic crisis than the richer West. The region has more smaller companies that are more flexible and less dependent on exports, it argues.

The former East Germany has long been eclipsed economically by the richer and more industrialized West. Yet ironically the eastern part of the country is now actually better equipped to deal with the ongoing economic crisis.

A worker at the Signet Solar factory in Mochau, near Dresden: Germany's eastern states have been less hard hit than the west by the crisis. That, at least, is the conclusion of the government's annual report on German unity to be released on Wednesday. According to the Berliner Zeitung newspaper, which has seen the report, it states that the East's "stronger resistance to the crisis" is due to the higher number of small- and medium-sized companies there. These are thought to be able to react more flexibly to the challenges posed by the economic downturn.

Furthermore, in comparison to western Germany, companies in the former East are far less dependent on exports. Germany, a highly industrialized country, is the world's biggest exporter and has been severely hit by the slump in global trade. On Tuesday the latest figures showed that German exports had fallen by an alarming 22.9 percent in April compared with the same month in 2008.

US long-term interest rates rose to the highest level of the year yesterday, threatening the "green shoots" of recovery, after the latest sale of 10-year government debt met with a tepid response from inflation-wary investors.

Concerns about the growth of government borrowing forced the US Treasury to give investors in an auction of $19bn in 10-year notes a yield of 3.99 per cent - 4 basis points higher than the yield available before the auction. That constituted the biggest yield markup since a 10-year auction in May 2003, said Morgan Stanley. Yields on the 10-year note, the benchmark rate for US mortgages, hit a high of 4 per cent during the day, up from 3.6 per cent a week ago.

The below piece is a good analysis of a hypothetical Treasury/Dollar black swan event, courtesy of Eugenio Aleman from, surprisngly, Wells Fargo. Eugenio does the classic Taleb thought experiment: what happens if the unthinkable become not just thinkable, but reality. Agree or disagree, now that we have gotten to a point where 6 sigma events are a daily ocurrence, it might be prudent to consider all the alternatives.

   Thinking the Unthinkable

    Several years ago, economists were saying that a new Great Depression was unthinkable, or even impossible, because we had learned from the 1930s. Today, we are teetering on the edge of a worldwide recession that could very well become a depression, at least according to those self-proclaimed "Doctors of Doom." On this note, I would like to discuss another "taboo" subject related to the U.S. dollar and closely linked to monetary and fiscal policy. And while this topic is a highly unlikely event, one of those events that Nassim Taleb would call a black swan, it suffices to remember how unlikely a collapse in home prices was several years ago. Remember?

    In previous reports, I have touched upon the concerns I have regarding the overstretching of the federal government as well as of monetary policy while the Federal Reserve tries to maintain its independence and its ability, or willingness, to dry the U.S. economy of the current excess liquidity. Furthermore, we heard this week the Fed Chairman's congressional testimony on the perils of excessive fiscal deficits and the effects these deficits are having on interest rates at a time when the Federal Reserve is intervening in the economy to try to keep interest rates low.

    Now, what I call "thinking the unthinkable" is what if, because of all these issues, individuals across the world start dumping U.S. dollar notes, i.e., U.S. dollar bills? We have heard that "rogue" states, like Iran, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, as well as not-so-rogue states like China, Brazil, Argentina, Russia, etc., have been discussing a way to go from a dollar pattern for multilateral trade to another country's or a combination of countries' currencies in order to achieve independence from U.S. monetary policy decisions. While these attempts, or at least the noise they produce in the media, have increased during the last year or so, my biggest concern is not with what these countries may do, but what individuals across the world may do if they believe the U.S. dollar is in trouble. Why? Because one of the advantages the U.S. Federal Reserve has over almost all of the rest of the world's central banks is that there seems to be an almost infinite demand for U.S. dollars in the world, which has made the Federal Reserve's job a lot easier than that of other central banks, even those from developed countries. Furthermore, approximately three-fourths of U.S. dollar bills are in foreign hands or foreign safe deposit boxes or mattresses, and an about-face by individuals across the world regarding these holdings of U.S. currency could be a huge blow to the value of the U.S. dollar, U.S. debt and the Federal Reserve's monetary policy. Why? Because all those holdings of U.S. dollar bills are basically a free loan from foreigners to the U.S. government, and if there is a massive run against the U.S. dollar across the world then the Federal Reserve will have to sell U.S. Treasuries to exchange for those U.S. dollars being returned to the country, which means that the U.S. Federal debt and interest payments on that debt will increase further. This means that we will go from paying nothing on our "currency" loans to having to pay interest on those U.S. Treasuries that will be used to sterilize the massive influx of U.S. dollar bills into the U.S. economy, putting further pressure on interest rates.

The US government is hoping that Germany will accept nine Uighur Chinese currently being held at Guantanamo Bay. SPIEGEL ONLINE spoke with the lawyer representing four of the men. She argues that they would integrate well into the already sizeable Uighur community in Germany.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: After a request by the US government the German government is examining a possible repatriation of nine Uighur men currently imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay to Germany. You just returned from the camp a few days ago and visited four of your clients who belong to this group. Can you describe your clients' current situation?

 Germany is being asked to accept nine Uighur Chinese men currently being held at Guantanamo Bay. Seema Saifee: The Uighurs are held in a facility known as "Camp Iguana," which is reserved for men who have been adjudged to be non-enemy combatants and who have been ordered released. Of all the camps at Guantanamo, Camp Iguana has the least restrictions. In Iguana, the Uighurs live and dine together; read books at picnic tables; wash their own laundry; and grow fruit and vegetables in a small garden. Camp Iguana, however, remains a military prison.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: How do your clients feel about the current debate about them?

Saifee: I spoke with my clients about the statements in the German media labeling them as dangerous. They were disheartened. US courts already ruled their detention unlawful. Federal judges found no evidence justifying their detention. The US government stated in open court there is no evidence they pose a security threat.

Final campaigning for Iran's presidential poll has been overshadowed by a row over accusations made by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Huge crowds have been gathering on the streets, as rival candidates hold their last election rallies.

In a letter published by several media, ex-President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani urged Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to rein in the president.

Mr Ahmadinejad alleged Mr Rafsanjani and other politicians were corrupt.

He is thought to be in a tight race with his main rival, reformist Mir Hossein Mousavi. Two other candidates are standing.

To find out the answer to that question, I visited, for the first time (trust me) the site of Stormfront, the major white nationalist/neo-Nazi hate site. You can do the same, if you wish. It may take awhile, as traffic overload is an issue today, for obvious reasons.

Although it is disconcerting to see that the site gets plenty of traffic every day, judging from the number of threads and posts and the purported number of new registrants last month (over 10,000).

One problem today reading the reactions there: The main thread drew dozens of responses but was shut down and is now locked. Another thread is active as I write this, perhaps because it is buried and simply adds to years-old tributes to the alleged killer, James Von Brunn.

Charles Krauthammer was honored Tuesday with the Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism, given annually by News Corp in honor of former New York Post editorial writer Eric Breindel.

In his acceptance speech, Krauthammer praised Fox News for creating an "alternate reality" on TV:

   I said some years ago that the genius of Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes was to have discovered a niche market in American broadcasting -- half the American people. The reason Fox News has thrived and grown is because it offers a vibrant and honest alternative to those who could not abide yet another day of the news delivered to them beneath layer after layer of often undisguised liberalism.

    What Fox did is not just create a venue for alternative opinion. It created an alternate reality.

Long-term monitoring by UC Berkeley's Infrared Spatial Interferometer (ISI) on the top of Mt. Wilson in Southern California shows that Betelgeuse (bet' el juz), which is so big that in our solar system it would reach to the orbit of Jupiter, has shrunk in diameter by more than 15 percent since 1993.

...

The ISI has been focusing on Betelgeuse for more than 15 years in an attempt to learn more about these giant massive stars and to discern features on the star's surface, Wishnow said. He speculated that the measurements may be affected by giant convection cells on the star's surface that are like convection granules on the sun, but so large that they bulge out of the surface. Townes and former graduate student Ken Tatebe observed a bright spot on the surface of Betelgeuse in recent years, although at the moment, the star appears spherically symmetrical.

...

"We observe around 11 microns, the mid-infrared, where this long wavelength penetrates the dust and the narrow bandwidth avoids any spectral lines, and so we see the star relatively undistorted," said Townes. "We have also had the good fortune to have an instrument that has operated in a very similar manner for some 15 years, providing a long and consistent series of measurements that no one else has. The first measurements showed a size quite close to Michelson's result, but over 15 years, it has decreased in size about 15 percent, changing smoothly, but faster as the years progressed."

Androulla Vassiliou, the EU health commissioner, called for a common European strategy on producing and using a swine flu vaccine. The World Health Organisation's pandemic alert for influenza A (H1N1) is at level five out of six. AFP - EU Health Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou on Tuesday called for a common European strategy on producing and using a swine flu vaccine, emphasising the need to focus on those most vulnerable.

"I think it is very important member states reach agreement on the modalities of production, availability and distribution of the vaccine," she told reporters as she arrived for a meeting of EU health ministers in Luxembourg.

"We need to have a vaccine by the autumn, and if there is not enough vaccine for everyone then we need to decide on priority groups to be vaccinated first," such as the elderly and the handicapped, and emergency services workers, she added.

"We won't have enormous quantities of the vaccine available from day one."

The possibility of the World Health Organisation (WHO) announcing the maximum pandemic alert -- currently level five out of six -- "is on all our minds," admitted Vassiliou.

Elephants, Sumatran tigers and some of Asia's rarest orang-utans will be plunged into a "dire and immediate" fight for their lives this summer as plans are finalised for a massive logging operation in Indonesia aimed at keeping the world supplied with cheap photocopying paper.

The project, which may source paper to office suppliers across the UK, could also unravel years of research spent solving the complex problem of how to reintroduce apes from captivity into the wild. Many of the subjects in a long-running experiment in Sumatra may be accidentally killed as the forest collapses around them.

The granting of the logging licence has provoked anger internationally among a coalition of conservation groups, who allege that it will enhance Indonesia's position as the world's third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Deforestation led by the unquenchable thirst of the paper and palm-oil industries is seen as the principal culprit. The destruction of Indonesian rainforests accounts for about 4 per cent of all man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

China tries to throw off image as a global climate criminal with its aims to become the future leader in a low-carbon world

A game-changing moment could be upon us. In recent years, the world has grown used to condemning China as a climate criminal. But over the next few weeks and months, don't be surprised if you hear the same nation being hailed as the planet's first green superpower.

The State Council, China's cabinet, will soon release the details of a staggeringly large "new energy" programme that could propel the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitter past Europe and the US into a global leader in renewable energy and low-carbon technology.

This is no short-term economic boost or sop for climate change negotiations; it is a long-term investment aimed at making China a dominant force in the global low-carbon economy for decades to come. Power plays do not come much bigger. 

"This isn't a profession for a young man to go into," says David Buechler, a Sawyer, North Dakota carpet installer who has been laying carpet for twenty-fie years. "I don't know any other carpet layers whose health isn't affected by the job in some way."

Buechler experiences a number of adverse symptoms when he works with carpet. "The fibers and the chemicals affect your lungs and your sinuses," he says. "Every time I lay carpet I sound like I have a cold by the end of the day. I get hoarse, shortness of breath, and my sinuses clog up. I get sinus infections on a regular basis. Also, my doctors attribute the arthritis I developed to inhaling the fumes from the carpet glues."

He adds, "Cancer, especially lung cancer, is a big concern. I know of about eight carpet layers in my area that were laying carpet when I started out, who have all died of lung cancer. They never made it to retirement."

Insurance companies are aware of the risks, according to Buechler. "It's hard to get life insurance if you're a carpet installer, he states. "And they require a really tough physical for medical insurance if they find out you lay carpet. I have also been told that if I hire a young guy to work for me I need to get a release signed so that if he's laying carpet and comes down with cancer years down the road, I won't be held responsible."

Some of Buechler's customers have had adverse health effects from carpet. He now regularly cautions new customers to stay away during installation, to keep off the carpet for several days during the initial high off gas period, and to ensure the house is continuously ventilated. He voices concern that some carpets appear to be more toxic than others, and he advises people not to take any chances if their carpet causes chronic health problems. He would rather see someone remove their carpet than have serious long-term consequences. Buechler says he has found that some people who react to one carpet may not react to another.

With computer data moving and changing ever more quickly, the phrase "digital preservation" is almost an oxymoron. Modern historians are figuring out how to cope in the digital "Dark Ages." 

It might not seem obvious, but the concept of "historical records" is a transmutable one.

Take the Domesday Book, written on sheepskin back in 1086. That historical record has out-lasted government records today by a very long way; more than a 1,000 years after it was written, we can still go and see it in its original form.

Yet modern digital government records from only 10 years ago can be all but unreadable, because in terms of the computing world, a decade is a very long time.

Outlasting sheepskin?

Decision-makers and average folks alike used to communicate by letter, leaving a paper trail for historians to follow far, far down the road. Now, with e-mails and text messages moving around the globe at lightning speed - and often being archived badly, if at all - some historians are worried that the present will be hard to read for historians of the future.

Several German states are trying to prevent the Jehovah's Witnesses from gaining the same offical status as the main church faiths. But they're unlikely to succeed after the group, controversial because of what former members call "totalitarian methods," won a landmark court case in Berlin.

Marina J. could still be alive today. Her small daughter would have had a mother and her widower wouldn't be a single father. A blood transfusion could have saved her.

On July 3, 2008, Marina J.'s husband took her to the hospital in the town of Lich in the western German state of Hesse. She was 29 years old, the mother of a seven-year-old daughter and a deeply devout member of the Jehovah's Witness church. The doctors diagnosed her with a miscarriage and strong bleeding. A blood transfusion could have been saved her life, but the woman insisted she didn't want one. She was accompanied by several members of her church and she showed the doctor a living will. Two days later, Marina J. was dead.

Thousands of stolen Italian artefacts, including ancient Etruscan treasures, medieval papal letters and even a book preface handwritten by Mussolini, have been discovered piled up in the Illinois home of an antique dealer, according to the FBI.

The secret collection of John Sisto ran to some 3,500 items and was discovered by relatives after his death in 2007, squirrelled away in hundreds of boxes stacked five feet high at his home in Berwyn.

Upstairs and in the attic, the walls were covered in delicate, old paintings, protected by cardboard sheets from refrigerator boxes.

Christian schools are justified in continuing to exclude gay teachers under certain circumstances, this according to the highest advisory body in the Netherlands, the Council of State.
 
In an advisory paper prepared for the cabinet and leaked to the newspaper Nederlands Dagblad, the Council argues that although schools are not allowed to discriminate, they do have a right to make specific demands of their staff under certain conditions.
 
The case arose last month when a Christian primary school in the Dutch town of Emst suspended a teacher after he came out as being homosexual. The school board said the teacher's sexual orientation conflicts with the foundation and the mission of the school.

Although private schools do exist in the Netherlands, the overwhelming majority of religious schools are state funded in the same way as non-denominational schools. 
 

Snaking on trestles through the now fashionable lower Manhattan neighbourhood, the High Line Park combines views of the Hudson River, wild vegetation, and echoes of New York's industrial history.

The park follows a rail line dating to the 1930s and seemed fated for the wrecking ball, like other relics of the city's grittier past, after the final freight train rumbled over in 1980.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, has started using a footstool to make up for his lack of inches when appearing with taller world leaders.

A video caught him using the discreet wooden accessory during the D-Day commemorations in Normandy last weekend.

It followed repeated attempts by the 54-year-old to use everything from stacked heels to standing on tiptoes to increase his tiny stature.

Manchester United have accepted a world record offer of £80m from Real Madrid for Cristiano Ronaldo.

"United have agreed to give Real Madrid permission to talk to the player," said a statement from the English club.

It added that the decision came at Ronaldo's request after he "again expressed his desire to leave".

United described the offer for the 24-year-old forward as unconditional and added that they expected the matter to be concluded by 30 June.