EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The EU will at a meeting with Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman next month sketch out three conditions for upgrading relations, according to a draft declaration seen by EUobserver.

The text says that the meeting in Brussels on 15 June "confirms the great importance the European Union is attaching to its relations with Israel and its readiness to continue strengthening our bilateral relationship."

Man surveys war damage in Gaza after Israel's Operation Cast Lead in December and January

But it does not give any timetable for implementing a formal upgrade in bilateral ties, envisaged before Israel launched "Operation Cast Lead" in Gaza in December.

The omission effectively continues a freeze imposed on the project by Israeli-critical EU countries, such as Belgium, Sweden and Portugal, which feel that the upgrade would give an untimely endorsement to Israel's hawkish new government.

Twitter, the microblogging website, is at the centre of a political furore in Germany, after MPs used it to leak news of the president's re-election.

News that Hörst Köhler had been re-elected as German president on Saturday was published on Twitter almost 15 minutes before the official result was announced, the Financial Times reports.

Julia Klöckner , of chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU party, told her Twitter "followers": "People, you can watch the football in peace. The vote was a success."

The refusal of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leadership to ensure minority rights is driving out many non-Serb minorities, a new human rights report says.  

The London-based Minority Rights Group International (MRG) says exclusion from political and social life and discrimination are forcing ethnic Bosniaks, Turks, Roma, Croats, Gorani, Ashkali Egyptians and even some Serbs out of Kosovo.

Non-Serb minorities have criticized the international community for paying too much attention to Albanian-Serb relations and ignoring other groups.

"The priority for the international community should be to ensure that there is some kind of international human rights mechanism to which minorities in Kosovo can turn," MRG director, Mark Lattimer, said.

L'Espresso reveals that Berlusconi also had a week long party bash in 2007 with droves of aspiring Sophonisbes decorating every angle of his villa. The article points out that Berlusconi is likely to be subject to blackmail and notes some possible coincidences involving beautiful women who become happy owners of roof-top apartments in the center of Rome.

The real treat is a wiretap between Berlusconi and "Evelina" Manna within minutes after la Repubblica revealed the famous Agostino Saccà taps (among others, here). The conversation reveals that Evelina felt there was something special between them, that she wasn't just another little whore.

Evelina: I still believe there's something special, I still do. In the world of dreams, no? So, I...I was about to call you-
Berlusconi: Dream worlds are the diametrically opposed to the world of the press-
Evelina: No, no! A world of dreams with you! So, I... I was about to call you-
Berlusconi: OK, listen, take my advice, do what you want... there's no way to resist the wave of mud that the press is capable of. Enough, I'm not going to repeat it again. Don't talk to the press.
Evelina: Don't be so cold with me, oh!
Berlusconi: I cannot not be cold, now, OK. Bye. ...Follow my advice. Ciao.

Czech activists pelted the leader of the leftist Social Democrats with hundreds of eggs at a rally on Wednesday ahead of European and national elections.

The eggs flew as Jiri Paroubek, the opposition leader, and his entourage addressed a pre-election meeting in Prague.

"We won't let this discourage us. Shame on you," said Mr Paroubek, as yolk dripped from his chin and belly.

Only 21% of Austrians intend to vote this June 7th. Europe, with its open borders, leaves its timorous citizens longing for the days when this "small, beautiful, prosperous" land was "an enclosed garden plot", argues Barbara Coudenhove-Kalergi.

A foreign fellow-journalist asks: Why are such a disproportionate number of Austrians against the EU, though the country has benefited so much from being part of the Union? And why do such a disproportionate number of Austrians vote for far-right parties? In the run-up to the EU elections over the next few weeks, plenty of foreign observers are bound to ask the same questions. Here is a stab at an answer.

The past few decades have quite unhinged Austrians. After World War II, they had for all intents and purposes bid farewell to world history, the most recent chapters of which clearly hadn't done them much good. The First Republic comprised the leftovers of a multinational empire that had fallen apart in World War I. Later they had half volens, half nolens joined the German Reich, which also ended in defeat. The upshot: Austrians holed up in their small, beautiful, prosperous land. Under the bell jar of neutrality they felt safe and secure from the trials and tribulations of the outside world. They retreated to an island of bliss.

With a low turn-out predicted for this June's European elections, Dutch and Romanian political parties are going for the electorate's funny bone - with gadgets, gags and innuendo.

"I fancy having intimate European relations". So goes the slogan on condoms the Green Party has been distributing in The Netherlands - a pun on the Dutch word for sexual intercourse, gemeenschap, which also means "community" depending on the context.... "Humour or despair?" wonders columnist Willem de Bruin in the Volkskrant. That pleasure can help promote the European project, which right now doesn't really "arouse" many young people, is a matter of course in a country known for its laissez-faire mores - and low turn-out in European elections.

Banks are being nationalized, CEO's salaries are being curbed and the financial system is being restructured. Those policies were once associated with socialists. So why are left-of-center parties not sweeping elections? 

The latest opinion polls ahead of the upcoming elections for the European Parliament paint a familiar picture. The European conservatives are expected to remain the strongest bloc in the assembly with the socialists again being relegated to second place, a position they have held since 1994.

It doesn't look much better for socialist parties at the national level either. Currently they lead governments in only eight out of 27 countries and the prospects for a reversal of that trend are not good. According to recent surveys, they face an uphill struggle in many upcoming elections, some of them in large European countries such as Britain and Germany.

Support for France's Socialist Party has plummeted lately, partly due to the fierce rivalry between party boss Martine Aubry and ex-presidential candidate Segolene Royal. The two tried to bury the hatchet for a European election rally on Wednesday. But for how long?

The technician with the local radio station had a vital role to play on Wednesday evening. He was measuring the audience applause and cheers at a rally in the Trocadiere music hall in the French town of Rezé near Nante, using a digital recorder to see which of the two speakers got the better reaction: Segolene Royal or Martine Aubry.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - An Estonian man has become the first person in EU history to vote online, as internet campaigns make their mark on the 2009 elections. But a throwback in Northern Ireland has seen canvassers threatened with a gun.

Vahur Orrin from Tallinn cast his vote in Brussels one second after the virtual polling station opened at 8.00am local time, with the moment captured on video for the YouTube file-sharing website.

EU history was made in Brussels at 8.00 on Thursday morning

Voting has also begun early in Finland and Sweden, with Nordic and Baltic countries leading the game in terms of helping geographically-scattered voters cast remote ballots. The Lithuanian government has in another first also opted to give official media accreditation to bloggers covering the vote.

In France, centre-right President Nicolas Sarkozy has attracted 106,000 "friends" on his personal page on the Facebook social networking site. His nearest rival in terms of online popularity is far-left leader Olivier Besancourt with 17,000 friends.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - In a provocative move ahead of next week's EU vote, the Party of European Socialists have listed "a selection of terrible European election candidates" from other political parties.

The list, published on Thursday (28 May), contains eight nominees from the centre-right European people's party, one from the liberal group, two others - a Dutch politician and the head of Britain xenophobic British National Party, Nick Griffin.

The Socialists' blacklist comes just one week ahead of the European elections

A twelfth space has been left for the "Dear Reader" to fill in.

There seems to be no fixed criteria for appearing on the list, and the reasons given differ in length, content and seriousness.

Mr Griffin, on the list due to have being convicted for incitement to racial hatred and Holocaust denial, appears alongside Romania's Monica Macovei, a former minister of justice, who is down for "being a perpetual critic of the justice reform pace in Romania" and being a "controversial person."

In Europe's biggest port, where nearly half the population of 600,000 is of immigrant origin, Geert Wilders appears to be knocking on an open door.

The platinum-blond, Islam-baiting populist is soaring in opinion surveys in the Netherlands, hammering the anti-immigration message to double his ratings this year to the point where his Freedom party is challenging to be the strongest in the country, according to a leading weekly tracking poll.

Wilders' acolytes are also poised to enter the European parliament for the first time after elections for the EU's sole democratically elected institution, covering 375 million people across 27 countries, take place next week...

Wilders' success represents, in part, a souring of traditional Dutch enthusiasm for the EU. It also appears symptomatic of a broader insurrectionary mood across Europe that is expected to favour extremists, ­mavericks and populists in the voting taking place over four days from next Thursday. Overt racism and the calculated use of Nazi language are featuring in what is otherwise a lacklustre campaign.

For the European elections there's the need to talk about Europe. To put forward a programme. Instead, I just see manifestos with the Centre that is neither on the Right or the Left (*). Big posters with more Left, more Right, more Moderate than the Centre Left. So many big faces with "bimbi" in tow (but was it not forbidden?). Nothing about Europe. It's not an election campaign, but a road map.
Brussels is the cemetery of the elephants. The most deficient get sent abroad as has happened with Albertini and Occhetto. It's a "Club Med" to have a holiday well away from national political crises. The unpresentables, convicted like Pomicino, or on trial like Mastella, are rewarded with the highest salary in Europe. Is this Europe useful to us? We know nothing about Europe. The European Commission has no power. If it doesn't even manage to get the "Rete 4" verdict respected. To get Fede out of our hair.
Obscure European functionaries place their signature (like taking dictation) and every year send billions of Euro to Campania, Calabria and Sicily. Our money, paid with our taxes. No real control from Europe. No verification from the Government and from Parliament. Guess where the money lands up. Guess why the Lega stays in religious silence. Billions of life annuities for organised crime while there's a lack of money for Abruzzo, for schools, for security, for health. For everything! Even for the flying squad police who can only give a single truncheon blow before going on strike.
In Italy, the dialect is coming back. We no longer know how to speak Italian. When they go to Europe, our representatives express themselves in gestures. The European Central Bank does what it wants. Economic policy, capital flows, investments are decided by a group of people. Who are these people? Who gives them the authority to cause the failure of rice cultivation in Italy or the wine production in another country? It's a Europe founded on the euro, a supermarket that always has new shelving. Without a common social policy, without an army. A Europe occupied by the Americans since 1945. From 63% of voters in 1979, it went down to 45.7% in 2004. The European voter is starting to disappear. Participation is born from knowledge, from transparency. Raise your hand if you know which laws have been voted on in the European Parliament and why they were put forward.
To change Europe, there's a need for new faces, for new air. Luigi De Magistris and Sonia Alfano are my candidates for Europe. If they are elected they have guaranteed me that they will make visible on the Internet all the funding assigned to Italy (8 to 9 billion euro a year), who gets it, and what they really do with it. And this for the whole of their period of office. Luigi and Sonia are honest people who are presenting themselves as independents for Italia dei Valori.

Despite an entire night of non-stop negotiations in Angela Merkel's Chancellery, there is still no plan in place to save Opel from following GM into bankruptcy. The problem, say Berlin politicians, is a lack of transparency -- and a surprise 300 million euro demand -- from the Americans.

By the end of the night, following almost 11 hours of negotiations aimed at finding a way to save the crisis-plagued carmaker Opel from the clutches of bankruptcy, Germany's political elite looked exhausted. It was 4:15 a.m. on Thursday morning by the time the team emerged from the Chancellery, and most eyes had dark rings under them. Finance Minster Peer Steinbrück even mumbled something about how desperately he needed sleep.

Chancellor Angela Merkel (third from left) with members of her cabinet during late night negotiations on the future of Opel in the Chancellery on Wednesday night. But exhaustion wasn't the only problem. The talks, as quickly became clear, had failed. And as deep and dark as the rings under most eyes were, the flash of anger was likewise unmistakable -- anger at Germany's negotiating partners from the US.

Roland Koch, governor of the state of Hesse, which plays host to Opel headquarters, complained that the American role in the negotiations "was not exactly helpful." Economics Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg said "once again General Motors confronted us with surprises."

In its annual report released on Thursday, Amnesty International scolds China and the United States for human rights violations. In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, AI head Irene Khan warns that the global economic crisis is leading Western governments to put the push for universal human rights on the back burner.

 Amnesty International warns that the global financial crisis is distracting governments and that humanitarian crises and human rights issues are being put on the back burner. SPIEGEL ONLINE: The past year has been totally dominated by the global recession. That's even reflected in your annual report. How has it affected the human rights situation around the world?

Khan: We are seeing a catastrophe. After years of going down, the number of people in poverty is growing again. We saw social uprisings across Africa and China -- and very harsh repression by governments that left many protesters dead. Food shortages allowed several governments, among others Zimbabwe and North Korea, to use food as a political weapon.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Could that have been prevented?

Khan: Leading governments have been distracted by the recession. Humanitarian crises, like in Darfur and Palestine, do not get the attention they deserve. The poorest are hardest hit by the economic crisis, but all the thought and investment goes to shore up the economy and the banking system in the West. Human rights are put on a backburner.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is it surprising to you that Western politicians think of their own countries first?

Palestinians losing out in access to vital shared aquifer in the occupied territories

A deepening drought in the Middle East is aggravating a dispute over water resources after the World Bank found that Israel is taking four times as much water as the Palestinians from a vital shared aquifer.

The region faces a fifth consecutive year of drought this summer, but the World Bank report found huge disparities in water use between Israelis and Palestinians, although both share the mountain aquifer that runs the length of the occupied West Bank. Palestinians have access to only a fifth of the water supply, while Israel, which controls the area, takes the rest, the bank said.

Israelis use 240 cubic metres of water a person each year, against 75 cubic metres for West Bank Palestinians and 125 for Gazans, the bank said. Increasingly, West Bank Palestinians must rely on water bought from the Israeli national water company, Mekorot.

KABUL, May 26 (Reuters) - An Afghan who has spent over six years at the U.S. military's Guantanamo Bay prison was only around 12-years-old when he was detained, not 16 or 17 as his official record says, an Afghan rights group said on Tuesday.

Interviews with the family of Mohammed Jawad, who like many poor Afghans does not know his exact age or birthday, showed he was probably not even a teenager when he was arrested in 2002, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission said.

He was picked up by Afghan police in connection with a grenade attack in Kabul in which two U.S. soldiers and their Afghan interpreter were wounded. He was transferred to U.S. custody the same day and flown to Guantanamo in early 2003.

ISLAMABAD -- The U.S. is embarking on a $1 billion crash program to expand its diplomatic presence in Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan, another sign that the Obama administration is making a costly, long-term commitment to war-torn South Asia, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

The White House has asked Congress for -- and seems likely to receive -- $736 million to build a new U.S. embassy in Islamabad, along with permanent housing for U.S. government civilians and new office space in the Pakistani capital.

The scale of the projects rivals the giant U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, which was completed last year after construction delays at a cost of $740 million.

LONDON (Reuters) - Photographs of Iraqi prisoner abuse which U.S. President Barack Obama does not want released include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper reported on Thursday.

The images are among photographs included in a 2004 report into prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison conducted by U.S. Major General Antonio Taguba.

Taguba included allegations of rape and sexual abuse in his report, and on Wednesday he confirmed to the Daily Telegraph that images supporting those allegations were also in the file.

"These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency," Taguba, who retired in January 2007, was quoted as saying in the paper.

Moscow (RIA Novosti) May 28, 2009
Russian arms exports are expected to increase by $700-$800 mln in 2009 despite the global credit crunch, state arms exporter Rosoboronexport said on Wednesday.

"Rosoboronexport sells an additional $700-800 million [worth of weaponry] every year. Despite the crisis, 2009 will be no exception," company official Valery Varlamov said.

The arms export monopoly sold $6.75 billion worth of arms in 2008, and earlier said its defense order portfolio was worth $27 billion.

"We could have signed deals worth a total of $50 billion, but we did not do this, and settled for $27 billion. We believe this figure is realistic," the official said.

Combat aircraft have a 50% share in sales of Russian weaponry, followed by air defense systems, military equipment for ground forces, and naval equipment.

South Korean and US troops have gone on higher alert after North Korea said it was scrapping the treaty that halted the Korean War more than 50 years ago.

Seoul's defence ministry said it would increase reconnaissance operations over North Korea.

North Korea recently tested a nuclear device and several short-range missiles but no significant troop movements within the country have been reported.

The UN Security Council is discussing a response to North Korea's nuclear test.

HONG KONG -- Worried about heavy reliance on imported oil, Chinese officials have drafted automotive fuel economy standards that are even more stringent than those outlined by President Obama last week, Chinese experts with a detailed knowledge of the plans said on Wednesday.

The new plan would require automakers in China to improve fuel economy by an additional 18 percent by 2015, said An Feng, a leading architect of China's existing fuel economy regulations who is now the president of the Innovation Center for Energy and Transportation, a nonprofit group in Beijing.
----
The average fuel economy of family vehicles in China is already higher than in the United States, mainly because cars in China tend to be considerably smaller than those in the United States -- and are getting even smaller because of recent tax changes.

A recent study by Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies reports that if humans commit to the restoration effort, most ecosystems can recover from very major disruption within decades to half-centuries. The study was written by Holly P. Jones and Oswald J. Schmitz and will appear in the June edition of the journal PLoS ONE. According to the study, researchers compiled information from 240 independent studies conducted since 1910 that examined large, human-scale ecosystems recovery following the termination of both human and naturally imposed disruption.

Researchers grouped the data into seven broad aquatic and terrestrial types of ecosystems, and disruptions such as deforestation, hurricane, invasive species, oil spoils, power plant and sea trawling. Most of the studies measured multiple response variables, which researched grouped into three categories: ecosystem function, animal community, and plant community. The researchers evaluated the recovery of each of the variables in terms of the time it took for them to return to their original state as determined by each study's author. The study also assessed whether recovery times were related to the magnitude of the disturbance.

Reportedly, 83 studies demonstrated recovery for all variables; 90 demonstrated a mixture of recovered and non-recovered variables; 67 demonstrated no recovery for any variable; and 15 percent of all the ecosystems in the analysis are beyond recovery.
The average recovery time was 20 years or less, and reportedly did not exceed more than 56 years. It was found that recovery from human disturbances was slower than natural disturbances, such as hurricanes. Recovery following agricultural, logging, and multiple stressors was significantly slower than all of other disturbance types.

A German town will become the first in the world to be powered by animal waste when it launches a biogas network this year.

Lünen, north of Dortmund, will use cow and horse manure as well as other organic material from local farms to provide cheap and sustainable electricity for its 90,000 residents.

Biogas is already used around the world - it will power buses in Oslo from September - but Lünen claims to be the only town to build a dedicated biogas network.

Material such as animal slurry and spoiled crops from local farms will be fed into heated tanks, where natural fermentation will break it down into methane and carbon dioxide - the same basic ingredients as natural gas. This biogas can then be burned to generate electricity and heat in a combined heat and power plant (CHP) before the heat is distributed across the town through a new biogas pipeline, which is being built underground.

The plant can produce 6.8MW, enough to power and heat 26,000 houses. According to Peter Kindt, director of Alfagy Ltd, which distributes CHP plants, the Lünen network could provide 30-40% of the town's heat and electricity needs.

At the very end of World War II, Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler still hoped that state-of-the-art technology could turn the tide in his favor. One of those projects, the Messerschmitt jet fighter, found a home in a remote corner of eastern Germany. But it was too late.

It took four and a half years, but finally, on March 20, 1944, World War II -- and more specifically, the armaments industry -- came to a remote corner of eastern Germany called the Lausitz. As the Allies flew an ever-increasing number of air raids over Germany's industrial and urban centers, large weapons factories in Nazi Germany began an exhaustive search for suitable places to relocate, sites as inconspicuous and isolated as possible. Indeed, by 1943 Hermann Göring, commander of the Luftwaffe, had already forged plans to relocate the aviation industry to areas the Allies were unlikely to bomb.

Irregular verbs, rebellious participles, arbitrary genders - French is a fiendishly difficult language to master, all grammarians agree. And what if its very complexity explained the success of French mathematicians?

There are times when you have to laugh at grammarians. They describe French as a horribly difficult language, full of complicated knots that only a lace maker could pick apart. They make a living out of highlighting everything that is contradictory or uncertain in our beloved Gallic tongue, which is presented as a tissue of nutty expressions, replete with irregular verbs, rebellious participles that refuse to agree, uncontrollable adjectives, singular plurals and outmoded tenses. In short, if you believed their descriptions, you would think that French was a dog's dinner.

Take genders for example. There is no doubt that French genders are completely arbitrary, whereas in Hungarian, there is no such thing as a `masculine' or `feminine' common noun, nor is there in English. Ooh Hungarian! Ooh English! Neuters of the world, come forth and unite! Well all right, there is no intelligent reason for "le bureau" and "la Rose," or "le lys" -- and if that bothers the Magyars, big deal!

How does a matriarchy really work? Argentinian writer Ricardo Coler decided to find out and spent two months with the Mosuo in southern China. "Women have a different way of dominating," the researcher told SPIEGEL ONLINE.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Coler, you are from Argentina, where macho behavior is not exactly unheard of. What was it like living for two months in the matriarchical society of the Mosuo in China?

Coler: I wanted to know what happened in a society where women determine how things are done. How do women tick when, from birth onwards, their societal position allows them to decide everything? We men know what a man is, we put that together quickly -- but what constitutes a woman? Although, I didn't get any wiser on that point.

... Simply exposing people to counterarguments may not accomplish much, he said, and may inflame antagonisms. <...>

The larger point is that liberals and conservatives often form judgments through flash intuitions that aren't a result of a deliberative process. The crucial part of the brain for these judgments is the medial prefrontal cortex, which has more to do with moralizing than with rationality. If you damage your prefrontal cortex, your I.Q. may be unaffected, but you'll have trouble harrumphing.

One of the main divides between left and right is the dependence on different moral values. For liberals, morality derives mostly from fairness and prevention of harm. For conservatives, morality also involves upholding authority and loyalty -- and revulsion at disgust. <...>

So how do we discipline our brains to be more open-minded, more honest, more empirical? A start is to reach out to moderates on the other side -- ideally eating meals with them, for that breaks down "us vs. them" battle lines that seem embedded in us. (In ancient times we divided into tribes; today, into political parties.) The Web site www.civilpolitics.org is an attempt to build this intuitive appreciation for the other side's morality, even if it's not our morality. <...>

Thus persuasion may be most effective when built on human interactions. Gay rights were probably advanced largely by the public's growing awareness of friends and family members who were gay. ...

Hi, I don't normally use my lists to promote things, but this is worth having a look; reality TV of a different order,  Eion Bailey and his collaborators are film makers, documentarians and activists, trying to make a difference in the world. I met them last summer at the Convergence conference in Iquitos, where I learned about their rather amazing project.  The concept is unique and original; identify a community with a need (e.g., a school, a sanitation system, etc.), put together a group of multitalented folks with requisite skills, and work in collaboration with the community to address and solve the problem, within 10 days! Make a documentary of the project, and that becomes the 'episode' in the series.  I was blown away by their pilot film, with a community in the mountains around the Urubamba valley in Peru.  Now they are on the cusp of selling the program to a major network, and they need our help, both to sell it and to continue this important work. This is reality TV, alright, but of a completely different order than what we associate with that term; self-indulgent, self-preoccupied clueless gringos pretending to rough it in some third world venue.  This project is 180 degrees from that, really very inspiring and moving. Look at the web  site, watch the movie, and let your friends know about it. These folks are being the change we want to see in the world!

Imagine This! TV

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

Up to 250,000 children have autism or a related condition on the autistic spectrum, but have not been diagnosed, researchers say. They are in addition to the 500,000 children who are known to be affected.

The authoritative study by Professor Simon Baron-Cohen and colleagues of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, sets a new benchmark for future studies of the prevalence of autism in the UK, and has grave implications for education and other public services which are already overstretched. The findings imply that many more young people may need intensive lifelong support.

But the authors dismissed suggestions that changes in lifestyle or the environment were behind the rise. They put it down to improved awareness and detection, and the inclusion of milder conditions within the diagnosis.

I've been trying to collect my thoughts regarding the "medical vs. social models of disability", (h/t In Wales)

In the UK the medical model prevails - it focuses on the individual as the problem that needs fixing and to be made as normal as possible.

The social model which disability campaigners promote focuses on society as being the source of the barriers that cause disability, rather than focusing on the individual as the problem.  

Autism is a disorder of social functioning which makes it difficult for sufferers to form relationships and to communicate with other people. In the 1990s it was recognised that there was a spectrum of cases from the severely to the mildly affected, and the diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome was included to cover those at the milder end.

We've seen it all (and more) before. But this nude picture of Carla Bruni is still expected to fetch a high price when it goes up for auction in Berlin next week.

Only ten numbered copies exist of the image of the French First Lady taken by U.S. photographer Pamela Hanson, and this one is being sold with a reserve price of around £3,000.

Indeed, she is decidedly displeased, angry even, that she was not invited to join President Obama and France's president, Nicolas Sarkozy, next week at commemorations of the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, according to reports published in Britain's mass-circulation tabloid newspapers on Wednesday. Pointedly, Buckingham Palace did not deny the reports.

The queen, who is 83, is the only living head of state who served in uniform during World War II. As Elizabeth Windsor, service number 230873, she volunteered as a subaltern in the Women's Auxiliary Territorial Service, training as a driver and a mechanic. Eventually, she drove military trucks in support roles in England.

While serving, she met the supreme Allied commander for the D-Day landings, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, and developed a fondness for him, according to several biographies. This prompted Queen Elizabeth, who was crowned in June 1953, to say in later years that he was the American president with whom she felt most at ease.

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.