Germany contributed heavily to the World Wildlife Fund's "Dirty Thirty" list of most-polluting power stations in the European Union, landing six of its coal-fired plants in the top ten.

According to the latest survey by environmental group WWF, the only country with dirtier power plants than Germany was Greece.

Germany had six coal-burning plants among the top-ten most polluting sites in the European Union, the WWF survey showed. And it was tied with Britain for having the largest number of dirty electricity plants overall. Each country contributed ten plants to the total.

Overall, the WWF said, the Dirty Thirty in seven countries pumped out nearly 400 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2006. That's 10 per cent of all EU CO2 emissions.

PARIS, France (Reuters) -- Cheering crowds met French president-elect Nicolas Sarkozy at his first official engagement on Thursday, hours after police in Paris faced rioters chanting "Sarkozy fascist."

Sarkozy does not take over from President Jacques Chirac until May 16 but there have been clear signs the right-winger's promise of change in areas ranging from labor law to education policy will face significant opposition.

"Mr. Sarkozy has been elected. But I don't think that you can consider that there is a general agreement over his program or that he has the legitimacy to do just anything," Bernard Thibault, secretary general of the main CGT union, told Le Monde.

After winning the election runoff against Socialist Segolene Royal on Sunday, Sarkozy left for a two-day retreat near Malta aboard the luxury yacht of a billionaire friend, provoking ridicule and anger among opposition parties. (Watch Sarkozy's vacation make waves in French newspapers )

He returned to Paris overnight looking suntanned and relaxed, and appeared alongside Chirac on Thursday at a ceremony in central Paris to commemorate the victims of slavery. Sarkozy waved to the crowds but said nothing.

On Wednesday night, hundreds of police had faced off against rioters chanting "Sarkozy fascist, the people will have your hide!" just around the corner from where Thursday's ceremony took place.

Nuclear energy fuels hot debate among MEPs -  EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - MEPs have called on EU leaders to review the union's atomic treaty, Euratom, with many claiming the European Parliament must be given power to oversee the sensitive area, and others hoping to halt what they see as a nuclear renaissance in the bloc.

The moves are being debated as European legislators are set to vote today (10 May) on a report assessing the 50-year-old Euratom treaty, which paved the way to European nuclear cooperation.

The draft report, prepared by Lithuanian MEP Eugenijus Maldeikis from the rightist UEN group, calls for "adjustments" to the treaty to "restore the institutional imbalance in favour of parliament, which should be accorded a co-decision power in the nuclear field."

"We face the problem of democratic deficit," Mr Maldeikus said during the parliamentary debate yesterday, but he defended the 1957 legal document. Green MEPs, on the other hand, want to scrap the whole treaty.

According to Austrian green MEP Johannes Voggenhuber, the Euratom treaty is "a futuristic poem, which half of the EU states are not interested in." "The consensus from 1957 is not there anymore", he said.

PARIS: A proposal by Nicolas Sarkozy to gather the European, Middle Eastern, and North African countries of the strategic Mediterranean rim into an economic community along the lines of the early European Union has begun making waves even before the president-elect takes office.

The initiative, outlined by Sarkozy in a campaign speech in February, went largely unnoticed until he repeated it in his electoral victory address Sunday evening. Plans are still being drawn up, Sarkozy's aides said Thursday, but even at this early stage the proposal has cascading implications for the region.

Such a union, even if primarily economic, would necessarily involve the member countries in discussions of controversial issues like Turkish membership in the European Union and illegal immigration via North Africa. It would bring Israel and its Arab neighbors into a new assembly that Sarkozy apparently hopes could tackle the intractable problem of Middle East peace.

Initial reactions have ranged from enthusiasm in Spain to cautious approval in Israel to outrage in Turkey, which sees the proposal as a ploy to keep it out of the European Union.

"This cannot be an alternative to Turkish membership in the EU," Egeman Bagis, the chief foreign policy adviser to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, said in a telephone interview.

Turkey's ruling party rushed a package of major constitutional reforms through parliament on Thursday as it sought to end weeks of political stalemate over the election of a new president.

The amendments were initiated by the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party after it failed twice to get its presidential candidate, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, elected in parliamentary votes as the current law requires.

Rushed through parliament in four days, they envisage a two-round popular vote to elect the president and call for a once-renewable five-year presidential mandate instead of the current single, seven-year term.

The bill, which has to be approved by outgoing President Ahmet Necdet Sezer to come into force, also calls for parliamentary elections to be held every four years instead of the current five.

President Sezer has 15 days to decide if he wants to return the bill to parliament for reconsideration. If it is voted without any change for a second time, Sezer has to either sign it in to law or put it on a referendum.

Tony Blair's ill-fated war with Iraq claimed two more victims yesterday when a civil servant and an MP's researcher were convicted of disclosing details of a secret conversation between the Prime Minister and President George Bush.

Last night, MPs, lawyers and civil rights groups described the prosecution as a "farce" and accused the Government of misusing the Official Secrets Act to cover up political embarrassment over the war.

David Keogh, 50, a Cabinet Office communications officer, was today jailed for six months. He passed on an "extremely sensitive memo" to Leo O'Connor, 44, a political researcher who worked for an anti-war Labour MP, Anthony Clarke. O'Connor was today sentenced to three months in jail after an Old Bailey jury found them guilty yesterday of breaching Britain's secrecy laws.

At the centre of the trial was a four-page Downing Street document which recorded discussions about Iraq between Mr Blair and Mr Bush, held in the Oval Office in April 2004 in the run-up to the handover of power to the Iraqi government.

Serbia is to take over the chairmanship of the Council of Europe despite concerns that the country is abandoning attempts at political reform.

The council is Europe's leading body monitoring human rights and justice.

Serbia takes over the council's chairmanship as part of the normal rotation among its member nations.

On Wednesday, a hardline nationalist was elected to the powerful position of speaker of the Serbian parliament.

Serbia will chair the Committee of Ministers and issue a programme of priorities for its six month chairmanship.

But serious concerns have been raised about Serbia's suitability to take on the role.

Unlike the US and many other EU countries, Germany has no statutory minimum wage, and debate has reignited over introducing one. One side says it's about social justice; the other calls it a job killer.

To some, it might seem that the jobs held by those uniformed individuals keeping watch at a company entrance are to be envied. They don't seem to involve much stress and leave a good amount of time for magazine reading. But the envy would likely stop when the pay stub arrived.

Security firm jobs might often be low key, but they usually also involve very low pay. In eastern Germany, security personnel can receive hourly wages as low as 3.70 euros ($5.02).

That kind of pay is what Michael Sommer, the head of Germany's DGB trade union federation, referred to when he addressed trade unionists on May 1 and talked about millions of German workers  in the restaurant and hotel industry among others eking out a living on "starvation wages." He demanded that Germany introduce a statutory minimum wage of 7.50 euros ($10) per hour.

[...]

Traditionally, wages in Germany are set according to industry-wide collective bargaining agreements and detailed rules determine what kind of work receives what kind of pay. Because of the strength of trade unions in Germany, wage settlements were generally pretty favorable to workers.

[...]

"That has acted as a kind of virtual minimum wage," said Joachim Ragnatz, an economist at the Halle Institute for Economic Research.

But more and more holes have developed in that system. Welfare benefits have been cut back. Unions have lost clout and some sectors, especially in the service industry, have opted out of collective bargaining agreements.

This is probably the best thumbnail description of this issue that you could ever hope to find.

The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman

It correlates with the IGS (police's polices) arresting the cop responsible with breaking the story of RG's inquiry on Segolène's advisor Bruno Rebelle :
Sarkozy is going back at those that hurt him during the campaign.

Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères

WASHINGTON: Bowing to pressure from the Bush administration, the World Bank board agreed Wednesday to give Paul Wolfowitz, the bank's president, slightly more time to defend himself against charges of misconduct before the board decides his future.

In a development that might help Wolfowitz's fight to remain as bank president, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has lobbied European foreign ministers in the last two weeks, expressing support for him.

"She has spoken with several European foreign ministers about her positive impressions of Paul and the job he's doing at the World Bank," Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman, said in an interview on Wednesday when asked whether Rice had become involved in supporting Wolfowitz.

Despite Rice's efforts and the board's decision to give Wolfowitz more time, bank officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the deliberations are confidential, said they saw no indication that the board was any less determined to oust him from the presidency.

Wolfowitz was given until Friday evening -- two additional days -- to make his case in writing to the board, and it was expected that he would appear before the board as early as Monday. The board is to vote on whether he deserves a reprimand, a vote of no confidence or outright removal.

• Tony Blair announced his resignation as Prime Minister effective June 27. The Labour Party is expected to elect Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as his successor. "He will always be defined by the war he started, not the conflict he ended."

• Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified before the House Judiciary Committee. He tried to explain Sen. Pete Domenici's role in David Iglesias's firing, blame others or the less-than "rigorous" process, and explain that basically the U.S. attorneys were fired by a "bunch of people who didn't know that's what they were doing".

• The House rejected, by a 171-255 vote, "a proposal by the House's most liberal Democrats to withdraw rapidly from Iraq." "This is proof the U.S. Congress is catching up to where the American people are," said Rep. James McGovern (D-MA). Later, the House approved, by a 221-205 vote, funding the Iraq occupation through September 30, but with withholding most of the funds until "Bush reports on the war's progress in July".

• The dry drunk George W. Bush was "sobered" by the visit that 11 Congressional Republicans made to the White House. They were there trying to save the Republican Party from ruin. Meanwhile, White House aides, Dan Meyer and Karl Rove, "lashed out" at Illinois Republican Reps. Ray LaHood and Mark Kirk for speaking to the press about the meeting. "The White House is not happy." That'll learn 'em.

• Not to be outdone, DSCC Chairman Chuck Schumer (D-NY) "boiled over in frustration" at the DNC "recently for touting its role in defeating former Sen. Conrad Burns". Um Chuck, the DSCC and DNC are supposed to be on the same team. What's more important? Winning elections, or winning credit?

• Rep. Tim Walz (D-MN) suggested there was 'no sense of cooperation from the president on the issue of drawing down the U.S. military presence in Iraq.'

• Sergeant Sanick Dela Cruz testified that he watched his squad leader, Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich, "kill five Iraqis who were trying to surrender and then told his men to lie about the killings" in Haditha, Iraq.

• Dick Cheney rejected former CIA director George Tenet's claim that the Bush administration "did not engage in serious debate before invading Iraq." "That's just not true... but the fact of the matter is this decision was weighed as heavily and given as careful consideration as any I've ever been involved in, and I've worked for four presidents." Oh, yeah one last item, Cheney told this to Fox News.

• Paul Wolfowitz "told Pentagon investigators he enlisted the help of a World Bank employee with whom he had a 'close personal relationship' in 'activity supporting the war' in Iraq when he was deputy secretary of defense." Can you say Shaha Alia Riza? (Thanks teacherken.)

• Someone at Minnesota's U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose's office has been smearing three of her former top managers and a human resources officer because they resigned in protest over her dictatorial management style.

• Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-CA), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, "said the committee would approve 'only prudent investments' in... 'high-risk, immature programs'" like the European missile defense system. Congress should eliminate, not just cut, funding for the missile shield pipedream.

• Rep. Mark Udall (D-CO), added language to a larger bill to constrain "any Army effort to seize property for the Piñon Canyon training-area expansion in southeastern Colorado." The Army wants "418,000 acres spanning six counties in order to triple the size of the Fort Carson".

• "The Department of Veterans Affairs has habitually exaggerated the record of its medical system, inflating its achievements in ways that make it appear more successful than it is." Another good investigative study from McClatchy Newspapers.

• Clean-up and recovery efforts are underway in tornado-devastated Greensburg, Kansas. A dog, trapped for 6 days under rubble, was rescued alive, but ran away as soon as freed.

• A massive forest fire along the U.S.-Canadian border has closed Minnesota's Gunflint Trail.

• Four U.S. oil workers were kidnapped in Nigeria's Niger Delta. "Armed men in speed boats seized the workers from a barge near an oil export terminal belonging to Chevron... Militants have now cut Nigerian oil production by almost a third."

• The price of oil rose because of supply disruptions from the figthing in Nigeria and a shutdown of Nkossa field in the Republic of the Congo due to fire.

• The North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo has 600,000 displaced people according to the United Nations. "The army and Rwandan mediators began negotiations" in January to bring "dissident Congolese army general" Laurent Nkunda, a Tutsis, into existing army brigades. The mixed brigades are now "hunting down Nkunda's enemies in... a Hutu-dominated Rwandan rebel movement based in eastern Congo" and are accused of killing, raping, and forcing civilians from their homes" by human rights observers.

• Kamal Labwani, a reformer and dissident, was sentenced by a Syrian court to 12 years in jail "for undermining national security after he visited" the United States to meet with officials in Washington in 2005.

• The U.S. Embassy in the Green Zone in Baghdad, Iraq has issued a "strict new order telling all employees to wear flak vests and helmets while in unprotected buildings or whenever they are outside."

• "At least 21 civilians, including six children, have been killed in US air strikes in Afghanistan, leading to angry protests among locals." Up to 38 people may be dead and 20 wounded. The attacks came after American specials forces were attacked by 200 Taliban fighters.

• Tasneem Khalil, a journalist for the Dhaka-based Daily Star newspaper, was jailed by Bangladesh's military-backed care-taker government. (See Mash's diary for more details.)

• Pakistan completed the first section of a border fence aimed at "restricting" the Taliban from entering Afghanistan. Yeah, that will surely work.

• "Islamic militants" affiliated with al Qaeda are "sponsoring poaching" in India's Kaziranga National Park, a world heritage site, to fund international terrorism. While the poachers mainly kill for rhino horn and elephant tusks, they go after anything they're asked to get.

• The "undisclosed location" of French president-elect Nicolas Sarkozy turned out to be a "three-day luxury cruise in the Mediterranean" aboard a $3.5 million yacht owned by his billionaire friend, Vincent Bolloré, one of France's richest men. Liberté, égalité, fraternité!

• Turkey's parliament passed a major constitutional amendment to allow the people, instead of the parliament, to elect their president. "The amendment was backed by 370 votes in the 550-seat assembly but must be signed by the current president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, to become law."

• "The 30 worst polluting power plants in Europe produce 10 percent of the EU's CO2 emissions -- and 10 of them are in Germany." Germany was singled out for its "decision to continue building coal-fired power plants".

• The Bank of England raised interest rates to their highest in six years. The rate moved from 5.25 percent to 5.5 percent, "the fourth quarter-point rise since August" and came after inflation in the UK reached 3.1 percent in March.

• "The open-border policy under Prime Minister José Luis Zapatero is driving a Spanish economic and social revival... More than 11 percent of the country's 44 million residents are now foreign-born, one of the highest proportions in Europe. With hundreds of thousands more arriving each year, Spain could soon match the US rate of 12.9 percent."

• "Members of an indigenous tribe from the Peruvian Amazon sued the oil giant Occidental Petroleum yesterday in California's superior court, alleging that the company knowingly put the health of the Achuar people at risk and damaged their habitat."

• After months of denials, China admitted their country was responsible for the melamine contaminated foodstuff. "The two companies illegally added melamine to the wheat gluten and rice protein in a bid to meet the contractual demand for the amount of protein in the products," China's quality-control agency said yesterday.

• North and South Korean military officials approved plans for a "one-off run" of two passenger trains, one from each side, to travel 16 miles across the "heavily fortified border" on May 17th. This will be first train crossing in over 50 years.

• South Korea began construction on a 20-megawatt solar power facility in Sinan "as part of its plan to diversify its energy sources and produce cleaner energy."

• "More than 60 children and 14 adults were taken" to hospitals in Adelaide, Australia after sliding down a popular playground slide that was maliciously coated with poisonous sticky black herbicide.

• In Sydney, Australia, plans were unveiled for a new 30,000 person suburb on existing farmland around Camden. The housing density target is 15 dwellings per hectare.

• Wellington, New Zealand's 26-year-old 61-bus fleet will be replaced beginning in August.

• Vehicles in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea are being powered by coconut oil instead of diesel.

• Astronomers have discovered an ancient star in our galaxy, nearly as old as the Universe. "It is currently a bloated red giant star, and nearing the end of its life." HE 1523 is such a dull name, how about renaming it the Methuselah Star?

• Bush has 619 days left. 3,379 U.S. confirmed deaths in Iraq. Over $424,602,000,000 spent on the Iraq war.

FILM-MAKER Michael Moore is under investigation by the US Treasury Department for taking 9/11 rescue workers suffering from ill-health to Cuba for treatment.

The trip is featured in Moore's new documentary Sicko about the American private medical industry

and promises to take the health care industry to task in the way Moore confronted America's passion for guns in Bowling for Columbine and skewered Bush over his handling of the response to September 11 in Fahrenheit 9/11.

The US Treasury Department notified Moore that it was conducting a civil investigation for possible violations of the US trade embargo restricting travel to Cuba.

"This office has no record that a specific license was issued authorising you to engage in travel-related transactions involving Cuba," Dale Thompson, the Office of Foreign Assets Control chief of general investigations and field operations, wrote in a letter to Moore.

In February, Moore took about 10 sick workers from the Ground Zero rescue effort in Manhattan for treatment in Cuba according to a colleague.

Cuba, despite its economic difficulties and authoritarian government, operates an excellent free health care system for the entire population.

New Delhi: Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav has conceded defeat in the UP Assembly elections as BSP has taken a huge lead and is all set to form the next government in the state.
The Congress party has hinted at offering outside support to Mayawati.

After two hours of counting, the BSP was leading in 154 of the 353 seats from which trends were available.

The Samajwadi Party was a distant second, ahead in 88 seats, followed by the BJP (63), Congress (23) and others (25).

The counting of votes got under way amid high security across Uttar Pradesh after seven phases of polling spread over a month.

Exit polls have placed Mayatwati's BSP as having a clear lead. For Chief Minister Mulayam Singh, this has been the toughest election ever, trying hard to retain his Muslim- Yadav votebank and ward off anti-incumbency.

According to the CNN-IBN-Indian Express-CSDS exit poll, the Western UP which sees a five-cornered fight is likely to be dominated by the BSP while Ruhelkhand is likely to see a neck-to-neck fight between the SP and the BSP.

BSP leads BJP and SP in triangular contest in the Doab region while Avadh is likely to be a straight fight between BSP and the SP.

BSP's elephant is likely to be way ahead of the others in the Bundelkhand region. SP versus BSP are likely to have a direct contest in the East.

n north-eastern UP, Samajwadi Party's cycle is likely to be way ahead of the BJP and the BSP. Based on these figures the UP assembly is likely to look like this: The BSP is likely to emerge as the single largest party with a tally of 152 to 168 seats; the SP is in second position with a likely tally of 99 to 111 seats; the BJP and its allies are likely to get 80 to 90 seats; Congress likely to finish with 25 to 33 seats and others are likely to get between 21 and 27 seats.

This is the most important political event in India this year - elections in her biggest state Uttar Pradesh which has population over 175 mln.
The results are good for ruling left-centre coalition UPA despite lacklustre performance by Sonia Gandhi's son Rahul Gandhi and Congress in these election - main result is archrival Mulayam is dethroned.

Maverick politician Mayawati already said her first decision in power will be to thrown Mulayam in jail on corruption charges. In this scenario the centre has some trump cards as Mayawati herself is under investigation of mammoth Taj Corridor scame case.

As information is flowing long term BSP and Congress alliance is becoming very likely.

http://shrillblog.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html#3472566098434604895

Canadians Must be Dropping Dead by the Dozens


Find the dead Canadians, A Register-Guard Editorial Published: Thursday, May 10,
2007: Here's a suggestion for a way to troubleshoot the U.S. Senate's
gutting of legislation that would have allowed consumers to purchase
prescription drugs from Canada and other industrialized nations: Begin with a
dragnet for dead Canadians.

The bodies ought to be easy enough to find. With more than 33 million
residents exposed to prescription drugs that U.S. senators believe are too
dangerous to sell to Americans, Canadians must be dropping dead by the dozens
while waiting in line for hockey tickets. That's reason enough for Americans to
continue paying the highest prescription drug prices in the world.

Thank goodness, 49 safety-conscious members of the Senate on Monday had the
courage to keep the plague of dead Canadians from spreading south into the
American heartland.

OK, as far as anyone knows, no Canadians actually have died from taking
Canadian prescription drugs, many of which are made in the United States and
approved by the Food and Drug Administration. And the FDA acknowledges that it
can't find a single American who's been harmed by taking drugs purchased from
licensed Canadian pharmacies.

But that doesn't mean it couldn't happen. Still, it seemed as if the
bipartisan legislation sponsored by Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Olympia
Snowe, R-Maine, took great pains to address safety concerns. ...

That wasn't enough for Mississippi Republican Thad Cochran, who added a
"poison pill" amendment...

The Cochran amendment wasn't really about ensuring the safety of imported
drugs. It was about protecting the profits of the powerful pharmaceutical
industry, one of the biggest contributors to political campaigns. Once again,
those contributions have paid off handsomely.

It's hard to find a way out of the trudge of the daily commute, but some are finding meditation can help. And, don't worry, the lotus position is not a must.

Crowded, noisy, smelly, boring. Those in the rat race put up with this on their daily commute to and from work.

We are spending longer - and crossing greater distances - than a decade ago. The UK tops the European league table for having the longest average commuting time at 45 minutes.

Former Speaker Lord Weatherill, who died this week, meditated daily

No wonder commuting is seen by many as the most stressful part of their day, an activity hardly leavened by Dan Brown's latest or a sudoku puzzle. But for some, having a regular slot away from the pressures of home and work allows them time out to meditate.

Amisha Bhavsar, 30, does precisely that. She works at the Inner Space meditation centre, run by the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University, in London's Covent Garden. As well as using the Tube to get to and from work, she uses public transport to travel around the city in the course of her working day.

"It's one thing offering people the opportunity to take a break from the working day when they come to us. But I've found that the quality of my experience at work is largely being set by my state of mind during the journey from home to my desk," she says.

A tour of a space facility in the US apparently prompted Prince Philip to ask how astronauts deal with "natural functions" in space. So how exactly do they go to the toilet (or should that be the loo)?

It's all to do with air flow. On earth, in the West at least, your standard toilet is a water-flush affair, that takes waste and washes it down a pipe.

THE ANSWER Space toilets use air flow as water flushes have drawbacks in zero gravity Adult nappies are used on space walks and during take-off and landing

The lack of gravity on the shuttle and the space station mean a water-flush system is not an option. You don't need a particularly vivid imagination to see the potential problems.

Instead, on the shuttle, urine and faeces are carried away by rapid flow of air.

The unisex toilet resembles a conventional loo, but with straps over the feet and bars over the thighs to make sure that the astronauts don't drift off mid-go. The seat is designed so the astronaut's bottom can be perfectly flush to make a good seal.

The diplomatic row between Germany and Egypt over the 2,400-year-old bust of the beautiful Queen Nefertiti is heating up. Berlin's refusal to allow her to travel is "unacceptable" says Cairo.

She may be 3,400-year-old foreigner, but she is still one of Berlin's best-known beauties. Her delicate features adorn posters all over town; there's an entire calendar devoted to her entrancing image; and thousands flock to the city's museum island each day just to catch a glimpse of her. Now, Egypt wants her back.

Queen Nefertiti's bust has been the jewel of the Berlin museum system since it was first put on display in 1923 -- and the German capital is unwilling to part with the temptress. Last month, when Egyptian authorities asked to borrow the sculpture for three months, German authorities turned them down, saying the sculpture was too fragile to travel. The response was immediate -- and outraged.

"We will make the lives of these museums miserable," Zahi Hawass, the flamboyant director of the Egypt's Supreme Council for Antiquities, threatened in April. "It will be a scientific war."

Hawass stepped up his campaign last week, asking five other museums in Germany, Great Britain, France and the US to loan iconic Egyptian artifacts -- including the British Museum's Rosetta Stone and the Zodiac in the Louvre -- for the opening of Egypt's National Museum in 2011.

New York: Nature's fury made life miserable from one end of the United States to the other, with people forced out of their homes by wildfires near both coasts and the Canadian border, and by major flooding in the Midwest.

And although the calendar still said spring, the first named storm of the year was whipping up surf on beaches along the southeastern coast.

However, it was not quite a day for the record books.

"It's a major flood," National Weather Service meteorologist Suzanne Fortin said on Wednesday of the flooding in Missouri.

"It won't be a record breaker, but it will be in the top three."

In southern Georgia, however, a three-week-old fire had become that state's biggest in five decades after charring 433 square kilometers of forest and swamp.

Nice day to all.

He made serious mistakes, and is one of the most controversial politicians of his generation -- but also one of the most successful. On Thursday British prime minister, Tony Blair, announced that he is to retire on June 27, just over 10 years after his 1997 landslide victory. His legacy to Great Britain will be immense.

AP

British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife Cherie leave the Trimdon Labour club after announcing he will step down. The long wait is finally over: On Thursday British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced his resignation as leader of the Labour Party, which will take effect on June 27. In doing so, he has launched a process that will also see him leave 10 Downing Street seven weeks from now. The most successful Labour Party leader ever, who won three elections in a row, first announced his decision to his cabinet on Thursday morning. He then flew to his constituency in County Durham in northern England, the heartland of the old workers' movement that gave rise to the Labour Party, a party Blair's New Labour has little or nothing in common with.

His Sedgefield constituency bears little resemblance to the area where he originally launched his political career in 1983 as a young London-based lawyer. Fifteen years of uninterrupted growth have left their mark -- with renovated schools, repaired streets and a new hospital -- on a region that had fallen victim to poverty and misery in the 1980s after the coal mines were closed.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Tony Blair has announced he will step down as the UK prime minister on 27 June - just four days after he attends his last EU summit, following a ten year-term in office during which he has changed Britain's image in Europe.

Speaking to Labour party activists in his Sedgefield constituency on Thursday (10 May), Mr Blair said that a decade as the British leader had been "long enough" for both him and his country, BBC reported.

He stressed that while people might think he had been wrong on some occasions, he had always done what he thought "was right for our country. And I came into office with high hopes for Britain's future, and, you know, I leave it with even higher hopes for Britain's future," he added.

"The British are special - the world knows it, in our innermost thoughts we know it. This is the greatest nation on earth," Mr Blair concluded in his emotional speech.

The outgoing prime minister is expected on Friday (10 May) to support the current finance minister Gordon Brown as his successor at the Downing Street although the Scottish politician will have to formally win support by his party over two other candidates.

Tony Blair has apologised for his mistakes and admitted that his legacy in the eyes of many people will be dominated by Iraq when he stands down as Prime Minister on 27 June.

In an emotional and highly personal speech, Mr Blair insisted that he had done what he believed was "right for my country" and stopped short of saying sorry for the Iraq war.

But he struck his most conciliatory tone over Iraq, admitting the fierce "blowback" of global terrorism and conceding he would leave office with many Britons believing the Iraq invasion was wrong.

Loyal Blairites launched a campaign to pin the blame for the mistakes made after the conflict on the Bush administration, which rejected Britain's advice by abolishing the Iraqi army after Saddam Hussein was toppled. Alastair Campbell, the former Downing Street communications director, and Baroness Morgan of Huyton, the former director of government relations, both criticised Donald Rumsfeld, the former US defence secretary, for the post-war decisions.

Tony Blair: success or failure?

To start with a theme, the departing Prime Minister is Bliar, the mendacious, spin-obsessed, manipulating fraudster who lied to take us to war, undermined our independent civil service, took cash from the rich and rewarded them with peerages and favourable decisions, and suborned our politics.

This Blair is also, at best a naive, messianic prating fool when it comes to foreign entanglement, a US poodle, or at worst a war criminal who has done huge damage to international law and world peace.

At home he has been the ignorer of Parliament, the trampler on our ancient liberties, the CCTV and ASBO king, the grinning, malign Mary Poppins of the supernanny state.

Personally he is Phoney Tony, a vacuous actor with the Dome as his exemplifying monument, a freebooter, a lover of foreign trips to celebrity hideouts owned by other members of the Cool Britannia Delusionary Roadshow.