The Czech authorities are continuing to place Romani children in schools for pupils with "mild mental disabilities", leaving them with a sub-standard education, Amnesty International said in a report published on Wednesday.

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Amnesty International's report, Injustice renamed: Discrimination in education of Roma persists in the Czech Republic, examines the systematic discrimination that still exists in the Czech education system, despite a 2007 judgment by the European Court of Human Rights.

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With a new Schools Act in 2005, the Czech authorities merely renamed "special schools" as "practical elementary schools", but the system which places children in these schools and teaches a limited curriculum, essentially remains the same.

After the hearing, representatives of the main political groups agreed to ask the commission - the EU's executive - and their own legal service for confirmation that Jeleva's declaration was in line with EU transparency rules, effectively freezing her application.

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[Martin Schulz's request that Bulgaria withdraw Jeleva] provoked a bitter response from conservative politicians, who described the dispute as a liberal and left-wing 'witch-hunt' and launched their own attacks on liberal and socialist candidates.

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Szajer said that his party was seriously worried by anti-Roma remarks allegedly made by the centre-left Slovak candidate for the post of commission vice-president, Maros Sefcovic, in 2005.

Turkey has accepted an official apology from Israel over the treatment of its ambassador, with the Israeli prime minister expressing the hope it would end the latest row between the two countries.

Danny Ayalon, Israel's deputy foreign minister, embarrassed Oguz Celikkol, the Turkish envoy, on Monday, making him sit on a low couch and removing the Turkish flag from the table in a meeting called to convey Israeli protests over a Turkish television series.

The ministers for Europe of the 27 member states are meeting today and tomorrow in La Granja (Segovia) to deal with issues that the Spanish government believes need to be progressed by leading European politicians if citizens' expectations created by the Treaty of Lisbon, which came into force on December 1 last year after a long negotiation process, are to be met.

The full application of the new Treaty is one of the Spanish Presidency's main responsibilities. European citizens need to feel that the EU has entered a new era as soon as possible. The first ministerial meeting being held under the Spanish Presidency will therefore tackle this issue.

During Wednesday's meetings, the ministers will deal with four issues in particular, which have been newly introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon.

The Czech Republic's Stefan Fuele, the incoming enlargement chief, told European lawmakers in Brussels that Turkey could become a full EU member during his tenure.

He told a committee vetting his candidacy that he "respects the achievements" Turkey has made, saying Ankara is an important regional partner with a special role to play in the European energy sector.

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Turkey embarked on its accession negotiations with the European Union in 2005. Ankara has moved on a series of concessions meant to meet the policy requirements to join Europe. It faces obstacles, however, on various provisions over the island of Cyprus.

The European Commission has authorised, under EU State aid rules, a measure adopted by Denmark which provides a state guarantee on non-life insurance against damages stemming from nuclear, biological, chemical or radioactive (NBCR) terrorist attacks that exceed a certain threshold. The Commission found that the measure was an appropriate means of ensuring that insurance coverage against NBCR risks would be available in Denmark and approved the measure under Article 107 3 (c) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), that allows under certain conditions aid for the development of certain economic activities. In particular, the measure is designed to be self-funding and concerns insurance cover that is currently insufficiently available on the private market.

Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said: "Today's decision shows that the Commission and Member States can work together on important public policy goals. The decision will ensure that insurance coverage against certain terrorist risks is available on the Danish market, while at the same time ensuring that state aid and Single Market rules are respected."

Denmark considers it an important public policy goal that Danish citizens and enterprises have access to insurance against NBCR risks. However, the global reinsurance market for low probability but high impact events such as a NBCR attack is underdeveloped and as a result there is insufficient reinsurance capacity for Danish insurers that wish to provide this cover in Denmark.

Viviane Reding said the use in the EU of body-scanning equipment made by such companies as the U.K.'s Smiths Group Plc and New York-based L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. should be voluntary.

"Our needs for security can't justify every violation of privacy," Reding told a European Parliament confirmation hearing today in Brussels. "Citizens aren't objects; they are human beings." She also mentioned possible health threats from the technology.

The comments highlight the obstacles to forging a common approach in the 27-nation EU on the use of body scanners after the failed terrorist attack on a Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit from Amsterdam on Christmas Day. The U.K. has conducted trials of such equipment and France said last week that it would start testing the technology.

Remember Sir Ian Blair, the laughable policeman, the man who did for public confidence in the police what his namesake did for the trustworthiness of politicians? He's not happy with the European Court of Human Rights' ruling against the "stop and search" powers exercised with such gay abandon by his officers:

I find it difficult to reconcile the decision of the European court of human rights that police powers under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 are unlawful with the rather common sense matter of the wider duty of governments to protect their citizens from atrocity.

Let me help. Protecting citizens from atrocity and demanding that Austrian tourists hand over their holiday snaps because some plod wants to preserve the modesty of a bus shelter are two entirely different things. Unfortunately, the law is so broadly worded - in particular, the provision that a police officer (or pseudo-officer) doesn't need to have any grounds for believing that the person searched has about their person anything of use for "terrorist purpose" - that it is wide open to abuse. And your officers (and pseudo-officers) have repeatedly abused it. That has to cast some doubt on the wisdom of there being such a wide-ranging law in the first place.

Police found explosives and weapons in a van as they arrested two of the suspects near Portugal's border with Spain, Spain's interior minister said.

The other two were picked up in central France. They were caught with weapons, false number plates and fake documents, officials said.

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Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said the operation that culminated in the arrests near Clermont-Ferrand in France had been started by French authorities several months ago, triggered by a concentration of vehicle thefts attributed to Eta.

The prospect that Greece's fiscal crisis could force it to default on its sovereign debt has prompted speculation that it may eventually be pressured to depart the 16-member euro zone. In an effort to end such talk, Mr. Papandreou said in a nationally televised appearance that the country was committed to the common currency.

His comments came as the ECB warned Greece that a proposed law to restructure private-sector debt could do more harm than good, saying bluntly that key parts of the law were "not consistent with the principle of an open market economy" and might squeeze off the flow of credit.

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The proposed law, which would ease debt repayments by households and small businesses affected by the financial crisis, was one of the key campaign promises of Greece's recently-elected Socialist government.

The Federal Statistics Office announced on Wednesday that Germany's largely export-driven economy recorded its biggest-ever decline since World War II last year. The country also breached the EU's deficit limit.

The extent of the damage felt in Germany by the global financial crisis was revealed on Wednesday with the release of new economic figures by the Federal Statistics Office.

"As an export-dependent nation, Germany was particularly affected by the financial crisis," commented Federal Statistics Office President Roderich Egeler. "With a GDP drop of five percent, the country is relatively far behind other nations."

Germany's gross domestic product (GDP) shrank by five percent in 2009, with a particularly heavy slump in the first half of the year. But the statistics show that the GDP stabilized in the second half of 2009.

NYTimes: Mixed Signals Complicate European Bank's Task

With signals about European growth mixed and some weaker members of the European Union still in debt crisis, the European Central Bank is in a tough position as it seeks to pull back on measures that helped the euro zone through the recession.

The bank's governing council will hold a regular meeting on Thursday in Frankfurt, its first of the year. Analysts do not expect it to announce any policy changes, but they will listen closely for any shift in how the central bankers seem to assess the economy and when they may raise interest rates.

Recent indicators and corporate financial reports show that Europe is recovering slowly and unevenly. The British retailer Tesco said on Tuesday that sales during the six-week holiday period through Jan. 9 were up 6.9 percent from a year ago, without adjusting for currency fluctuations. The German retailer Metro said its sales dipped 3.6 percent in 2009. Over all, retail sales in the euro zone fell 1.2 percent in November from October, according to European Commission figures released last week.

The Minister for Employment, Celestino Corbacho, said on Wednesday that he considered `submerged activities' made up between 16% and 20% of G.D.P. and admitted that the number usually increased in times of recession.

Presenting the numbers for 2009 in the fight against fraud in the labour market, he said that there had been a 30% increase in the number of work inspections over the year, and that this had resulted in fines worth 960 million € being issued, 12.4% more than in 2008. In addition the inspections led to an extra 48,742 people registering to start contributing into the Spanish social security system.

The number of counterfeit euro bank notes withdrawn from circulation rose 8% during the last six months of 2009, with the €20 bill the most widely forged, the European Central Bank said Monday.

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The increase in counterfeits recovered in the second half wasn't as sharp as in the previous six months, when there was a 17% jump. The total number of counterfeit notes recovered in 2009 was 860,000 -- up from 666,000 the previous year.

The forger's favorite euro bill remains the €20 note, which accounted for 47% of the forgeries, the ECB said. It was followed by the €50 note, which accounted for 39%.

The European Union's designated financial services chief has pledged to examine curbs on short-selling and extend a planned regulatory shake-up to every corner of the industry, blamed by many for the economic crisis.

Outlining his plans to push through a welter of rules that will tighten the policing of banks as well as curbing runaway borrowing, Michel Barnier said: "We need to turn the page on an era of irresponsibility."

"We are going to reform. No market, no financial player ... should be able to escape. I will not shy away from the difficult subjects of sanctions and short-selling."

Haitian President Rene Preval has said thousands of people are feared dead following a huge quake which has devastated the country's capital.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon said the head of the UN mission in Haiti and his deputy were among more than 100 staff missing.

The 7.0-magnitude quake, Haiti's worst in two centuries, struck south of Port-au-Prince, on Tuesday.

The Red Cross says up to three million people are affected.

Officials in the Middle East and Europe questioned tighter U.S. airline security measures Tuesday, saying increased body scanning and inspections of Arab passengers would be discriminatory and overly intrusive.

After the alleged Christmas Day attempt by a Nigerian man to blow up a Detroit-bound jetliner, the Obama administration said it would require more full-body pat-downs, searches of carryon bags, full-body scanning and explosive-detection technology at U.S. airports.

The European Union has said it may require member nations to put in more full-body scanning machines in order to conform with American security measures and ease passengers' trips from Europe to the U.S.

Kampala -- PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni has cautioned those advocating for the Anti-Homosexuality Bill to "go slow", saying the matter was a sensitive foreign policy issue.

Museveni said he had been questioned about the bill by several foreign leaders, including the Canadian prime minister, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He said Clinton called him for over 45 minutes over the issue.

"I told them that this bill was brought up by a private member and I have not even had time to discuss it with him. It is neither the Government nor the NRM party. It is a private member," Museveni told the NRM meeting at State House Entebbe.

Q. Guns. Let's talk about this issue.

A: I never got an A rating, like my opponent -- would-be opponent -- has enjoyed. I don't own them. I do shoot them, and I shoot them at things that can't shoot back. And will continue to do that. And by that, I want to be clear, I don't mean children. I have done a little bird hunting in my day.

One month after the Copenhagen climate summit ended in recriminations and and a weak outline of a global deal, key groups of developing countries will meet to try to explore ways to get to agree a legally binding final agreement.

As the dust settles on the stormy Danish meeting, environment ministers from the so-called Basic countries - Brazil, South Africa, India and China - will meet on January 24 in New Delhi. No formal agenda has been set, but observers expect the emerging geopolitical alliance between the four large developing countries who brokered the final "deal" with the US in Denmark will define a common position on emission reductions and climate aid money, and seek ways to convince other countries to sign up to the Copenhagen accord that emerged last month.

Venezuela's government has imposed rolling blackouts of up to four hours every other day throughout the country to help combat an energy crisis.

Hugo Chavez, the president, has said rationing is necessary to prevent water levels in the country's main dam from falling to critical lows and causing a widespread power collapse.

The blackouts will begin on Wednesday in the capital, Caracas.

Russia rescued British energy consumers by ensuring a steady flow of gas into the power network as supplies from Norway faltered during the cold weather, industry customers users said today.

As the National Grid warned of a "high" possibility of shortages in the north-east and south-west owing to another cold snap, the Major Energy Users' Council said Britain had been lucky to survive without shortages. Eddie Proffitt, chairman of the council's gas group, said: "The [British] gas industry has coped very well but we have been lucky. It would have been desperate if we had seen the kind of disputes between Russia and Ukraine that have reduced gas flows on the continent in the past two or three Januaries."

The world's population is burning through the planet's resources at such a reckless rate - about 28 per cent more last year - it will eventually cause environmental havoc, said the Worldwatch Institute, a US think-tank.

In its annual State of the World 2010 report, it warned any gains from government action on climate change could be wiped out by the cult of consumption and greed unless changes in our lifestyle were made.

Consumerism had become a "powerful driver" for increasing demand for resources and consequent production of waste, with governments, including the British, too readily wanting to promoted it as necessary for job creation and economic well-being.

More than £2.8 trillion of stimulus packages had been poured into economies to pull the world out of the global recession, it found, with only a small amount into green measures.

A new study published in the International Journal of Biological Sciences....was a reanalysis of various studies performed on rats which ran for 90 days (which is actually long for this sort of research). An overview of the study:

   There is a world-wide debate concerning the safety and regulatory approval process of genetically modified (GM) crops and foods [1, 2]. In order to scientifically address this issue, it is necessary to have access to toxicological tests, preferably on mammals, performed over the longest time-scales involving detailed blood and organ system analyses. Furthermore, these tests should, if possible, be in accordance with OECD guidelines. Unfortunately, this has been a challenge since usually these are regulatory tests performed confidentially by industry prior to commercialization of their GM crops, pesticides, drugs or chemicals. As a result, it is more instructive to investigate the available data that allows comparisons of several GMOs consumptions on health effects. This will allow the most appropriate statistical analyses to be performed in order to avoid possible false positive as well as false negative results. The physiological criteria used to either accept or reject any GM significant effect as relevant should be made clear. Here we discuss sex-related, temporal, linear and non-linear dose effects which are often involved in the establishment of chronic and endocrine diseases.

    We investigated three different GM corn namely NK 603, MON 810 and MON 863, which were fed to rats for 90 days. The raw data have been obtained by European governments and made publically available for scrutiny and counter-evaluation. These studies constitute a model to investigate possible subchronic toxicological effects of these GM cereals in mammals and humans. These are the longest in vivo tests performed with mammals consuming these GMOs. The animals were monitored for numerous blood and organ parameters.

From the conclusion:

   .... in the three GM maize varieties that formed the basis of this investigation, new side effects linked to the consumption of these cereals were revealed, which were sex- and often dose-dependent. Effects were mostly concentrated in kidney and liver function, the two major diet detoxification organs, but in detail differed with each GM type. In addition, some effects on heart, adrenal, spleen and blood cells were also frequently noted. As there normally exists sex differences in liver and kidney metabolism, the highly statistically significant disturbances in the function of these organs, seen between male and female rats, cannot be dismissed as biologically insignificant as has been proposed by others [4]. We therefore conclude that our data strongly suggests that these GM maize varieties induce a state of hepatorenal toxicity. This can be due to the new pesticides (herbicide or insecticide) present specifically in each type of GM maize, although unintended metabolic effects due to the mutagenic properties of the GM transformation process cannot be excluded.

The Obama administration on Tuesday paved the way for the return of jaguars to the American Southwest by agreeing to designate a critical habitat for the biggest cat in the Western Hemisphere, which once roamed from California to Louisiana.

Jaguars occasionally are spotted in the Southwest, but usually because they cross from northern Mexico. Arguing that jaguars were native to Mexico rather than this country, the Bush administration refused to designate habitat for the endangered animal, which would give the cat special protection in certain areas. The Center for Biological Diversity filed three lawsuits since 2004 trying to compel that action. Last March, a federal judge ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to agree to designate a habitat.

On Tuesday, the Fish and Wildlife Service said it would do so and also draw up a recovery plan for the species.

Federal officials have until January 2011 to disclose their intentions, which could include intentionally reintroducing the predator to the Southwestern desert. The notion is likely to be controversial, as ranchers and some rural communities have fought the return of another predator, the Mexican gray wolf, to the region.

Scientists find increased methane levels in Arctic Ocean

[Underlines and emphasis added]

A team led by International Arctic Research Center scientist Igor Semiletov has found data to suggest that the carbon pool beneath the Arctic Ocean is leaking.

The results of more than 1,000 measurements of dissolved methane in the surface water from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf this summer as part of the International Siberian Shelf Study show an increased level of methane in the area. Geophysical measurements showed methane bubbles coming out of chimneys on the seafloor.

"The concentrations of the methane were the highest ever measured in the summertime in the Arctic Ocean," Semiletov said. "We have found methane bubble clouds above the gas-charged sediment and above the chimneys going through the sediment."

The new data indicates the underwater permafrost is thawing and therefore releasing methane. Permafrost can affect methane release in two ways. Both underwater and on land, it contains frozen organic material such as dead plants and animals. When permafrost thaws, that organic material decomposes, releasing gases like methane and carbon dioxide. In addition, methane, either in gas form or in ice-like methane hydrates, is trapped underneath the permafrost. When the permafrost thaws, the trapped methane can seep out through the thawed soil. Methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, is thought to be an important factor in global climate change.

The images appear to show rows of dark "conifers" sprouting from dunes and hills on the planet surface. But the scene is actually an optical illusion.

The photographs actually show sand dunes coated with a thin layer of frozen carbon dioxide, or dry ice, less than 240 miles from the planet's north pole.

Internet giant Google has said it may end its operations in China following a "sophisticated and targeted" cyber attack originating from the country.

It did not accuse Beijing directly, but said it was no longer willing to censor its Chinese search engine - google.cn.

Chinese rival Baidu called the move "hypocritical" and financially driven. In US trade on Wednesday Baidu's shares were up 10%, and Google's down 1.5%.

Google said the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists were the primary target of the attack, which occurred in December.

Across the US, death rates among black women diagnosed with breast cancer are 37 per cent higher than for whites, but in Chicago the difference is an astonishing 68 per cent (Cancer Causes & Control, vol 18, p 323). Something about this heaving metropolis is sending black women to an early grave.

Poor access to screening and therapy is clearly an important factor. But according to a novel collaboration between sociologists and biologists, the strain of living in some of the toughest neighbourhoods in the US may cause biological changes that lead directly to earlier deaths.

Cinema audiences in Russia have been quick to point out that Avatar has elements in common with The World of Noon, or Noon Universe, a cycle of 10 bestselling science fiction novels written by the Strugatskys in the mid-1960s.

It was the Strugatskys who came up with the planet Pandora - the same name chosen by Cameron for the similarly green and lushly forested planet used as the spectacular backdrop to Avatar. The Noon Universe takes place in the 22nd century. So does Avatar, critics have noticed.

And while there are clear differences between the two Pandoras, both are home to a similarly named bunch of humanoids - the Na'vi in Cameron's epic, and the Nave in Strugatskys' novels, read by generations of Soviet teenagers and space-loving scientists and intellectuals.

President Nicolas Sarkozy became a grandfather yesterday after the wife of his second son, Jean, gave birth to a baby boy.

"Yes, he had a grandson this morning," said a presidential aide, who added that he had been given a "very unusual" name.

According to a parliamentary source, his first name is Solal, the hero of the 1968 novel Belle du Seigneur, a tragic love story by Swiss-Jewish writer Albert Cohen.

Nothing could ever defeat The Great Joe Rollino, neither the frigid waters of the Atlantic in winter nor even the passing of the years. The resilience of this short, sinewy man was the stuff of legend on the streets of Brooklyn as were the stories of his feats as a of Coney Island strongman.

Maybe at 104 years old - Rollino was born on 19 March 1905 - he should not have been out walking the streets of the Brooklyn he adored and which loved him back. But taking a five minute stroll every morning at dawn was part of his treasured routine. As were all the other habits that he said contributed to his unusual longevity: regular swims in the ocean whatever the season, breakfasts of oatmeal and never, ever meat, cigarettes or alcohol.