The Croatian parliament has approved Jadranka Kosor as prime minister, making her the first woman to have the job in the country's history. 

Croatia's parliament elected Jadranka Kosor as the nation's first female prime minister late on Monday.

The 56-year-old takes over after the sudden resignation of her predecessor, Ivo Sanader, on July 1, with the ruling coalition halfway through its four-year term.

Her immediate tasks will be to take action against the country's worst economic crisis in years and pump new life into stalled EU accession talks.

Croatia's bid for EU membership has been blocked by neighboring Slovenia after a border row.

Kosor was born in Pakrac, and studied in Zagreb where she graduated in law.

She is also a published poet and an award-winning journalist. She is fluent in English and has a working knowledge of German.

Italian centre-right MEP Mario Mauro has dropped his bid to become EU parliament president, leaving the path clear for Polish conservative deputy Jerzy Buzek to take up the post.

Mr Mauro made the announcement on Sunday (5 July) following a congress of the centre-right EPP faction in Athens. The move is designed to avoid "unnecessary and damaging divisions" in the group, he said.

Mr Buzek - the former prime minister has spent the past five years on the industry committee

The EPP will formally nominate Mr Buzek as its candidate on 7 July.

His appointment has to be confirmed by an EU parliament vote on 14 July. But the EPP is expected to make a deal with the socialist group, giving its man the job for the next two and a half years, followed by German centre-left MEP Martin Schulz in 2011.

Poland's Mr Buzek would become the first politician from one of the ex-Iron Curtain member states to hold a senior EU post if he gets through.

Last week's ruling by the German Constitutional Court, coupled with demands by one conservative party for changes to the constitution, may not only jeopardize Berlin's schedule for the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty. The Karlsruhe ruling also threatens future steps toward European integration.

When the parliamentary group of the Christian Social Union (CSU) -- the Bavarian sister party to Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats -- met in Berlin last Thursday, they had a hero to celebrate. "You have saved our honor," said CSU representative Hans-Peter Friedrich to his party colleague and friend Peter Gauweiler.

Gauweiler, a lawyer from Munich -- and a political maverick who is the enfant terrible of the conservative group in the German parliament or Bundestag -- was largely successful with the legal complaint he filed with the German Constitutional Court against the EU Lisbon Treaty. Now it's official: The ratification by the overwhelming majority of the German parliament -- including the CSU -- was negligent. In essence, the court ruled that by passing the so-called "accompanying law" to the Lisbon Treaty, which determines the rights of German parliament to participate in European legislation, the representatives had relinquished significant monitoring rights to Brussels. According to the judges, this unconstitutionally subjects the people that they represent to the whims of a bureaucracy that lacks sufficient democratic legitimacy.

But the CSU cares little about past errors. Now the idea is to push ahead and "Gauweiler" them! Last Thursday, the politicians from Bavaria decided to follow up their success with a new set of demands. They want the Lisbon Treaty to be ratified only under condition that the new EU law would only be valid in Germany "in accordance with the decision by the German Constitutional Court." They are now demanding a solution that gives "maximum" parliamentary influence over future EU policy.

Many Social Democrats doubt their candidate Frank-Walter Steinmeier can beat Chancellor Angela Merkel in September's general election. And some are already looking around for a new figure to lead the party to a future victory. Berlin's cocky Mayor Klaus Wowereit, is right at the top of the list.

The setting couldn't have been more symbolic. To the left, the Bosporus Strait, that magical spot where Europe and Asia meet, and in the background the glowing dome of the Blue Mosque. Somewhat surprisingly, three sections of the Berlin Wall -- albeit sections made from Styrofoam -- complete the scene.

The pieces of the "fake" Berlin Wall are on display in Berlin's sister city, the Turkish capital Istanbul. In a couple of weeks they and a thousand others that have been sent around the world to be painted by artists and students will be returned to the German capital where, on Nov. 9, in a celebration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall, they will all be knocked over like dominoes. But first, someone has to paint these pieces. And Berlin's Mayor Klaus Wowereit, is on hand to make the first few brushstrokes.

Bulgaria's center-right opposition party is gearing up for coalition talks after beating the ruling Socialists in the country's first parliamentary elections since joining the European Union two years ago.  

Bulgaria's next prime minister is expected to be Sofia mayor and former bodyguard Boiko Borisov, who has been nicknamed 'Batman' for his tough talk on the country's endemic corruption.

Borisov, whose Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria party (GERB) won just under half of the 240 seats up for grabs in Sunday's elections, says he wants to form a coalition that will prioritise the fight against corruption and boost the ailing economy.

GERB is widely expected to enter negotiations with the Blue Coalition, a group of rightist parties that collectively picked up 16 seats.

`Batman' Borisov has also pledged to work towards the eradication of ethnic tensions in Bulgaria.

The rancour and mistrust of Bush-era relations between Russia and the US were cast aside yesterday when presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev signed an agreement on nuclear weapons that could prove historic.

The two leaders agreed to work towards a treaty to replace the 1991 Start-1 pact which expires in December and to reduce their stockpiles of nuclear warheads to between 1,500 and 1,675 each. In a further sign of its willingness to repair fractured relations, Russia offered its airspace to US planes flying weapons and troops to Afghanistan. This will shorten flying time and save the US more than $100m (£62m) a year.

Mr Obama announced that he intended to host a global nuclear summit next year to combat nuclear proliferation, the biggest threat to global security, and said he and Mr Medvedev had discussed a plan for Russia to reciprocate by hosting a follow-up meeting.

VENICE -- Days before his country, Sweden, took over the presidency of the European Union, Carl Bildt was sipping a postprandial espresso, enjoying the sun and the waterfront vista stretching toward St. Mark's.

But, as befits a foreign minister with verve and unusually broad experience of many corners of Europe, his mind was elsewhere.

Mr. Bildt, 59, rummaged through papers. With the boyish manner he has retained despite three decades in politics, he lighted with glee upon a satellite photograph of the harbor of Sevastopol in Crimea, but was crestfallen at being unable to retrieve a similar picture of Novorossiysk, a Russian port on the eastern coast of the Black Sea.

Few -- if any -- European foreign ministers could discuss in this detail the fate of Russia's Black Sea fleet, stationed in Sevastopol by agreement with Ukraine until 2014.

Senior police officers are receiving "off-book payments" and secret perks totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds, including private school fees and cars for their spouses.

The Times has discovered that one chief constable heading a force of just 1,700 officers was paid a £74,000 top-up on his salary last year. Sean Price, of the Cleveland force, was paid a £50,000 "retention package" and an "honorarium" of £24,000, raising his income to £200,000.

The private deals, sometimes referred to as debentures or supplements, are negotiated with police authorities behind closed doors and paid over and above salaries agreed in national negotiations.

The incentives include generous relocation packages, satellite TV, home security and even "lifestyle coaching". They are legal but largely hidden from the public. The Times has uncovered the scale of the practice.

Eurostar Tuesday said it notched a 22% rise in passenger traffic between London and Amsterdam, following the full reopening of the Channel Tunnel in February. Eurostar said its service on-time performance since then was 96%.

The statement coincided with an announcement Tuesday from both Belgian National Railways (SNCB) and the Netherlands' NS Hispeed that additional high speed rail service linking Brussels and Amsterdam will begin next year.

He has already played host to showgirls, hostesses, a teenage model and a prostitute. For once, however, there was no question over the suitability of Silvio Berlusconi's latest round of female guests.

The official party of first ladies, including Michelle Obama and Sarah Brown, is expected to arrive today for a three-day visit to Rome and the earthquake-stricken city of L'Aquila.

The traditional gathering of leaders' spouses has come under scrutiny this year after Veronica Lario, Mr Berlusconi's wife, announced in May that she was seeking a divorce, partly because she could not stay with a man "who frequents minors".

An online petition by four Italian academics also urged the spouses to boycott the summit on account of Mr Berlusconi's "offensive" behaviour towards women.

Carla Bruni, the Italian-born wife of the French President, who has a history of clashes with Mr Berlusconi, announced yesterday that she would not be attending the official G8 events in Rome. She will, however, visit the summit venue of L'Aquila.

The choice of L'Aquila to host this week's summit of world leaders has highlighted Italy's failure to help the victims of the quake

Silvio Berlusconi switched the location of the G8 summit to the city of L'Aquila as a way of focusing world attention on Italy's most disastrous earthquake for 30 years.

But as Hu Jintao, the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, touched down in Rome yesterday, the first of 40 world leaders to arrive for the summit, residents were sceptical that the presence of so many grandees on their doorstop would do them much good.

More than 300 people died, 1,500 were injured and 70,000 made homeless by the quake that struck exactly three months ago. In the days that followed the disaster, Mr Berlusconi, not yet embroiled in the sex scandal that is now dogging him, took personal charge of the rescue effort, visiting the city and meeting survivors each day.

France and Brazil have urged a bigger role for the International Labour Organisation in a reshaped global economic system that would also see more influence given to developing countries in the United Nations Security Council.

REUTERS - France and Brazil urged a bigger role for the International Labour Organization in a reshaped global economic system that would also see more influence given to developing countries in the United Nations Security Council.

"Everywhere in the world, employees are asking for more justice, more security. They must be heard," French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said in a joint column published in France's Liberation daily and Brazil's Folha de Sao Paulo on Tuesday.

"International organisations must take account of the social effects of the current crisis. The role of the International Labour Organization must be very much strengthened," they said, according to a text of the column released in advance.

While US tries to inject purpose into meeting, Italy is lambasted for poor planning and reneging on overseas aid commitments

Preparations for Wednesday's G8 summit in the Italian mountain town of L'Aquila have been so chaotic there is growing pressure from other member states to have Italy expelled from the group, according to senior western officials.

In the last few weeks before the summit, and in the absence of any substantive initiatives on the agenda, the US has taken control. Washington has organised "sherpa calls" (conference calls among senior officials) in a last-ditch bid to inject purpose into the meeting.

"For another country to organise the sherpa calls is just unprecedented. It's a nuclear option," said one senior G8 member state official. "The Italians have been just awful. There have been no processes and no planning."

"The G8 is a club, and clubs have membership dues. Italy has not been paying them," said a European official involved in the summit preparations.

As 15,000 police and troops threw a three-kilometre security cordon around the town of L'Aquila where the G8 summit opens tomorrow, the Government of Silvio Berlusconi was frantically drawing up plans for an alternative venue if the mountainous Abruzzo region is struck again by a powerful earthquake.

Even though Italy said that the G8 leaders would be completely safe, they will be briefed on emergency evacuation plans when they arrive, with 12 helicopters on standby to fly them to Rome if necessary.

In an interview with the newspaper Il Giornale -- which he owns -- Mr Berlusconi said that there was "absolutely no risk" to the leaders since the venue, the Finance Police barracks at Coppito outside L'Aquila, built in 1992, was earthquake-proof. Mauro Dolce, of the civil protection agency, said the barracks had been built to withstand even a 5.8 magnitude tremor like the one that killed 300 people on April 6 and left 60,000 homeless.

"For the situation to be dangerous there would have to be an earthquake that has never happened at L'Aquila in living memory," Mr Dolce said.

The leaders of the Group of Eight leading industrial nations will meet in the earthquake-hit Italian town of L'Aquila from Wednesday to discuss the global financial crisis and climate change. The summit is aimed at aiding the reconstruction of the town and the world financial system -- but the prospect of progress on either is slim.

The backdrop is replete with symbolism. Many houses in the central Italian town of L'Aquila, hit by a devastating earthquake in April, are little more than rubble. Tens of thousands of people in the region live in tent cities in conditions made even more miserable by the heat.

 Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi during a speech in the village of Onna near L'Aquila in April after the central Italian region was devastated by an earthquake. Like L'Aquila, the world economy and global financial system are in ruins. And like in L'Aquila, the reconstruction efforts in the financial markets lag far behind the ceremonial declarations.

This shattered town is hosting the G-8 summit of the world's leading economies beginning on Wednesday, and its inhabitants have little hope that the meeting will bring any fundamental improvement to their lives. Expectations that the summit itself will yield much progress are similarly muted.

Nicolas Sarkozy: Alliance for Change

The summit meeting which is taking place in L'Aquila, Italy, at which the Group of 8 (Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States) is joined by South Africa, Brazil, China, India, Mexico and Egypt, will be the first since we realized the extent of the financial and economic crisis we are facing.

This crisis highlights our degree of interdependence. It calls for leaders to promote a collective response, based on shared values and responsibilities. It also compels us to assess the performance of our international institutions and to rethink current global governance structures.

The need to reform global governance did not spring from the crisis. Well before its outbreak, the multilateral system was conspicuously unrepresentative and lacking in coherence. The ability of international institutions to respond to the serious challenges of today's world needs to be reinforced and their mandates reviewed.

Iceland's economy suffered a near total collapse when its banks were laid low by the global credit crunch. The public lost their jobs and savings and now the government wants to know why. 

In an effort to thoroughly investigate the economic collapse and related crimes, the Icelandic government has sought help from a prominent European figure. Newly elected MEP Eva Joly, the Norwegian-born French magistrate who became famous as the lead judge in the Elf Aquitaine corruption scandal, acts as special adviser to Iceland`s authorities.

Deutsche Welle:  Ms Joly, how would you compare this investigation with the Elf Aquitaine affair?

Eva Joly: This is much huger, much much more important. This bankruptcy is much bigger than Enron, involving a lot of people, involving other banks, and really the investigation is huge.

What about the time and costs involved?

It will probably be expensive. I calculated that in order to pay for people and experts from abroad - and we need highly trained experts - we will need some three million Euros a year. And it will take a long time, it's impossible to say how long at the moment. That will depend on what kind of cooperation we will get from abroad and how far we will go. But I think that we can reasonably say that within two or three years, we should have some cases ready to go to court. If I judge by the ELF case we could even spend up to seven years.

Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown expressed a "total convergence" of views in their meeting ahead of this week's G8 summit in Italy, with both leaders warning that rising oil prices and declining public investment could spoil the chances for recovery of the world's economy.

Meeting in the French town of Evian on Monday (6 July), Mr Brown, the UK's prime minister, argued that governments must keep spending to return to growth.

Mr Sarkozy: "We cannot afford to have low growth rates over many years."

"If we can get growth, if we can get unemployment down, if we can keep interest rates and inflation down, then there is scope to do the things we want to do, and that is to get money to the frontline services," he told journalists after the event, referring to the need to avoid pay and job cuts in the public sector.

His French counterpart, president Nicolas Sarkozy, played the same tune, saying: "Of course we need to combat indebtedness and try to restrain deficit, but we will only achieve that if we restore growth and if we restore our economies to health."

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Finance ministers from the 16-country eurozone remain divided on whether the currency area should hold a single seat at the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Luxembourg's prime minister, Jean-Claude Juncker, who chairs the monthly eurogroup meetings due to his double-hatted role as the country's finance minister, said he supported the move towards one seat on the international financial institution.

The IMF building in Washington

European commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, Joaquin Almunia, also said he was in favour of the move.

"The best way to have a clear and a strong defence of our common interests as an economic and monetary union at the IMF level is to have a single chair," Mr Almunia told journalists after the meeting on Monday (6 July).

"This is not the opinion of some of the members of the euro area," he added.

European member states are seeking solutions to soften the impact of the prolonged economic crisis. Sweden, whose much-admired social model is the envy of many countries, has the return to prosperity a priority for its presidency of the Union. But Le Soir reports that Sweden's example may not be easy to follow.

A year ago, France took command of the Union and Nicolas Sarkozy was heading toward a stand-out presidency. Socialists deplored his policies, most especially the dearth of any defence of the European social model.Now, a year later, the recession has hit hard and social security is the talk of the town again. In addition to fighting climate change, the Swedish presidency has put the struggle against the global economic crisis at the top of its agenda. It aims to make growth and jobs core priorities of the new Lisbon Strategy, which should be adopted under Spain's presidency in 2010.

In this context, one cannot help wondering whether the Swedish social model might not help the EU 27 out of the morass. Could it be an antidote to the crisis? Another fine opportunity for Sweden to shine...and consign the calamitous Czech presidency to oblivion as expeditiously as possible? Over the past 20 years, what is more generally called the "Scandinavian model" has to a greater or lesser extent inspired social policy in several other countries, including Belgium, France and Germany, which, however, have not succeeded in recreating a Swedish "paradise". To wit: the employment rate in Sweden was 73% before the crisis, i.e. higher than the 70% target set at Lisbon in 2000. 71.5% of Swedish women are gainfully employed, as against only every other Belgian woman. So is the Swedish system a panacea? "It's too early to judge how far this model will weather the crisis," notes Ernst Erik Ehnmark, rapporteur to the European Economic and Social Committee. The Swedish auto industry (Volvo, Scania), for one, has not eluded the current economic upheavals.

One energy expert says oil could fall to as little as $20 a barrel by the end of the year. That could push gasoline prices back down to $2 a gallon, prices not seen since last fall's slide slammed retail gasoline to its lowest value in four years. Energy experts say oil supply is outstripping demand. Eventually suppliers will tire of paying to store all of the surplus oil and flood the market, they predict.

A year after oil hit a record closing price, the commodity's price is way down -- and may fall significantly further as supply continues to dwarf demand.

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The reasons are simple, said Philip K. Verleger Jr., an expert on energy markets at the University of Calgary in Canada: The still-sputtering economy has lessened demand at a time when there is already a big surplus of oil.

For eight straight months, oil supplies have been running about 2 million barrels a day higher than the global demand of 83 million barrels a day, Verleger said. Eventually, he and others predicted, suppliers will tire of paying to store all of the surplus oil and flood the market.

"That is the largest and longest continuous glut of supply that I have seen in 30 years of following energy prices," Verleger said. "It's a huge surplus. There has never been anything like it."

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With so much oil available and so little need for that amount, investors, oil companies and even some banks have bought and stored surplus oil everywhere they can. By one estimate, before oil surged to its high this year of $73.38 a barrel in June, as many as 67 supertankers -- each capable of carrying 2 million barrels of oil -- were being used as floating storage.

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But the glut has gone on for so long, he said, that the cost of all of that storage is bound to rise. When it rises enough, some suppliers will refuse to pay and a lot of that oil will be dumped onto the market.

"Oil will drop to $20 a barrel by the end of the year because this situation just cannot be sustained," Verleger said.

The PP is all for bailing out the fat cats.

Also the Central Bank doesn't want to hear about regulatory intervention or nationalisation of failing institutions.

It's moral hazard all around.

A man of words and not of deeds is like a garden full of weeds; a man of deeds and not of words is like a garden full of turds — Anonymous

Deep-seated ethnic tensions erupted into the deadliest outbreak of violence the country has seen since the Tiananmen Square massacre.

The Chinese authorities yesterday blamed exiled Muslim Uighur separatists for trouble in the restive western province of Xinjiang which killed at least 156 people and injured hundreds more. But the government was in turn accused of heavy-handed repression which, according to the claim of one Uighur representative, may have left up to 400 people dead.

The violence, which may have been the deadliest in China since Tiananmen Square in 1989, began in the regional capital Urumqi on Sunday night when tensions between Uighurs and Han Chinese boiled over. State television showed images of rioters throwing rocks at police, smashing buses and setting fire to shops and cars, as well as bystanders holding faces streaming with blood. Burnt-out buildings and vehicles continued to smoulder yesterday, broken glass littered the roads and bloodstains dotted the concrete.

It was the second major eruption of ethnic violence in China in less than 18 months. In March last year, protests and riots flared up in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, with authorities saying 19 people were killed and exile groups saying the real figure was 200. The latest trouble in Xinjiang also comes at an embarrassing time for the Communist Party in Beijing, just three months before it is due to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.

The Iranian Supreme Leader, assailed by some of his country's most prominent clerics and detested by millions of his ordinary citizens, has received a boost from an unlikely quarter: Joe Biden.

One day after the American Vice-President said that the US would not stop Israel bombing Iran's nuclear plants , Ayatollah Khamenei launched a fierce attack on "meddling" Western leaders, designed to rally his fractured people.

"We warn the leaders of those countries trying to take advantage of the situation: beware. The Iranian nation will react," the Ayatollah declared in a televised speech yesterday. "The leaders of arrogant countries, the nosey meddlers in the affairs of the Islamic Republic, must know that even if the Iranian people have their differences, when your enemies get involved, the people . . . will become a firm fist against you."

Tehran has backed the warning with action against foreign interests in Iran: a local employee at the British Embassy, Hossein Rossam, has been arrested and faces charges of threatening Iranian national security. An unnamed 23-year-old French woman working as a teaching assistant at the university of Isfahan was held last week on spying charges.

Please tell me there's at least one Texas Tech political science student with the guts to answer "I do not recall" to every test question. Maybe even "I do not recall remembering."

Sweden, which has just taken over the EU presidency for a six-month stint, is trying to convince its European partners to follow its example and impose a carbon tax. Adopted in 1991, it has proved efficient on a national level, reports Olivier Truc for Le Monde.

"A carbon tax affects a lot more emissions than the carbon trading scheme does," affirms Andreas Carlgren, Swedish environment minister. "But never fear," adds ministry spokesman Mattias Johansson, "it's not a European tax. Each country would retain control. There would be a minimum rate, and the tax would be charged by each State, the way VAT works."

It's all of 18 years since the Swedes established a carbon tax on energy consumption. Whenever sceptics claim the tax kills growth, its proponents whip out its track record: since the tax was introduced, Swedish greenhouse gas emissions have dropped 9%, while the economy has grown 48% since then. "So this tax doesn't slow growth in the least," concludes Mr Johansson. What is more, the carbon tax annually puts 15 billion Swedish crowns (€1.4bn) in the public coffers. When it was first launched back in 1991, the rate was €27 per metric ton of CO2. Now it is €108/ton.

Yahoo! today said it will no longer purchase carbon offsets for its operations, focusing its climate strategy on reducing the energy used by its data centers....

n a blog post, [David] Filo also committed the company to reduce the carbon intensity of its data centers "by at least 40% by 2014," stating, "We'll get there through a combination of innovative data center design, improving how we utilize our servers, cloud computing, and locating our data centers in areas where cleaner energy is available."

Yahoo! also announced that it would build a state-of-the-art data center near Buffalo, N.Y. -- beating out sites in Illinois, Ohio, and Pennsylvania -- that would take advantage of the region's hydropower and climate [!]. Among other things, the data center will operate without any chillers, utilizing a natural cooling system supplied entirely by the cool air coming off Lake Erie. Chillers are among the most energy-intensive parts of a data center....
Data centers account for more than half of the company's carbon footprint, says Page, including its global office operations, employee commuting, and air travel.

The new Buffalo data center is expected to have a high efficiency rating -- called PUE, or power usage effectiveness, in industry parlance -- of 1.1 or better, according to Page. To date, the most efficient data center, built by Google, has a PUE of 1.12.

The G8 countries will this week announce a "food security initiative", committing more than $12bn for agricultural development over the next three years, in a move that signals a further shift from food aid to long-term investments in farming in the developing world.

...

The G8 initiative underscores Washington's new approach to fighting global hunger, reversing a two-decades-old policy focused almost exclusively on food aid. Hillary Clinton, US secretary of state, and Tom Vilsack, the agriculture secretary, have both highlighted the shifting emphasis in recent speeches.

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Washington's shift could prove contentious in the US, as its farmers are the largest exporters of several crops, including soyabean and corn. The US is the world's largest donor of food aid - mainly crops grown by US farmers, costing more than $2bn last year.

The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a think-tank, estimates that Washington spends 20 times more on food aid than on long-term schemes in Africa to boost local food production. US annual spending on African farming projects topped $400m in the 1980s, but by 2006 had dwindled to $60m, the council said in a report this year.

It's the main tool of every self-respecting Boy Scout: the Swiss army knife. But how did something that began as a simple tool become a global brand? An exhibition marks the knife's development over the past 125 years. 

Make your own Swiss army knife - who could resist such a challenge? Indeed, visitors are queuing up to try out one of the highlights of a new exhibition at the Forum for Swiss History in Schwyz. It's the brain child of curator Pia Schubiger.

"The army knife has really become a cult object," Schubiger said. "Everyone here knows it and has one."

Schubiger said that in her father's generation, it was tradition for fathers to pass their knives on to their sons, and to tell them "every good Swiss boy has a pocket knife."

Japanese railway workers face enforced "smile scans" every morning in a bid to boost their customer services, it has been claimed.

More than 500 staff at Keihin Electric Express Railway are expected to be subjected to daily face scans by "smile police" bosses.

The "smile scan" software, developed by the Japanese company Omron, produces a sweeping analysis of a smile based on facial characteristics, from lip curves and eye movements to wrinkles.

Scientists have created human sperm for the first time from stem cells.

The research, carried out at Newcastle university, might enable infertile men to have children, while provoking another ethical debate on the progress of reproductive biology.

Karim Nayernia, project leader, said the "in vitro designed" sperm produced in his laboratory looked fully mobile and functional under the microscope, though more research would be needed before IVD sperm were used to fertilise human eggs. The work might lead to a fertility treatment in five to 10 years, he said.

WEAPONS inspector David Kelly was writing a book exposing highly damaging government secrets before his ­mysterious death.

He was intending to reveal that he warned Prime Minister Tony Blair there were no weapons of mass destruction anywhere in Iraq weeks before the ­British and American invasion.

He had several discussions with a publisher in Oxford and was seeking advice on how far he could go without breaking the law on secrets.

Following his death, his computers were seized and it is still not known if any rough draft was discovered by investigators and, if so, what happened to the material.