At least 19 people were trampled to death on their way to the Love Parade techno music festival in Duisburg, Germany. The festival-goers were crushed in a tunnel on their way to festival grounds, according to police. 

At least 19 people died after a stampede broke out at the Love Parade techno music festival in the western German city of Duisburg on Saturday. Authorities in Duisburg scheduled a press conference for Sunday to detail the cause of the mass panic.

 

The tragedy occurred in a tunnel on the way to the festival grounds as police were trying to prevent people from entering the overcrowded site. Thousands of fans had been walking along a hundred-meter pathway toward the festival for several hours.

In interviews with German media, eyewitnesses questioned the safety of the 200-meter (650-foot) long and 30-meter wide tunnel that served as the Love Parade's main access.

There was also some concern ahead of the festival that Duisburg's former railway freight yard would not be able to accommodate all the party-goers. In an interview with Der Westen, organizers said the venue could hold up to 500,000 people. Some 1.4 million people were estimated to have attended the event, about 200,000 less than the previous year's Love Parade in Dortmund.

t was a scene to warm the heart: a delighted student in mortar board and gown had just heard that she had graduated with 110 e lode (the equivalent in Italy of a starred first-class degree). In the front row of the audience, her father burst into applause, beaming with undisguised pride.

The ecstatic parent, however, was Italy's scandal-prone prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. And by last night the graduation of his daughter, Barbara, at a ceremony in Milan last Tuesday, had touched off yet another controversy involving the Berlusconi family.

In a letter to the press and subsequent interviews, a professor at Barbara Berlusconi's university deplored what she claimed was an attempt by the chancellor to secure funding from one of the world's richest men by promising his daughter a teaching post.

LONDON -- Perhaps the only consistent thing about Britain's socialized health care system is that it is in a perpetual state of flux, its structure constantly changing as governments search for the elusive formula that will deliver the best care for the cheapest price while costs and demand escalate.

Even as the new coalition government said it would make enormous cuts in the public sector, it initially promised to leave health care alone. But in one of its most surprising moves so far, it has done the opposite, proposing what would be the most radical reorganization of the National Health Service, as the system is called, since its inception in 1948.

Practical details of the plan are still sketchy. But its aim is clear: to shift control of England's $160 billion annual health budget from a centralized bureaucracy to doctors at the local level. Under the plan, $100 billion to $125 billion a year would be meted out to general practitioners, who would use the money to buy services from hospitals and other health care providers.

Thursday's ruling by the International Court of Justice offered surprising clarity: Kosovo did not break international law when it declared indepedence in 2008. German commentators acknowledge that this is a blow for Serbia, but many see an opportunity for Belgrade to reassess its stance towards Pristina.

The ruling by the International Court of Justice on Thursday didn't go Serbia's way. By stating that Kosovo's unilateral secession in 2008 did not violate international law, the United Nations body has likely cleared the way for even more countries to recognize Europe's newest state.

While the decision by the court, based in The Hague, is non-binding, it effectively destroyed Belgrade's efforts to strangle Kosovo's nationhood at birth. The government in Serbia had sought an opinion on Pristina's 2008 declaration of independence from the ICJ.

Meanwhile, separatist movements across the globe may take courage from a ruling which seemed to give self-determination as much weight as territorial integrity.

The Scottish first minister has called on the UK and US governments to publish all of their documents relating to the release of the Lockerbie bomber.

The Sunday Times claimed to have seen a letter from the US administration to the Scottish government before the release of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi.

It said the US government did not want Megrahi released from prison.

But it said a compassionate release would "preferable" to transferring Megrahi to a jail in Libya.

Alex Salmond said the documents would "vindicate" the Scottish government.

MADRID -- Bullfighting, seen by many Spaniards as an essential component of their cultural patrimony, could suffer its biggest setback to date on Wednesday when lawmakers in Catalonia will vote on whether to ban fights in their region.

Such a ban would be "the most important victory for animal rights that we've had," according to Aida Gascón, the national director of AnimaNaturalis, an organization that has long campaigned against what it considers to be a barbaric and outdated practice.

But the animal-welfare values defended by activists like Ms. Gascón have recently been overshadowed by an identity debate over whether bullfighting, so firmly rooted in Spanish traditionalism, still has its place in an independence-seeking Catalonia. It also comes at a time when identity issues top the agenda in other parts of Europe, from Belgium, where regional feuding has scuttled efforts to maintain a stable federal government, to the Balkans.

Tony Blair will come under greater pressure over his role in the Iraq conflict this week, as one of the men who tried to slow the march to war in 2003 publicly raises questions over his judgement.

Hans Blix, who was in charge of the team of United Nations inspectors checking for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) on the eve of the war, will lay bare his disagreements with Mr Blair and the former US president George W Bush in an appearance at the Iraq inquiry on Tuesday.

Last night, Dr Blix revived his differences with Mr Blair over Saddam Hussein's arsenal, claiming he always questioned the former prime minister's assessment of the threat posed by Iraq.

The Christian Democrats have agreed to join informal talks with the free-market VVD party and Geert Wilders' far-right Freedom Party (PVV) to determine whether it would be possible to form a rightwing coalition.

The talks come at the request of former Christian Democrat prime minister Ruud Lubbers, who is the present informateur, in charge of mediating in the negotiations on the formation of a government. VVD leader Mark Rutte and Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders had already agreed on Friday to such private informal talks, without the presence of Mr Lubbers.

The Christian Democrats will take part in the talks without conditions, says party leader Maxime Verhagen. However, if the party then decides to go ahead with formal negotiations with the anti-Islam Freedom Party, it would not be prepared to compromise on issues that are central to Christian Democrat values.

Only in the U.K. (or the U.S.) would 49.7% of the vote be called a landslide...

ATHENS, July 24 - Greece will get a second aid tranche of a European Union and International Monetary Fund bail-out as it has met the conditions set in an austerity plan, its finance minister was quoted as saying on Saturday.

EU, IMF and European Central Bank officials will be in Athens on Monday to check whether Greece is implementing its €110bn (£92bn $141.6bn) programme to secure another €9bn in aid. Greece received a first payment of €20bn from its eurozone partners and the IMF in May.

"The disbursement of the second tranche depends on whether we meet the targets we have been set to meet by June 30," finance minister George Papaconstantinou said in an interview with the weekly Kosmos tou Ependyti newspaper.

"These conditions have been met and we have taken a further step by passing the pension reform bill."

WASHINGTON -- An epic fight is brewing over what Congress and President Obama should do about the expiring Bush tax cuts, with such substantial economic and political consequences that it could shape the fall elections and fiscal policy for years to come.

Democratic leaders, including Mr. Obama, say they are intent on letting the tax cuts for the wealthy expire as scheduled at the end of this year. But they have pledged to continue the lower tax rates for individuals earning less than $200,000 and families earning less than $250,000 -- what Democrats call the middle class.

Most Republicans want to extend the tax cuts for everyone, and some Democrats agree, saying it would be unwise to raise taxes on anyone while the economy remains weak. If no action is taken, taxes on income, dividends, capital gains and estates would all rise.

The issue has generated little public attention this year as Congress grappled with health care, financial regulation, energy, a Supreme Court nomination and other divisive topics. But it will move to the top of the agenda when lawmakers return to Washington in September from their summer recess, just as the midterm campaign gets under way in earnest. In recent days, intense discussions have begun at the Capitol.

Beyond the implications for family checkbooks, the tax fight will serve as a proxy for the bigger political clashes of the year, including the size of government and the best way of handling the tepid economic recovery.

LONDON -- To some, he is a real-life Willy Wonka. To others, he is a Bond-style villain bent on taking over the world's supply of chocolate.

In a stroke, a hedge fund manager here named Anthony Ward has all but cornered the market in cocoa. By one estimate, he has bought enough to make more than five billion chocolate bars.

Chocolate lovers here are crying into their Cadbury wrappers -- and rival traders are crying foul, saying Mr. Ward is stockpiling cocoa in a bid to drive up already high prices so he can sell later at a big profit. His activities have helped drive cocoa prices on the London market to a 30-year high.

Goldman Sachs is facing a threat by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission to bring in outside accountants to comb through the bank's systems for data on its derivatives business, the panel's chairman has said.

The commission will not back down from demands for information Goldman's executives have maintained they do not track, Phil Angelides told the Financial Times.

"We have a deep level of questioning about whether we're getting the straight scoop here and whether Goldman is working with us on information that they surely have," Mr Angelides, chairman of the US Congress-appointed commission.

His comments mark the latest episode in the dispute between Goldman and the commission, which has scolded the bank for its "abysmal" response to the inquiry. The frustration of FCIC members was evident several weeks ago when two of Goldman's executives, Gary Cohn, president, and David Viniar, chief financial officer, told the panel the bank's accounting systems did not break out trading revenue generated strictly from derivatives.

My reading of contemporary Republican thinking is that there is no chance of any attempt to arrest adverse long-term fiscal trends should they return to power. Moreover, since the Republicans have no interest in doing anything sensible, the Democrats will gain nothing from trying to do much either. That is the lesson Democrats have to draw from the Clinton era's successful frugality, which merely gave George W. Bush the opportunity to make massive (irresponsible and unsustainable) tax cuts. In practice, then, nothing will be done.

Indeed, nothing may be done even if a genuine fiscal crisis were to emerge. According to my friend, Bruce Bartlett, a highly informed, if jaundiced, observer, some "conservatives" (in truth, extreme radicals) think a federal default would be an effective way to bring public spending they detest under control. It should be noted, in passing, that a federal default would surely create the biggest financial crisis in world economic history.

To understand modern Republican thinking on fiscal policy, we need to go back to perhaps the most politically brilliant (albeit economically unconvincing) idea in the history of fiscal policy: "supply-side economics". Supply-side economics liberated conservatives from any need to insist on fiscal rectitude and balanced budgets. Supply-side economics said that one could cut taxes and balance budgets, because incentive effects would generate new activity and so higher revenue.

The political genius of this idea is evident. Supply-side economics transformed Republicans from a minority party into a majority party. It allowed them to promise lower taxes, lower deficits and, in effect, unchanged spending. Why should people not like this combination? Who does not like a free lunch?

If you tried to test the safety of cars or children's toys using the same method the European Union applied in its stress tests on banks, you would end up in jail. How so? Simply because the testing mechanism was calibrated to fix the result. The purpose of the exercise was to ensure that the only banks that failed it were those that would have to be restructured anyway.

At the same time, the supposedly clever idea was to demonstrate to the outside world that the rest of the banking system remained sound. The purpose of this cynical exercise was to pretend that the EU was solving a problem, when in fact it was not.

It is too early to judge whether the ploy worked. But from the informed reaction on Friday night, I suspect not. Expectations were not very high. But the EU undershot the lowest of them.

Taliban sources have told Al Jazeera they are holding one of the two US servicemen who went missing in eastern Afghanistan's Logar province, and say the other is dead.

The two servicemen went missing after they departed their compound in Kabul City on Friday afternoon and did not return, prompting a massive seach operation, Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) said on Saturday.  

"The unit dispatched vehicles and rotary-winged assets to search for them and their vehicle, and the search is ongoing," Isaf said in a statement.

Isaf did not specify the nationality of the missing soldiers, but US officials told the Associated Press news agency (AP) that they are American.

The African Union president has criticised International Criminal Court indictments against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, saying they were "undermining African solidarity and African peace and security".

"To subject a sovereign head of state to a warrant of arrest is undermining African solidarity and African peace and security that we fought for for so many years," Malawian President Bingu wa  Mutharika, current head of the pan-African organisation.

Mutharika told African leaders at the opening session of AU summit in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, to look for ways of resolving the conflict in Sudan without the need to arrest Bashir.

MEXICO CITY -- The number of bodies pulled from mass graves in a rocky field outside the northern city of Monterrey rose to 50 Saturday, authorities said, marking one of the largest dumping grounds ever found for casualties of Mexico's drug war.

Forensic experts used earthmoving machinery to dig up several new graves beyond the nine pits already excavated.

Unnamed military sources told the semi-official Notimex news agency that workers uncovered 12 new bodies early in the day, bringing to 50 the bodies dug up in a landfill in the township of Benito Juarez east of Monterrey.

Some of the bodies appeared to have been incinerated, while others had bullet wounds, the Milenio news network reported on its website. It said the victims appeared to have been killed within the past two weeks.

"The majority (of the victims) are men between 20 and 50 years old, and most of them have tattoos," said Nuevo Leon State Attorney General Alejandro Garza y Garza, adding that forensic experts would conduct genetic tests to identify the victims.

LHASA, Tibet -- They come by new high-altitude trains, four a day, cruising 1,200 miles past snow-capped mountains. And they come by military truck convoy, lumbering across the roof of the world.  After the violence that ravaged this region in 2008, China's aim is to make Tibet wealthier -- and more Chinese.

Chinese leaders see development, along with an enhanced security presence, as the key to pacifying the Buddhist region. The central government invested $3 billion in the Tibet Autonomous Region last year, a 31 percent increase over 2008. Tibet's gross domestic product is growing at a 12 percent annual rate, faster than the robust Chinese national average.

[...].

But if the influx of money and people has brought new prosperity, it has also deepened the resentment among many Tibetans. Migrant Han entrepreneurs elbow out Tibetan rivals, then return home for the winter after reaping profits. Large Han-owned companies dominate the main industries, from mining to construction to tourism.

A huge cache of secret US military files today provides a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, Taliban attacks have soared and Nato commanders fear neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fuelling the insurgency.

The disclosures come from more than 90,000 records of incidents and intelligence reports about the conflict obtained by the whistleblowers' website Wikileaks in one of the biggest leaks in US military history. The files, which were made available to the Guardian, the New York Times and the German weekly Der Spiegel, give a blow-by-blow account of the fighting over the last six years, which has so far cost the lives of more than 320 British and over 1,000 US troops.

Scottish officials say US memo giving grudging support to freeing Abdelbaset al-Megrahi undermines president's criticisms

Barack Obama is under growing pressure to release a letter that reveals the US grudgingly supported freeing the Lockerbie bomber on compassionate grounds.

The letter was sent to Scottish ministers by a senior diplomat at the US embassy in London last August, eight days before Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was released from prison because he was dying from inoperable prostate cancer.

Obama's administration has refused to allow publication of the letter, in which the US says allowing Megrahi to live at home in Scotland would be "far preferable" to sending him back to Libya under the prisoner transfer deal brokered by former prime minister Tony Blair in 2007.

Foreign ministers of South America will meet on Thursday in Ecuador to discuss the rupture of relations between Colombia and Venezuela.  The meeting was called days after Colombia accused Venezuela before the Organization of American States (OAS) of being the home of 87 bases of guerrilla groups FARC and ELN. Venezuela denies this and accuses Colombia of trying to create the conditions for a U.S. military intervention in the oil-rich socialist nation.

Caracas- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez warned that he would suspend oil shipments to the United States if Venezuela were to fall victim of a military attack from Colombia. "If there were to be an armed aggression against Venezuela... impulsed by Yankee imperialism... we would suspend oil shipments to the United States of America", he affirmed. "We would not send a single drop more".

Washington- Venezuela's Ambassador before the Organization of American States, Roy Chaderton, assured on Friday that his country's territory has been used by irregular armed groups from Colombia on various occasions, adding that there have been clashes between these and Venezuelan armed forces.

Táchira.- The governor of the Venezuelan state of Táchira, César Pérez Vivas, stated that the Government had applied "incorrect politics" with regard to Colombia and added that he would not be intimidated by the warning emitted by Venezuelan President this Sunday. Leader Hugo Chávez had stated that he or Pablo Pérez, governor of Zulia, cooperate with with paramilitary groups and would be considered traitor to the Fatherland and jailed.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Friday called on Colombian guerrilla groups FARC and ELN to "reconsider their armed strategy" against the State. According to the leftist leader, the United States is using the guerrillas as an "excuse" to "penetrate" Colombia.  Chavez, who broke ties with Colombia this week following allegations that Venezuelan authorities neglect to act on guerrilla presence on their territory, made the remarks at a forum of labor unionists in Caracas.

A report quietly submitted by IDF Military Advocate General Avichai Mandelblit to the United Nations two weeks ago regarding Israel's conduct during Operation Cast Lead confirms the key findings of the Goldstone Report. The report (full version here), which documents 150 ongoing investigations, has outraged the Israeli Army. "It looks as though they were frightened by Goldstone," remarked  an IDF officer. Another military official expressed anger that after a previous IDF report asserting the legality of shelling civilian areas with white phosphorous, a chemical weapon, the Mandelblit report has issued recommendations limiting the munition's use. "It looks like tying your own hands behind your back. Why should a weapon with which there is no problem be limited?" the official asked.

Toxic legacy of US assault on Fallujah 'worse than Hiroshima': Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.

Iraqi doctors in Fallujah have complained since 2005 of being overwhelmed by the number of babies with serious birth defects, ranging from a girl born with two heads to paralysis of the lower limbs. They said they were also seeing far more cancers than they did before the battle for Fallujah between US troops and insurgents.

The Maldives have become a symbol of the dangers of global warming, amid fears the low-lying nation could disappear as a result of rising sea levels. But one team of scientists believes the truth is more complicated. The Maldives coral islands, they postulate, may be growing with the rising waters.

KENNER, LA. -- If there is no smoking gun in the Deepwater Horizon disaster, it is because there is smoke coming from so many places.

After months of oil-spill misery and endless recriminations about what happened and why, it is increasingly clear that the complex operation of drilling an exploratory well in the deep water of the Gulf of Mexico failed in a complex way. No single decision or misstep in isolation could have caused the blowout, but any number of decisions might have prevented it had they gone the other way.

The calamity, the evidence now suggests, was not an accident in the sense of a single unlucky or freak event, but rather an engineered catastrophe -- one that followed naturally from decisions of BP managers and other oil company workers on the now-sunken rig.

Such was the theme that began to emerge from hearings this past week in Kenner, La., where a federal investigatory panel, meeting in a nondescript Radisson hotel near the New Orleans airport, questioned survivors of the April 20 explosion that killed 11 of their co-workers. Government investigators describe a situation in which BP repeatedly had to make "risk-based decisions," and in every instance chose the least expensive option even though it potentially elevated the risk. That steadily whittled away at the margin of error until there was no margin left and gas found a spark on the Deepwater Horizon.

Like a burglar with a universal lock pick, many deadly pathogens use the same protein to gain access to the cells of a potential host, researchers have discovered. The new findings could have implications for blocking infections by agents ranging from wheat rust to malaria.

Pathogenic fungi, such as flax rust and soybean rust, and similar pathogens known as oomycetes, such as the organism behind the Irish potato famine and sudden oak death, make similar proteins to disarm their hosts' defenses. But to work, these effector proteins need to first make their way inside of a cell. And until now, scientists did not know, in the first place, how these compounds were able to break in.

A new study, published online July 22 in Cell describes how these blights do it.

To infect a plant, pathogenic fungi and oomycetes make a protein called RXLR--a type of effector protein--which enters plant host cells and blocks the plant's defenses. But the new research shows that both of these types of organisms are able to insert their effector proteins inside the cell by binding with a single type of lipid on the host cell's surface. This union allows the effector protein to be carried into the cell through the cell wall, where it can start doing damage.

The French Riviera's palm trees have long been synonymous with the balmy exoticism and glamour of the Cannes "croisette" or Nice's "promenade des anglais."

But the tropical plants have been all but wiped out in parts of southern France by two beautiful but voracious insects: a South American moth and the Asian red palm weevil.

The larvae of these two deadly "palmivores" ruthlessly eat their way through palm tree hearts often fatally wounding the plant.

Fires raged overnight in the south of France, destroying 900 hectares of pine forest and brush and forcing the evacuation of a camp site housing about 2,000 holiday makers. Firefighters say that the flames should soon be under control.

The fires, which started at 9pm Saturday were spread by seasonal Mistral winds across the area between Sausset les Pins and St Julien les Martigues on the Mediterranean coast near Marseille.
 
They are believed to have been started by a vehicle being deliberately set on fire.
 
About 2,000 people staying at a campsite at Carry-le-Rouet were allowed to return on Sunday morning after being moved out overnight. At daybreak firefighters were struggling to keep the flames at bay as they approached houses but so far little damage to property or people is reported.

ISO 50001 will establish a framework for industrial plants, commercial facilities or entire organizations to manage energy. Targeting broad applicability across national economic sectors, it is estimated that the standard could influence up to 60% of the world's energy use.

The document is based on the common elements found in all of ISO's management system standards, assuring a high level of compatibility with ISO 9001 (quality management) and ISO 14001 (environmental management). ISO 50001 will provide the following benefits:

• A framework for integrating energy efficiency into management practices
• Making better use of existing energy-consuming assets
• Benchmarking, measuring, documenting, and reporting energy intensity improvements and their projected impact on reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
• Transparency and communication on the management of energy resources
• Energy management best practices and good energy management behaviours
• Evaluating and prioritizing the implementation of new energy-efficient technologies
• A framework for promoting energy efficiency throughout the supply chain
• Energy management improvements in the context of GHG emission reduction projects.

New York-based alternative energy supplier Terra-Gen Power has secured $1.2 billion in financing for the construction of what it says will be the largest wind farm in the U.S. The funds will deliver four projects at the company's Alta Wind Energy Center in Kern County, California, with a capacity of 570 megawatts. A total of 190 3.0 MW Vestas-American Wind Technology turbines will be used in the new initiative. These will be added to the already underway 150 MW Alta Project I which uses GE turbines. Eventually it's envisioned that the Alta Wind Energy Center will deliver 3,000 MW of wind power.

Construction is expected to begin immediately and Terra-Gen says the 720 MW potential of the first five projects at the Alta Wind Energy Center will increase the installed wind capacity in California by more than 25% and deliver enough clean, renewable energy to supply up to two hundred thousand homes. Commercial operations are slated to begin in 2011.

"We are delighted to have closed this financing and to be working with Vestas and GE on the Alta projects. The project represents an important expansion of the renewable generating base of California and helps us advance our nation's goals of achieving energy independence in an environmentally responsible manner," said Jim Pagano, CEO of Terra-Gen. "The Alta projects I-V will create more than 1,500 domestic manufacturing, construction and operation and maintenance jobs, and inject more than $600 million into the local economy. We are grateful to Kern County, the State of California, the U.S. Congress, and the Treasury Department for their supportive renewable energy policies, without which ambitious projects like the Alta Wind Energy Center would simply not be possible."

The company signed a purchase agreement with Southern California Edison in 2006 to deliver 1,550 MW of power and currently has 21 renewable energy projects in operation in six states, with more than 5,000 megawatts of renewable energy capacity under development.

yesss!

"Resonance is the reply from the unknown... Unleash the opera of phenomena." W.A. Mathieu

The fanfare from the Bayreuth Festival, opening on July 25, summons an audience ranging from prominent politicians to die-hard Wagnerians. Composer Richard Wagner's legacy has magnetic power.  

Apart from political and show business celebrities, the Bayreuth Festival audience includes many for whom simply being there means that a dream has come true. Christian Thielemann, the conductor of the current production of the four-opera cycle "The Ring of the Nibelung," told Deutsche Welle that this enthusiasm is shared by the artists as well.

 

"They are completely focused on these works by Wagner, and they sacrifice their summer vacations just for the privilege of being here," said Thielemann, "Nobody comes to Bayreuth who doesn't truly want to."

 

Held this year for the 99th time, the Bayreuth Festival continues to fascinate and intrigue: It is the high point of the festival summer in Germany, the world's most prestigious opera festival, a Mecca for Wagnerians, a mega-event.

NEW ORLEANS -- Ships were getting back in place Sunday at the Gulf of Mexico site of BP's leaky oil well as crews raced to resume work on plugging the gusher before another big storm stops work again.

Now that Tropical Storm Bonnie has fizzled on Louisiana's coast, engineers are hoping clear weather lasts long enough for them to finish their work on relief wells. But as peak hurricane season approaches, the potential for another storm-related delay is high.

"We're going to be playing a cat-and-mouse game for the remainder of the hurricane season," retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen said Saturday. Sure enough, another disturbance already was brewing in the Caribbean, although forecasters said it wasn't likely to strengthen into a tropical storm.

Meanwhile, British media reported that BP chief executive Tony Hayward was negotiating the terms of his departure ahead of the company's half-year results announcement Tuesday.

Citing unidentified sources, the BBC and Sunday Telegraph reported detailed talks regarding Hayward's future took place over the weekend. A formal announcement was expected in the next 24 hours, the BBC reported.

The retail giant Wal-Mart will place radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags on underwear, jeans and other consumer items, according to several news reports, including one today from the Wall Street Journal. Companies have long used such "smart tags" to keep track of the inventory of goods going through the supply chain, but the move by Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer, to put them on individual consumer items marks a (not unexpected) shift toward something that privacy advocates have long feared.
 
That's because RFID tags, which can be read at a distance and hence surreptiously, can provide a lot of personal information even if it does not carry it per se. Katherine Albrecht, a privacy and RFID expert who has been following the issue for years, described in a special privacy issue of Scientific American just how the tags pose new security risks to those who carry them, often unwittingly. Here's an excerpt:  

If the idea that corporations might want to use RFID tags to spy on individuals sounds far-fetched, it is worth considering an IBM patent filed in 2001 and granted in 2006. The patent describes exactly how the cards can be used for tracking and profiling even if access to official databases is unavailable or strictly limited. Entitled "Identification and Tracking of Persons Using RFID-Tagged Items in Store Environ ments," it chillingly details RFID's potential for surveillance in a world where networked RFID readers called "person tracking units" would be incorporated virtually everywhere people go--in "shopping malls, airports, train stations, bus stations, elevators, trains, airplanes, restrooms, sports arenas, libraries, theaters, [and] museums"--to closely monitor people's movements.

ScienceDaily (July 23, 2010) -- Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered carbon molecules, known as "buckyballs," in space for the first time. Buckyballs are soccer-ball-shaped molecules that were first observed in a laboratory 25 years ago.

They are named for their resemblance to architect Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes, which have interlocking circles on the surface of a partial sphere. Buckyballs were thought to float around in space, but had escaped detection until now.

"We found what are now the largest molecules known to exist in space," said astronomer Jan Cami of the University of Western Ontario, Canada, and the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif. "We are particularly excited because they have unique properties that make them important players for all sorts of physical and chemical processes going on in space." Cami has authored a paper about the discovery that appears online in the journal Science.

Buckyballs are made of 60 carbon atoms arranged in three-dimensional, spherical structures. Their alternating patterns of hexagons and pentagons match a typical black-and-white soccer ball. The research team also found the more elongated relative of buckyballs, known as C70, for the first time in space. These molecules consist of 70 carbon atoms and are shaped more like an oval rugby ball. Both types of molecules belong to a class known officially as buckminsterfullerenes, or fullerenes.

The Cami team unexpectedly found the carbon balls in a planetary nebula named Tc 1. Planetary nebulas are the remains of stars, like the sun, that shed their outer layers of gas and dust as they age. A compact, hot star, or white dwarf, at the center of the nebula illuminates and heats these clouds of material that has been shed.

They see life as a game. They enjoy nothing more than outsmarting the system. They don't trust politicians, medias, nor brands. They see corporations as inefficient and plagued by an outmoded hierarchy. Even if they harbor little hope of doing better than their parents, they don't see themselves as unhappy. They belong to a group -- several, actually -- they trust and rely upon.

"They", are the Digital Natives.

Southwest Airlines made headlines earlier this year for kicking overweight actor-director Kevin Smith off a flight because he took up more than one seat.

Now we're hearing the airline recently removed a 5-foot-4, 110-pound Sacramento-area woman from a plane so a hefty passenger could have an extra seat.

The incident happened last week on an early-evening Southwest flight from Las Vegas to Sacramento.

The local woman was flying standby, paid full fare for the last available seat, got on board, stowed her bags and sat down - only to be told she would have to deplane immediately.

The reason?

A late-arriving passenger required two seats because of her girth.

[...]

Why the extra concern? The person requiring two seats was just 14 years old.

A bear climbed into an empty car in the US state of Colorado, sounded the horn and sent the vehicle rolling down hill with the terrified animal still inside.

The car's owner, 17-year-old Ben Story, took a snap of the panic-stricken bear as it demolished the inside of his vehicle in its bid to escape.

Police in Larkspur, near Denver, eventually freed the animal by opening the door from a distance using a rope.

It is believed the bear was attracted by a sandwich left on the back seat.

Mr Story and his family were asleep when the bear opened the unlocked door of his 2008 Toyota Corolla in the early hours of the morning and climbed inside.

Vladimir Putin has given a bizarre account of meeting with the Russia spies expelled from the US during a trip to a motorcyle convention designed to boost his flagging popularity.

The Russian prime minister travelled to neighbouring Ukraine where he spent the day hanging out at a motorcycle convention with a group of Russian bikers called the "Night Wolves."

At a meeting with Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, Mr Putin spoke at length, in often surprising terms, about the recent US-Russia spy scandal that ended in the biggest spy swap since the Cold War.

Spaniard Alberto Contador (Astana) sealed his third Tour de France victory after finishing the race's last stage in Paris with a 39-second lead over Luxembourg's Andy Schleck (Saxo Bank). Briton Mark Cavendish (Columbia) won the 20th and final stage.

AFP - Alberto Contador leaves Paris on Sunday with yet another Tour de France crown, and the same angelic smile that paints a picture of a no-frills cycling champion.

Behind that facade is a rider who, like cancer survivor Lance Armstrong, has realised there are more painful things than suffering for long hours in the Alps and Pyrenees.