The prospects of Turkey joining the EU faded yesterday (29 May) as the French National Assembly approved a bill making referenda obligatory for accepting new EU member countries with populations over 5% of the bloc's entire size.

The proposal, which was introduced as part of a broader institutional reform project, was accepted with a 48-21 vote majority and has now been sent to the Senate for approval. The final vote will be in July, when both chambers convene for a joint session. 

The move comes just one day after MEPs and the Commission heavily criticised Turkey for slowing down the pace of reforms during the visit of the Turkish foreign minister Ali Babacan to Brussels (see EurActiv 29/05/08). 

Commercial fishermen throughout Europe launched new protests Friday against soaring fuel bills, blockading ports and refineries in France and handing out fresh fish for free in Madrid.

The protests against diesel fuel costs have been simmering all week, with truckers in Britain blocking highways and fishing vessels halting port traffic on the English Channel in France.

Outside the Ministry of Environment, Agriculture and Fishing in Madrid, news agencies reported that hundreds of angry fishermen handed out 20 tons of fish to people lined up at trucks loaded with the catch of Europe's biggest fishing fleet. Spanish union leaders claimed the strike among fishermen had 100 percent support.

The Spanish government has not responded to the protests but more trouble is on the way: truck and taxi drivers are threatening a strike next week.

Pressure is building in the European Union for common rules to discourage, or punish, excessive payments to top business executives.

France, which takes over the presidency of the EU on 1 July, will ask finance ministers to consider a European directive to curb disproportionate bonuses or golden handshakes to company bosses. The Dutch government has already introduced a draft national law to punish what it describes as "unjustifiable" payments to business leaders. The French finance minister, Christine Lagarde, said companies must put their own house in order or face a rash of national, or EU, legislation to clamp down on "excesses".

French officials said Paris felt that, without such an EU-wide curb, large companies or highly paid executives would evade national curbs by exercising their right to move from one EU country to another.

Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg's Prime Minister, and president of the "Eurogroup" - the countries using the Euro - recently described steep increases in executive pay as a "social scourge". He said EU governments should consider ways of punishing disproportionate bonuses and high severance payments with windfall taxes.

The Conservatives predict that 25,000 children will leave the state education system when they are 16 in the next few weeks without a single qualification to their name.

It is why David Cameron and Michael Gove have looked overseas to the Swedish model to try to stop the rot.

In Sweden 900 schools have opted out of the state delivery system to become "free schools", which is five per cent of primary schools, 15 per cent secondary. More than 1,500 applications were granted last year for more schools to join the exodus.

Many of the applications for new schools are from parents battling with a council which is threatening to close down a local school. Swedish parents don't protest against school closures - they apply to open a rival school.

Inflation in the 15 countries sharing the euro snapped back to a record 3.6 percent in May amid soaring oil prices, according to a first estimate from the EU's Eurostat data agency on Friday.

The 12-month inflation rate had eased in April to 3.3 percent after hitting 3.6 percent in March, the highest level since the launch of the euro in 1999.

Recent record oil and food prices have pushed inflation higher, putting additional strain on consumers and businesses already struggling with slowing economic growth.

The bounce-back to 3.6 percent in May took eurozone inflation further away from the European Central Bank's comfort zone, which it defines as annual consumer price growth of close to but less than 2.0 percent.

There's nothing the central bank can do about this inflation either on the upside or on the downside. It's not something that lends itself to monetary solutions. Differing perspectives on what the bank should do by the EU governments (mostly false, but erring on both sides) mean that it will likely do nothing. This should hopefully open a possibility for real long-term solutions through industrial and transportation policy.

Business airline Silverjet has gone into administration after financial problems forced it to suspend all its flights, leaving passengers stranded.

The cancellations left about 7,000 UK and 2,500 non-UK customers needing to make alternative plans at short notice.

Seats were selling for £1000/return to New York and Dubai - which wouldn't normally be expensive for a business class trip.

Indonesia must step up efforts to investigate serious human rights abuses surrounding the eruption of a "mud volcano" which displaced 36,000 people, the national human rights commission said Wednesday.

The commission investigator said the state body had found "serious" rights violations relating to the disaster and called on the government to punish those responsible.

"A serious human rights violation has occurred," Kabul Supriyadhie told a forum of activists and journalists.

The mud volcano, dubbed "Lusi", erupted from a well being dug by Lapindo Brantas, an oil and gas company owned by billionaire welfare minister Aburizal Bakrie, in East Java two years ago on Thursday.

Thirteen people were killed in the initial eruption and 12 villages were inundated as the stinking, methane-filled mud spewed across 640 hectares (1,580 acres) of surrounding countryside, forcing thousands to flee their homes.

<...>

"This is a problem that we deem serious, where the state has failed to protect and guarantee basic rights of the victims of the incident and has no political will to pressure PT Lapindo Brantas to take their responsibility," Supriyadhie said.

He said the company had no legal authority to drill in the densely populated area and local residents had not been informed of its operations.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

WorldChanging: The Real Green Heretics

The magnitude of the crises we face, the speed with which they are unfolding (as we're just beginning to understand) and their interconnectedness and interpenetration into every aspect of human society mean that the solutions we need to embrace are not going to be the same sort of solutions we're used to thinking of now.

The discussions we see today -- whether we're talking energy sources, farming practices or fashion choices -- are not even the right kind of debate. Unable to mentally grapple with the idea that we need to be aiming for total sustainability right now, we talk to death the same series of inadequate baby steps. Faced with the need to reinvent the material basis of our civilization, we argue paper or plastic.

[...]

Our ideas of what's normal, or even what's possible, will not outlast the next decade. Unfortunately, Wired's list of heresies is a list of normal, contemporary approaches (nukes, tree plantations, factory farming, living in the Sunbelt suburbs) and current environmental commonplaces (cities are good, China can be green, carbon trading needs reform) packaged in a way designed to shock and titillate.

British pensioners who cannot afford to heat their homes. European hauliers and fishermen whose livelihoods are under threat. Palestinians forced to fill up their cars with olive oil. Americans asked to go down to a four-day week.

All around the world, in a multitude of ways, the soaring price of oil is hurting rich and poor alike. For the lucky ones, it is simply a matter of changing their lifestyle. But those most vulnerable to the price of oil have been driven on to the streets in angry protests, which raise a fundamental question: what can we do to survive in a world where a barrel of oil costs $127 (£64)?

President Nicolas Sarkozy has been asked to adjudicate in a village quarrel that has global implications: the future of the Mont St Michel, the most visited tourist site in provincial France.

The new mayor of the island-abbey-village (population 30; annual visitors 3 million) is campaigning against plans to banish tourist car parks to a new site almost one mile inland.

Eric Vannier, elected mayor in March, claims that, from 2012, visitors may have to pay up to €25 (£19.70) a person to reach one of the most beloved places of religious, and tourist, pilgrimage in Europe. If the plans go ahead, he says, the Mont - both its medieval abbey and its single, winding street of shops and restaurants - will become accessible only to a wealthy "elite".

M. Vannier has launched an appeal to President Sarkozy to intervene and reverse some of the decisions taken two years ago as part of an ambitious project to flush away three million cubic metres of silt and sand and restore true island status to the Mont St Michel.

She was a hedonistic, tomboy beauty who drove racing cars barefoot round Saint Tropez, won literary acclaim and took so many drugs that her pet fox-terrier overdosed from sniffing her handkerchiefs.

The novelist Françoise Sagan may have died leaving a debt of more than €600,000 (£470,000) after tax evasion and corruption scandals, but she is enjoying a surprise revival as France indulges a craze for historical literary women whose work, life and bedroom antics challenged the norm.

With an acclaimed new biography, a memoir by a female lover, a cinema biopic and the reissue of nine of her books for the first time in years, the literary magazine Lire has predicted 2008 will witness Sagan's literary renaissance. Le Figaro called her "the woman of summer 2008". Even the news weekly L'Express this week ran a fashion special on how to dress in her trademark blue-jeans and moccasins.

Sagan's debts and scandals ensured that the years before her death in 2004 were spent in misery as the taxman hoovered up every last penny. Her estate was such a mess that publishers did not want to touch many of the more than 40 novels, plays and essays she wrote, and they fell out of print. Her son, who now looks after her legacy, is hoping that Sagan-mania, and a potential Hollywood adaptation of her first novel, will prompt enough interest to allow her to be published again for a new generation.

ienna is much more comfortable in the world of theater and high art, coffee and cake. But next weekend, thousands of football fans will descend on the city for the Euro 2008 soccer championships. Not everyone is pleased.

It was an historical moment. In 1978, the first subway line in Vienna opened for business, and the celebration was full of the pomp one would expect. Finally, residents from the working-class district of Favoriten could cruise into the heart of the city in less than 20 minutes. Not all, however, were pleased about the new train line. Now, complained the Viennese daily Die Presse, the city will be flooded with the hoi polloi. Not a few agreed with the paper.

PHOTO GALLERY: MIXED FEELINGS AHEAD OF EURO 2008

Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (16 Photos)
This year, the masses are descending on the city once again. In just over a week, Euro2008, the European championship soccer tournament, will kick off in host countries Austria and Switzerland. And many of the fans are planning on heading straight to Vienna. Once the opening match between Switzerland and the Czech Republic on June 7 is out of the way, authorities predict that some 2 million fans in total -- or 100,000 guests per day -- will find their way to the Austrian capital. Tens of thousands from Poland and Croatia and a further 400,000 from Germany -- all teams in Group B along with Austria -- are expected.

The three and four star hotels in the city have been booked out for months. Even the ultra-sumptuous Hotel Sacher across from the Viennese Opera, will be packed, says Director Reiner Heilmann. The waiting list is extensive, and there is little chance of relief, even once teams are eliminated in the latter stages of the tournament, he says.

World football's governing body FIFA is on a collision course with the European Union over its plans to introduce a maximum quota for foreign players. FIFA's president Sepp Blatter says he is convinced that the EU will endorse his proposal to have no more than five foreigners per football team. The "6+5" plan, which was overwhelmingly endorsed by the FIFA Congress on Friday, also includes a rule to have at least six home-grown players per team.

But the European Commission insists that this contravenes EU labour laws and cannot be introduced in European clubs:

"No hope"
"They have no hope at all of getting this through," says John McDonald, spokesman for sports at the Commission. "The FIFA rule is based on discrimination on the grounds of nationality, which is incompatible with Community law."

Maurice Bourjol
Dean of Law Tours University
Michel Debray
Admiral (2S)
Bruno Drweski
Professor
l'INALCO (International Cultural Studies)
Yvon Grinda
Chief executive, Chemistry,
Alpes-Maritimes)
Pierre Levy
Journalist
Philippe Marteau
Union Executive CGT ONIGC
Albert Salon
Former Ambassador of France

Extra police will be on duty on London's tube network today to prevent public order problems as a number of "underground drinks parties" are staged by opponents of Boris Johnson's alcohol ban.

London's new mayor announced earlier this month that drinking on tubes and buses would be outlawed from Sunday as part of an attempt to stop antisocial behaviour. Opponents of the move are planning a number of parties on the network, with the prospect of some lines being taken over by revellers.

Several thousand people have signed up to online groups planning to organise parties. On Facebook, "Circle line party - last day of drinking on the tube" vows to celebrate "our freedom to drink", adding: "We need to make this big, so spread the word and we'll flash-mob the tube."

California using fish to fight the spread of mosquitos in abandoned swimming pools

...

Thousands of sprawling ranch homes stand unoccupied, along with thousands of now stagnant swimming pools. And a nasty unforeseen consequence of the housing downturn has bubbled to the surface in those pools: mosquitoes.

"Pools, when they aren't maintained, there are nutrients in the water and you get the sun producing energy and the mosquitoes will use the bacteria or the energy to produce," said Chris Miller, a biologist with the Contra Costa Mosquito Vector and Control District.

But these mosquitoes are not just a mere nuisance, they're also potentially dangerous.

"They transmit West Nile virus," said Miller, "and that is why we are so concerned with these pools and the foreclosure issue. It can be a real threat to public health."

However, there is little evidence that gambusia is especially effective as a "mosquito fish" and, out of its native environment, it's considered a pest.

Gambusias have traditionally been referred to as mosquitofish based on the assumption they are ideal for mosquito larvae control. While we prefer to retain gambusia in the title to this page (since this allows for world wide understanding), we would like to suggest adoption of a more suitable name for these species outside their natural range, damnbusia. This is not an effort to damn this poor innocent fish, but to inform the masses that this species can be a major pest and in many cases more suitable alternatives exist for mosquito larvae control. Hence we feel the name is far more educational and valuable than the misnomer of mosquitofish.

Many people ask what should we use for mosquito control if we can't use mosquitofish? Pretty much any fish will eat mosquito larvae. Try finding a mosquito larvae in any body of water inhabited by fish. The best thing to use is a native fish found in your local area that is somewhat hardy and will reproduce in the environment that requires mosquito control. Which species this is will totally depend upon where in the world you live, but most parts of the world have suitable species that probably already exist in your vicinity. And please stick to using fish from your local river basin, rather than the same or similar species brought in from outside your local river basin as significant differences often exist between populations from different river basins.

...

Gambusia holbrooki and G. affinis (Cyprinodontiformes: Poeciliidae) are native to southern and eastern USA, but now (following translocation) have an extensive global distribution. Where mosquito-borne diseases pose a threat to human health, and native fish are not suitable control agents (such as urban areas in Thailand and Venezuela) stocking water bodies with poeciliids (such as gambusia and guppies Lebistes reticulatus) may be one of the few means of mosquito control. These poeciliids are well-suited to stagnant waters, where they tend to remain stationary just below the water surface, using the relatively oxygen-rich interface layer. However, the effectiveness of gambusia as a mosquito control agent is unclear. Gambusia may prefer to consume macro-invertebrates other than mosquito larvae (particularly large instars). Some of these macro-invertebrates consumed may include species which also prey on mosquito larvae. Gambusia, not having the aestivation/embryonic diapause capability of some Cyprinodontiformes, die out in seasonal ponds, requiring a restocking program. In any event, the larvae of many mosquito species develop in rain-filled tree hollows and peridomestic containers, such as coconut shells and discarded packaging, concealed from vertebrate predators.

1.  Your "access log being deleted within 48 hours".
   
2.  Hilarious digs at google and others.

Yoda is standing sideways, with his head turned towards the viewer:

"Begging for a lawsuit, Wikipedia is"

Our knowledge has surpassed our wisdom. -Charu Saxena.