Tony Blair faces disappointment in his bid to become the European Union's powerful new president after losing support among continental leaders.

The former prime minister's key backer, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, is said to have "changed his mind" about Mr Blair's suitability for the post.

Without Mr Sarkozy's support, Mr Blair's candidacy - which is unofficially backed by Gordon Brown and the British government - is effectively doomed.

Sources in Brussels now say the favourite for the job is Felipe Gonzales, Spain's charismatic socialist former prime minister, whose government collapsed in a sleaze scandal in 1996.

Europe's leaders are just beginning the complex horse-trading that will end in the appointment of an EU president and "high representative" - effectively the union's foreign minister - once the Lisbon Treaty has been finally fully ratified.

More than 20,000 gathered on Saturday in Srebrenica to bury newly identified victims of the massacre there. Fourteen years after some 8,000 Muslim men and boys died, experts are still working to identify all the remains. 

A mass funeral ceremony was held just outside the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica on Saturday in a ritual that has been repeated on this date for the past six years.

More than 20,000 gathered for the burial of 534 newly identified victims on the 14th anniversary of the wartime massacre in the Bosnian town.

The victims' caskets were carried by mourners from hand to hand to their graves following a prayer at a cemetery just outside the eastern town.

Those buried Saturday were just some of victims of the estimated 8,000 Muslim men and boys who were victims of the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995. They were killed by members of the Bosnian Serb army under the command of Ratko Mladic, an indicted war criminal, as well as irregular Serbian units.

MPs want to be sure the Met is not trying to hide embarrassing payments to officers by reporters

The Metropolitan Police could face a new House of Commons inquiry into whether officers are routinely paid by journalists to obtain confidential information about celebrities and suspects, in a fresh twist to the tabloid phone-hacking scandal.

The home affairs select committee will meet on Tuesday to decide whether to launch a full inquiry into how private information such as criminal and DVLA records have been obtained by private investigators, who have then sold them on to journalists.

Three Labour members of the committee - Martin Salter, Karen Buck and Ann Cryer - have written to its chairman, Keith Vaz, calling for an inquiry and for assurances that the Met's decision last week not to reopen its own inquiry into phone hacking arranged by News of the World staff was not influenced by any fear of embarrassing revelations over backhanders that were paid to police officers.

Opponents of European integration have had their hand strengthened with the recent election of right wing members from Britain, and combined with other nationalists will be a bloc that cannot be ignored. 

Amid the bland blue, grey and white neutrality of the debating chamber, a collection of mini-Union Jacks on a collection of tables stand out.

The members sitting with flags are from the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) which wants to leave the European Union - until now seen as existing on the fringes.

But since the European elections in June, hardline euroskeptics are taking center stage.

Britain's Conservative Party has carried out a promise to leave the main center-right grouping in the European Parliament, and form its own alliance, with politicians from across Europe opposed to deeper political union.

Even allowing for different strands of euroskepticism, opponents of deeper EU integration have never been so numerous or prominent.

Less than a week after Lithuanians celebrated one thousand years of their country's history, the Baltic state marks another historic occasion: the inauguration of its first female president.  

Dalia Grybauskaite has been sworn into office at the Lithuanian parliament or Seimas on Sunday after winning a landslide election victory in May. The 53-year-old, who ran as an independent candidate, won 69 per cent of the vote.

The inauguration ceremony is to be followed by a holy mass at Vilnius cathedral, a military parade and a gala concert.

The former European Union financial planning and budgets commissioner got her new job because voters decided her EU experience and a reputation for straight talking was vital at a time when Lithuania is facing a sharp economic downturn.

Soon after her victory, Grybauskaite said her main diplomatic efforts would be towards the "development of a balanced foreign policy" and "helping to democratise the neighbourhood".

Military chiefs condemn 'disastrous' move after Britain suffers bloodiest week

Ministers are secretly planning to cut the number of British troops in Afghanistan, at a time when defence chiefs are appealing for thousands more reinforcements to meet the deadly threat from the resurgent Taliban.

Hours after the death toll of UK forces in Afghanistan rose above the number killed in Iraq, The Independent on Sunday established that Gordon Brown wants to bring up to 1,500 service personnel home from the war-torn country after its elections next month, seemingly on grounds of cost.

Astonished former military chiefs condemned the "disastrous" move, which emerged at the end of one of the bloodiest weeks in the recent history of the British military.

Twenty years after Berlin Wall fell, more than 17,000 former Stasi members are still working for the state

Berliners and the citizens of eastern Germany are struggling to digest the news that thousands of former members of the dreaded Stasi secret police were working as their local civil servants, police officers and teachers, almost 20 years after the Iron Curtain collapsed.

More than 17,000 staff currently employed by Berlin and eastern Germany's five federal states were estimated to have worked for the all-pervasive communist police organisation, according to evidence compiled by historians at Berlin's Free University.

Shocking cases came to light after the fall of the Berlin Wall, including a husband who spied on his dissident wife for years and a mother who informed the Stasi about her son after he reached puberty because she considered him a threat to the state.

Greek riot police have led an operation to demolish a makeshift camp housing illegal immigrants in the western port city of Patras.

The camp was used by migrants hoping to smuggle themselves onto ships bound for Italy and Western Europe.

Its closure is more proof of Greece's tougher stance on illegal immigration.

The camp had been a source of tension with many Greeks who regarded it as a major eyesore for themselves and for tourists arriving from Italy.

Workers at a bankrupt French car parts supplier have threatened to blow up their factory unless carmakers Renault and PSA-Peugeot pay them compensation, a union official said on Sunday.

The 366 employees of New Fabris in central-eastern Chatellerault, are occupying the plant to demand that the auto giants - who accounted for 90 per cent of their business - pay 30,000 euros (£26,000) to each worker.

"The gas bottles are in the factory. Everything has been planned for it to blow up," unless there is an accord by July 31, Guy Eyermann, CGT union official and secretary of the company works council, said.

The Chatellerault factory is thought to house car parts worth some two million euros, as well as a new Renault machine estimated at a further two million, the union leader said.

"We are not going to let PSA and Renault wait until August or September to recover the spare parts and machines still in the factory," he warned.

"If we get nothing, they get nothing at all."

On 25 October, there'll be the Primaries for the PDminusL. Every potential voter will vote. The ones that obtain the most votes will become the successors to people of the caliber of Franceschini, Fassino and Veltroni. I am going to be a candidate. Since the death of Enrico Berlinguer there has been Emptiness in the Left. An Emptiness of ideas, of proposals, of courage, and of men. A Left wing without programmes, inclined to mess-ups, just rooted in the exploitation of the local administrations. Silent in the face of the militarization of Vicenza and the introduction of nuclear power stations. Champions of incinerators and the privatisation of water. A political monster. Born of the Left and finishing up in the Vatican. The crutch of all the conflicts of interests. An ambiguous creature that has generated Consorte, Violante, and D'Alema.

a bit abbie hoffman, but...

good luck!

If'Madness is the absence of work'(Foucault), then Sanity is the presence of play..

Liechtenstein initialed a deal with Germany to drop bank secrecy laws starting next year that until now have prevented cooperation in tax probes, one of the first concrete outcomes of promises that offshore tax havens across Europe made this year to open up their bank sectors.

Friday's agreement in Berlin was triggered by pressure ahead of April's meeting of Group of 20 nations, which had threatened to produce a blacklist of alleged tax havens for targeting with sanctions. Promises made by Lichtenstein and other offshore banking centers just ahead of the meeting caused G-20 leaders to back off, but the threat of sanctions remains if bilateral cooperation deals aren't reached.

A Liechtenstein government spokesman said the German accord follows a model recommended by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an intergovernment think tank based in Paris. Friday's pact still needs to be signed formally and ratified to take effect.

Problem is, consumers won't start spending until they have money in their pockets and feel reasonably secure. But they don't have the money, and it's hard to see where it will come from. They can't borrow. Their homes are worth a fraction of what they were before, so say goodbye to home equity loans and refinancings. One out of ten home owners is under water -- owing more on their homes than their homes are worth. Unemployment continues to rise, and number of hours at work continues to drop. Those who can are saving. Those who can't are hunkering down, as they must.

Eventually consumers will replace cars and appliances and other stuff that wears out, but a recovery can't be built on replacements. Don't expect businesses to invest much more without lots of consumers hankering after lots of new stuff. And don't rely on exports. The global economy is contracting.

My prediction, then? Not a V, not a U. But an X. This economy can't get back on track because the track we were on for years -- featuring flat or declining median wages, mounting consumer debt, and widening insecurity, not to mention increasing carbon in the atmosphere -- simply cannot be sustained.

The X marks a brand new track -- a new economy. What will it look like? Nobody knows. All we know is the current economy can't "recover" because it can't go back to where it was before the crash. So instead of asking when the recovery will start, we should be asking when and how the new economy will begin. More on this to come.

H/T to Jessie of Le Café Américain whose sometime sig line is apropos here:

"The banks must be restrained, and the financial system reformed, and balance
restored to the economy, before there can be any sustained recovery."

More from Jessie's post There Will Be No Recovery:

The median wage must generally increase for consumption to resume, and for this to happen the heavy taxes of the financial sector and the oligarchs on the real economy must be lowered significantly in proportion to its size.

There is reason for pessimism that this can happen voluntarily. I have come to the conclusion that there is a pathological drive in some small portion of the population to acquire and control and devour rather than consume, even to their own destruction.

Amen to that.

If sanity be culturally normative, then by the norms of this culture I claim insanity.

Almost a year after A.I.G.'s collapse, despite a tidal wave of outrage, there still has been no clear explanation of what toppled the insurance giant. The author decides to ask the people involved--the silent, shell-shocked traders of the A.I.G. Financial Products unit--and finds that the story may have a villain, whose reign of terror over 400 employees brought the company, the U.S. economy, and the global financial system to their knees.

Britain has announced the deaths of eight more soldiers in Afghanistan, its worst death toll in a 24-hour period.

Five of the soldiers on foot patrol were killed by twin blasts near Sangin in the southern Helmand province on Friday, the highest death toll in a single attack.

Britain has now lost 184 soldiers in Afghanistan since it joined the US-led invasion in 2001, more than the 179 deaths during its campaign in Iraq that began in 2003.

Fifteen soldiers, including four officers, have been killed in the past 10 days as British and US troops have carried out offensives aimed at pushing Taliban fighters out of Helmand province.

The heavy losses threaten to damage British public support for the deployment in Afghanistan.

The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency's director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.

The report that Mr. Cheney was behind the decision to conceal the still-unidentified program from Congress deepened the mystery surrounding it, suggesting that the Bush administration had put a high priority on the program and its secrecy.

Mr. Panetta, who ended the program when he first learned of its existence from subordinates on June 23, briefed the two intelligence committees about it in separate closed sessions the next day.

Efforts to reach Mr. Cheney through relatives and associates were unsuccessful.

Barack Obama, the US president, has said the military offensive currently under way against the Taliban in Afghanistan has "a long way to go".

"We knew this summer was going to be tough fighting ... we still have a long way to go," Obama told Britain's Sky News channel in an interview on Saturday.

The southern province of Helmand is the focus of the current operation where thousands of extra US marines have been brought in to drive out the Taliban fighters.

Marines are concentrated in the southern tip of Helmand province, around the districts of Garmsir, Khanashin and Nawa.

US special forces are also working with Afghan commandos around the Baramsha border crossing with Pakistan, in an attempt to cut off the Taliban's main supply route.

The Peruvian president has named a member of his pro-business ruling party as prime minister after bowing to opposition pressure to shake up his cabinet.

Saturday's appointment of Javier Velasquez came as Alan Garcia faced the worst crisis of his term in office with his approval rating plunging to 21 per cent.

Velasquez, a member of the APRA party and the head of congress, will take over leadership of the cabinet.

"The country wants order and social inclusion and I am sure the cabinet that Velasquez leads will meet these objectives," Garcia said at the presidential palace.

He retained Luis Carranza, the finance minister and a favourite of investors, who is in the middle of rolling out a $3.2bn stimulus programme to boost the economy.

I first heard about Baha Mousa from his family. He was working as a hotel receptionist in Basra when British troops surrounded the building and arrested seven men. They were taken to a British barracks, hooded and beaten. Two days later, as his weeping father recalled for me, Mousa was dead. His family was given $3,000 in compensation and rejected a further $5,000. What they wanted was justice. His father had been appointed a police officer by the British authorities themselves. He was wearing two pistols on his hips. He was "our man", and we killed his son.

The outrageous death of his 26-year-old son, arrested in front of his own father, remains one of the most shameful episodes of our occupation of southern Iraq. As they beat the seven men, the British soldiers gave them the names of footballers. I guess it is always easy to demean those who you are going to brutalise. One of his comrades, who worked in the same hotel, and who spoke to me in great pain from his hospital bed, described how Baha had pleaded for his murderers to stop kicking him. "He was a decent guy. They didn't need to do that to him," he said.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is leaning toward appointing a criminal prosecutor to investigate whether CIA personnel tortured terrorism suspects after Sept. 11, 2001, setting the stage for a conflict with administration officials who would prefer the issues remain in the past, according to three sources familiar with his thinking.

Naming a prosecutor to probe alleged abuses during the darkest period in the Bush era would run counter to President Obama's oft-repeated desire to be "looking forward and not backwards." Top political aides have expressed concern that such an investigation might spawn partisan debates that could overtake Obama's ambitious legislative agenda.

The White House successfully resisted efforts by congressional Democrats to establish a "truth and reconciliation" panel. But fresh disclosures have continued to emerge about detainee mistreatment, including a secret CIA watchdog report, recently reviewed by Holder, highlighting several episodes that could be likened to torture.

As the fallout from the closure of Germany's Kruemmel nuclear reactor continues, politicians wrangle over the future of the country's energy production and energy giant Vattenfall tries to allay public fears. 

Much has been pledged, accused and suggested by German politicians in the week since a short-circuit in a transformer at Kruemmel bumped it off the national grid.

The Social Democrats have called for a faster nuclear phase-out plan -- currently planned for 2020 -- and stressed the importance of closing eight of the oldest reactors without further ado.

For their part, the Christian Democrats have reiterated calls to extend the operating lives of the nation's plants on the grounds that the technology is perfectly safe.

But a survey conducted by the research institute, Emnid for the Bild am Sonntag newspaper, has revealed many reservations towards nuclear energy among normal Germans. Some 72 percent of the 501 people asked said they would like to see Kruemmel and other older reactors closed down.

AP Environmental Writer= NEWPORT, Ore. (AP) â€" During his 35 years as a commercial fisherman, Jeff Feldner lost his share of crab pots when storms blew them out of position, a passing boat propeller sheared off the buoy, or a bank of kelp overwhelmed everything and dragged it away.

As a result, thousands of crab pots litter the ocean floor, creating a deadly obstacle course of brightly colored plastic lines waving in the water, waiting to entangle migrating whales, turtles and sea lions, as well as passing boats.

But once the crab season is completed in August, fishermen will have a chance to get some back in what has been billed as the largest effort ever to recover lost crab pots. A federal stimulus grant of $700,000 will go to hiring fishermen to recover about 4,000 pots â€" squat cylinders made of stainless steel mesh, rubber and iron to help it sink to the bottom.

Forget lentils and tofu. Vegetarian cooking is enjoying a makeover, prompting meat-eaters to put down their steak knives. New green cuisine is tapping into the rise of the "flexitarian", the occasional vegetarian who is helping their waistline and the planet by eating less meat.

A new crop of vegetarian restaurants is springing up, catering to rising demand for meat-free dining options. Even established restaurateurs, such as Aldo Zilli, are jumping on the bandwagon: Zilli is considering axing meat from one of his London eateries to cash in on the new trend. He is even mulling rechristening one of them Zilli Green. And other chefs, including Oliver Peyton, are increasing the number of meat-free choices on their existing menus.

From Sir Paul McCartney, who wants us all to eschew meat on Mondays, to Lydia Guevara - granddaughter of the revolutionary Che - who is starring in a new anti-meat campaign for Peta, there is no shortage of high-profile figures banging the vegetarian drum. This is boosting sales of meat-free foods in supermarkets as shoppers swap minced meat for substitutes such as Quorn. The meat-free market was worth £739m last year, up by a fifth in the last five years and is forecast to enjoy similar growth until at least 2013, according to research by Mintel.

Vegetarian food is no longer the crunchy preserve of a small minority but is hitting the mainstream. A recent poll for the Food Development Association showed that 86 per cent of Brits eat non-meat meals once or twice a week, forcing restaurants to follow suit.

Residents near Dortmund were evacuated this week after the ground collapsed around a geothermal heat pump, while in another German town, almost 190 buildings have now been damaged by a geothermal project gone awry. 

Residents of the small town of Kamen, near Dortmund, had a shock this week when ground around a construction site collapsed as a result of drilling for a geothermal heat pump. Many locals had to be evacuated amid fears that houses could collapse, and many nearby buildings now have long cracks in the walls. 

For residents of the southern German village of Staufen, the news came as little surprise: their town began sinking - and then rising - as a result of geothermal drilling almost two years ago.

Until then, Staufen had just been a quaint day-trip destination, visited by German pensioners looking for a slice of Black Forest cake and history buffs drawn to the town's links to Johann Georg Faust, the legendary alchemist and magician, who - so the story goes - made a pact with the devil here.

The UK must invest more in nuclear and clean coal energy and put less emphasis on wind power if it wants a secure low-carbon future, business leaders say.

The CBI says government energy policy is "disjointed" and it is urging a "more balanced" energy mix.

The current approach means the UK might miss climate change targets, it added.

The government said putting in place a balanced mix of renewables, new nuclear and cleaner fossil fuels was at the heart of its energy policy.

With her ample bosom, skimpy sari and mischievous grin, Savita Bhabhi, India's first and only online cartoon porn star, might not look like a threat to national security. But the country's Government has made the fictional housewife seductress the first target of new laws, passed after last year's terror attacks on Mumbai, that allow the authorities to block dangerous websites.

The Savita Bhabhi site, which features a series of daily cartoon strips based on the "sexual adventures of a hot Indian bhabhi" (sister-in-law), was created by Puneet Agarwal, 38, a British entrepreneur of Indian descent. Before being blocked in India it was attracting 60 million visitors a month, about 70 per cent of them from India.

The decision to block the site has bemused many onlookers. Despite featuring the adventures of a "regular Indian woman who just can't get enough sex" and being managed by an outfit that calls itself the Indian Porn Empire, the venture appeared to owe as much to Benny Hill as to Hustler. One typically titillating storyline involved a travelling lingerie salesman ringing Savita's doorbell and the escapades that followed. ("Can you help me please . . . The hook is stuck.") Some pundits argued that Savita's adventures drew on a rich tradition of Indian erotica, from the Kama Sutra, which dates back perhaps two millennia, to a long-established tradition in Indian popular culture of flirtation between a man and his elder brother's wife. But above all, as Tehelka, a news weekly, observed, the strip appeared to "poke fun at the coy Indian attitude towards sexuality".

With dramatic tales of secret police, spies and attempts at escape, it can be difficult to get a clear picture of everyday life in the former East Germany. But a new exhibition of photography from the 1980s reveals the ordinary lives behind the Iron Curtain.

Situated on Pariser Platz, the bustling Berlin square in front of the Brandenburg Gate, the Academy of Arts overlooks what was once the dividing line between East and West. It is apt then, that from July 10 to October 11 this should be the location for an exhibition of photographs taken in the former East Germany just before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

 But while it is the breaching of the Iron Curtain that is often the subject for such exhibitions, this display does not concern itself with dramatic historical developments. Instead it finds the people behind the politics and presents snapshots of East Germany as it really was. Mounted against a bright white background, these black and white and sepia photographs powerfully expose the rebellious undercurrents in stories of ordinary individuals from 20 years ago.

"Faire mouche" in French means to hit the bull's eye, hit the nail right on the head; "die Fliege machen" or "eine Fliege machen" in German means to clear off, get lost: though both translate literally as "do (the) fly". But sparing the life of this pesky insect is regarded as an act of kindness in Spain, Sweden, Latvia and France. The following is a selection of some choice European expressions that hit the nail - and not the fly - on the head.

If you look like you wouldn't hurt a fly, it's because you're of an unequivocally gentle character, unable to harm the tiniest thing. Big, impulsive hands - whether they belong to the president of the USA or not - are unwelcome, no matter who you are in Europe, from France: faire de mal à une mouche, Germany: er könnte keiner Flige etwas zu Leide tun, Spain: No haría daño ni a una mosca, Sweden: ej göra en fluga förnär, to Latvia: neizdarīs mušai pāri. Yet one of the most famous morals from Aesop's fable is: beware a wolf in sheep's clothing. Is Obama sending an indirect message as he meets fellow G8 leaders in Italy? L'habit ne fait pas le moine - the cowl does not a monk make, as the French and English aphorisms go - you can't judge someone on their appearance. The French also surmise that the fiendishly cunning are like un loup à l'apparence de brebis (a wolf that looks like a lamb), echoing the Spanish saying: es un lobo con piel de cordero (a wolf with lamb's skin).

To mark the 150th anniversary of London's Big Ben first chiming on Saturday, July 11, the message "Happy Birthday Big Ben, 1859 - 2009" is being projected onto the tower, one the most popular buildings in the English capital.

AFP - Big Ben, one of London's most familiar landmarks, celebrates the 150th anniversary of its first chiming on Saturday.
  
The Great Bell, housed in Saint Stephen's Tower which adjoins Britain's House of Commons, first struck the hour on July 11, 1859, and has been interrupted only occasionally for maintenance and bad weather ever since.
  
To mark the anniversary, the message "Happy Birthday Big Ben, 150 years, 1859 - 2009" will be projected on the tower.
  
These days, the name Big Ben is frequently used to describe the tower, one of the British capital's most photographed sites, but the nickname was first given to the bell alone.
  

A controversial service which planned to publish millions of mobile phone numbers in an online directory has been suspended after being deluged with people trying to remove their details from the system.

The 118 800 service, which had been due to launch this week, had caused concerns about privacy after it emerged it was set to make available details of 15m mobile phone numbers it had bought from market researchers and list brokers.

Consumers who wanted their numbers removed from the site were told they needed to log on and apply to be ex-directory.

Problems began late last week as phone users flooded the site to do so.

Visitors to the site are now told the service was unavailable online and by phone while "major developments" are undertaken "to improve the experience for our customers".

JUST as Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, was basking in the praise of his fellow leaders over his handling of the G8 summit last week, a new episode in the scandal that has haunted him for months was disclosed.

A magazine reported that he had spent a weekend in a luxurious Umbrian health spa with a retinue of women, including an actress and a former showgirl who have worked for the billionaire politician's television stations.

On the first day of the summit in the city of L'Aquila, which was hit by an earthquake in April, Berlusconi, 72, made a direct reference to his troubles, assuring fellow leaders: "You all know very well they are attacking me on a personal level, but rest assured, I will continue to lead my country for another four years."

Prosecutors in Bari in southern Italy are investigating a businessman, Giampaolo Tarantini, on suspicion that he abetted prostitution by allegedly paying women to attend parties at Berlusconi's homes in the capital and Sardinia. Tarantini has denied all wrongdoing.

On July 14, the Indian Army will march for the first time on the Champs-Elysees of Paris, where 400 of its soldiers will take part in the Bastille Day parade, under the watchful eyes of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

 

India, the guests of honour for this year's parade, is sending three batallions.

 

In uniforms inspired by those of the former British Empire, they will march to music "less militaristic" and quicker than that to be used by the French soldiers. The Indian Army made a "strong impression" during their rehearsals, according to a French officer.

The French (gossip) press says she claims to be scammed out of 650,000 euros by Christophe Rocancourt. Exciting!

To count as internationally significant, an opera company must be able to supercharge its lineup with star power.

That's exactly what the Santa Fe Opera has done this summer. It not only brought back Natalie Dessay but persuaded the much-sought-after French soprano to make her first-ever appearance as Violetta in "La Traviata."

In the opera world, this is big news. Even before this year's summer season opened, all 11 performances of Giuseppe Verdi's classic tragedy were sold out or virtually so. Critics were scrambling to book trips to New Mexico.

So expectations were running sky-high by the time opening night came July 3. And, put simply, Dessay came through, delivering a dazzling, star-worthy performance in every respect.

http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_12804528

Uttering expletives when you hurt yourself is a sensible policy, according to scientists who have shown swearing can help reduce pain.

A study by Keele University researchers found volunteers who cursed at will could endure pain nearly 50% longer than civil-tongued peers.