"Today, 80% of the CAP budget still goes to 20% of the farmers. We propose an innovative and integrated system which would make the allocation of resources fairer among farmers and member states," said spokesman Luis Capoulas Santos, as the S&D group unveiled its ambitions for EU farm reform.

'New start' for environment, cohesion

The European Parliament group argues that one of the EU's oldest policies is in need of comprehensive reform for two reasons.

Firstly, due to the emergence of new challenges such as climate change, water management, renewable energy, biodiversity and soil erosion. The group stresses the need to move towards more sustainable production models and suggests considering new "carbon credit" instruments for agriculture.

Secondly, because the principle of economic, social and territorial cohesion enshrined in the EU treaties "has never been included within the objectives of the CAP". The group notes that the largest farms, which are generally also the most competitive and efficient, "continue to receive the most support".

Putting an end to "unfair allocation of public resources (80% of the budget to 20% of the farmers)" would also give the CAP renewed legitimacy, the paper underlines.

AFP - Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who came to power on pledges of resetting ties with Russia, was expected in Moscow Friday amid efforts to defuse years of tensions between the two neighbors.

Arriving for the first Russian visit by a Ukrainian head of state in two years, Yanukovych, who took office last week, was scheduled to meet Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, considered to be the country's paramount leader.

"The intensification of political dialogue is among the priority tasks," the Kremlin said in a statement ahead of the visit.

"The meeting of the heads of state is designed to give a serious impetus to the development of the entire set of Russian-Ukrainian relations, the resumption of their truly good neighborly and mutually beneficial nature."

Candidates from Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom party (PDL) will not be allowed to contest the polls in Lombardy, his political home turf, and the Lazio region, which includes Rome.

The bungle in Lazio occurred when a party member missed the deadline to register for the March 28-29 regional elections.

A furious Berlusconi has vented his anger at "amateur" party officials, whose blunder could hand a victory to the left-wing opposition in two of Italy's most important regions.

Renata Polverini, the PDL candidate for president of the Lazio region, has called for a demonstration in Rome on Thursday afternoon, after a first court appeal failed to reintroduce her list on Tuesday. "They want a trial of strength from the streets, we will give it to them," she told reporters. "We will be ever so many."

Just looking at the numbers, the Labour party was the biggest loser of the Dutch municipal elections. Geert Wilders' PVV made a spectacular entry onto the political scene in two cities where it participated and left-wing liberal D66 earned the most seats elsewhere in the country.

The other significant loser of these elections was local democracy. Turnout had never been this low (54 percent) in municipal elections. With the interesting exception of The Hague and Almere, where Geert Wilders' Party for Freedom (PVV) ran. More people went to the polls there than did four years ago. It seems likely the PVV rallied its supporters, but that was an extra motivation for the rank and file of other parties as well.

Slovakia adopted a law on 4 March to crack down on income from crime and corruption, with the government and opposition parties in rare agreement ahead of a June election.

Accusations of graft, rarely proven, are a frequent feature of Slovak politics. Corruption has been widespread in central and eastern Europe during post-communist reforms and justice systems have been weak.

The law will allow any Slovak to challenge the origin of anyone else's assets over 460,000 euros ($629,200). A prosecutor will be able to order the person to disclose where the funds came from. Courts will have the right to confiscate assets of unclear origin.

"Any loss of life is something that makes us very sad indeed," he said.

"Nobody wants to go to war, nobody wants to see innocent people die, nobody wants to see their forces put at risk of their lives.

"Nobody would want to make this decision except in the gravest of circumstances where we were sure that we were doing the right thing.

"I think it was the right decision and made for the right reasons."

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou is due in Paris on Sunday to meet Sarkozy as part of a tour of capitals seeking backing for his debt-riddled nation.

He received political support, but no promise of financial aid, at talks in Berlin with Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday.

French officials have said there is no need for aid at present, but Mr Sarkozy made clear that Paris would be ready to help if Athens faced a budget meltdown.

Spanish foreign minister Miguel Angel Moratinos - who chaired Cordoba's talks as a representative of the EU's rotating presidency - was confident that disagreements would be ironed out.

...

Ashton is set to discuss her proposals with other EU commissioners on March 11, and to secure their approval by the end of March. EU governments and the European Parliament are then expected to give their go-ahead by the end of April, but current wrangles put the timetable at risk.

...

This was signaled by Moratinos applauding her for "not having a minute's rest in her agenda," even though Ashton's absence from an EU defence ministers' gathering in late February and her decision to skip an EU-Morocco summit this weekend went down badly in Madrid.

Olli Rehn, the EU's Economic Affairs Commissioner, has urged the Greek government to tighten its belt and make further cuts---translation: slash wages! This is perhaps to be expected coming from a member of Finland's Centre party, but it is deeply divisive for Europe. Unsurprisingly, a centre-right Commission holds centre-right economic views--views which are unchanged despite the lessons of the current financial and economic crisis.

Overspent or underfinanced?

Yes, Greece has a serious current government deficit about which it cooked the books (12.5% of GDP in contrast to 10% of GDP in the US). But the public stock of debt as a percentage of GDP is around 40% of GDP, well below the Eurozone norm. The problem in Greece has been wrongly portrayed as one of overspending. And although some Greek public sector expenditure is nepotistic and unnecessary, most of it goes to low-paid teachers, nurses and other public servants. The real problem lies elsewhere; namely, in a poor tax collection system allowing the rich to move money to tax shelters. Poor tax collection is greatly compounded by the collapse in government revenue resulting from recession, and these matters will not be put right overnight. Mr Papandreou must be given time if he is to bring about fundamental structural reform. He does not need the sort of labour unrest which will follow a massive wage squeeze.

On Saturday, Icelandic voters will head to the polls to vote on a government plan to pay back 3.8 billion euros to Britain and Holland stemming from losses to private savers in those countries after the collapse of the online bank Icesave. SPIEGEL ONLINE spoke to Olafur Eliasson, 42, who organized the campaign against the compensation plan.

All signs point to "no." On Saturday, voters in Iceland will head to the polls to vote in a referendum on a plan that would see the small country in the North Atlantic pay back €3.8 billion ($5.16 billion) to Britain and the Netherlands. The money is designed to compensate for those countries' decisions to reimburse 340,000 people who lost their savings when Icesave, an online subsidiary of Landesbanki, collapsed along with its parent in the fall of 2008. Reykjavik has been forced to move on the issue under intense pressure from the governments in London and The Hague.

The EU's competition policy is preventing the creation of strong European companies and needs to be more flexible, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Thursday.

Sarkozy made his comments as he unveiled new policies aimed at halting the decline in French industry, which included a promise for a more active government role in companies where the state is a shareholder.

"I want the conception of European competition to move forward," he said, saying that the policy should be looked at on a European level and not at the level of an individual country.

"Otherwise how do we create big European groups? Which big group in the world can conquer export markets without first being dominant in its own domestic market?" he asked. He said Europe had lost the battle for consumer goods contracts and was facing increasing competition on major industrial contracts.

The European Parliament and the European Commission will jointly host stakeholders at an EU summit on March 22 to discuss the controversial topic of how the bloc can distribute radio spectrum among an array of powerful industries and services including defence, transport, space applications, television and mobile phones.

The EU executive's consultation will ask consumers and companies to spell out their stance on a Europe-wide spectrum policy that could provide the frequencies to carry all stakeholders involved while tackling social inclusion and environmental health.

The consultation, due to close on 9 April, will likely reopen a debate that has already seen Internet service providers, regulators and the EU at loggerheads.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - An EU court has backed the bloc's decision to impose tariffs on shoes from China and Vietnam following a series of complaints from Chinese shoe producers.

The EU General Court, formerly known as the Court of First Instance, ruled against the producers on Thursday (4 March) after they requested an annulment of the 2006 tariff regulation.

The challenges were made on the grounds that European Commission analysis of the costs of Chinese and Vietnamese imports for EU manufacturers was inaccurate.

The European duties add between 9.7 percent and 16.5 percent to the import price of Chinese shoes and 10 percent to Vietnamese shoes.

REUTERS - China will steer a steady policy course this year but will change tack if needed to counter the lingering impact of the international credit crunch, Premier Wen Jiabao said on Friday.

Wen announced increases in social and rural spending that outstrip the planned rise in defence outlays, underscoring concern over the income inequalities that blight a country poised to pass Japan this year as the world's second-largest economy.

In his annual address to the National People's Congress, the largely ceremonial parliament, Wen said China would maintain an appropriately easy monetary stance and an active fiscal policy.

China avoided the worst of the global slump by pumping up credit, slashing interest rates and launching a 4 trillion yuan ($585 billion) infrastructure programme in late 2008.

The housing market seems set to undergo its own "double-dip" recession, with Halifax announcing yesterday that there was a 1.5 per cent fall in house prices between January and February, and with the slow economic recovery now on course to depress sentiment for the rest of the year.

The Halifax number follows the 1 per cent drop in values registered by the Nationwide in January, and will be especially disappointing for home owners because it cannot be seen as simply a reflection of the temporary strength of the market in December being corrected the following month.

The US Labor Department released its February unemployment report on Friday, showing the rate held steady at 9.7% with fewer job losses than expected. The report noted that figures may have been skewed by temporary hiring to beat the winter storms.

AFP- European governments agreed Friday to give aerospace giant EADS an additional 3.5 billion euros (4.76 billion dollars) to save the troubled Airbus A400M military transport project, the firm said.

"EADS thanks the nations for the decisive support they are bringing to the programme through this agreement," a statement said, after officials from seven NATO countries met in Berlin to hammer out a deal.

"EADS considers that this agreement provides a sound basis for a successful evolution of the A400M programme," the Airbus parent company added, vowing "to deliver a state-of-the-art product within the new frame of the contract."

Bah...

*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.

RUSSIA: During state visit to France by President Dmitry Medvedev, Alstom and Transmash Holding signed documents on March 1 firming up the strategic partnership agreement which had been signed on March 31 last year.

Subject to certain conditions being met within six months, Alstom will acquire a 25% + 1 share stake in TMH's parent company Breakers Investment BV for an initial payment of US$75m. The balance is to be paid in 2012 and is linked to TMH's results for 2008-11.

Transmashholding is the 8000-pound gorilla of the former Soviet rail industry. It was in talks with all three of the EU-centered multinationals (Alstom, Bombardier, Siemens).

*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.

JAPAN: East Japan Railway confirmed in February that it expects to take delivery in July of its first pre-production Series E6 mini-shinkansen trainset, designed for 320 km/h operation on the Tohoku Shinkansen route. The train will undergo an extensive testing and commissioning programme before entering revenue service in March 2013

Like the Series E5 trains now being delivered, which are derived from the Fastech 360S experimental trainset, the Series E6 is derived from the small-profile Fastech 360Z. The seven-car trains will be phased in during March 2013, replacing all of the current six-car Series E3 trainsets used on Komachi services between Tokyo and Akita by March 2014.

Weird but less noisy. ("Mini-shinkansen": trains with reduced cross-section to enable running on dual-gauge conventional lines.)

*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.

President Barack Obama's budget will lead to deficits averaging nearly $1 trillion over the next decade, the CBO estimated Friday.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said President Barack Obama's budget would lead to annual deficits averaging nearly $1 trillion for the next decade.

The estimates are for larger deficits than the budget shortfalls expected by the White House.

Annual deficits under Obama's budget plan would be about $976 billion from 2011 through 2020, according to a CBO analysis of Obama's plan released Friday.

The Financial Crisis of 2007-2009 (no-one's settled on a name yet; we are still too close to the action, and that end date might still need some discreet pushes to the right) has naturally set off a book publishing frenzy. With the first wave of instant histories now spent (the startlingly fast-out-of-the-blocks chronicle "Bailout Nation", the elephantine "Too Big To Fail" etc, etc), we are now getting a second wave of books, whose authors have had time to dig deeper and reflect more on how we got into this mess. Yves Smith's offering is the first integrated account of the root causes of the financial crisis, and a compelling one.

For Smith, it turns out to be a matter of bad economic theory, self-serving ideology, and, under cover, plain old rapacity. The author gives us a brisk historical sweep through what sounds like deeply unpromising, but, as it turns out, surprisingly engaging terrain: post- war economic theory, the evolution of the financial services industry and its regulation since the 1970s, modern financial instruments, and the Crisis itself. It's been a long time a-comin', this Crisis. It all culminates in a whodunit account of the mechanisms that brought the crisis to its acute phase; an account that respects the complexities, yet grips like a vice. But first of all, it's about the way a single phrase, "free markets", was turned into a justification for profoundly destructive behaviour.

Yves Smith (got it yet?) points out that there was always more to Adam Smith's account of the free market than its modern reduction allows:

Smith also pointed out that self-interested actions frequently led to injustice or even ruin. He fiercely criticized both how employers colluded with each other to keep wages low, as well as the "savage injustice" that European mercantilist interests had "commit[ted] with impunity" in colonies in Asia and the Americas.

Yves shows us that little has changed since Adam's day (last chance!). Running through the book, we will find ever more glaring contrasts between the official slogans: "invisible hand", "free market" and so on, and what is really going on: scams, rip-offs, increasingly brazen looting. This is sanctioned, in an unwelcome display of bipartisanship, by intellectually bankrupt and venal politicians of all hues.

Next we are into the meat of the economic theory (Chapters 2-4). Smith briskly takes a sledgehammer to any number of plaster saints cluttering up the edifice of modern economics:

"assumptions that are patently ridiculous: that individuals are rational and utility-maximizing (which has become such a slippery notion as to be meaningless), that buyers and sellers have perfect information, that there are no transaction costs, that capital flows freely"

And then...papers with cooked figures, economists oblivious to speculative factors driving oil prices, travesty versions of Keynes's ideas that airbrush out its most characteristic features in the name of mathematical tractability.

And then...any number of grand-sounding theoretical constructs: the Arrow-Debreu theorem, the Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium model, the Black-Scholes option model, Value at Risk, CAPM, the Gaussian copula, that only work under blatantly unrealistic assumptions that go by high falutin' names - equilibrium, ergodicity, and so on.

The outcome of this pseudo-scientific botching is an imposing corpus of pretentious quackery that somehow elevates unregulated "free markets" into the sole mechanism for distribution of the spoils of economic activity. We are supposed to believe that by some alchemical process, maximum indulgence of human greed results in maximum prosperity for all. That's unfair to alchemy: compared with the threadbare scientific underpinnings of this economic dogma, alchemy is a model of rigor.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Ankara on Thursday (4 march) recalled its ambassador from Washington in protest over a resolution passed by US lawmakers recognising the Armenian genocide in 1915.

The foreign affairs committee in the US Congress narrowly passed a non-binding resolution condemning as "genocide" the First World War killings of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman empire.

Ankara reacted immediately by withdrawing its ambassador from Washington. Turkey rejects the genocide label and argues that 300,000 to 500,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died when Christian Armenians took up arms against their Ottoman rulers and sided with invading Russian troops.

Speaking in front of US business representatives gathered at the American Chamber of Commerce to the EU's Transatlantic Conference, Kennard spelled out two policy priorities for the coming months, echoing US President Barack Obama's recent State of the Union address.

"I have a great sense of urgency to get things done and to have some concrete deliverables and outcome [...]. No issue is more important than getting our economy moving and creating jobs," he said, adding that the fundamental ingredients for success are vision and execution.

Boosting bilateral trade, creating jobs and restoring sustained growth is at the core of the US strategic agenda in Europe.

"Because innovation and entrepreneurship are at the core of President Obama's plan of economic recovery, like they are the centrepiece of the Europe 2020 strategy, we have a great opportunity to work on these issues," Kennard stressed, noting that rather than dialogue, the EU-US relationships needs an "innovation action plan".

The US ambassador rebuffed claims that EU-US relations were irreparably damaged in December when President Obama left out the EU by concluding a climate deal with China and India. He also tried to play down a recent row over Obama's visit to Europe and the postponement of the EU-US summit.

"These ups and downs are not new," he said. "It is important to keep all this in perspective [...] The EU-US economic relationship dwarfs any other economic relationship anywhere into the world and we need to educate others that this is an enduring relationship," he said.

Jean-Pierre Fabre, the main opponent of outgoing President Faure Gnassingbe in Togo's presidential election, claimed the elections were full of "irregularities" including "ballot box stuffing," and has declared himself the victor.

AFP - Israeli police stormed Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque compound -- one of Islam's holiest sites -- on Friday after protesters threw stones following the main weekly prayers, police and witnesses said.

Police fired tear gas and threw stun grenades in an attempt to disperse the protesters.

"Our officers entered the compound after volleys of stones were thrown at Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall, below the mosque compound," Jerusalem police spokesman Shmulik Ben Ruby told AFP.

An AFP photographer at the site reported seeing 10 Palestinians and five police officers injured in the clashes.

There were similar outbreaks at the compound last Sunday after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he was placing two West Bank shrines -- The Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem -- on a list of Israeli heritage sites.

All the talk was about the rising stars of the Chinese political establishment as the National People's Congress kicked off in Beijing.

Olympic athletes, TV actors and obscenely wealth businessmen were the media darlings darting around the heavily secured square in front of the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, where the National People's Congress (NPC) kicked off on Friday. The NPC, an annually recurring political spectacle, is attended by everyone of note in China.

REUTERS - Chile's government said on Thursday the death toll from a massive weekend earthquake and ensuing tsunamis was unclear because of confusion over the number of people who disappeared and whether they were dead.

The government said it had formally identified 279 of the victims and other bodies had yet to be identified but that initial tolls were unreliable. Earlier on Thursday, the government had put the death toll at 802.

...The confusion over the death toll comes as the government, its national emergency office and the Navy face sharp criticism for initially underestimating the threat of devastating tsunamis after the earthquake and the extent of damage across large areas of south-central Chile.

...But sometimes from the smallest crack in a façade come the largest of changes.  In this case, the most modest potential "no" from a new Japanese government in Tokyo, concerning U.S. basing posture in that country, seems to have caused near panic in Washington.  In neither Europe nor Asia have we felt any political earthquakes -- yet.  But just below the surface, the global political tectonic plates are rubbing together, and who knows when, as power on this planet slowly shifts, one of them will slip and suddenly, for better or worse, the whole landscape of power will look different.

The study updates a 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and has discovered several new elements of the global climate which have been influenced by humans, such as an increasing amount of water vapour evaporating from the warmer oceans into the atmosphere and a corresponding increase in the saltiness of the sea.

"There is an increasingly remote possibility that climate change is dominated by natural rather than anthropogenic [man-made] factors," the scientists concluded in their study, published in the journal Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews of Climate Change.

Scientific observations based on temperature recordings on every continent, as well as thermometer readings on, in and above the oceans, leave "little room for doubt" that the earth is warming, but trying to attribute a cause for this global warming is not possible unless man-made activity in the form of carbon dioxide emissions is taken into account, the scientists said.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission on Thursday (4 March) approved financing for 43 gas and electricity interconnection projects worth €2.3 billion as part of a bigger "recovery package" agreed last year in response to both the economic and the Russian-Ukrainian gas crisis.

The funding, which varies between €1 million to 200 million per project, comes with a series of caveats - mainly imposed by Germany last spring when it agreed to the deal after months of haggling. For instance, the money needs to be used over the next 18 months and it can only finance up to 50 percent of the total investment cost.

Energy commissioner Gunther Oettinger, himself a German politician, called the decision a "milestone" in EU history, since never before had the community invested so much in energy infrastructure. Apart from the gas and electricity projects already approved, the commission also agreed to fund wind farms and carbon capture and storage units worth €1.5 billion. That decision was taken in December last year, also as part of the "recovery package."

EU taxation commissioner Algirdas Semeta told Brussels weekly European Voice that he is planning draft legislation on a minimum rate of tax on carbon emissions.

"In my estimation it is possible to start discussion within the college [of European Commissioners]," he told the newspaper, adding that "there is currently the right momentum" to relaunch the issue.

His spokesperson said that the "energy directive is one of the priorities he would like to pursue," during his five-year mandate and that an impact assessment of such a carbon tax is now being finalised. The commissioner would like to publish the proposal in the next "couple of months."

Mr Semeta's predecessor, Laszlo Kovacs, also planned legislation on the same issue in 2008 but the idea was shelved after it was deemed too divisive.

The ten companies holding the largest number of surplus emission allowances under the EU's cap-and-trade system stand to make a profit of 3.2 billion euros in the 2008-2012 trading period, according to a new analysis of EU data.

The research, published on 3 March by climate NGO Sandbag, compared the emissions allowances that different companies had received under the EU's emissions trading scheme (EU ETS) with their actual emissions. It found that the overly generous free allocation of permits, compounded by a drop in production following the global downturn, had added significant assets to many companies' books.

According to the report, steel giant ArcelorMittal alone could cash over €1 billion from unused EU allowances by 2020. Taken together, the top ten companies, dominated by steel and cement firms, shared 35 million surplus permits in 2008, worth around €500 million at current carbon prices.

RWE and E.ON, the two utilities most short of permits, had to make more emissions reductions or pay for more allowances than the required net reductions of the entire scheme in 2008.

The recession meant that the carbon cuts required under the EU ETS were achieved, but the scheme failed to fulfil its original purpose of providing incentives to develop low-carbon technologies, Sandbag warned.

When employees of the Dutch city Heerlen in 2004 began investigating ways to reduce the city's dependence on fossil fuels, a coal mine was not necessarily the most obvious place to start.

However, Elianne Demollin-Schneiders, the city's energy management coordinator, had conducted research in other provinces, and was convinced that the floodwater trapped in Heerlen's abandoned coal mines could lead to an innovative new "green energy" source.

She believed the geothermal energy potential of the warm water trapped deep (up to 825 metres) in the disused mines could be used as a cheap way to heat and cool local buildings.

Speaking to EurActiv, Demollin-Schneiders explained that EU funding authorities were initially a little sceptical about the proposal, describing it as a "risky" undertaking. However, they agreed to finance a feasibility study to assess whether the project could work, and when they were satisfied with the results, significant amounts of Interreg (see 'Background') funds were made available.

In total, some 20 million euros were spent on the 'Minewater' project, which included Heerlen and a disused mining area in Scotland called Shawfairn.

AFP - Icebreakers have freed dozens of ships from thick ice in the Baltic Sea, officials said Friday, ending the ordeal of thousands of passengers and crew stranded in freezing conditions off the Swedish coast.

"There are no more ships stuck in the ice," Ann Ericsson of the Swedish Maritime Administration's ice breaker unit, told AFP.

A number of vessels, including several large passenger ferries shuttling as many as 1,000 passengers each between Sweden, Finland and Estonia, become stuck Thursday just outside the Stockholm archipelago, where freezing winds had pushed thick ice towards the coast.

USA: BNSF has begun in-service testing of the experimental hydrogen fuel cell shunting locomotive developed in partnership with Vehicle Projects and the Department of Defense. The trials are being undertaken at the railway's yard in Commerce, California.

'As far as we know, this is the first hydrogen fuel cell locomotive in the world', said BNSF President Matt Rose. 'While it's still experimental, we are very excited to be able to take a leadership role in developing this cutting edge technology. The benefits of hydrogen are its low emissions and that it can be produced from a variety of sources.'

The figures were condemned today by the European Commission, which announced plans to bridge the gap over the next five years, possibly including new laws.

"I am deeply concerned that the gender pay gap has barely fallen over the last 15 years, and in some countries is even increasing" said EU Commissioner Viviane Reding.

"In these times of crisis the gender pay gap is a cost Europe cannot afford. Together with the member states, we will significantly reduce the gender pay gap in the EU by the end of this Commission's mandate".

The gap is based on the difference in gross hourly earnings between men and women, and ranges from just 4.9 per cent in Italy to 30 per cent in Estonia.

At 21.4 per cent, the UK gap is the ninth widest out of the 27 countries.

Representatives of the industry, practitioners and patients that use homeopathic products are to hold an EU Homeopathy Day in the European Parliament on 23 March as the kick-off for a new effort to win EU-level alternative-medicine-friendly legislation.

Industry lobbyists and their MEP allies believe that with the new European Commission expected to launch a review of EU pharmaceutical laws at some point during its four-year term, now is their chance to press their case.

"It provides an excellent opportunity for positive change," Irish euro-deputy Marilyn Harkin, the organiser of the event in the parliament, told EUobserver. "The aim is to integrate homeopathy into EU health policy,"

...Andy Lewis, the proprietor of the Quackometer website, which debunks quack medicine on the internet, said that the new campaign of European homeopathy lobby was at odds with the British parliament's enquiry.

"The MPs concluded, after a very detailed review of the evidence, that homeopathy was scientifically implausible and could not be shown to be effective," said Mr Lewis, who was also one of the organisers of a series of `homeopathy overdose' demonstrations outside pharmacists across the UK in January in which sceptics swallowed entire bottles of homeopathy sugar pills. "The recommendation was that homeopathy should not be publicly funded and that medicines labeling regulations should not allow it to make unfounded claims. "

The next round of integration talks between the government and representatives of Muslim communities, scheduled for May 17, will now take place without the participation of the Islam Council.

The suspension follows the launch of an investigation concerning major tax fraud against the leaders of Milli Gorus, an organisation accused of promoting a fundamentalist brand of Islam. With 27,000 members, it is the dominant force within the Islam Council.

"The charges are so serious," German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said "that I cannot sit together with these people at the same table".

In a statement issued on Friday, the leadership of the Islam Council rejected the suspension, and said the Council would withdraw from the talks altogether.

When it comes to travel, Germans are world champions. As it turns out, so is the German language. Many Germans words were adopted abroad several hundred years ago - and have stayed.

In England or the US, many children attend a kindergarten. Psychiatrists refer to angst or gestalt. We often refer to something tasteless as "kitschy" and something that is broken is kaputt. What all these English words have in common is that they come from German.

And German words have traveled far beyond English-speaking countries and made their way into a wide variety of other languages.

"It's an interesting phenomenon, to see how far these words spread, how many languages use them," said Rolf Peter, head of projects at the German Language Council.

First it was smokers, now it is children. A Berlin café has excited debate by establishing a no-child section. For a nation with a low birth rate that is trying to encourage its citizens to have more babies, such an anti-child policy is cause for concern.

In the middle of one of the most child-friendly neighborhoods in Berlin, one café is bucking the trend. In what appears to be a first for the German capital, the Café Niesen in Prenzlauer Berg has established a child-free zone on its own premises.

The café, which Christine Wick has run since 2005, is located in a cul-de-sac near a park and is opposite a petting zoo, which makes it the perfect place for parents to grab a drink or snack together with their offspring. But as Wick told the Berlin tabloid B.Z.: "My regulars were not finding it peaceful."

If the medals won by all 27 EU member states at the Vancouver Winter Olympics were to be added up, the EU would be the big winner of the Games, stress the Young European Federalists (JEF-Europe).

The 108 medals brought home from the 2010 Winter Games by EU athletes is almost three times more than the top-ranking United States, which won 37 medals.

In total, the EU 27 scored 31 golds, 36 silvers, and 41 bronzes.

"Why should this joy be limited by national borders?" asked JEF-Europe Vice-President Pauline Gessant, arguing that one should "think European" instead.

Stephen Hampton and Steven Ayres initially faced up to 10 years in an Indian jail after being arrested over spying claims.

They aroused suspicion after asking hotel staff for a room overlooking a runway at Indira Gandhi International Airport and were carrying an air traffic control scanner, laptop, binoculars and cameras.

The men avoided spying charges, which carry a jail term of up to 10 years, but were charged with a lesser offence under section 20 of the Indian Telegraph Act which carries a three-year jail sentence and or a fine.

Hampton and Ayres, both railway workers from Bristol, admitted the charge and were fined 25,000 rupees (£362) when they appeared at court today.

1926 - Birth of Andrzej Wajda, a Polish film director.

It's been a few years since I saw Wajda's films...

It is rather ironic which film made the greatest impression on me: Danton. That film aims to idolise the life-loving and slightly corrupt Danton (played by Depardieu) in contrast to the principled but cold Robespierre (played by Wajda favourite Wojciech Pszoniak) -- but the wqay I remember when I saw it two decades ago, the Robespierre character made the better impression on me...

*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.

Monday "But Michael," I say, looking at the packet of cheap plain biscuits that have just been handed to me by my very good friend Lord Ashcroft. "I thought you were getting me some Chocolate Hobnobs."

Behind the heavy wooden doors of House of Commons committee room 10, a little-known group of young Tories gathered in private on Wednesday to rally their forces ahead of the general election. The chintzy decor provided an incongruous backdrop for the Young Britons' Foundation, which has begun to earn a reputation in Tory circles as "the Conservative madrasa".

Evoking al-Qaida indoctrination, the name has stuck because the offshoot from Conservative Future, the party's official youth wing, harbours an extremist edge. The YBF's leader, Donal Blaney, is on record expressing what could be viewed as extreme positions on everything from the NHS to waterboarding. So what were leading members of David Cameron's top team, including party chairman Eric Pickles and shadow defence secretary Liam Fox, doing at their annual gathering?