Iceland's women are blaming men for the financial crisis that has brought the country to its knees, They are now looking for a female solution to clean up the mess. Caretaker Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir is heading into this weekend's election with good chances of winning.

It's not shadenfreude that can be read between the lines when Halla Tomasdottir talks about Iceland's financial crisis and her country's bankruptcy, but there may be a bit of satisfaction. "A lot had gone wrong, some things didn't make sense and it couldn't go on that way," the economist says. "We warned it would happen."

Halla was general director of the chamber of commerce when she issued those warnings, but nobody wanted to listen to her advice. She then parted ways and started her own company together with banker Kristin Petursdottir. Kristin had been a manager at the British subsidiary of the crisis-stricken Icelandic bank Kaupthing. Together, Halla and Kristin formed Audur Capital, a financial and investment company that would take a new path.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The happiest children are to be found in the Netherlands while Britain is among the worst countries in Europe in which to grow up, a new study examining children's wellbeing in 29 European countries has shown.

The report, by the Child Poverty Action Group, compares 43 separate criteria such as health, education and housing standards in EU member states as well as Norway and Iceland.

Children are best off in the Netherlands and Scandinavia

The Netherlands followed by Sweden and Norway are the countries considered to be the best places in which to be a child.

At the bottom of the league are Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania and Malta.

One of Germany's biggest terrorism trials is underway this Wednesday. The authorities have accused four men of plotting a series of terror attacks, on a scale comparable with the London and Madrid bombings. 

The Sauerland cell was named after a region in western Germany where police seized three terrorism suspects in September 2007, along with hundreds of kilos of bomb-making materials. The fourth suspect was arrested in Turkey and extradited to Germany last November.

The four men, whose ages range between 23 and 30, are accused of planning to bomb discos, restaurants, airports, the Federal Prosecutors' Office, and US army installations, in a spate of attacks allegedly planned for October 2007.

The bombings were to take place across Germany, from the American base at Ramstein to cities such as Dortmund, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Cologne and Munich.

Both the current and future EU president countries have come out in support of Ankara's bid for membership. Meanwhile, Turkish police detained more than 30 people suspected of ties to al-Qaeda.  

Turkey's Anatolia news agency reported on Tuesday that anti-terrorist authorities detained 37 individuals in early morning raids in five provinces. The agency added that seven of the suspects were thought to have received armed training in militant camps in Afghanistan.

A Turkish newspaper reported in March that Ankara had been given intelligence from the US that al Qaeda was possibly planning attacks in Turkey.

EUOBSERVER / ZAGREB - The structural reforms Croatia still needs to carry out are more likely to hold up its EU membership bid than the current border dispute with Slovenia, a senior EU official has warned.

"I would be more concerned about structural reforms [in Croatia]" than about the border dispute, Vincent Degert, head of the European Commission's delegation in Croatia told a group of journalists in Zagreb on Monday (20 April).

Croatia wants to enter the EU by 2011, but reforms - in the agriculture sector, among others - could cause problems

Mr Degert spoke about justice reform, as well as the need to restructure Croatia's shipyards and the agriculture sector, as some of the key areas where progress is still needed.

"These are the hardcore reforms," he said, with Croatia hoping to finish membership negotiations within the next eight months and enter the EU by 2011.

UOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The battle between internet pirates and copyright holders shifted to Strasbourg this week, with a move that threatens to hold up a major European Union telecoms bill and unravel France's flagship legislation on cutting off internet access for illegal downloaders.

MEPs in the European Parliament's industry committee on Tuesday (21 April) passed an amendment to the telecoms bill requiring that internet cut-offs can only be put in place after a decision by judicial authorities.

Internet piracy is turning into a key issue for young voters ahead of the June elections

The bill itself is a much broader legislative initiative that aims to substantially reform the European telecoms sector, focusing on infrastructure rather than content, with both parliament and EU member states largely in agreement on the package.

But last September, MEPs overwhelmingly backed a similar amendment that intended to put a stop to France's "three strikes law," under which copyright scofflaws would see their internet stopped for up to a year.

LONDON -- After a string of embarrassing revelations about expense claims by members of Parliament, Prime Minister Gordon Brown proposed Tuesday that the expense-account system be overhauled "to restore people's confidence that M.P.'s are there to serve the public and not themselves."

Legislators in the House of Commons are the beneficiaries of an array of perks and reimbursements, all of them perfectly legal, for expenses associated with running their offices, traveling between London and their districts, and having homes in both places. Members of Parliament earn base salaries of $92,795. In a recent 12-month period, they claimed an average of nearly $200,000 in expenses.

It emerged this month that the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, regularly claims that her sister's house in London, where she rents a room when Parliament is in session, is her primary residence. That has allowed Ms. Smith to draw the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars in the so-called second-home allowance for the house in Worcestershire, where her family lives and where she lives during weekends and the long stretches when Parliament is not sitting.

The ignominy is evidently too much to bear. When he flies to international summits President Sarkozy is confronted by a number of private jets that dwarf his French Airbus A319.

Even the Spanish and German leaders arrive in bigger aircraft, let alone Barack Obama's mighty Air Force One.

Next month work will begin on a project to give Mr Sarkozy wings in keeping with his ambitions when French engineers take possession of an aircraft that will be turned into an ultra-modern presidential airliner.

Although not quite as big as the Boeing 747-200 that is Air Force One, the French A330-200 will be at least ten metres longer and two metres higher that the aircraft used by other European leaders. It will also be far more luxurious -- as befits a man who called Mr Obama inexperienced, questioned the intellect of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Spanish Prime Minister, and disparaged Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, in comments to MPs last week.

An attempt by Europe to bring its "last dictator" in from the cold by inviting Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarussian president, to a summit of 27 EU government leaders could backfire by aggravating EU divisions, it was feared yesterday.

Many European leaders are hoping that Lukashenko - who has been in power for 15 years, has been blacklisted by Brussels on account of his authoritarian rule and was until recently subject to a travel ban - will not take up the invitation to the Prague summit on 7 May.

The summit is to launch the EU's new "eastern partnership" policy with six former Soviet bloc states, aimed at increasing Brussels' clout in the region at the expense of Moscow's.

Lukashenko, head of the most isolated state in Europe, has been invited together with the leaders of Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Moldova. The Czech foreign minister, Karel Schwarzenberg, delivered the invitation in person to Belarus's president in Minsk on Friday.

French Prime Minister Francois Fillon has warned that hundreds of workers at the Continental tyre company who trashed a government building on Tuesday to protest planned layoffs should face charges, calling their acts "unacceptable".

AFP - Prime Minister Francois Fillon warned Wednesday that workers who vented their anger by trashing a government building should face charges, as fears grew of French labour unrest turning violent.
   
Workers from the German-owned Continental tyre company went on a rampage Tuesday after a court refused to block the company's decision to shut down their factory and scrap 1,200 jobs.
   
A few hundred employees ransacked offices of the regional administration in Compiegne, northeast of Paris, smashing windows, overturning desks and wrecking computers.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Parliament has approved a watered-down version of an energy package aimed at further liberalising the bloc's electricity and gas markets, while strengthening consumer rights.

Initially targeting full separation of transmission and production activities in energy giants like E.ON or GDF - also known as "unbundling" - the compromise approved on Wednesday (22 April) by the European Parliament gives big energy players the option of keeping the two types of activities, but under stronger supervision.

Electricity transmission networks

The EU goal is to facilitate network access for smaller energy companies without their own grids, as well as to ease up cross-border investments and trade in EU's €300 billion electricity and gas market, which is still fragmented by national barriers.

"The package will give the EU a clear regulatory framework needed to ensure a properly functioning internal market and to promote much needed investment, especially by cross-border and regional cooperation," EU energy commissioner Andris Piebalgs told MEPs in a plenary debate ahead of the vote.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission has said it is ready to investigate and take action against any European boats or European-owned fishing companies that fly flags of convenience that engage in illegal fishing off the coast of Somalia.

This month, Abdirahman Ibbi, the deputy prime minister and minister of fisheries and marine resources in the new Somali national unity government, said that an estimated 220 foreign-owned vessels were still engaged in unlicensed and illegal fishing in Somali waters, most of them of European origin.

Commissioner Borg is ready to investigate allegations of European illegal fishing in Somali waters if presented with evidence

The European commissioner for fisheries, Joe Borg, on Wednesday (22 April) told reporters that he had no information regarding Mr Ibbi's allegation.

"I am certainly prepared to look into it if we are provided with specific details on this," he said during a press conference presenting a paper reviewing the state of the European Common Fisheries Policy. "But the information I have is that it is nowhere near close to those figures that have been mentioned."

Building firms and green groups welcomed the budget announcement to spend £375m on energy efficiency in buildings over the next two years, but said it was much too little to kickstart an ailing construction industry and would barely reduce carbon emissions.

The chancellor Alistair Darling said that energy efficiency - stopping heat leaking out of buildings - was "the easiest and quickest" way to reduce carbon emissions and the benefits would be distributed between homes, offices and public buildings.

"These measures will support employment and save 380,000 tonnes of CO2 and around £60m in energy bills each year," said the full budget report. The UK emits 531m tonnes of CO2 a year, making the total savings 0.14%.

Greenpeace dismissed the measures as "woeful". "The emissions saved per year represent about two weeks' emissions from Radcliffe-on-Soar coal-powered station - Britain's third biggest power station," said the environment group's spokesperson.

Officers who deliberately conceal their identification numbers will face the sack, Britain's top policeman has said.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson said it was "totally unacceptable" not to wear the numerals.

His comments follow allegation against several officers at the G20 protests - including the man who pushed newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson before he died.

New footage has emerged of the moments leading up to his death, as a third post-mortem examination was held.

The footage is in the link.  It doesn't support the police claim that there was a confrontation prior to the attack.

First there was the `wee fee', then the charge for the privilege of checking-in, now it seems budget airline Ryanair has finally tipped the scales by announcing it is considering a fat tax.

But, just when you thought they couldn't possibly take this any further, there's more.

The company needs customers' help to figure out how to charge the fat tax and its offering the following options:

Charge per kg over 130kg/20 stone (male) and 100kg/15 stone (females).

Charge per inch for every waist inch over 45 inch (male) and 40 inch (female).

Charge for every point in excess of 40 points on the Body Mass Index (+30 points is obese).

Charge for a second seat if passengers' waist touches both armrests simultaneously.

Stephen McNamara, spokesman for Ryanair, explained the four options being offered appeared to be the "simplest".