The bloc's executive, the European Commission, tabled proposals earlier this month giving governments the freedom to choose whether or not to grow GM crops (EurActiv 14/07/10).

To pass, the plans must first be approved by EU governments and lawmakers.

The move was seen as an attempt by the Commission to break a longstanding deadlock in EU GM approvals, which has seen just two products authorised for cultivation in Europe, restricting commercial plantings to less than 100,000 hectares.

Several EU governments have already criticised the proposals, and last week German Chancellor Angela Merkel attacked the plans as a first step towards dismantling the bloc's single market.

A first meeting of EU government officials to discuss the proposals in Brussels on Tuesday confirmed the widespread opposition to the plans.

"There is huge opposition against the proposals by member states, for several different reasons," the Belgian Presidency source told Reuters.

The European Commission on Thursday said it is up to member states to decide whether they expel Roma people, but only on an individual basis and respecting the principle of "proportionality", in reaction to France's announcement it will dismantle 300 Roma camps within three months.

"We're not here, as the European Commission, to judge on individual cases of Roma people. It's for each government, each authority to make those decisions," Matthew Newman, spokesman for justice and human rights said during a press conference.

Liberal Democrat ministers have warned that the Conservatives will inflict lasting political damage to Nick Clegg's party if voters think the coalition Government is relishing the task of cutting public spending.

Although the Cabinet has agreed to try to blame the cuts on its inheritance from Labour, senior Lib Dems are worried that some Tory politicians - including George Osborne, the Chancellor - give the impression they are on a Thatcherite mission to shrink the state.

One Liberal Democrat minister warned yesterday: "If we look as though we are enjoying it, we're dead. We have to take people with us."

Hannelore Kraft, state premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, has called on the lord mayor of the western German city of Duisburg to accept moral responsibility for the deaths of 21 people at a stampede at the Love Parade techno festival on Saturday.

In a statement in Thursday's edition of the regional paper Rheinische Post, Kraft said Adolf Sauerland "and those responsible in the city government will ultimately have to take political responsibility."

Kraft's statements have been interpreted by German media as an indirect call for Sauerland's resignation. Meanwhile, a group of 150 young protesters gathered in Duisburg Thursday morning, demanding that Sauerland step down.

EULEX, the EU's law enforcement mission in Kosovo, has carried out a string of high-profile arrests leading to charges against government officials in the former Serbian province, which declared its independence in 2008.

Kosovo's Special Prosecutor's Office yesterday (29 July) expanded an investigation of the governor of the Central Bank of Kosovo to include additional charges of "abusing official position" and "receiving bribes," EULEX said.

"The matter involves the issuing of operating licences in relation to insurance companies during the period 2006 to 2008," the EU's mission in Kosovo said in a statement.

Local media report that Central Bank Governor Hashim Rexhepi was arrested on 23 July in Pristina as part of a corruption investigation. Raids were conducted at the Central Bank's offices, a private company and private properties of four suspects, including Rexhepi.

Hong Kong billionaire seals deal on UK network

EDF of France is to sell its UK electricity networks business to Cheung Kong Infrastructure of Hong Kong for £5.8bn ($9bn) - 45 per cent more than the price originally suggested for the deal.

The state-controlled French electricity group confirmed the sale alongside its half-year results on Friday. The deal at a stroke reaches the €5bn ($6.5bn) target the French utility set for disposals by the end of 2011.

CKI, controlled by Li Ka-shing, the Hong Kong billionaire, outbid a consortium of Macquarie of Australia, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, and Canada Pension Plan.

In EDF Networks, it has acquired low-voltage electricity distribution networks in the east and south of England, and long-term contracts with businesses such as the London Underground, Heathrow and Gatwick airports, and the Channel tunnel.

Italy on Friday appeared to be heading for early elections or a government shake-up after Silvio Berlusconi moved to expel dissidents from his People of Liberty party, reducing his parliamentary majority to a thread.

Although an acrimonious divorce between the prime minister, 73, and Gianfranco Fini, co-founder of their party, had been on the cards for months, there was still confusion over how much life was left in Mr Berlusconi's two-year-old centre-right coalition.

The rift ends 16 years of collaboration between the two politicians and sounds the death knell, at least for the moment, of Italy's brief flirtation with a two-party system.

Mr Fini, 58, a former neo-fascist who has moved to the mainstream, insisted at a press conference in Rome that he would remain in his post as speaker of parliament, in spite of Mr Berlusconi's efforts to remove him.

Now, even those few pence are being stripped away -- gleefully -- by what many say is the most extremist government Britain has ever seen, outstripping even Margaret Thatcher in the scope of its draconian cuts and the fervor of its market fundamentalism. The savage cutbacks and vast, churning upheavals being pushed through, at breakneck speed, by the new Conservative government (and its truly pathetic coalition "partner," the lapdog Lib Dems) will sends millions of people tumbling down into a permanent underclass -- and finally, after 60 years of trying, gut the national health service with a stealth "Americanization" that will turn the operation of local doctors' offices over to private firms (many of them from the US) and privatize public hospitals, allowing them to "fail" -- and close -- if they don't produce enough cash for their elite shareholders. Meanwhile, the schools are now in the hands of the arch-neocon Michael Gove, who is plotting with revisionist historian Niall Ferguson to impose a pro-Empire, pro-elite "national greatness" ideology on the young. Gove is also using "emergency" legislative procedures to strip public schools away from the oversight of democratically elected local government and put them into the hands of unaccountable corporations, religious groups and wealthy elites.

This Revolution of the Rich is being justified by a carefully crafted, constantly stoked panic about budget deficits, pointing to the example of the perpetually weak government and economy of Greece as a horror story to be avoided at all costs. Yet even if the Greek situation was as dire as the fearmongers make out, the fact remains that the cuts which the Tory-LapDog coalition is making in the much stronger, much more stable UK are actually far in excess than those being imposed upon Greece. As with the fearmongering about "Iraqi WMDs," the "dangers of the deficit" are being exaggerated -- and manufactured -- in order to put into place a pre-existing (and transatlantic) ideological agenda:  neo-feudal oligarchism.

Madrid, Jul. 29 (Prensa Latina) A Spanish judge has issued arrest warrants for three U.S. soldiers involved in the killing of Spanish cameraman Jose Couso during the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

  National Court Judge Santiago Pedraz ordered the arrests after the Spanish Supreme Court ordered Couso's case to be reopened.

On April 8, 2003, Sergeant Thomas Gibson, Captain Philip Wolford and Lieutenant Colonel Phil de Camp fired a shell at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, killing Jose Couso, a cameraman for Telecinco, and Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk, a Ukranian.

Read more...

AFP - Italy's lower house of parliament Thursday approved an unpopular austerity package totalling 25 billion euros (32 billion dollars) aimed at bringing the public deficit under control and reassuring markets.

Sponsored by the centre-right government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the law passed by 321 to 270 votes, with four abstentions.

The law was approved by the Senate two weeks ago and was the object of a confidence vote on Wednesday.

Although Germany's capital is short on big businesses, small enterprises are abundant, with creative industries in particular blossoming faster than in other cities. In Berlin, this creative boom is aided by a project which helps SMEs to deal with the bureaucratic procedure of obtaining EU regional funds.

The financial crisis has left thousands of homes vacant in the US city of Milwaukee. Residents there are placing part of the blame for the mess at Deutsche Bank's door.

Police dispersed violent protests across the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka with tear gas Friday, as more than 8,000 garment workers took to the streets to protest low wages. Bangladeshi workers are paid the lowest industry salary worldwide.

Renault has announced a net profit of 780 million euros for the first six months of 2010, reversing a €2.7 billion loss over the same period last year, on the back of a 23% rise in sales.

Stricken carrier British Airways has reported a net loss of 122 million pounds (€146 million) in the three months through to June due to a series of cabin crew strikes and the disruption caused by a volcanic ash cloud from Iceland.

Upgrading and electrification on the Zürich - München corridor is set to cut timings by 40 min from 2016 to around 3 h 30 min, with the number of services `almost doubled'; there are currently four return EuroCity trains a day.

Opening of the Gotthard base tunnel is expected to give a Stuttgart - Lugano timing of under 5 h in 2018, while infrastructure upgrades in southern Germany will trim 30 min off the current 3 h timing between Basel and Frankfurt by 2022.

A previous attempt to improve services between the two countries and Austria, branded as TEE Rail Alliance, was launched in 2000, but came to nothing.

INDIA: Japan International Co-operation Agency signed a further loan agreement for the 1 483 km Western Dedicated Freight Corridor on July 26, making the planned route between Delhi and Mumbai Japan's largest official development assistance project.

The latest loan provides the Indian government with ¥1·6bn repayable over 40 years to fund design reviews and tender preparation for the 552 km second phase of the Western DFC, which will be suitable for 100 km/h running and 30 tonne axleloads.

AUSTRALIA: On July 12 Victorian Premier John Brumby unveiled the routes for two rail links in Melbourne as part of the A$38bn Victoria Transport Plan launched in 2009.

The A$4·3bn Regional Rail Link involves the development of a new commuter service from West Werribee to the city, entailing construction of new tracks on the existing corridor through Sunshine and Footscray and new stations at Tarneit and Wyndham Vale. The project is designed to separate regional and suburban services, providing dedicated tracks for regional trains from Geelong, Bendigo, and Ballarat and increasing capacity on suburban routes.

The A$4·5bn Metro Rail Tunnel would link Dynon and St Kilda Road with five underground stations. This would carry a 'metro -style' service from Sunbury to St Kilda, increasing capacity by 12000 passengers/h.

The number of jobless people in Spain continued to climb in the second quarter, with figures released on Friday showing unemployment at its highest level since 1997.

The National Statistics Institute (INE) said its latest household employment survey revealed that 32,800 additional people had joined the dole queue in the three months to the end of June, taking the total to 4.65m, or 20.09 per cent of the active population.
...
Friday's unemployment rate compares with 20.05 per cent at the end of March this year. INE said the number of jobless had risen by more than 500,000 since this time last year. The latest survey showed that new job offers failed to keep pace with an increase in the labour force. The number of households with all its members out of work also increased by 9,800 to 1.31m.

Sweden's economy grew at its fastest pace for more than three years in the second quarter, burnishing its status as one of the best-performing European economies as the country's centre-right government battles for re-election in September.

Surging exports to China and other emerging markets helped lift growth by 3.7 per cent from last year and by 1.2 per cent from the first quarter, exceeding most economists' expectations. Rising household consumption also played a part - suggesting recovery is gaining a stronger grip after Sweden's deepest recession since the second world war.
...
As with Germany, the Swedish recovery has been driven by strong demand from the developing world, with manufacturers such as Volvo, the world's second-biggest truck maker, and SKF, the largest maker of ball bearings, announcing strong second-quarter results this month.

Economists warn that the export-led recovery could weaken in the second half of the year as growth slows in China.

But there were signs that domestic demand was starting to make more of a contribution in Sweden, with household consumption up 2.5 per cent from last year and imports 28 per cent higher, outpacing the 25 per cent jump in exports.

A full-fledged disintegration of the eurozone would trigger the worst economic crisis in modern history, devastate every country in Europe including Germany, and inflict a deflationary shock on the US. There would be no winners, warns the Dutch bank ING in a new report "Quantifying the Unthinkable".

"Complete break-up would have effects that dwarf the post Lehman Brothers collapse. Governments would find themselves having to bail out banks again, worsening already fragile government finances. The risk of at least a temporary break-down in payments systems would be enormous, " said the report by Mark Cliffe, Maarten Leen, and Peter Vanden Houte.

"Initial trauma is sufficiently grave to give pause for thought to those who blithely propose EMU exit as a policy option," it said, a rebuke to those German politicians and economists who have talked openly of shaking out weaker members.

Here is the ING study (pdf) Hat tip Jean Quatremer

"Ce qui vient au monde pour ne rien troubler ne mérite ni égards ni patience." René Char

China's rapid recent growth has made it increasingly likely that its gross domestic product, in US dollar terms, will be larger this year than Japan's. However, the vagaries of international currency movements mean such a result is far from assured.

Observers eagerly awaiting what will be a symbol of shifting global economic power on Friday seized on a remark by Yi Gang, director of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, about China's growth prospects.

"China is in fact already the second-biggest economy. With the expansion of the economic base, the growth rate should certainly gradually slow down," Mr Yi, who is also deputy central bank governor, said in an interview on the Safe website.

However, Mr Yi's comment fell far short of formal seizure of a title that Japan has held for just over four decades, especially given that he did not specify whether he was talking about China's GDP at market prices or in purchasing power parity terms.

In PPP terms, often a more telling measure of economic weight, China has already been the second-largest economy for years.

The problem, ultimately, is that there is no neat cordon sanitarie between the firms enjoying explicit or presumed government support (anyone with an operating brain cell knows Goldman, for instance, will not be allowed to fail) and their counterparties. That was the lesson of the LTCM near-death in 1998, yet no effective measures were put in place then. And the fact that backstopped firms channel funds to non-backstopped firms and thus support risk-taking in less regulated parts of the system is a long-recognized problem. The most radical and effective measure is narrow banking, or restricting depositaries to investing in only very safe assets, first proposed by Irving Fisher and others during the Great Depression.

The U.S. financial system remains fragile and banks subjected to additional economic stress might need as much as $76 billion in capital, according to the results of International Monetary Fund stress tests.

The findings, released today as part of a broader IMF report on the U.S. financial system, suggested that while the nation's banking system is stable, it remains vulnerable. Home prices, commercial real estate loans and economic growth have the potential to cause shocks that could expose banks to more losses.

Under one scenario, small and regional banks as well as subsidiaries of foreign banks would need $40.5 billion in additional capital to meet a benchmark capital ratio of 6 percent Tier 1 common equity from 2010 to 2014. Under the adverse scenario, those needs rise to $76.3 billion, according to the report.

Twenty-one years ago, Li Lu was a student leader of the Tiananmen Square protests. Now a hedge-fund manager, he is in line to become a successor to Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
...
Mr. Li's ascent on Wall Street has been no less dramatic. He spent his childhood shuttling between foster families after his mother and father were sent to labor camps during the Cultural Revolution. After the Tiananmen Square protest, he escaped to France and came to the U.S. Investors in his hedge fund have included a group of senior U.S. business executives and the musician Sting, who calls Mr. Li "hardworking and clever."

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The United States and the Czech Republic are once again negotiating the possibility of building part of the US missile defence system in Prague, Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas said on Friday. The Pentagon has already requested a sum of $2.2 million for the building from the US Congress.

The facility should be able to detect and give an early warning in case a short- or medium-range missiles aimed at Nato countries.

According to sources from the Czech Foreign Ministry, the new site should consist of two offices with equipment gathering data on enemy missiles, Czech daily Hospodarske noviny (HN) has reported.

Mr Necas said that only a handful of people would be needed to run the site and that the personnel could be drawn from the Czech army after undergoing training. The exact location has yet to been determined, but Prague or its environs is the main option.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will make his first visit to Lebanon on Friday since 2002 to attend a hastily arranged regional summit with President Michel Sleiman and Saudi King Abdullah. The three leaders are meeting to discuss how to defuse Lebanon's growing sectarian tensions that are straining the country's fragile religious balance, raising new fears of instability. Separately, the summit also serves as an important milestone in Lebanese-Syrian relations as it marks the first visit by a Syrian leader since the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri.

Relations between the two countries have largely stalled since Hariri was killed, with many Lebanese alleging that Syria, the once dominant power-broker in Lebanon, was responsible. Damascus, for its part, repeatedly denied any involvement in the assassination. In 2008 the two countries established formal diplomatic relations for the first time and now hope to build on those ties.

Hezbollah under fire

Tensions between the Islamic Shiite group and the majority party in parliament led by Hariri have worsened recently as a special tribunal, set up under United Nations auspices, to investigate Hariri's assassination is widely expected to indict members of Hezbollah for their involvement in the killing. Hezbollah's influential secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, has warned, though, that he will not accept any indictments from the `Special Tribunal for Lebanon' (TSL). Nasrallah's challenge to the court, based in The Hague, is a pre-emptive move as the tribunal has yet to hand down any judgment on the case. Nonetheless, Nasrallah asserts that the court is a US and Israeli plot to undermine "the resistance" and sow discord between Lebanon's Sunni and Shiite populations.

AFP - Rioting erupted in Kabul Friday when two US embassy vehicles were set ablaze after one collided with a civilian car, killing a number of occupants, officials and witnesses said.

Television pictures showed the vehicles in flames and young Afghan men throwing stones at them and beating them with sticks and iron bars.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said it had despatched a quick reaction force to the area, outside the American embassy and near US and Afghan army bases in the centre of the city.

Every day there is a new sign that it's FUBAR. But for those calling the shots, the problem is supposed to be:

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

In September 2009, the German government released $1 million (760,000 euros) of funding to train Somali police officers. The training took place in Ethiopia, and the new recruits were equipped with uniforms, weapons and knowledge with the aim of sending them back into Somalia to try and keep peace in the fractured country.

Two months after the completion of this training, almost 1,000 new police officers have reportedly disappeared en route to the Somali capital Mogadishu. It is thought highly likely that these deserters have left to join opposition Islamist militia in Somalia.

Falling Off a Cliff
Judicial Confirmation Rates Have Nosedived in the Obama Presidency

Judicial confirmations slowed to a trickle on the day President Barack Obama took office. Filibusters, anonymous holds, and other obstructionary tactics have become the rule. Uncontroversial nominees wait months for a floor vote, and even district court nominees--low-ranking judges whose confirmations have never been controversial in the past--are routinely filibustered into oblivion. Nominations grind to a halt in many cases even after the Senate Judiciary Committee has unanimously endorsed a nominee.

Such tactics are completely unprecedented, and so are their results. Fewer than 43 percent of President Obama's judicial nominees have so far been confirmed, while past presidents have enjoyed confirmation rates as high as 93 percent. And President Obama's nominees have been confirmed at a much slower rate than those of his predecessor--nearly 87 percent of President George W. Bush's judicial nominees were confirmed.

The data could not be any clearer. As Figure 1 shows, judicial confirmations have fallen off a cliff since President Obama took office.

Dark oil slicks are spreading from the middle of Venezuela's Lake Maracaibo towards the shores -- the wetlands, mangroves, beaches and docks. Oil is permeating fishing nets, coating the garbage dumped into the water, killing off wildlife and driving away residents and tourists.

"My sons would set out the nets and at dawn would bring in mullet and corvina fish to sell to small restaurants in Puerto Caballo. They stopped several months ago because what they caught were blackened and damaged," Adelso Silva, an elderly fisherman from Santa Cruz de Mara, near the city of Maracaibo, capital of Zulia state.

Located in northwest Venezuela and connected by a natural channel to the Caribbean Sea, Lake Maracaibo is the largest in South America, with a surface area of 12,800 square kilometres and a volume of 245 billion cubic metres of water. The shoreline and lakebed have been the sites of intense petroleum production since the second decade of the 20th century.

Yesterday José Miguel Insulza presented to the President of the OAS Permanent Council, Maria Isabel Salvador, the 12 page report of the High Commission appointed to report on conditions in Honduras. The full report has not yet been released, but its conclusions just appeared in the Honduran press. As reported in El Tiempo, the High Commission proposed seven points that could make it possible for Honduras to return to the OAS.

Colombia - A report released by U.S. NGO the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) finds an "alarming link" between Colombian military units that received U.S. funding and cases of extrajudicial killings or "false positives" -- in which civilians were murdered and presented as guerrillas killed in combat -- committed by those units.  John Lindsay-Poland, the FOR's research and advocacy director, told Colombia Reports that the NGO undertook the two year research project on Colombia as a case to study, in order to evaluate the affects that U.S. military aid has on human rights.  To compile the report, the FOR drew on data from the Colombian prosecutor general's office, the Colombian inspector general's office and 20 human rights organizations, in order to study 3,000 cases of false positives committed by members of the Colombian armed forces since 2002. These cases were then cross-referenced with lists of more than 500 Colombian military units who received assistance from the U.S.

Six Reasons Why Argentina Legalized Gay Marriage First...  1) First, Catholics don't go to Church and Evangelicals are (still) small in number. ... 2) Second, separation of church and party.  It is not enough to have separation of church and state, as do most countries in the region. It is vital to have separation of church and party. ... 3) Third, transnational legalism.  Much has been written about how globalization helps to promote LGBT rights.  But Argentina shows that there is a type of globalization that is especially helpful, and which incidentally, is scarce in the United States--transnational legalism.  This term refers to the ease with which a country's legal system borrows from international cases to set legal precedents domestically. ... 4) Fourth, domestic legal resources. It would be incorrect to say that Argentina's pro-LGBT groups drew exclusively from abroad.  They also drew from domestic sources. ... 5) Fifth, democracy, yes; referendum democracy, no.  Perhaps the most important victory by pro-LGBT groups in Argentina was to avoid the referenda trap. ... 6) Sixth, and lastly, the president presides.  Ultimately, what made the law possible was the President's decision to take the risk of backing the bill.

Muslim imams in Senegal have called on their followers to not to pay their electricity bills in protest against frequent power outage. Power cuts in Senegal have resulted in anger and frustration in the streets of the capital, Dakar, where blackouts can last up to ten hours.

The oil giant's chief executive Peter Voser stressed the oil industry's "shock" at the explosion at BP's Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 people, unleashed the worst oil spill in US history and claimed the scalp of BP chief executive Tony Hayward this week. "The Macondo blow-out and the related oil spill is a tragedy for everyone affected," Mr Voser said yesterday. "We were all shocked by the loss of life there, and the on-going and widespread impacts from the spill."

But he also emphasised the need for continued deep-water oil production. "World-wide deep-water production has an important role to play in the global energy supply equation, with potential for production growth with supply diversity, and sustained investment in technology, jobs and services," he said.

Britain's coalition government will commit 43 million pounds (€51.6 million) over 18 months to subsidising the uptake of electric cars, the Department for Transport (DfT) said on Wednesday (28 July).

British motorists will receive up to 5,000 pounds towards the purchase of a low-carbon car from January 2011 to March 2012, Transport Secretary Philip Hammond said.

The amount committed on Wednesday is less than the 250 million pounds pledged by the previous Labour government over a five-year period.

However, a press officer for the transport department denied that the new government had cut the number of cars it could subsidise.

REUTERS - A fleet of 6,000 bicycles for hire will hit the streets of central London on Friday when the city's mayor Boris Johnson launches a scheme intended to fuel a cycling revolution in the congested capital.

The initiative, which follows similar projects in cities including Paris and Montreal, aims to ease overcrowding on London's commuter network, with 400 bicycle "docking stations" from Notting Hill in the west to the Tower of London in the east.

According to a news report in Spiegel Online, Chancellor Angela Merkel is furious that Mr Oettinger missed the crucial meeting last Tuesday (20 July) to attend at a mid-level conference in Washington instead.

At the Brussels meeting, the college of commissioners decided that loss-making mines in the EU must be closed down by autumn 2014.

In the run-up to the decision, Berlin had been expecting EU competition commissioner Joaquin Almunia - whose native Spain also has many jobs dependent on government aid to mines - to suggest that the subsidy regime be extended for one last time until 2023. The expectation was that 2018 would be the final compromise - a year in line with the German government's domestic promises on the matter.

According to the Spiegel Online report, Mr Oettinger's cabinet mailed Berlin the day before to suggest that a narrow majority would see the subsidies extended to the wished-for date.

However, on the day itself the opposite occurred. Mr Almunia was outnumbered by a flank of commissioners saying that they would agree only to a short extension to the subsidies or their immediate end. And Mr Oettinger, to the chancellor's chagrin, was in Washington attending a 'clean energy' conference. A conference to which Germany itself only sent a state secretary rather than a minister.

Forest fires fanned by strong winds swept across central Russia on Friday, killing at least 25 people and destroying hundreds of houses as the nation grapples with a record heatwave.

As Germany's wild boar population has skyrocketed in recent years, so too has the number of animals contaminated by radioactivity left over from the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown. Government payments compensating hunters for lost income due to radioactive boar have quadrupled since 2007.

It's no secret that Germany has a wild boar problem. Stories of marauding pigs hit the headlines with startling regularity: Ten days ago, a wild boar attacked a wheelchair-bound man in a park in Berlin; in early July, a pack of almost two dozen of the animals repeatedly marched into the eastern German town of Eisenach, frightening residents and keeping police busy; and on Friday morning, a German highway was closed for hours after 10 wild boar broke through a fence and waltzed onto the road.

Even worse, though, almost a quarter century after the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown in Ukraine, a good chunk of Germany's wild boar population remains slightly radioactive -- and the phenomenon has been costing the German government an increasing amount of money in recent years.

According to the Environment Ministry in Berlin, almost €425,000 ($555,000) was paid out to hunters in 2009 in compensation for wild boar meat that was too contaminated by radiation to be sold for consumption. That total is more than four times higher than compensation payments made in 2007.

A panel of politicians has voted to remove the Galapagos Islands from the UN's list of World Heritage Sites in danger - in spite of a firm recommendation from scientists and officials who visited the islands that they should keep their status.

The Pacific archipelago, whose unique wildlife inspired Charles Darwin's theory of evolution were included on the list in 2007 after scientists warned they were facing environmental disaster from mass tourism, immigration, development, overfishing and the invasion of alien species.

Following a visit in April, a group of UN scientists raised concerns that port facilities in Ecuador, to whom the islands belong, and Galapagos were still not sufficiently bio-secure to prevent more alien species such as plants, fungi and even diseases being transported from mainland South America to the islands.

SOFIA - Bulgaria's Communist-era security agency, the dreaded Committee for State Security, maintained a top secret unit in charge of kidnapping, discrediting and killing of Bulgarian émigrés around the world long before the notorious assassination of writer Georgi Markov in London in 1978, it can be revealed.

The secretive Cold War structure, dubbed "Service 7" was set up in mid-1963 and by 1972 was engaged in at least ten covert operations against Bulgarians who had fled Communism and settled in Italy, Britain, Denmark, West Germany, Turkey, France, Ethiopia, Sweden and Switzerland.

The revelations surfaced after an investigation by 24 Chasa, one of Bulgaria's top-selling dailies, of nearly 5,000 pages of recently declassified archives from the former Communist intelligence service, the First Directorate of the Committee on State Security.

The records, written between 1964 and 1972 and once marked as "top secret" detail operations against people whom the regime saw as its enemies and given code-name such as "The Black", "Lackey", "Traitor", "X", "Hamlet", "Betrayer", "Blind man", "Ox" and "Widower ".

24 Chasa came across the papers by chance in a batch of documents the National Intelligence Service had released under a new law declassifying former State Security archives. The files carried the acronym OM - in Bulgarian "ostri meropriatia", which translates as "sharp measures" in English.

AFP - Russian special forces on Thursday foiled the attempted hijacking of a plane coming from the Caucasus at Moscow's Domodedovo airport, Russian news agencies quoted an airport official as saying.

A passenger on a flight from Mineralnye Vody in the Caucasus to Moscow "made orders to the crew," an airport spokeswoman was quoted as saying by Ria Novosti.

Police and special forces from Russia's FSB internal security agency isolated the plane from others at the airport and cleared it out, she added.

"All of the passengers were freed, there were no victims," a spokesman for the transport police was quoted as saying by Itar-Tass, adding that the hijacker was believed to be a 40-year-old resident of Mineralnye Vody.

During a consultation launched last spring, a number of civil society organisations have voiced their concern at the legislative framework that discourages the engagement of volunteers in sport.

The report on the results of the public consultation on the EU's sports competence, published yesterday (28 July), singles out the need for EU action to support the social, educational and health functions of sport activities, already outlined in the study on volunteering in the EU, published in February 2010.

Police in the southwestern German city of Stuttgart on Friday dispersed a sit-down protest against the ceremonial pledge of allegiance taken by new German army, or Bundeswehr, recruits.

Just under 50 protesters sat down in front of the St. Eberhard Cathedral at midday but were not blocking the entrance to the church service for some 300 recruits and their families. Police defended their dispersal of the group, explaining that another location had been designated for the demonstration.

Authorities had initially issued permits to 13 anti-military protest groups for Friday but later revoked two of these. About 1,000 police officers were dispatched to ensure the safety of a total of 650 recruits from southern Germany.

Protests against soldiers' public oaths are a regular affair with long tradition in Germany. Just noted on the sidelines of that Support Our Troops campaign.

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

One afternoon earlier this summer, in a Somerset meadow, David Crisp stumbled upon 52,000 Romano-British coins, the second-largest such hoard of its kind ever unearthed - and presently on exhibit in the British Museum. Almost 800 of these were minted during the reign of Carausius, which lasted from around AD286 until AD293, the first ruler since the conquest in AD43 to govern Britain without the authority of Rome - and a much-overlooked historical figure. As Roger Bland, the museum's head of portable antiquities, says, "This find presents us with the opportunity to put Carausius on the map. Schoolchildren across the country have been studying Roman Britain for decades, but have never been taught about Carausius - our lost emperor."

For nigh on 10 years prior to its recapture, Britain enjoyed the best of both worlds as a unified and isolationist nation-state that could still claim affinity with the greater dominion of Rome across the Straits of Dover. Indeed, some of the coins that activated Crisp's metal detector are embossed with the motif "AUGGG" (the three 'g's denoting three augusti, or Roman emperors), stressing that Carausius was on equal terms with the other two emperors - one in Constantinople, one in Rome itself - of an increasingly more fragmented federation, riven with incessant warfare.

Well gosh darn it, there's to be no more swearing at Goldman Sachs!

The investment bank has issued an edict that e-mailed profanity is no longer permitted, meaning all 34,000 of Goldman's employees are going to have to rein in their tongues even when the, um, shoot really hits the fan, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Which words will be censored is hard to say because the bank cannot, under the policy, send out an e-mail that lists them, The Journal notes.

The ruling was delivered verbally, which has left employees questioning where they might stand on shorthand terms  -- The Journal suggests "WTF," (a common abbreviation for "white-tailed finch") as an example -- or even words that sound like obscenities but are not.

My emphasis (straight from the "You can't make that, err..., stuff up" department)

The Daily Show's Jon Stewart: "They may still f*ck you over, but from now on they, themselves will refer to it as making sweet, sweet love to you".

Europeans think a hundred miles is a long way. Americans think a hundred years is a long time.

Paul the psychic octopus may have retired from predicting football matches, but his advertising career has just begun. The eight-legged oracle recently appeared in an advertisement for a German supermarket chain and has received more than 160 endorsement offers, including a book deal, according to the mollusk's agent.

From the depths of the ocean to the height of stardom, Paul the octopus' star hasn't gone dim yet. After shooting to fame this summer by correctly predicting the results of each of Germany's World Cup matches -- including tipping Spain to beat Netherlands in the final -- the cephalopod oracle from the Sea Life aquarium in Oberhausen was featured in recent print ads for the German supermarket chain Rewe.

How Gangsters Are Saving Euro Zone

Gangsters, drug dealers and money launderers appear to be playing their part in helping shore up the financial stability of the euro zone.

That's thanks to their demand, according to European authorities, for high-denomination euro bank notes, in particular the €200 and €500 bills. The European Central Bank issues these notes for a hefty profit that is welcome at a time when its response to the financial crisis has called its financial strength into question.

The financial strength of the ECB has been called into question?

[Europe.Is.Doomed™ Alert]

Wind power

I've been able to find a hotel with wireless nearby, and am seating in the street to grab my emails and catch up. Sigh...

Wind power