Despite the fact that the project lacks key suppliers, the EU and Turkey are preparing to sign an intergovernmental agreement on Europe's flagship Nabucco gas pipeline on Monday. 

The 3,300-kilometer (2,000-mile) pipeline is expected to pump as much as 31 billion cubic meters from the Caspian Sea to Austria via Turkey and the Balkans, bypassing Russia, in what is seen as a bid by the EU to wean itself off its dependency on Moscow's supplies.

Europe has suffered from almost annual spats between Russia and its transit countries, specifically Ukraine, which have left some EU countries with drastically reduced oil and gas supplies, sometimes in the depths of winter.

The Nabucco line is expected to be the first move away from the Russian supply line and is seen as a rival to Russia's South Stream project. That project has been developed by Russian gas giant Gazprom and Italy's Eni, which will channel Russian gas through Bulgaria to Western Europe under the Black Sea.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - A new generation of MEPs will be trying to find their way around the famously labyrinth-like European Parliament building in Strasbourg this week as the constitutive session of the assembly gets under way.

Almost half (49.8%) of the 736 deputies have been elected for the first time while women will represent just over a third of the assembly, which is also host to eight former prime ministers and boasts two octogenarians.

The main buzz in the corridors will be one of deal-making as deputies divide up committee membership, firm up political alliances and formalise the political groups in parliament.

There are 160 national groups represented within the parliament the vast majority of which are housed in the seven political groups ranging from the centre-right European People Party (265 MEPs) to the smallest, the newly-formed eurosceptic and right wing Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD) with 30 members.

Just 28 MEPs are not non-attached, including the deputies from Britain's far-right BNP and the France's National Front.

The Union for the Mediterranean, launched a year ago, was meant to revive cooperation between the EU and countries bordering on the Mediterranean. But little progress has been made on pressing issues in the region. 

For almost 14 years now, the member states of the European Union have been working with 16 partners across the Southern Mediterranean and the Middle East on regional projects. This network used to be known as the Barcelona Process, but in 2008, it was re-launched as the Union for the Mediterranean, or Euromed, by the ever-industrious French President, Nicolas Sarkozy at the time of his European presidency.

Euromed is the only EU body in which both Israel and Arab states are represented, and if Sarkozy had prevailed, it would have only counted countries with a Mediterranean coastline among its members.

But German Chancellor Angela Merkel protested against this exclusive "Club Med" and eventually, she got her way. Sarkozy opened his Mediterranean Union to all 27 EU member states. At a short summit in Paris on July 13, 2008, 43 members officially joined Euromed.

In an off-the-cuff remark caught on camera, US President Barack Obama told German Chancellor Angela Merkel she was bound to win the September election. The forecast has annoyed Germany's Social Democrats.

It's not easy for a German camera crew working at the White House to get a good spot for their camera. In terms of priority rankings, the German media are about as important as the Albanians. Which is why Heike Slansky, a correspondent for German public service channel ZDF had to be particularly persistent in her efforts for footage when Chancellor Angela Merkel came to visit President Barack Obama in America at the end of June.

 All smiles: Barack Obama is apparently confident that Angela Merkel will win re-election in September. "At first we were only allowed to film the Chancellor's arrival," the German journalist recalled. However shortly before the meeting, her television crew learned that they would also be able to film Obama and Merkel making their way from the Oval office to a press conference in the East Room of the White House. And as the leaders strode down the corridor, their respective press secretaries -- Robert Gibbs and Ulrich Wilhelm -- in tow, something happened that Slansky still doesn't quite understand.

'You've Already Won'

Just as Obama and Merkel were walking past the camera, the German chancellor said: "We have to prepare our election campaign." Obama smiled, waved his left hand somewhat nonchalantly and said, "Ah, you've already won. I don't know what you always worry about."

The French justice minister asked a prosecutor to appeal for longer prison terms against "gang of barbarians" members jailed last week for a gruesome anti-Semitic murder. The victim's sister said on FRANCE 24 that she was satisfied with the appeal.

France's justice minister asked a prosecutor on Monday to appeal for increased jail terms against members of a gang imprisoned last week for kidnapping a young Jewish man, torturing him and leaving him to die.

"We feel reassured that the minister heard us and reacted so quickly," said the victim's sister, Yael Halimi, during an interview with FRANCE 24.

Referring to the gang members who lured Halimi into a trap and who held him hostage, she said: "The sentences handed over to the jailers and the bait were not in line with Ilan's ordeal."

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Germany's debate on how much national say there should be over further EU integration is intensifying two weeks after the country's constitutional court handed down a significant judgement on the EU's Lisbon Treaty.

The judgement was initially greeted with relief by the pro-integration camp as it did not say the EU treaty was incompatible with the German constitution.

How much say should Germany's parliament have over EU decisions'

But the 147-page ruling, now scoured by legal and constitutional experts, is causing strong discussion in political circles, just weeks before a new draft law incorporating the court's points is to be published.

Only after this law has been approved by parliament, may final ratification of the Lisbon Treaty - the signature by the German president - be completed.

The 30 June judgement said that parliament should have final say when the EU seeks to extend competences beyond what is foreseen in the Lisbon treaty.

German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück was right to criticize a recent law guaranteeing pension levels in the long term, media commentators write. The government passed the law because it wanted to pander to 20 million elderly voters ahead of the September general election.

German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück, never one to mince his words, has angered his own party, the Social Democrats (SPD), by criticizing recent legislation guaranteeing that pensions won't be cut. Now his party comrades are urging him to take a long vacation to avoid damaging the party's already slender chances of winning the Sept. 27 general election.

 Straight talker: German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück. The law, passed by the Bundestag lower house of parliament in June, was devised by SPD Labor Minister Olaf Scholz, and enshrines a long-term guarantee that pensions won't be cut, regardless of how badly the economy develops.

"I have big doubts whether that's the right signal for following generations," straight-talking Steinbrück, who recently accused Britain of obstructing regulatory reforms of financial markets, told the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper. He said today's pensioners were better off than ever before and that pensions were rising faster than they had been for years while people in work were afraid of losing their jobs in the economic crisis.

Utrecht city councillor Marka Spit says she is going to ignore Dutch Integration Minister Eberhard van der Laan's plan to abolish segregated integration courses as of January 2009. Various Dutch media report that the two politicians, both members of the Labour Party (PvdA), disagree on whether segregated integration classes benefit or undermine the emancipation of Muslim women in the Netherlands.

Dutch law requires nearly all newcomers to the country, other than European immigrants, to take a combined Dutch language and integration course, either inside or outside the Netherlands. The requirement, however, also applies to immigrants who have already been living in the country for some time.

The idea behind offering separate courses for men and women is to attract Muslim women who would otherwise not - be allowed to - attend because of their faith. Marka Spit says women should, at the very least, be offered the option of following the course in a single-sex setting.

After a first reading, the Lithuanian parliament has passed amendments to the penal code criminalising the promotion of same-sex relationships. "If the amendments get through the two remaining readings, homosexuals will face penalties ranging from forced labour through to fines and detention," reports Polish daily Dziennik. Penalties for "gay agitation" would apply to both individuals and organisations. The opposition conservative and eurosceptic party Order and Justice (TiT) is agitating for a minimum fine set at €325, the maximum €1,750. A couple of months ago the Lithuanian right sought to push through parliament a bill that equated homosexuality with zoophilia and necrophilia, providing not only fines but also prison sentences for speaking favourably about gay tendencies.

Street markets, long family lunches, strolls in the park . . . For the French, Sunday is a great tradition, a time to enjoy the finer things in life while other silly countries such as Britain keep working. So President Sarkozy's plan to "abolish Sunday" and let the shops open is running into a hail of criticism.

Parliament is due to pass a Bill tomorrow to ease France's strict trading laws, but hostility to it is so widespread that some MPs in Mr Sarkozy's own centre-right camp predict that it could unravel before becoming law.

The President's plan to abolir le dimanche is being resisted by an unlikely coalition of interests, including the centre and left-wing Opposition, the Roman Catholic Church, the trade unions and small shopkeepers who fear losing their existing Sunday business to supermarkets. Up to 60 per cent of the public, according to polls, are also against a scheme that will reverse the century-old right to a day of rest.

The first full analysis of the H1N1 virus, published in Nature, shows it causes more lung damage in animals than seasonal flu. For two strains of virus tested, five times less was needed to cause the same damage as seasonal flu. Damage to the lungs increases the risk of pneumonia which is the commonest cause of complications, severe illness and death in flu epidemics.

UK Financial Investments (UKFI) said in its annual report that its loss on the two stakes - 70pc of RBS and 43pc of Lloyds Banking Group - had reached £10.9bn at the end of June.

The losses, which are not yet realised, have been wracked up since Gordon Brown was forced to inject billions into the troubled lenders in October.

The investment, which amounts to more than £3,000 that each UK household, will not be quickly disposed of. The recession is continuing to hit both banks hard.

So having tried with the referendum, that was blocked in the Court of Cassation with the disappearance of a few thousand signatures, having tried with the popular initiative laws, at a standstill in Parliament Vizzini, the committee, you know everything, now he is trying, having tried with the Civic Lists, that anyway have given great results because they have infiltrated into many town and provincial assemblies at least one representative armed with a video camera and a vigilant eye, now he is trying out throwing a pebble into the pond of the Primaries. The interesting thing, still more interesting than Grillo's candidacy, is the reaction of the Democratic Party politburo, these indignant "parrucconi" {bewigged folk}. Shame. Grillo. Let's keep him out. A provocation. He has not got the credentials. He has attacked us and therefore he cannot come in. These moulds who are there encrusted to the night of Jurassic Park, do not realise these poor things, because by now you have to pity them, are bundles of bones, who the more they get angry, the more they make the game interesting . They do not realise that the more they get angry, and the more they show that they are afraid of Grillo, anyway as they are the holders of 26 and something per cent of the vote, it seems that they are losing a thousand votes a day, which means that they are really at the moment of the gas pipe. Why? Because there are two possibilities: either Grillo gets few votes at the Primaries and then they could say: see, it was a bluff, he's not liked by our voters, he made a mistake with the party and so why bother, - or otherwise Grillo gets loads of votes and then they would have to ask why, who is it that goes to the Primaries of the Democratic Party to vote for Beppe Grillo? Democratic Party voters who agree with what Grillo says. So perhaps rather than talking about Grillo, his language, his beard, his image, and facial characteristics, perhaps they would be better to ask why a part of the Democratic Party, even though Grillo has always been attacking the Democratic Party, perhaps they agree with what he is saying. Could it be that to hear talk of the environment, of the fight against nuclear and about zero refuse, you have to go to Grillo's blog? Is it that in order to hear talk of public water you have to go to Grillo's blog? That to hear about the Aldrovandi case, possibly before the verdict that convicted the police officers, you have to go to Grillo's blog or to participate in V-Day and to hear talk of the convicts in Parliament, you have to go to those places and to hear talk about so many other really important issues, thinking just of the whole topic of development, of the degrowth, of green cars, all topics that are at Obama's fingertips and that Grillo has been dealing with for years and that the Centre-Left is not dealing with, well then perhaps, if they want to defeat Grillo at the Primaries they should try and steal from him his job, they should start to talk about some of these things that are anything but "qualunquist" {populist} things or even comic. They are normal things for normal politics. But instead they get angry. They shriek. They prepare codicils to block his route. I believe that even if it only lasts a week, this candidacy has already given rise to its effects because it has already demonstrated which part of the Democratic Party is dead and buried and which part still has hope.

While the pinstripe crowd fixates on troubled assets, a stalled stimulus and mortgage remedies, it turns out that a more sure-fire financial fix is within our grasp -- and has been for years. New research says a healthy dose of estrogen may be the key not only to our fiscal recovery, but also to economic strength worldwide.

The sexy new discussion in policy circles around the world, thanks to the recession, is whether a significant shift of power from men to women is underway -- or whether it should be. Accounting giant Ernst & Young pulled out charts and graphs at a recent power lunch in Washington with female lawmakers to argue a provocative bottom line: Companies with more women in senior management roles make more money. The latest issue of Foreign Policy magazine sweepingly predicts the "death of macho." Economists at Davos this year speculated that the presence of more women on Wall Street might have averted the downturn. Adding to this debate is the fact that the laid-off victims of this recession are overwhelmingly men.

All those right-brain skills disparaged as soft in the roaring '90s are suddenly 21st-century-hot, while cocky is experiencing a slow fizzle.

Most of Wall Street, and America, is still waiting for an economic recovery. Then there is Goldman Sachs.

Up and down Wall Street, analysts and traders are buzzing that Goldman, which only recently paid back its government bailout money, will report blowout profits from trading on Tuesday.

Analysts predict the bank earned a profit of more than $2 billion in the March-June period, because of its trading prowess across world markets. If they are right, the bank's rivals will once again be left to wonder exactly how Goldman, long the envy of Wall Street, could have rebounded so drastically only months after the nation's financial industry was shaken to its foundations.

The obsessive speculation has already begun, along with banter about how Goldman's rapid return to minting money will be perceived by lawmakers and taxpayers who aided Goldman with a multibillion-dollar cushion last fall.

Job losses across the European Union continue to outnumber job gains, with the highest number of announced lay-offs recorded in June in France and Britain, a fresh EU report showed.

The situation in the labour market in the 27-member bloc keeps deteriorating, according to a monthly monitor conducted by the European Commission and published on Friday (10 July).

Half of the total job losses across Europe since last September were recorded in manufacturing

The report points out that between September 2008 and June of this year, some 640,000 jobs disappeared while 219,000 posts were created. Last month alone there were 87 cases of restructuring-related job losses, which led to 50,000 workers being put out of work.

France with 19,625 announced lay-offs and Britain with 11,528 jobs to go, topped the June list of EU countries with the highest number of restructuring cases in the labour market, followed by the Czech Republic (3,070), Poland (2,310), Germany (1,960) and (1,950).

Germany has been suffering its worst recession since World War II. But the dark clouds could soon be lifting as the country looks like avoiding another quarter of negative growth.

Is the German economy on the road to recovery? The recession is over in Germany. That at least is the conclusion of the Economy Ministry in Berlin. In their internal report on economic growth in the second quarter, seen by SPIEGEL, the ministry's experts have come to the conclusion that growth was exactly 0 percent for the three-month period in question.

This modest but unexpected figure is welcome news. The German economy has been shrinking since the second quarter of 2008, marking the worst recession in the country since World War II. The experts base their calculations on the data available for April and May 2009 and coupled them with estimates for June. The official growth figures will only be announced by the Federal Statistics Office in August.

British Airways pilots have overwhelmingly accepted 2.6 per cent pay cuts as part of a package of measures to save the airline £26 million, it was announced today.

The British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa) said its members voted by more than nine to one in favour of the pay cut, as well as a reduction of 20 per cent in some allowances.

Balpa said the turnout in the ballot was 83 per cent, with the result announced ahead of BA's annual meeting tomorrow.

This graph...compares the BLS reported monthly unemployment rate (in red) with the Obama economic forecast from January 10th: The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan

Geithner is correct about the stimulus kicking in during the 2nd half of 2009, and Delong agrees. But Delong is pointing out that the economy is in much worse shape than originally expected, and he argues if the Obama Administration knew in January what we know today, the package would have been much larger. Maybe. But thinking back - there was a huge political problem with the word "trillion" - so a much larger package would have been very difficult (although the composition could have been different).


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

California's property tax burden has gradually shifted to homeowners because commercial and industrial property doesn't change hands as often as homes and the sales can be easily disguised.

A sale is a pretty straightforward transaction for a home. That's not the case for commercial or industrial property, where a sale can be disguised in an almost infinite number of ways.

"The whole system is completely unenforceable," says Lenny Goldberg, a Sacramento lobbyist who, as director of the California Tax Reform Assn., has been pressing for years to institute a "split roll" -- that is, to tax commercial and industrial property differently from residential.  The idea is to reverse what has been a shift in California's property tax burden onto homeowners from business owners under Proposition 13.

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Goldberg calculates that Disneyland, which hasn't had a reportable change of ownership since, well, forever, is currently taxed at an average of about a nickel per square foot. For comparison, a median California home bought last year out of foreclosure, measuring 1,600 square feet and selling for about $330,000 (these are averages from the California Assn. of Realtors), would incur property tax of about $3,300 per year, or $2.06 per square foot.

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An effort by public employee unions to get a split-roll initiative on the ballot in 2006 didn't even make it past the signature-gathering stage. But those were different times. Maybe, just maybe, the voters of this financially spavined state aren't still so reluctant to close a big loophole.

Ya think?


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

Almost every holder of a PhD in economics who works for a formal economic body like the Treasury, the RBA or the OECD has been deeply schooled in "neoclassical" economics, often without knowing that there is any other way of thinking about how the economy functions. They think they are simply "economists", and anyone who objects to their analysis or models must be uneducated about economic theory.

In contrast, virtually all University Departments of Economics contain at least one economist who rejects neoclassical economics, and instead subscribes to a rival school-like Austrian, Marxian, Post Keynesian, or Evolutionary Economics.  These contrarian academic economists often disagree amongst themselves, sometimes vehemently-you couldn't get two more opposed points of view than Austrian and Marxian economics, for example-but they tend to be united in regarding neoclassical economic theory as pompous drivel.

There are probably many reasons for this dichotomy between University economics departments which almost always have a handful of dissidents, and official economics bodies like the OECD and Treasury that are almost exclusively staffed by neoclassical economists. But I suspect the main reason is tenure: universities offer it, while formal economic advisory bodies don't.

As a result, academic economists who "turn feral" and reject neoclassical economics can still teach and publish and hang on to their jobs, even if their neoclassical Department Heads wish they would go away. OECD and Treasury economists who do the same thing probably find their employment coming to an end-because they don't have tenure.

So anything published by a formal economic body like the OECD will be the product of a neoclassical economic model-and therefore, in my opinion and that of a sizable minority of academic economists, drivel (there was one exception-the Bank of International Settlements while Bill White, a supporter of Hyman Minsky's "Financial Instability Hypothesis", was its its Economic Adviser).

Our analysis is as follows. First, debt and leverage cause fragility; they leave less room for errors as the economic system loses its ability to withstand extreme variations in the prices of securities and goods. Equity, by contrast, is robust: the collapse of the technology bubble in 2000 did not have significant consequences because internet companies, while able to raise large amounts of equity, had no access to credit markets.

Second, the complexity created by globalisation and the internet causes economic and business values (such as company revenues, commodity prices or unemployment) to experience more extreme variations than ever before. Add to that the proliferation of systems that run more smoothly than before, but experience rare, but violent blow-ups.

...

Third, debt has a nasty property: it is highly treacherous. A loan hides volatility as it does not vary outside of default, while an equity investment has volatility but its risks are visible. Yet both have similar risks. Thus debt is the province of both the overconfident borrower who underestimates large deviations, and of the investor who wants to be deluded by hiding risks. Then there are products such as complex derivatives, which in the name of "modern finance" make the system even more fragile.

As it did in Tibet, the Chinese leadership is harshly cracking down on unrest in Xinjiang. The region's Muslim Uighurs feel degraded and robbed of their culture while they suffer in their homeland under the dominance of the Han Chinese.

Hairegul is wearing a pink T-shirt with the word "Sunshine" printed on the front. Her fingernails are the same shade of pink, her eyelashes are painted with mascara, and she is adept at flipping her long black hair back and forth. Meanwhile, Wang Xiaomei's hair is pinned up and five rhinestone studs sparkle in her left ear. She is wearing a striped sweater and clunky, brightly colored plastic bracelets around her wrist.

 Unrest in Urumqi. Hairegul is a Uighur and Wang Xiaomei is Han Chinese. They are both daughters of affluent parents, 21 and in the middle of their semester exams at a teacher training college in Urumqi. The two women live in the same dormitory and are sitting in the same classroom. They are both studying music and want to be teachers. They have the same dream.

Britain became the first country to halt arms exports to Israel in response to its Gaza offensive, rescinding five export licences for parts used on warships which were deployed in the conflict.

An Israeli official said that Britain had reviewed 182 licenses before deciding to revoke the five in connection with the Saar 4.5 class corvette. The British Embassy in Tel Aviv confirmed the move but said that it did not constitute an embargo on Israel.

"There are no security agreements between the UK and Israel," an embassy spokesman said. "UK policy remains to assess all export licences to Israel against the consolidated EU and national arms export licensing criteria."

The quagmire of  Afghanistan becomes clearer each day as reports filter out that the grand surge in Helmand is stymied and Afghan townspeople are not so pleased with their "liberation." 

Yet, while an uproar in the UK over their casualties this week - 15 dead in 10 days - grows, (see "renowned British military historian Correlli Barnett ... in the pages of the very conservative Daily Mail" (h/t Steve Hynd of Newshoggers)) Gen McChrystal continues to up the expectation that he will be asking for more US troops and more billions when he completes his strategic review:

The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said Sunday that when he gives his assessment to the Obama administration next month of what is needed to defeat the Taliban , he won't be deterred by administration statements that he cannot have more U.S. troops.

One of the central talking points justifying our ongoing war has always been talk about protecting or saving the women of Afghanistan. Both the right and the left have used this argument as a rationale for continuing - yet few ever listen to the wishes of actual Aghan women.

After the US air strike killed more than 140 Afghan civilians in Farah province, Malalai Joya, the MP for Farah who was forced from Parliament by the US backed warlords noted:

de Arriaga - Brüning: Die Sultana von Cádiz (The Sultana of Cádiz) (arr.2008) 90'
Opera in two acts (Pasticcio with music from pieces by Arriaga)

For the Barenboim-Said Foundation's first opera project we decided to commission a libretto, but not a new composition'with only a year to prepare, time would have been too short. We therefore took recourse to already existing music by the Spanish composer J. C. de Arriaga (1806-1826) and put together an opera pasticcio from several of his works. To this we added traditional Arabic music, played by musicians from the region.

There is a strong link in obesity between mothers and daughters and fathers and sons, but not across the gender divide, research suggests.

A study of 226 families by Plymouth's Peninsula Medical School found obese mothers were 10 times more likely to have obese daughters.

For fathers and sons, there was a six-fold rise. But in both cases children of the opposite sex were not affected.

The researchers believe the link is behavioural rather than genetic.

They say the findings mean policy on obesity should be re-thought.

Why pay our farmers to produce opium while Afghan poppy crops are razed, asks Boris Johnson.

We are nearing the end of the season for the big ornamental poppies that flower all over South Oxfordshire, the area I used to represent in parliament. The petals have fallen to the ground, pink and purple and red. But I expect the seed-pods are still standing tall. If you take a sharp knife to one of those seed-pods, and make a careful diagonal incision, you will see a white latex ooze out. What is that gunk? That is opium, my friend; and the reason there are so many giant poppies all over that part of England is that the seeds have been blown in the wind or carried in the guts of birds. They have come from the farms. We actually grow opium there, and we grow it officially.

At direct government urgings, there are large tracts of land that are given over to the cultivation of the palaver somniferum, for the very good reason that the opium is essential for the NHS. When we die of cancer, or when we are carried off in any other mortal agony, our final miseries are invariably palliated by opiates, in the form of morphine or diamorphine, and indeed our respiration is typically suppressed by these drugs in a vast and unadmitted programme of humane killing.

El Niño, the warming of the Pacific Ocean that creates chaos in global weather patterns, is on its way back, threatening droughts, floods, crop failure and social unrest.

According to scientists at America's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a new bout of El Niño is under way as the surface of tropical waters across the eastern Pacific has warmed roughly 1C (1.8F) above normal and is still rising.

Further down, some 150 meters (500ft) below the surface, the waters are heating up -- by around 4C (7.2F).

These indications have been emerging for about the past month from satellite pictures and an array of robotic buoys strung out across the Pacific. "The persistently warm sea temperatures are important indicators of an El Niño," Mike Halpert, of NOAA's Climate Prediction Centre, said.

The Cornish beach that inspired Virginia Woolf's novel To The Lighthouse has been sold for £80,000. A private buyer from London who originally hails from Cornwall bought Upton Towans beach in Gwithian, complete with a view of the Godrevy Island lighthouse, at auction.

All the proceeds will go to the Hall for Cornwall theatre in Truro because Dennis Arbon, a trustee of the performing arts venue who has owned the beach for the past 19 years, wants the sale to be of benefit to the people of Cornwall.

The guide price for the 76 acres of beach near Hayle was £50,000. Woolf's novel, published in 1927, was set in the Hebrides but drew on her childhood holidays in St Ives, where she stayed at a house from which Godrevy Island was visible. A landmark of early 20th century literature, Woolf called her most autobiographical work "easily the best of my books". She used the money garnered from sales to buy a car.

Planning restrictions mean the new owner is not allowed to build on the land or excavate minerals.

A study appearing in the August 5 NeuroReport suggests that four-letter words may help alleviate pain. "Swear words are unique," says Timothy Jay, a psychologist at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams, who has studied the role of naughty words in linguistics. "They're really the link between the language system and the emotional system."

Inspiration for the new study came to psychologist Richard Stephens as he listened to his wife let loose with some unsavory language during the throes of labor. So he and his colleagues at Keele University in England conducted an experiment to test whether uttering emotion-laden choice words can actually change the amount of pain people feel. Undergraduate students (38 males and 29 females) each immersed a hand in cold water (about 5º Celsius) for as long as they could stand it, while repeating either a swear word or an innocuous word.

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When people had a swear word for their mantra (popular choices: the s-word, the f-word, two b-words and a c-word), they were able to keep a hand in the chilly water longer. What's more, after the ordeal, people who swore reported less pain.

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Swearing increased heart rate in both men and women, but had a greater effect on women. Researchers thought the heart rate increase might signal the beginning of a fight-or-flight response. Such a response may allow the body to tolerate or ignore pain, they say.

 

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

Cat owners may have suspected as much, but it seems our feline friends have found a way to manipulate us humans.

Researchers at the University of Sussex have discovered that cats use a "soliciting purr" to overpower their owners and garner attention and food.

Unlike regular purring, this sound incorporates a "cry", with a similar frequency to a human baby's.

The team said cats have "tapped into" a human bias - producing a sound that humans find very difficult to ignore.

China's ministry of health has banned the use of electric shock treatment to cure internet addiction.

The move follows growing concern in the country about young people's compulsive use of chat rooms, websites and online gaming - but also the methods used to wean them offline.

Doctors released the first diagnostic definition of internet addiction late last year, based on a study of more than 1,300 intensive users. It says addicts are those who spend at least six hours online a day and have shown at least one of a range of symptoms - including yearning to get back online, fear of social contact, irritation and difficulty concentrating or sleeping.

BERLIN (Reuters) - A Berlin brothel has come up with a novel way to negate the impact of the global economic crisis and target a new group of customers at the same time -- offering a discount to patrons who arrive on bicycles.

"The recession has hit our industry hard," said Thomas Goetz, owner of the "Maison d'envie" brothel.

"Obviously we hope that the discount will attract more people," he added. "It's good for business, it's good for the environment -- and it's good for the girls."

You can't be me, I'm taken