The SPD challenger to Chancellor Angela Merkel, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, urged party members to run a spirited campaign ahead of September's vote. This follows the party's poor showing at the EU polls last week. 

Frank-Walter Steinmeier rallied some 500 delegates at the Social Democrats' congress in the German capital. 

 

"We want to win and we will win," he said in his key-note speech.

 

The gathering, which comes after the debacle at the European parliamentary polls, is seen as a chance to infuse fresh enthusiasm into party ranks.  

 

The German vice-chancellor and foreign minister who hopes to topple Chancellor Angela Merkel, urged all SPD members to ensure victory for the Social Democrats in September's general elections.

EU foreign policy chief Solana's visit to Beirut following last weekend's election is meant to consolidate relations with Lebanon. He has met with representatives of various political parties, including the Hezbollah. 

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana is in Beirut for talks with Lebanese officials, less than a week after the country held parliamentary elections. The vote saw the Western-backed alliance increase its majority in parliament, defeating a coalition led by the Shiite militant group Hezbollah.

"This will help very much open a new page for the future of the country, prosperity, democracy and peace, said Solana after meeting Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh.

Solana also discussed the latest post-election developments with  President Michel Suleiman and Prime Minister Fuad Siniora.

Peter Mandelson's emergence as Labour's guiding spirit from a past dogged by spin and sleaze is one of the most remarkable transformations of the modern political age

In the muddy, seething waters after Labour's imperfect storm, Newsnight hosted a focus group debate this week on potential Labour leaders, including a discussion of Lord Mandelson of Hartlepool and Foy. One woman instantly concluded that he was "a bit public school and blue-blooded".

He would certainly object that the blood in his political veins is strictly red, as the grandson of Herbert Morrison, and that he's a product of Hendon County Grammar. But you could see her point.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Socialists have warned EU leaders meeting next week in Brussels not to disrespect the European Parliament by formally agreeing to appoint commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso for a second term in office.

Following a meeting on Friday (12 June ) of representatives from national delegations to discuss the beating that the left took in last week's European elections, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, head of the European socialists, said their main message was to "be careful."

EU leaders are meeting in Brussels on 18-19 June

"Don't make any decisions of a binding character as far as the president of the commission is concerned."

He pointed out that the parliament as a whole on 7 May agreed that the next commission president should be appointed under the Lisbon Treaty - yet to be approved throughout the EU.

The Latvian government has agreed to slash pensions and state sector salaries in a bid to keep the country afloat financially. Riga must cut costs to qualify for more financial aid from the EU and the IMF. 

Latvia's prime minister says last-minute state budget cuts have saved his country from bankruptcy. The country is seeking to avert the possible devaluation of its struggling currency, and it needs to reduce budget shortfalls in order to qualify for crucial financial aid from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

The country has been particularly hard hit by the current recession, and is facing an economic contraction of up to 20 percent this year.

Prime Minister Valdis Dombrovskis described the decision to slash 500 million lats ($1 billion) from budget expenses as "very difficult", but necessary if Latvia wants to receive the next installment in a 7.5 billion euro ($10.6 billion) bailout plan which was inked in December.

The economic crisis is rattling the aviation sector and no company has been left unscathed. Airline profits are suffering while orders for new planes are down. There's no telling when turbulence might end.

It sounds like something of a pipedream. Randy Tinseth, marketing manager at Boeing forecasts that despite the plethora of current problems: "We will see our industry grow," he says at the end of the telephone conference call. Aviation remains "a highly valued and integral part of the social and economic fabric of the world," he says.

Recession and weak currencies are threatening the continent's summer parties

The musician Neil Young will tonight entertain thousands of fans at the Isle of Wight festival before packing up his guitar and heading off to a sold-out Glastonbury, where he will headline along with Bruce Springsteen and a reformed Blur in a fortnight's time.

Despite the uncertainties of our summer weather, the credit crunch, and, in many cases, the same acts doing the rounds, Britain's music festival season is in full swing and rude health. Along with Glastonbury and the Isle of Wight, there will be T in the Park, Womad, V, Reading, Latitude and Bestival to name just a few of more than 100 planned between now and the end of September.

But across Europe it's a different story. In what was once a burgeoning market, particularly in eastern Europe, long starved of Western music during the Cold War, the festival circuit faces crisis. From Denmark's giant Roskilde - Europe's second biggest festival after Glastonbury - to Romania's B'esfest and Hungary's Sziget - promoters are struggling to sell tickets, despite such normally guaranteed draws as Coldplay, Oasis, Fat Boy Slim, the Prodigy and Kanye West.

Norway appears to be steering clear of the global financial crisis. FRANCE 24's reporters take a closer look at this resilient economy, bolstered by its sovereign wealth fund and its extensive oil and gas resources.

Contrary to the rest of Europe, Norway seems to be escaping the financial crisis - a miracle that can be explained in part by the rich natural resources of the Scandinavian peninsula, which is home to one third of the world's unexploited oil and gas reserves.

 Norway is the world's third biggest gas exporter, its fifth biggest oil exporter, and the leader in GDP per capita. It also has the world's second biggest sovereign wealth fund, just behind Abu Dhabi: a treasury with an estimated worth of more than 216 billion dollars, replenished by gas and oil revenue.

 
If natural resources are abundant, the ethos of saving money is also ingrained in the system; earning a lot and spending little is indeed Norway's credo. This financial discipline is to thank for the country's economic hardiness, according to the government.

Lack of housebuilding means Britain looks destined to live with relatively high house prices lurching from boom to bust as they have done for decades.

There are campaigners who argue that Britain should deal once and for all with its damaging boom-bust cycle in house prices by reaching for a radical policy known as annual land value tax (LVT), which would be levied on the value of land up to its maximum permitted development value.

The tax would be levied on property owners at, say, 1%, of the land's value every year, with the proceeds used to replace council tax and reduce income tax, thus rewarding work rather than property speculation. LVT would also encourage, for example, an elderly person living in a large family house to move to a flat and free the house for a family in a country where space is limited. It would also discourage developers from sitting on empty sites and buildings.

"This tax-shifting vision would release billions into the pockets of millions of working people and their families to spend and make the economy work for them and not landowners, speculators and bankers," says Louanne Tranchell, chair of the Labour Land Campaign.

LVTs are used elsewhere in the world and the idea goes back at least two centuries. "With the financial crisis, the time is ripe to introduce a system to collect the unearned income from the value of the land, which arises from community activity and services, and through investment in transport and infrastructure funded by the public purse," Tranchell adds

So, maybe it's not only speculation that's pushing oil to $70+...

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

TEHRAN -- Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has issued a statement praising the people's "unique" participation in Friday's presidential election and saying the elected president is all Iranian citizens' president.

"The participation of over 80 percent of (eligible) people... and the 24 million votes for the elected president are a real celebration that, God willing, will guarantee the country's progress and security," he said in the statement issued on Saturday.

Incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected president after receiving 24,527,516 votes, which was 62.63 percent of the 39 million votes cast in Friday's election. Main challenger Mir-Hossein Mousavi received 13,216,411 votes, which was 33.75 percent of the turnout.

The Iranian nation has proven that 30 years after the Islamic Revolution, they are still loyal to its revolutionary values and showed their "friends and enemies" that despite all the political and psychological pressure, they will stay the course, the Supreme Leader said in his statement.

NATO defense ministers have agreed to continue the alliance's anti-piracy patrols off the Horn of Africa when the current mission ends later this month.  

Meeting in Brussels on Thursday, the ministers decided to expand their five-ship maritime force off the coast of Somalia to 10 warships when the current mandate expires on June 28.

British Defense Minister Bob Ainsworth said the group had agreed to make the NATO flotilla "available for further, long-term counter-piracy activities to complement the many assets doing this job in the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden."

NATO ministers, however, were still discussing whether or not to divert the additional ships from their Mediterranean forces or put together an entirely new force.

Grinning broadly and protesting their desire only for the "peaceful life", four Chinese Muslims released from Guantanamo Bay enjoyed the delights of their new home over the weekend.

That meant fried Bermudan rock fish with banana and almonds, and a monumental row about their arrival in Britain's oldest colony.

Their celebratory meal, joined by The Sunday Telegraph after this newspaper tracked them down to their hideaway in a guesthouse in a remote corner of Bermuda, was washed down with water and a heavy dose of relief and gratitude toward their hosts.

By the yardstick of Jacques, the melancholy philosopher-clown in William Shakespeare's play As You Like It, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has indisputably passed the stage of "Mewing and pucking in the nurse's arms".

Nor is SCO anymore the "whining schoolboy, with his satchel/And shining morning face, creeping like snail/Unwillingly to school". The SCO more and more resembles Jacques' lover, "Sighing like a furnace, with a woeful ballad/Made to his mistress' eyebrow." Indeed, if all the world's a stage and the regional organizations are players who make their exits and entrances, the SCO is doing remarkably well playing many parts. That it has finally reached adulthood is beyond dispute.

(CNN) -- Venezuela has promised to give Nicaragua $50 million to replace money that the United States said this week it would withhold from the Central American country, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega Saavedra said Saturday.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez promised the aid after Ortega learned that the United States was canceling $62 million of aid that was to have come from the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a U.S.-government-funded anti-poverty fund set up by former President George W. Bush.

Ortega expressed disappointment in President Barack Obama for the decision. "He expresses good will, but in practice, he has the same policies as President Reagan," Ortega told a crowd of supporters in Managua's Plaza of the Revolution.

In 1982, then-President Reagan supported funding the contras, the forces opposed to Ortega and his socialist Sandinista Party, which had come to power after overthrowing the U.S.-backed Anastasio Somoza in 1979.

Ortega called this week's decision not to follow through on the payment "disrespectful."

Hello America! Greetings from Wales in the UK. How are things in the colonies these days? Getting along OK without us?

Anyway, back to the nature of the debate.

We have slightly different problems to you. Over here most people work and shop within 10 miles of where they live, so the slow death of the motorcar won't affect us as quickly as yourselves.

What we have is a massive & complicated debt problem.

Ireland (a little neighbour of ours just off our west coast) has just had it's S & P credit rating downgraded for the second time in three months. They belong to a 'Mickey Mouse' currency called the Euro (which, daft as we are and in the EU with them, we weren't daft enough to join a false currency). Then we have the Baltic states - Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. Latvia is a basket case. It will devalue it's currency some time this week as well as slash public sector pay. It is on the verge of total collapse financially and socially ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/5438615/Latvian-debt-crisis-shakes- Eastern-Europe.html and http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/5446658/European-banks-in-spotlight -as-Baltic-crisis-hits-Sweden.html ). Their neighbours (Lithuania and Estonia) are heavily entwined with them and also financially in ruins. In turn, Scandanavian banks - particularly Sweden, are heavily exposed and underwriting them in turn is Switzerland and Germany. A little bit further over is Ukraine - also on the verge of collapse and serious social upheavel. The only people who are willing to help Ukraine are the Russians - but only if they move out of the west's sphere of influence into theirs (similar deal on the table for the Baltic states. The re-birth of the USSR perhaps?) And then in our country we have neo-nazis winning electoral respectability and our two main poiltical parties mired in sleaze and financial scandal.

So over here in Europe, it's like a giant game of Jenga. Only we're playing it drunk, in blindfolds, with boxing gloves.

The birth of an endangered camel was an "unexpected" arrival on Merseyside after its mother's long hair concealed the pregnancy for more than a year.

The yet unnamed Bactrian camel calf was born at Knowsley Safari Park in Prescot, weighing about 88lbs.

Staff were surprised by the new arrival after discovering his mother Wendy was pregnant only six weeks ago. A normal gestation period is 15 months.

There are only about 1,000 Bactrian camels left living in the wild.

Eight hundred Chrysler dealerships are closing almost overnight. If Future Shock is "too much change in too short a period of time" then we are experiencing FS on meth. The jobless rate hit 9.4% ten days ago. Oil hit $70/bbl today. It's a race to the cliff.

You and others have written often that Mr. Obama needs to level with the American people and tell them the truth. My question is, which American people? The 69.5 million who voted for hope, change, or at least, "different"? I think many of us have gotten the message and are working toward a simpler, more local life. Or are you talking about the nearly 60 million who voted for the Party That Wrecked America? Think about what you're demanding. Re-read your own withering descriptions of these cheeze-doodles and remember the words of Col. Jessep about handling the truth. They can't. I repeat, 60,000,000 people voted for the party of Palin, Limbaugh, Hewitt, Hannity, Inhofe, Romney, O'Reilly, McCain, McConnell, Cheney, Huckabee, and George W. Bush. You live in a nice small town, James. Would you be willing to invite the most passionate, paranoid citizen of Limbaugh Nation to your apartment, crack him across the face with the Truth and then hand him a loaded gun?

Of course not.

Yet you seem to demand that very thing from Mr. Obama. You demand that he "stop pretending" and get in our faces. I don't agree. I think it is YOUR responsibility as a new kind of old-testament prophet to speak these dangerous truths to all of us. Those who have ears will listen. But it is Mr. Obama's responsibility to land this thing safely on the Hudson River. Inflaming and terrifying the passengers would be stupid and homicidal.

Mr. Obama has raised the bar to unheard-of levels. We seem to forget that a young Kansan-Kenyan beat the ever-loving hell out of a pre-crowned Clinton and then won the home state of Jesse Helms four months to the day after we finally put his racist butt in the cold ground. So, yes, I still trust the guy. I still believe that Mr. Obama has yet to be a second-tier intellect in any given room. Jesus, Jim, it's been less than five months since he took office. Ask yourself what McCain would be doing right now.

I bought your book, The Long Emergency, two years ago. I read it once and made plans to move. I finally sold my house last December to the one and only person who made me an offer. It was like walking out of a bank with all my money just before it crashed. I now live near fresh water, beautiful mountains, an active railroad line, and am surrounded by small, successful farms. The hospitals are good. The schools are first-rate. And, yes, the local gun shops are running low on bullets. But the overall attitude is progressive and growing more so each day. So I am one of the ones who is listening.

Keep preaching. Keep writing. Just realize that half this country wouldn't hesitate to burn the other half. The last thing we need to do is ask the President to hand them a torch.

France might be just across the English Channel from Britain, but Emma Jane Kirby says both nations are still prone to the pitfalls of linguistic misunderstandings.

The 65th anniversary of the World War II D-Day landings took place in France

Last weekend, standing on Pegasus bridge in Normandy for the D-Day celebrations, I was touched to see two classes of French primary school children singing the British national anthem in honour of the veterans.

As I went closer, I realised with delight that while they had got the tune off pat, the words were just slightly off the mark.

Standing tall and proud, the children were calling on the Almighty to "sieve the Queen and her setter, Victoria."

It took me straight back to my own school days when I had learned to sing the nursery rhyme Frere Jacques.

For many years I had warned Frere Jacques to wake up not because the morning bells were ringing (sonnez les matines), but because there was "sunny semolina" to be had.

CARAN d'Ache has a special link to the worlds of design, painting and writing, as its name is a reference to the most important tool in drawing.

This Swiss company was founded in 1924 by Arnold Schweitzer, who acquired Ecridor, a Geneva pencil factory, and then founded a new company - la Fabrique Suisse de Crayons Caran d'Ache.

He was inspired by Russian Emmanuel Poire, a caricaturist who signed his work with the pseudonym, Caran d'Ache, which means "pencil'' in Russian.

Today, the company is the country's only manufacturer of pencils, colour pencils, fine arts materials and luxury writing instruments.

London - The Lord of the Undead is now a knight of the British Empire.

Christopher Lee, whose sonorous voice and burning black eyes made him a memorable arch-villain in films from Dracula to Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, has been given one of Britain's highest honours by Queen Elizabeth II.

Golfer Nick Faldo, captain of Europe's 2008 Ryder Cup team, was also promoted to Sir. He can add the title to his six major championship wins.