On 28 and 29 May, parliamentary elections will be held in the Czech Republic. Along with the conservatives, social democrats and communists, two new parties will almost certainly get to the lower house of parliament...

...the centre-right Public Affairs (VV: Věci veřejné) party and conservative group TOP 09 (Tradice Odpovědnost Prosperita 09).

...Political scientists believe that the new parties could complicate the post-election situation even more because their 'coalition potential' is fairly limited. TOP 09 has already announced that it will not form a government with the social democrats, while VV presents itself as a party campaigning against ''political dinosaurs'' - in other words, parties that have been in parliament for a long time.

Therefore, the social democrats (ČSSD) - who are in the lead, according to polls - will probably have difficulty forming a 'centre-left' coalition, which would leave the party with two options: form a broad coalition with the conservative ODS or a minority government supported by the communists, KSČM. Yet no Czech political party is willing to form a normal government with KSČM, which is still considered extremist.

A code of rights will be discussed at the next EU Telecoms Council scheduled for Monday (31 May), as ministers will consider introducing pan-European rules to protect users of electronic communications from expensive bills. But no formal debate will take place on the thorny issue of funding and regulating investment in super-fast Internet.

The Spanish EU Presidency will push ahead a proposal to introduce guarantees to limit or control expenditure for all end-users of electronic communications services, as is already the case for telecoms roaming services (see 'Background').

A document obtained by EurActiv lists among possible measures the introduction of a "minimum degree of itemised billing," meaning a regularly updated account of expenses.

The paper also proposes that "users should be able to switch off certain type of calls" and that "different prepayment options should be offered to users".

The razor-thin majority piled pressure on Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who has been forced to ditch his party's traditional alliances in pushing through spending cuts and labor reforms as markets fret Spain could suffer a similar crisis to Greece but on a larger scale.

The vote was won by 169 parliament members, all from the Socialist Party, voting in favour, and 168 against, from the opposition European People's Party-affiliated Popular Party, the Basque nationalist party, Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, Izquierda Unida, Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds, Bloque Nacionalista Galego, Nafarroa Bai and Unión Progreso y Democracia.

The Popular Party even made sure one of its deputies was brought to the session in an ambulance.

There were 13 abstentions, from representatives of Convergència i Unió (CiU), Coalición Canaria and Unión del Pueblo Navarro.

It was the abstention of 10 members of CiU, a Catalan nationalist party regarded as conservative or centrist, which saved the plan, EurActiv Spain writes.

"The parties will tackle lobbying through introducing a statutory register of lobbyists," reads the text of the agreement, published on 12 May. 

"We also agree to pursue a detailed agreement on limiting donations and reforming party funding in order to remove big money from politics," it continues.

No details of the breadth of the register - or the timescale of its introduction - were immediately available.

In fact many EU countries like Greece or Spain were known for giving away Shengen visas to Russians with minimum formalities, the only thing they were interested was short visit to their countries. I don't know how much Russia improved its visa service but on all accounts procedures remain cumbersome so in reality it is EU citizens who will get relief from visa free regime. Current statistics stands at 3.6 mln Russians visit EU countries annually with 1.6 mln EU citizens making short term visits to Russia. As for human rights I think EU should concentrate on high level of so-called "hate crimes" in Russia (other name for racist attacks) instead of singling out North Caucasus republics.

Chief Treasury Secretary David Laws has apologised after it emerged he had been claiming MPs' expenses to rent rooms in homes owned by his partner.

Mr Laws said he would immediately pay back the money which the Daily Telegraph said totalled £40,000.

He said his motivation was to keep the relationship with the man private and not to reveal his own sexuality.

David Cameron said he agreed with Mr Laws's decision to refer himself to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner.

Since 2006 parliamentary rules have banned MPs from "leasing accommodation from a partner".

The wives of two wealthy Middle Eastern businessmen embroiled in controversial arms deals gave generous donations to the Conservatives just before the general election.

The donations are large enough to give them privileged access to David Cameron. One businessman, Fouad Makhzoumi, was involved in the scandal which brought down the disgraced Conservative politician Jonathan Aitken. The other, Wafic Said, was a fixer in BAE's huge Al-Yamamah deal with Saudi Arabia, which was investigated for bribery allegations by the Serious Fraud Office.

The donations were criticised by Labour MP John Mann: "Why are these people giving cash to the Tories, and why is the money being accepted?" Electoral Commission records show that a week before the general election, May Makhzoumi gave £50,000 to the Tories. Her billionaire Lebanese husband controls Future Pipe Industries, a multinational engineering group headquartered in Dubai. The British wing of the company has previously given £100,000 to the Tories.

With the European economy floundering, Turkey - which underwent its own crisis in 2001 - has become a model of stability, boasting robust growth and a secure banking system. Now Germany is seeking closer economic ties. 

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reported this week that the world's market economies were recovering better from the global financial crisis than expected.

...The European Commission predicted a growth of 5 percent for Turkey this year and 4.5 percent in 2011 - the best figures in Europe. And other factors show that Turkey has shown the healthiest recovery signs of all the OECD countries: Turkish Minister-of-State Ali Babacan recently pointed out that his was the only OECD government that did not need to help its banks with state financing following the recent financial crisis.

Ministers gathered in Brussels this week (26 May) to shape the strategy agreed that the combined efforts of the European Investment Bank (EIB) and encouragement for private venture capital funds is fundamental to boosting innovation.

Member states also want the EU executive to look at whether technology-oriented stock markets, such as the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) in London, could be used to stimulate growth and entrepreneurship in Europe.

<tears hair out>

However, venture capital reacted by saying that the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD), currently being debated by finance ministers and MEPs, threatens to make life difficult for some small firms.

The European Commission is suggesting that the retirement age in member states should be raised regularly so that on average across the EU not more than one third of adult life is spent in retirement.

According to a report in today's Financial Times Deutschland, citing a commission ideas paper on pensions, workers should work longer hours and retire later otherwise there risks a "painful combination of smaller payouts and higher contributions."

And if workers work longer hours and retire later, what happens to high unemployment? Shrinking is the one thing it won't do... Let's again be clear what this is really about: workers pay for all dependables, be them children, housewifes, unemployed, those on incapacity benefits, or retired. But shifting part of the dependable population from the safest bin (pensioners) to the least safe (receivers of unemployment benefits) will cut costs...

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

Entrepreneurs want governments to incentivise big businesses to sublet empty office space to smaller firms, as high rents in European capitals remain a barrier to growth.

At a meeting of entrepreneurs, hosted by Fondation EurActiv as part of SME Week, business owners complained that their expansion plans are being thwarted because they cannot find affordable offices.

With corporations contracting since the crisis, many large companies have offices lying idle. Meanwhile, start-ups keen to find their own premises and add one or two new staff members continue to work out of their own homes, because rents are artificially high.

Ségolène Finet, founderof mamaNANA, a French e-boutique devoted to the fashion needs of breastfeeding mothers, said more support is needed for companies after the initial start-up phase.

"When you start a business, there is support available, but when you are growing your business it becomes more difficult," she said.

Since mid-2009, governments have been issuing less state aid to banks trying to stay afloat and continue lending to the real economy, according to a report published by the Commission yesterday (27 May).

In total, state guaranteed funding - including recapitalisation, approved by the EU executive's state aid rules - amounted to €1.24 trillion, less than a third of the €4.13 trillion that was set aside, the report concluded.

Apple's iPad went on sale outside the US for the first time Friday, with thousands of gadget fans storming stores to get their hands on the tablet device billed as a revolution in computer use and for which a France 24 application is now available.

SPAIN: A full-size mock-up of the Oaris high speed train concept being developed by CAF was unveiled at the International Rail Forum exhibition in Valencia on May 25.

The company has been leading one of the work streams in the CENIT programme to develop trains for operation at over 300 km/h, which is being funded by CDTI, the centre for industrial and technical development at Spain's Ministry of Science. This has drawn on experience with the 250 km/h trainsets supplied by CAF for operation in Spain and Turkey.

Martin Wolf: Spare Britain the policy hair shirt (FT.com, May 27 2010)

The UK should tighten fiscal and monetary policy now, in the depths of a slump. That, in essence, is what the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development calls for in its latest Economic Outlook. I wonder what John Maynard Keynes would have written in response. It would have been savage, I imagine.

...

Let us translate this proposal into ordinary language: "If you are unwilling to starve yourself when desperately ill, nobody will believe you would adopt a sensible diet when well." But might it not make sense to get better first?

Here are some facts, to keep the hysteria in check: the UK economy is operating at least 10 per cent below its pre-crisis trend; the OECD estimates the "output gap" - or excess capacity - at slightly over half of this lost output; the UK government is able to borrow at a real interest rate of below 1 per cent, as shown by yields on index-linked gilts; the yield on conventional 10-year gilts is 3.6 per cent; the ratio of gross debt to gross domestic product was 68 per cent at the end of last year, against 73 per cent in Germany and 77 per cent in France and an average of 87 per cent since 1855; the average maturity of UK debt is 13 years, according to the International Monetary Fund's Fiscal Monitor; and, yes, core inflation has risen to 3.2 per cent, but that is hardly a surprise, given the large - and essential - sterling depreciation.

Above all, the private sector is forecast by the OECD to run a surplus - an excess of income over spending - of 10 per cent of GDP this year. On a consolidated basis, the UK's private surplus funds nearly 90 per cent of the fiscal deficit. Thus, fiscal tightening would only work if it coincided with a robust private recovery. Otherwise, it would drive the economy into deeper recession. Yes, that is a Keynesian argument. But this is a Keynesian situation.

I Fratelli Gemelli: Infamia e Disonore

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The EU's 'outermost' islands in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans say the policies decided in Brussels concerning free trade, agriculture or fisheries take too little consideration of their interests and economic problems.

"The EU's free-trade agreements with countries in our region often jeopardise our own small producers, who are dependent on a few crops. We need pragmatic policies to make it through until 2014 [when the new multi-annual EU budget starts]," Paulino Rivero Baute, the president of the regional government in the Canary islands said on Thursday (27 May).

During a surprise visit to Afghanistan over the weekend, German President Horst Köhler seemed to argue that the mission served to protect German trade interests. Outrage at home has been shrill. German commentators are none-too-impressed either.

.. "A country of our size, with its focus on exports and thus reliance on foreign trade, must be aware that ... military deployments are necessary in an emergency to protect our interests -- for example when it comes to trade routes, for example when it comes to preventing regional instabilities that could negatively influence our trade, jobs and incomes," Köhler said.

Political reaction to the president's comments has been impassioned, if delayed. Jürgen Trittin, of the Green Party, said on Thursday the president's comments were not consistent with Germany's constitution and that "we don't need gun boat diplomacy nor do we need a loose rhetorical cannon as our head of state." Thomas Oppermann, a parliamentarian with the opposition Social Democrats, told SPIEGEL ONLINE that "Köhler is jeopardizing the acceptance of the German military's missions abroad."

Criticism also came from within Chancellor Angela Merkel's governing coalition. Ruprecht Polenz, the foreign policy spokesman for Merkel's Christian Democrats said "it was not a very successful formulation, to put it mildly." Rainer Stinner, of the business-friendly Free Democrats, Merkel's junior coalition partner, said: "We are not in Afghanistan out of any economic interests, rather we are there to stabilize the country and curtail international terrorism."

A bomb planted by suspected Maoist rebels derailed an overnight passenger train which was then hit by a cargo train in eastern India today, killing at least 65 people and injuring an additional 200, officials said.

Survivors described a night of screaming and chaos after the blast and said it took rescuers more than three hours to reach the scene. The blue passenger train and the red cargo train were knotted together in mangled metal along a rural stretch of track near the small town of Sardiha, about 90 miles (150 kilometers) west of Calcutta.

AFP - Gunmen wearing suicide vests stormed two Pakistani mosques belonging to a minority sect in Lahore, bringing carnage to Friday prayers and killing around 80 people, officials said.

Squads of militants burst into prayer halls firing guns, throwing grenades and taking hostages in the deadliest attack on the city of eight million, which has been increasingly hit by Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked violence.

Both mosques belonged to the Ahmadi community, also known as Qadiani, which has tens of thousands of members.

Pakistan's leading rights group said the community had received threats for more than a year and officials blamed the attack on Islamist militants, who have killed more than 3,370 people in bombings over the last three years.

"China objects to and condemns any act that destroys the peace and stability of the Korean peninsula," Wen said during a meeting with Lee in Seoul, according to a South Korean official citing the Chinese leader's comments.

Wen is on a three-day visit to South Korea.

AFP - Japan and the United States agreed Friday to keep a US military base on the island of Okinawa despite strong local opposition, resolving a row that has badly strained ties between the allies.

Tokyo and Washington said in a joint statement that the Futenma marine airbase would be moved, as first agreed in 2006, from a city area to the coastal Henoko region of the southern island.

They announced the deal after a telephone conversation between Japan's centre-left Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who took power last year vowing "more equal" relations with the United States, and President Barack Obama.

Why did Futenma take on such a weak offer? His poll numbers will drop further.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

The House of Representatives voted Thursday to repeal a ban on gays openly serving in the military and end a Clinton-era "don't ask, don't tell" policy. The Senate will now vote on the measure, contained in an amendment to a defense policy bill.

Human rights watchdog Amnesty International has criticised the United States, China and Russia for withholding support for the International Criminal Court and cited France for its weak response to police violence in its annual report.

In other news, the Sun rose on the East.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

AFP - Togo's main opposition party, the Union of Forces for Change (UFC), has joined government for the first time and will run seven ministries, including foreign affairs, a presidential decree said Friday.

Veteran opposition leader Gilchrist Olympio, 74, will participate in the new government, according to the cabinet ministerial list in the decree, read out by the director of state television TVT, Kouessan Yovodevi.

This marks the first time that the UFC, created in 1992, will play a formal role in government in Togo since the democratic process started in the small west African nation in 1990.

Sydney Morning Herald: Party leaders in Nepal avert crisis

Why parties have been wrangling till the last minute? Maoists after deposition of king Gyanendra won 40% of votes and formed government with outside support. However when their PM Prachanda tried to remove army chief India intervened and forging coalition of all other (non-Maoist) parties deposed Prachandra installing MK Nepal's government. Maoists demand implementation of peace agreements about reintegration of former Maoist rebels into army and security forces while non-Maoist parties are afraid of Maoist's militant wings like Youth Communist League. Fearing Prachandra taking Lenin-Mao's well-trodden path pf taking power then disposing of opposition non-Maoist parties demand dismantling of Maoist armed wings first then they will consider the whole problem of "reintegration" of former gerillas. These were sticking points.

Now Maoists appear to have won "head" of MK Nepal, but non-Maoist parties got 1-year breather.

Roy Ashburn, the California legislator who came out in March after years of operating as a "family values" Republican, is now speaking out in favor of gay rights.

Ashburn spoke on the state senate floor yesterday about a bill that could affect gay marriage, should it become legal in the state again.

"On a personal note, before I speak to the bill, I would not have been speaking on a measure dealing with sexual orientation ever, prior to the events that have transpired in my life over the last three months," Ashburn said, according to the Sacramento Bee.

"However, I am no longer willing or able to remain silent on issues that affect sexual orientation, the rights of individuals and so I'm doing something that is quite different and foreign to me."

This gives a whole new meaning to cross-border infiltration, but it's not clear if it will add a feather in the cap of the Punjab police.

In an era of spy planes and satellites, the Amritsar (rural) police have detained a white pigeon that could have been -- the police claim -- used as a Pakistani spy.

The pigeon was reportedly spotted in Ramdas, a tiny town close to the Indo-Pak border, with a Pakistani stamp imprinted and a Pakistani phone number written on its feathers.

Excited residents took the bird to the nearest police station. The pigeon's fate will be decided once officials there decide what to do with it.

With news of the low-tech `spy' spreading, the police have kept the bird in a special cage. It was earlier simply locked in a room.

Amnesty International's 2010 report documents abuses in 159 countries and shows how powerful governments are blocking advances in international justice by standing above the law on human rights, shielding allies from criticism and acting only when politically convenient.

A gay couple who were jailed in Malawi have been pardoned by President Bingu wa Mutharika.

Mr Mutharika, speaking as UN chief Ban Ki-moon visited Lilongwe, said he had ordered their immediate release.

Steven Monjeza, 26, and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, 20, were given 14-year jail terms after being convicted of gross indecency and unnatural acts.

The case has sparked international condemnation and a debate about homosexuality in the country.

Mr Ban said he welcomed the president's decision.

"We are back and proud to be back [on the] "global food security table," said Ertharin Cousin, US Permanent Representative to the UN Agencies in Rome, addressing an event on 'Transatlantic Approaches to Global Food Security' on 26 May in Brussels.

Her comments came after the launch of the US government's global hunger and food security initiative, Feed the Future (FTF), earlier this month.

The initiative is referred to as a renewed commitment by the US "to invest in sustainably reducing hunger and poverty".

...Meanwhile, Peteris Ustubs, deputy head of cabinet for EU Development Commissioner Andris Piebalgs, said that the EU executive is against the creation of more and new funds as "each fund tends to create its own bureaucracy," which he says decreases the effectiveness of development aid.

"A car is the most expensive thing that a citizen owns apart from his home," said EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia, presenting the new rules on Thursday (27 May). "It is therefore vital to get the competition rules right in this area."

And thereby make cars even cheaper compared to other modes. Priorities.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

The flow of oil and gas from the broken well in the Gulf of Mexico has been stopped by pumping mud into it, however the challenge will be whether that can be sustained, the U.S. incident commander Admiral Thad Allen said today.

Allen, on ABC's "Good Morning America," said the next 12 to 18 hours will be "very critical" in the effort to stop the gusher which has sent thousands of barrels of oil into the fragile ecosystem there.

"Where I was wrong," said President Obama at his press conference on Thursday, "was in my belief that the oil companies had their act together when it came to worst-case scenarios."

n the December 1974 issue of Popular Science Magazine, there was an article titled "Solar Cells: When Will You Plug Into Electricity from Sunshine?" that discussed the future of solar energy. The article predicted that by 1986 the cost per watt at peak power would be down to $0.30 ($0.60 in today's dollars) based on projections from the National Science Foundation.  There were also predictions for giant solar-cell systems that would provide solar energy to towns and utilities by 1990.

Scientists discovered the creature, named Nectocaris pteryx, after studying samples of fossilised rocks from the famous Burgess Shale of Canada, which provides a remarkably preserved snapshot of the weird and immensely diverse forms of life that evolved during the Cambrian period of geological history.

Nectocaris, which grew to a length of about 5cm, including its two front tentacles, is thought to have been a fast-moving predator which swam using its undulating, wing-like fins.

But crucially it could also shoot a jet of water from a funnel-like nozzle which it could swivel in various directions - a hallmark of modern-day cephalopods.

The researchers believe that this key anatomical detail, discovered by analysing 91 newly discovered fossils of Nectocaris, strongly suggests that it must be the original common ancestor of squids, octopuses and the beautiful chambered-shelled nautilus; the reason is that no other group of animals uses this form of jet propulsion.

In the wake of an admission by internet search giant Google that it had accidentally collected data from unencrypted wifi networks in people's homes while its fleet of cars were out photographing buildings and roads for its `Street View' map service, Austria has said it wants to make such moves punishable.

Currently, only when such data is deliberately extracted in a premeditated fashion, for example, with the purpose of selling on that data, is such activity governed by criminal law in the country.

State secretary for media Josef Ostermayer said this was necessary so that companies "were not even tempted" to use such data.

A former member of the German parliament has received a suspended prison sentence after he was found guilty of possessing child pornography.

A state court in Karlsruhe gave Joerg Tauss a 15-month suspended sentence after rejecting claims that the pornographic images were necessary for his parliamentary work.

The 56-year-old resigned in June 2009 from the Social Democratic Party (SPD) three months after his home and offices were raided by investigators.

Prosecutors said that the investigation revealed he had 228 pornographic pictures and videos on his mobile phone in addition to material found at his home.

...After leaving the SPD Tauss joined the small Pirate Party, which campaigns for reform to the law regarding Internet file-sharing and copyright. He was later stripped of parliamentary immunity and lost his seat in parliament.

Egypt, plagued by tomb raiders and art dealers, has lost large portions of its pharaonic heritage to Europe and the United States. The head of the country's Supreme Council of Antiquities is waging a bitter moral campaign against the West, and he is now demanding the return of six of the most beautiful masterpieces.

...The man has already brought home 31,000 smuggled objects in past years. They are primarily pieces taken in illicit excavations, which have been sold over the last 50 years, through auction houses like Sotheby's and Christie's, to museums in the United States.

...The Louvre also got a taste of his fury. Hawass wanted the French museum to return five magnificent frescoes it had acquired from a seller who had obtained them illegally. When it refused, he ejected French archeologists from Egypt and terminated all collaboration with the treasure trove on the Seine.

Finally, last October, French President Nicolas Sarkozy put in a sheepish call to Mubarak, promising that everything that had been requested would be turned over. Hawass was triumphant: "It was a victory for us."

...Hawass wants the magnificent bust of the vizier Ankhaf from Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. The British Museum in London is being asked to hand over the Rosetta Stone, which was used to decipher hieroglyphs. The heaviest piece, an astrological relief with a depiction of the zodiac, is in the Louvre.

He has two demands for the Germans. In addition to the bust of Nefertiti in Berlin's New Museum, Hawass is claiming a 4,500-year-old limestone statue on display in Hildesheim near Hanover. It depicts Hemiunu, the architect of the tomb of Cheops.

The last item on his list, currently in Turin, Italy, is an image of Ramses II, carved by an unknown Nile Michelangelo.

Like many middle-class families, Cortney Munna and her mother began the college selection process with a grim determination. They would do whatever they could to get Cortney into the best possible college, and they maintained a blind faith that the investment would be worth it.

Today, however, Ms. Munna, a 26-year-old graduate of New York University, has nearly $100,000 in student loan debt from her four years in college, and affording the full monthly payments would be a struggle. For much of the time since her 2005 graduation, she's been enrolled in night school, which allows her to defer loan payments.

This is not a long-term solution, because the interest on the loans continues to pile up. So in an eerie echo of the mortgage crisis, tens of thousands of people like Ms. Munna are facing a reckoning. They and their families made borrowing decisions based more on emotion than reason, much as subprime borrowers assumed the value of their houses would always go up.

Meanwhile, universities like N.Y.U. enrolled students without asking many questions about whether they could afford a $50,000 annual tuition bill. Then the colleges introduced the students to lenders who underwrote big loans without any idea of what the students might earn someday -- just like the mortgage lenders who didn't ask borrowers to verify their incomes.

Ms. Munna does not want to walk away from her loans in the same way many mortgage holders are. It would be difficult in any event because federal bankruptcy law makes it nearly impossible to discharge student loan debts. But unless she manages to improve her income quickly, she doesn't have a lot of good options for digging out.

Brain scans reveal striking similarities in the thought pathways of highly creative people and those with schizophrenia.

Both groups lack important receptors used to filter and direct thought.

It could be this uninhibited processing that allows creative people to "think outside the box", say experts from Sweden's Karolinska Institute.

In some people, it leads to mental illness.

Yes, it's that time again. And today, the number of blonde marchers (that way, dear, that way) was double all those who have ever marched before. This great tradition, begun last year to cheer up the economically downturned, attracted 1000 blondes. (The sign, dear, the sign - other way up. Thank you).

You can't be me, I'm taken

America may have eighty-sixed its moon base ambitions, but the Japanese have no plans to let perfectly good lunar real estate go to waste. An ambitious $2.2 billion project in the works at JAXA, the Japanese space agency, plans to put humanoid robots on the moon by 2015, and now official backing from the Prime Minister's office says the Japanese could have an unmanned lunar base up and running by 2020.

Key to all of this, of course, is the robots themselves, and who better than the Japanese to dream up and realize the kind of intelligent, self-repairing, multitasking bots that will be needed to fulfill such a mission.

Bayern Munich defender Philipp Lahm has added another line to his long international CV this summer. German head coach Joachim Loew announced the full-back will captain the national team in South Africa.

Chic old buildings, trendy bars and nice playgrounds, all within a quick subway ride from downtown, have long attracted young families to Berlin's fashionable Prenzlauer Berg district. Indeed, it is impossible to walk down the sidewalks in the quarter without dodging all manner of prams and strollers.

But it is exactly those baby carriages which are attracting others to "P'Berg" -- as the neighborhood's not-insignificant population of American expats refer to it. Brazen thieves have made a specialty out of swiping all manner of prams and strollers -- the owners of which have often shelled out as much as €1,000 ($1,230) for the hippest models.

"In fact, [telling Icelanders what to do] might actually have the opposite effect (we don't like being bullied)."

Very true. In negotiations, it is better to see if you can get the Icelander to think that he/she has thought of the proposal, and even pretend to oppose it a little, so that they think they have beaten you when they have really agreed to what you wanted.

The one thing you should not do is try to tell Icelanders what they have to do.

and nearly fell out of my chair laughing.

Finns, Swedes, and Norwegians are little puddlycakes compared to Icelanders.  And they've been that way - we have documentary evidence! - since before the Saga Age.  The best way to get an Icelander to do something is to strictly forbid them to even consider doing it and they'll do it just to spite you.  

LOL

Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere

As usual for Outlook it is good balanced article, maybe slightly overdramatized. There was no big surprise that problems with time would pile up, it's natural consequence of Dharamsala popularity and influx of population, both Indian entrepreneurs and Tibetan refugees.

But problems whatever they maybe raise questions about the future for "Buddhist capital of the world" after Dalai lama. The heir apparent, Karmapa is living nearby in Gyuto monastery but his accession is contested by influential pretenders, one is Thinley Dorjee living in kalimpong in West Bengal hills and second is Dawa Dorjee, Sikkimese pretender with his own flock of followers.