A rift between Britain and France deepened last night as three European countries launched a surprise Middle East initiative to halt the violence and hold out prospects of an eventual long term settlement.

The plan, agreed by France, Italy and Spain, was announced by the Spanish Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, yesterday at a summit with French President Jacques Chirac. Mr Zapatero said stability and security in the Middle East meant stability and security for the world.

The initiative clearly caught Downing Street by surprise. Asked if the Prime Minister was aware of it, his spokesman replied laconically: "We will wait and see."

At the core of the plan - to be put to next month's EU summit - is an immediate ceasefire with an international mission to monitor it in Gaza; a boost for efforts already under way to form a new "national unity" Palestinian government that can earn international recognition; prisoner exchanges to release the three soldiers whose abduction sparked war in Lebanon and fighting in Gaza this summer; and talks between Israel and the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Hundreds of thousands of people in Russia will lose their jobs after President Vladimir Putin approved plans to ban foreigners from trading at street stalls and markets. Immigrants from former Soviet republics such as Georgia, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan dominate markets in Russia, mainly selling fruit and vegetables.

The new measures, which were condemned as discriminatory and ill-conceived by human rights and migrants' activists, will come into effect next year said the prime minister, Mikhail Fradkov, in a televised meeting with Mr Putin.

The president last month demanded that the government act to ensure that the interests of "native Russians" engaged in small trade were better protected.

The move came on the heels of a political crisis with Georgia that flared when Tbilisi arrested and deported four alleged Russian spies. After that a number of Georgian businesses in Russia were closed in a nationalist backlash that one western diplomat described as "openly racist".

· Bid to thwart couples from shopping for liberal rules
· Citizens could face laws of non European courts

A European Union plan to streamline divorce proceedings is coming under fire from Sweden, which is warning that the change could pave the way for socially conservative countries to block divorces.

In a highly critical report on a European commission initiative, the Swedish justice ministry has made the claim that divorce laws from a non-EU country such as Iran could be applied in European courts.

The Swedish intervention has come in response to a commission green paper which is designed to end the practice of "divorce shopping", in which a separating spouse exploits liberal laws in another EU country.

Guardian: Cracked it!

Three million Britons have been issued with the new hi-tech passport, designed to frustrate terrorists and fraudsters. So why did Steve Boggan and a friendly computer expert find it so easy to break the security codes?

Six months ago, with the help of a rather scary computer expert, I deconstructed the life of an airline passenger simply by using information garnered from a boarding-pass stub he had thrown into a dustbin on the Heathrow Express. By using his British Airways frequent-flyer number and buying a ticket in his name on the airline's website, we were able to access his personal data, passport number, date of birth and nationality. Based on this information, using publicly available databases, we found out where he lived, his profession, all his academic qualifications and even how much his house was worth.

It would have been only a short hop to stealing his identity, committing fraud in his name and generally ruining his life.

Great news then, we thought, that the UK had just begun to issue new, ultra-secure passports, incorporating tiny microchips to store the holder's details and a digital description of their physical features (known in the jargon as biometrics). These, the argument went, would make identity theft much more difficult and pave the way for the government's proposed ID cards in 2008 or 2009.

Today, some three million such passports have been issued, and they don't look so secure. I am sitting with my scary computer man and we have just sucked out all the supposedly secure data and biometric information from three new passports and displayed it all on a laptop computer.

The UK Identity and Passport Service website says the new documents are protected by "an advanced digital encryption technique". So how come we have the information? What could criminals or terrorists do with it? And what could it mean for the passports and the ID cards that are meant to follow?

First it is necessary to explain why the new passports were introduced, and how they work.After the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre, in which fake passports were used, the US decided it wanted foreign citizens who presented themselves at its borders to have more secure "machine-readable" identity documents. It told 27 countries that participated in a visa waiver programme that citizens with passports issued after the 26th of last month must have micro-chipped biometric passports or would have to apply for a US visa. Among those 27 countries are the major EU members, and other friendly nations ranging from Andorra and Iceland to Singapore, Japan and Brunei. The UK, of course, is also included.

Standards for the new passports were set by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) in 2003 and adopted by the waiver countries and the US. The ICAO recommended that passports should contain facial biometrics, though countries could introduce fingerprints at a later date. All these would be stored on a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) microchip, which can be accessed from a short distance using radio waves. Similar chips are commonly found in retail, where they are used for stock control.

Fatally, however, the ICAO suggested that the key needed to access the data on the chips should be comprised of, in the following order, the passport number, the holder's date of birth and the passport expiry date, all of which are contained on the printed page of the passport on a "machine readable zone." When an immigration official swipes the passport through a reader, this feeds in the key, which allows a microchip reader to communicate with the RFID chip. The data this contains, including the holder's picture, is then displayed on the official's screen. The assumption at this stage is that this document is as authentic as it is super-secure. And, as we shall see later, this could be highly significant.

Die Finanzaffäre bei Siemens reicht nach Erkenntnissen der Staatsanwaltschaft bis in das Spitzenmanagement des Konzerns. Die Fahnder prüfen nun, ob Siemens durch Korruption an Aufträge für die Olympischen Spiele 2004 in Athen und andere Projekte gekommen ist oder kommen wollte. Ermittlungsbehörden aus Deutschland, der Schweiz und Italien haben seit dem vergangenen Jahr nach und nach ein geheimes, international weit verzweigtes Finanzsystem enthüllt. Nach den bisherigen Ergebnissen der Fahnder diente es dazu, von 2002 an bis heute mindestens 20 Millionen Euro in schwarze Kassen in der Schweiz und Liechtenstein zu leiten. Diese Mittel sollten, so der Verdacht, vor allem dazu eingesetzt werden, im Ausland Schmiergeld für Großaufträge zu zahlen. Die Münchner Staatsanwaltschaft ermittelt gegen zwölf Personen, darunter zehn aktive oder frühere Mitarbeiter von Siemens. [...] [...] Die Staatsanwaltschaft prüft in diesem Zusammenhang, wie die SZ weiter erfuhr, zahlreiche Vorhaben von Siemens. Das betrifft unter anderem ein Projekt bei den Olympischen Sommerspielen 2004 in Athen sowie Telekommunikationsvorhaben in Ägypten, Saudi-Arabien, Kuwait, Indonesien und Vietnam. In Kuwait war nach den Erkenntnissen der Ermittler das dortige Ministerium für Kommunikation der Ansprechpartner. Aufgefallen sind den Fahndern auch ein Vorhaben in der Karibik sowie zahlreiche weitere Projekte.

According to the state prosecutor's office, the financial affair at Siemens extends into the group's top management. Authorities are now investigating whether Siemens obtained or attempted to obtain orders for the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens and other projects through corruption. Since last year, investigators from Germany, Switzerland and Italy have gradually uncovered a secret and internationally far-reaching finance system. According to the investigators' findings to date, this was used to channel at least € 20 million into secret accounts in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. The suspicion is that these funds were intended to be used abroad as bribes to obtain large contracts. The Munich state prosecutor's office is pursuing investigations of twelve persons, including ten current or former Siemens employees. [...] [...] As the SZ also learned, the prosecutor's office is also scrutinizing numerous Siemens projects. Among others, these include a project for the 2004 summer Olympic Games in Athens as well as telecommunications projects in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Indonesia and Vietnam. In Kuwait, according to investigative findings, that nation's Ministry for Communications was the negotiating party. Investigators' attention has also been drawn to a project in the Caribbean and numerous others.

EUobserver: Parliament examines 'joke or very serious' fraud (15.11.200)

European Parliament president Josep Borrell has called for an investigation into an email sent to the assembly's 732 MEPs indicating a potential misuse of public funds.

In a series of electronic messages, a person from within the parliament instructs a third person on how to get paintings he purchased at an exhibition at the seat of the European People's Party next to the parliament, paid for by the party.

In the emails, an MEP's assistant from the centre-right EPP/ED group tells the private person to look for "a friend or middleman to send the invoices in his or her name and then give you the money. To have something paid by the EPP it is necessary to send the invoice to the EPP, Rue de Commerce 10/1000 Brussels."

Ségolène Royal on Thursday night celebrated winning the French Socialist party's presidential primary with a big majority of votes, boosting her bid to become the country's first woman president next May.

Her victory, hailed last night by one of her supporters in Paris as the "birth of a new Socialist party", helps her to dismiss criticisms that her candidacy was based more on style than substance and she lacked the experience to win the hearts of her party.

"I am conscious of having received this boost; to have been chosen in this way is something extraordinary," said Ms Royal, speaking from her home at Melle, the small village in her rural constituency of Poitou-Charente in western France.

"France is going to write a new page of its history. The country has a desire for change. I want to incarnate that change, to give it credibility and legitimacy, and I believe that this legitimacy has been offered to me tonight," she said.

Ms Royal had called for a big turnout in the party to give her the undisputed backing she needs to build as broad a church as possible on the left around her candidacy.

PARIS (Reuters) - Segolene Royal's quest to become France's first woman head of state took a giant leap forward on Friday when she was crowned as the Socialists' presidential candidate for next year's election.

Party officials said Royal won 60.62 percent of the vote in a Socialist primary ballot -- a result which is likely to silence many leftist critics who had portrayed her as a lightweight populist and inexperienced campaigner.

"The fact that I have been chosen in this way is something extraordinary," said Royal, smiling radiantly and visibly moved.

The video game industry's own clash of the titans reboots this week with the midnight launch of Sony's PlayStation 3 and Sunday's debut of Nintendo's Wii.
Full coverage

"I want to embody change and give it credibility and legitimacy. And I think today, I have received this legitimacy," she told reporters in her western France stronghold, where she is president of the Poitou-Charentes region.

France has taken a major step towards electing its first woman president.

At the same time Segolene Royal, in winning the Socialist nomination, has dealt a significant blow to the party's traditional left wing.

The campaign has drawn comparisons to US politics. The three televised debates may have been dull, but the off-screen mud-slinging would have been worthy of the American presidential election itself.

Internet users have devoured websites, such as one called the "dustbin of the primaries", to read the latest blogs rubbishing opposing candidates.

Segolene Royal drew whoops of laughter at her final rally in Paris this week by attacking the "male chauvinism" of her competitors.

Laurent Fabius had reacted to her presidential bid by asking: "Who's going to look after the children?"

France's ruling centre-right UMP party erupted in acrimony on Thursday as supporters of its leader, Nicolas Sarkozy, jeered one of his cabinet colleagues, exposing fierce presidential rivalry.

The vocal display of rancour on the right contrasted sharply with the opposition Socialists, who were calmly voting in a primary to choose between Ségolène Royal, Laurent Fabius and Dominique Strauss-Kahn for their presidential candidate.

Supporters of Mr Sarkozy, interior minister, booed and whistled a speech by Michèle Alliot-Marie, defence minister, at a UMP conference to agree a manifesto for parliamentary elections next year.

While Mr Sarkozy has a suffocating grip on the party, there are dissenters who remain loyal to President Jacques Chirac and share the head of state's dislike of the interior minister.

The boos for Ms Alliot-Marie came amid rumours that Mr Chirac may stand for a record third term in a bid to stop Mr Sarkozy replacing him in the Elysée palace.

Bernadette Chirac, France's first lady, fuelled the rumours by telling the Nouvelle Observateur that her husband would exercise his right as a former president to join the Conseil constitutionnel, the country's highest court, "in five years".

Ségolène Royal's battle to become the first woman president of France begins in earnest today, after the Socialist party last night overwhelmingly endorsed her as their candidate in next April's election.

The "madonna of the opinion polls", whose personal battle against a domineering military colonel father and the perceived sexism of her party's old guard has fascinated France even more than her policies, secured a decisive victory after a rancorous US-style primary.

....
Her endorsement marks a change in how the Socialists will position themselves to wrest power from the right - nearly 12 years under Jacques Chirac has left a legacy of unemployment, stagnation, debt and unrest on its run-down estates.

With Mr Chirac now the most unpopular president in the fifth republic's history, the left is hoping to win for the first time since Mr Mitterrand. Ms Royal appears to represent a third way for the French left, outspokenly declaring her admiration for Tony Blair, seen by many as a traitor to the socialist cause.

The US Senate has overwhelmingly voted to pass a controversial deal to share civilian nuclear technology with India.

The deal was proposed over a year ago as a way to boost ties with a strategic ally. In exchange, India must allow the US to inspect its civilian reactors.

President George W Bush hailed the move as bringing India into the "nuclear non-proliferation mainstream".

However, the bill still has to clear a number of hurdles before it becomes law and is implemented.

One condition would require India to fully and actively participate in efforts to contain Iran's nuclear programme before the US will offer Delhi help.

The Air Force has conducted more than 2,000 airstrikes in Afghanistan over the past six months, a sharp increase in bombing that reflects the growing demand for American air cover since NATO has assumed a larger ground combat role, Air Force officials said.

The intensifying air campaign has focused on southern Afghanistan, where NATO units, primarily from Britain, Canada and the Netherlands, as well as American Special Forces have been engaging in the heaviest and most frequent ground combat with Taliban rebels since the invasion five years ago.

The NATO forces are mostly operating without heavy armor or artillery support, and as Taliban resistance has continued, more air support has been used to compensate for the lightness of the units, Air Force officials said. Most of the strikes have come during "close air support" missions, where the bombers patrol the area and respond to calls from ground units in combat rather than performing planned strikes.

On a recent 11-hour mission that included a reporter for The New York Times, a B-1 bomber orbited at 20,000 feet, responding to radio calls from American and Canadian troops who asked the plane to use its radar to watch for insurgent forces and to be prepared to drop bombs.

The U.S. midterm elections last week provided a lot of disturbing news about the reliability of electronic voting - starting, naturally, with Florida. In a Congressional race there between Vern Buchanan, a Republican, and Christine Jennings, a Democrat, the machines in Sarasota County reported that more than 18,000 people, or one in eight, did not choose either candidate. That "undervote" of nearly 13 percent is hard to believe, given that only about 2.5 percent of absentee voters did not vote in that race. If there was a glitch, it may have made all the difference. Jennings trails Buchanan by about 400 votes.

The serious questions about the Buchanan-Jennings race only add to the high level of mistrust that many people already feel about electronic voting. More than half of the states, including California, New York, Ohio and Illinois, require that electronic voting machines produce voter-verified paper records, which help ensure that votes are properly recorded. But Congress has resisted all appeals to pass a law that would ensure that electronic voting is honest and accurate across the United States.

Fortunately, that may be about to change. With the Democrats now in control of both houses, there is an excellent chance of passing tough electronic voting legislation. Representative Rush Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, had more than 200 co-sponsors for a strong bill before the midterm elections, and support is likely to grow in the new Congress. In the Senate, Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who will be chairwoman of the Rules and Administration Committee, which oversees elections, plans to develop a similar bill.

CAMP EITUTA, Burma -- In a burgeoning encampment here on Burma's eastern frontier, Hay Nay Tha, a 30-year-old mother of three, awakens in the darkness most nights to the sound of her children's screams.

"They keep having nightmares about our journey here," she said.

That journey, Hay recalled, began when she was four months pregnant and government soldiers torched her village and forced local farmers off their land. It ended four weeks later, after her husband died of malaria en route to this camp. She and her children arrived here this summer dehydrated and exhausted. Hay soon went into early labor with a stillborn son.

"To be honest," the copper-skinned woman said, shyly gazing down at her hands, "I am having nightmares, too."

Nightmares of all kinds are rife in this camp, where new clusters of villagers arrive almost daily, a consequence of Burma's largest military offensive against its own people in more than a decade, according to aid groups and Western diplomats. The offensive has targeted minorities such as Hay, a member of the restive Karen ethnic group, which has long maintained a measure of autonomy.

According to estimates by relief groups, Burmese forces have burned down more than 200 civilian villages here in Karen state, destroyed crops and placed land mines along key jungle passages to prevent refugees from returning to their home villages. Dozens of people have died, and at least 20,000 civilians have been displaced over the past eight to 10 months.

"What is now going on in Burma are crimes against humanity," said Sunai Phasuk, head Burma consultant for New York-based Human Rights Watch. "The military government has significantly stepped up their systemic policy of violence against the ethnic Karen with this offensive. We're talking about a mounting disaster."

Burma's military leaders have historically been secretive about their actions. But observers say they are attempting to build a broad security cordon around their new capital near the inland city of Pyinmana, located only a few miles from the border of Karen state. The result has been an extraordinary use of force to clear out existing villages in the area.

[...]

A fiercely independent group of approximately 3 million people, the Karen speak a separate language from most Burmese, use their own ancient writing system and have traditionally opposed the military junta. Two decades of sporadic government campaigns have already driven hundreds of thousands of Karen and other refugees into neighboring Thailand, where at least 150,000 now live in official camps and an estimated 1.5 million dwell illegally.

WaPo: Bush Choice for Family-Planning Post Criticized

The Bush administration has appointed a new chief of family-planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services who worked at a Christian pregnancy-counseling organization that regards the distribution of contraceptives as "demeaning to women."

Eric Keroack, medical director for A Woman's Concern, a nonprofit group based in Dorchester, Mass., will become deputy assistant secretary for population affairs in the next two weeks, department spokeswoman Christina Pearson said yesterday.

Keroack, an obstetrician-gynecologist, will advise Secretary Mike Leavitt on matters such as reproductive health and adolescent pregnancy. He will oversee $283 million in annual family-planning grants that, according to HHS, are "designed to provide access to contraceptive supplies and information to all who want and need them with priority given to low-income persons."

The appointment, which does not require Senate confirmation, was the latest provocative personnel move by the White House since Democrats won control of Congress in this month's midterm elections. President Bush last week pushed the Senate to confirm John R. Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations and this week renominated six candidates for appellate court judgeships who have previously been blocked by lawmakers. Democrats said the moves belie Bush's post-election promises of bipartisanship.

The Keroack appointment angered many family-planning advocates, who noted that A Woman's Concern supports sexual abstinence until marriage, opposes contraception and does not distribute information promoting birth control at its six centers in eastern Massachusetts.

An Army specialist who admitted that he and a group of other U.S. soldiers raped a 14-year-old girl and killed her and her family in an Iraqi village was sentenced to 90 years in prison yesterday, by far the longest sentence for a U.S. soldier in connection with the death of an Iraqi civilian since the war began in 2003.

Spec. James P. Barker, 23, could be eligible for parole in 20 years, as part of a plea agreement with prosecutors that spares him the possibility of a death sentence. Barker has indicated he will testify against other soldiers in the case, some of whom face the death penalty.

Barker yesterday became one of 16 U.S. troops sentenced to prison time for the deaths of Iraqi civilians during the war, and he received a sentence of more than three times the length of the next-longest sentence in any case that has concluded. Two soldiers are serving 25-year sentences in unrelated homicide cases.

This guy needs some serious therapy while he is in prison.

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

Six bodies have been found amidst debris left by rioting in Nuku'alofa, capital of the Pacific nation of Tonga.

Hundreds of youths destroyed buildings and looted shops on Thursday, in protests sparked by government delays in implementing democratic reforms.

The government has now said new elections will be held in 2008 to elect a more democratic parliament.

Was it worth six lives?

Meanwhile, Tonga has apparently asked New Zealand to send troops to restore law and order.  I am deeply uncomfortable about this. Stopping people from killing one another is one thing, but this smacks of helping to prop up a corrupt feudal regime, and raises the prospect of kiwi troops gunning down Tongans to keep a kleptocrat in power. That is not what we are meant to be about down here...

Fine coffee beans may be Ethiopia's most precious natural resource. But Starbucks is standing in the way of the country's efforts to trademark its gourmet product. The row is escalating.

Think you know what's in your coffee cup? It used to be simple: ground coffee beans and water. Now though, your average robusto has given way to a grande double non-fat latte with a shot of vanilla syrup. The 20 cent cup of mud has turned into a $4 coffee experience.

Still, even as coffee has gone upscale, the barista whipping forth your drink still works with coffee beans. How they find their way from plantations to your mug is a quintessential tale of globalization, complete with giant wealthy corporations, poor local farmers and conflicts over who is entitled to what.

The most recent dispute in this economic food chain involves Starbucks and the Ethiopian government. The giant coffee franchise opposes Ethiopia's efforts to trademark the names of its most famous coffee regions Sidamo, Yirgacheffe and Harar. Starbucks, after all, is already using those names to sell coffee for top dollar across the globe. A clear case of a developing country defending itself against rapacious Western business interests, right? Oxfam, UK-based development agency, thinks so. It is championing Ethiopia's move and has embarked on a massive media campaign accusing Starbucks of keeping the small farmer under its thumb.

"Harar and Sidamo have sold in coffee shops for up to $24 and $26 per pound," Seth Petchers, coffee lead for Oxfam's Make Trade Fair campaign, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "Farmers who grow these specialty coffees get as little as $.60 to $1.10 per pound.... We want to work to find a win-win solution." Oxfam estimates that over time Ethiopia's coffee industry would benefit from an additional $88 million annually were the trade marking plan to go through.

Nobel prize-winning US economist Milton Friedman has died at the age of 94.

Mr Friedman died in San Francisco, a spokesman for his family said. The cause of death is not yet known.

Mr Friedman, who coined the phrase "there's no such thing as a free lunch", was awarded the Nobel Prize for economics in 1976.

Known as the high priest of monetarism, his ideas gained popularity in the 1980s when they influenced the policies of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.

'Intellectual'

The leaders were won over by Mr Friedman's idea that the supply of money was the key factor in determining economic growth and the rate of inflation.

Lady Thatcher paid tribute to Mr Friedman, calling him "an intellectual freedom fighter".

While on a camping trip to Washington, Hite and a Tampa friend, Kenny Stadelman, became trapped Nov. 6 when last week's floods washed out part of the only road into the Hoh Rain Forest in Olympic National Park.

The park service rescued the men, along with two stranded park workers, after two days. But a 75-foot-long, 25-foot-deep section of Hoh Road is gone, and Hite's rental car, along with the workers' private vehicles, remain stuck inside the park.

Federal highway officials are surveying damage at the park, but park officials Wednesday said that no timeline has been established for road repair.

Back in Tampa, Hite's wife, Pat, worries that the couple will "have to pay rent on that car until it can be brought out, probably in the spring."

That would cost Hite an extra $20 to $27 per day for every day the car is trapped.

On its first day of broadcasting, Al-Jazeera International provided a fast-paced, first-rate lens to the Middle East and Africa. It also proved that it was indeed different from the BBC and CNN -- by ignoring some of the world's most-important news events.

Call it the Un-CNN. Imagine the BBC devoting 24 hours to special coverage of Africa and the Middle East. Picture that and it will give you a sense of the first day of broadcasting for al-Jazeera International (AJI), the English-language cousin of the channel the Bush administration loves to hate.

AJI has the look and feel of the BBC and rival Sky News. The visual identity -- graphics, backdrops, audio stingers, precise English and overall pacing -- are all straight from the BBC. There's an obvious reason for the similarity: Three-quarters of the on-air staff, and most of the management, come from British and American networks.

Al-Jazeera's critics have been waiting with sharpened knives for evidence of anti-American or anti-Israeli bias on the new channel, but none of that was evident in the first day of broadcasting. One thing was apparent, though: A self-conscious, sometimes excruciating, emphasis on being the non-Western voice. Like the old 7-Up campaign that positioned the lemon-lime soda as the alternative to Coca-Cola, al-Jazeera International is perhaps trying too hard to show it does not have the Western-centricism of CNN, the BBC and their counterparts.

(Cited this in afew's What culture am I from? diary, too, but fascinating enough to put here as well, I thought.)

Edward T. Hall, an anthropologist and the father of proxemics, even put numbers to the unspoken rules. He defined the invisible zones around us and attributed a range of distance to each one: intimate distance (6 to 18 inches); personal distance (18 inches to 4 feet); social distance (4 to 12 feet); and public distance (about 12 feet or more).

[Echoes of kcurie's "separation of three spaces"?]

<...>

According to scientists, personal space involves not only the invisible bubble around the body, but all the senses. People may feel their space is being violated when they experience an unwelcome sound, scent or stare: the woman on the bus squawking into her cellphone, the co-worker in the adjacent cubicle dabbing on cologne, or the man in the sandwich shop leering at you over his panini.

<...>

Preferences differ from culture to culture. Scholars have found that Americans, conquerors of the wild frontier, generally prefer more personal space than people in Mediterranean and Latin American cultures, and more than men in Arab countries.

<...> "There's an idea that you have the right to this space," she said, noting that it was born of a culture that prizes independence, privacy and capitalism.

Dr. Archer tells of a Brazilian man he interviewed who, when speaking to the American waiters with whom he worked, used to casually touch them for emphasis. The man's overtures of friendship toward his co-workers were always rejected and he wanted to know why. So when business was slow he observed how the Americans interacted. And eventually he arrived at this conclusion: Americans hate to be touched.

<...>

Researchers who observed the avatars (digital representations of the humans that control them) of participants in Second Life, a virtual reality universe, found that some of the avatars' physical behavior was in keeping with studies about how humans protect their personal space.

In other words, the digital beings adhered to some unspoken behavioral rules of humans even though they were but pixels on a screen.

The bits about conquering the wild frontiers and privacy and independence and capitalism and so on seems a bit cliché, but maybe there are kernels of truth in these clichés after all?

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

Scientists using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have discovered that dark energy is not a new constituent of space, but rather has been present for most of the universe's history. Dark energy is a mysterious repulsive force that causes the universe to expand at an increasing rate.

Investigators used Hubble to find that dark energy was already boosting the expansion rate of the universe as long as nine billion years ago. This picture of dark energy is consistent with Albert Einstein's prediction of nearly a century ago that a repulsive form of gravity emanates from empty space.

Data from Hubble provides supporting evidence that help astrophysicists to understand the nature of dark energy. This will allow scientists to begin ruling out some competing explanations that predict that the strength of dark energy changes over time.

Researchers also have found that the class of ancient exploding stars, or supernovae, used to measure the expansion of space today look remarkably similar to those that exploded nine billion years ago and are just now being seen by Hubble. This important finding gives additional credibility to the use of these supernovae for tracking the cosmic expansion over most of the universe's lifetime.

"Although dark energy accounts for more than 70 percent of the energy of the universe, we know very little about it, so each clue is precious," said Adam Riess, of the Space Telescope Science Institute and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Riess led one of the first studies to reveal the presence of dark energy in 1998 and is the leader of the current Hubble study. "Our latest clue is that the stuff we call dark energy was relatively weak, but starting to make its presence felt nine billion years ago."

To study the behavior of dark energy of long ago, Hubble had to peer far across the universe and back into time to detect supernovae. Supernovae can be used to trace the universe's expansion. This is analogous to seeing fireflies on a summer night. Fireflies glow with about the same brightness, so you can judge how they are distributed in the backyard by their comparative faintness or brightness, depending on their distance from you. Only Hubble can measure these ancient supernovae because they are too distant, and therefore too faint, to be studied by the largest ground-based telescopes.

In the fifties, there was a national football team that beat everyone, establishing a record for an unbroken series of wins still valid today, was the first non-British side to breat England at home (6:3 in Wembley), only lost the 1954 finals against West Germany, because of an out-of-form captain, but also because a goal of the latter was erroneously ruled off-side, pushed goals per match averages to levels not seen before or after, its captain shot more international goals than Pelé. (Also see this diary.)

This team was Hungary's "Golden Team", and its captain was Ferenc Puskás.

During the 1956 Revolution, he was in Bilbao, Spain on an away match with his club team, and with other Golden Team members, didn't return home. He came to Real Madrid, where he formed a phantastic duo with Alfredo di Stéfano. Older, he was coach of Panathinaikos Athen, which he led to the European Cup of Champions final in 1971 (there losaing to Cruyff's Ajax).

Both in Madrid and in Athens he was under dictatures, I never read of what he thought about that.

After 1989, he returned to Hungary. He was active in local football, but then became sick, after six years of hospital treatment, he died aged 79.

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

It was the night from hell for Lindsay Lohan at the World Music Awards.

She was visibly upset when the audience booed her every time she took to the stage, she fell down the stairs and was forced to abandon her role as main host of the ceremony.

The 20-year-old actress pulled out halfway through after tumbling down a flight of stairs backstage.

(...)Her role was from then on taken up by the individual awards presenters. Luckily, she was not seriously hurt - she was well enough to go partying afterwards, the only sign of injury a blue sticking plaster on a finger.

(...)But the true spectacle backstage was the freakshow surrounding Michael Jackson. He spent the evening locked in his dressing room with four minders. When it was his turn to go on stage, a blacked-out SUV reversed into the dressing room and ferried him the 100 metres to the stage.

Jacko had been expected to recreate Thriller in his first UK stage appearance for nine years, but R&B star Chris Brown performed it instead. Then a teenage choir appeared, miming to We Are The World. Jacko strolled out halfway through to sing just one line, but his voice cracked and faltered on the high notes. And that was it: exit to boos.