German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian bloc has come out firmly in favor of a return to nuclear power, seeing a vote-getter ahead of federal elections due in 15 months.

Although Merkel has long championed a three-way mix in electrical power generation -- fossil, renewables and nuclear -- she has in the past been cautious in openly advocating a reverse in official government policy to phase out nuclear power by 2021.

That all changed at a top-level weekend meeting of her Christian Democrats (CDU) and its Bavarian sister-party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), in the Bavarian town of Erding.

The anti-nuclear decision, passed into law by the government of her Social Democrat predecessor Gerhard Schroeder, was "absolutely wrong," Merkel said as the meeting ended Monday.

The Russian town of Pochep is home to a massive stockpile of chemical weapons, some decades old. Too dangerous to move, Germany is helping build a facility in the town which will destroy the arsenal.

The human toll caused by chemical warfare has been well documented in conflicts such as World War I, Vietnam and the Iran-Iraq war. The dangerous weapons have been outlawed since 1997, when the multilateral Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) entered into force.

Strict timelines have since been set for destroying existing chemical weapons. The 2012 deadline is fast approaching for countries such as Russia, which began construction Tuesday, June 10 on a new facility that will dispose of the chemical weapons.

After years of deadlock, employment ministers in the European Union reached an agreement Monday on rules concerning working time and temporary workers.

The agreement came after the 27 voting members established a qualifying majority for approval of the new measures that will impact millions of European workers and employers. At issue in the votes were common rules for allowing a work week of over 48 hours and the rights of workers from temporary agencies.

 

Breaking a stalemate

 

Efforts to revise EU working time rules had stalled since November 2006 over opt-outs from a 48-hour weekly maximum, especially in Britain, which championed the cause of loose rules.

 

"We believe flexibility and choice is important for our economy and for workers themselves," said British Employment Minister Pat McFadden as he arrived for ministerial talks in Luxembourg.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Former Irish president and human rights activist Mary Robinson has denied any interest in occupying one of the top jobs created by the EU's Lisbon treaty, saying she would prefer to stay away from "any role of a political nature."

Provided the treaty is ratified in all member states, EU leaders will in the coming months have to decide who should be appointed to the top positions of EU president and foreign minister, as well as European Commission president.

""I can say very clearly 'no'", says Mary Robinson

Ms Robinson said she was aware her name had been floated by some - such as EU communications commissioner Margot Wallstrom - as a possible female candidate for one of the posts, but stressed she is not interested.

"I can say very clearly 'no'," she told EUobserver on Monday (9 June) in the margins of a discussion in the parliament on human rights.

BRUSSELS: The European Union's competition commissioner, Neelie Kroes, delivered an unusually blunt rebuke to Microsoft on Tuesday by recommending that businesses and governments use software based on open standards.

Kroes has fought bitterly with Microsoft over the past four years, accusing the company of defying her orders and fining it nearly €1.7 billion, or $2.7 billion, for violating European competition rules. But her comments were the strongest recommendation yet by Kroes to jettison Microsoft products, which are based on proprietary standards, and to use rival operating systems to run computers.

"I know a smart business decision when I see one - choosing open standards is a very smart business decision indeed," Kroes told a conference in Brussels. "No citizen or company should be forced or encouraged to choose a closed technology over an open one."

Kroes did not name Microsoft in advance copies of her speech, but she made her meaning clear by referring to the only company in EU antitrust enforcement history that has been fined for refusing to comply with European Commission orders - a record held by Microsoft.

GRIFFIN, Indiana: In a year when global harvests need to be excellent to ease the threat of pervasive food shortages, evidence is mounting that they will be average at best. Some farmers are starting to fear disaster.

American corn and soybean farmers are suffering from too much rain, while Australian wheat farmers have been plagued by drought.

"The planting has gotten off to a poor start," said Bill Nelson, a Wachovia grains analyst. "The anxiety level is increasing."

Randy Kron, whose family has been farming in the southwestern corner of Indiana for 135 years, should have corn more than a foot tall by now. But all spring it has seemed as if there were a faucet in the sky. The rain is regular, remorseless.

Some of Kron's fields are too soggy to plant. Some of the corn he managed to get in has drowned, forcing him to replant. The seeds that survived are barely two inches high.

Horses, donkeys and mules in the EU will have to have passports and be electronically tagged, the European Commission has decided.

The new regulation is due to come into force in July next year.

Owners will have to get an electronic chip inserted into their foal's neck in the first six months after its birth.

The plan is to prevent the spread of diseases and avoid the risk of horsemeat going on sale from animals that have been given medication.

Horsemeat is eaten widely in the EU. Countries where it appears on the menu include Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Slovenia.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS -Macedonia says it is ready to open EU accession talks in the second half of this year and has taken steps to reassure Brussels over violent incidents that marred the country's recent elections.

A series of gunfights claimed one life and left several people injured in the mainly ethnic Albanian-populated areas in Macedonia during the 1 June elections. Election monitors also reported a host of voting irregularities.

Macedonia has been waiting to launch EU membership talks for almost three years

Following the events, the European Commission pronounced itself "very concerned," while Slovenia, currently holding the six-month rotating EU presidency, said at the time that it "deeply deplored that violence and intimidation accompanied elections in parts of the country."

Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday (10 June) in Brussels, Macedonia's foreign minister, Antonio Milososki, aimed to reassure the EU.

The government's child poverty targets lay in tatters today as new figures showed that 2.9 million children are officially living below the breadline in the UK - up 100,000 since 2005-06.

The statistics, released by the Department for Work and Pensions, push the government even further from its target of halving child poverty by 2010.

It is the second successive year that the government has failed to make progress.

The figures also show that in 2006-07 there were 2.5m pensioners living in poverty, a rise of 300,000. This is the first increase in pensioner poverty since 1998.

The number of children and pensioners in poverty is even higher once housing costs such as rent and mortgages are taken into account.

09 June 2008 Zagreb _ Croatian police have detained a reporter for wearing a cap with a symbol of the Ustasha regime, in what the journalist claims is 'double-standards.'

Croatian Television reporter Matija Vuksic, said he was wearing the cap with a symbol of the Ustasha, the name of Croatia's Second World War-era pro-Nazi regime, not out of conviction but for a investigation into how sporting fascist and communist symbols is seen in Croatian society.

First, he recorded citizens' reactions to his cap with the letter "U" on it, using a hidden camera in Zagreb's Ban Jelacic Square and then set out for the first police station. He approached two police officers, who did not take their time to react.

They detained him three hours, after which he left the station, charged with disturbing the public peace and order.

"Nobody was apprehended in last Friday at Thompson's concert for sporting Ustasha symbols and all the things they shouted, like: "Kill the Serb!," complained Vuksic.

The police said there were no Ustasha symbols at the concert.

June 10th, 2008 by Berlaymole (View all posts)

For the past couple of weeks José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, has been running an online poll on his website, asking visitors to express their opinions on EU's biofuels policy. At the last count, some 89 per cent of the 60,000 respondents had voted for the EU to drop its biofuels targets, which have been widely criticised for taking food out of the mouths of the world's hungry to put in the gas tanks of European vehicles. As of today the poll has mysteriously disappeared from President Barroso's website, and nowhere has the result been announced. Has the President of the Commission been taking election advice from Robert Mugabe? Why not just ask him for yourself, using the handy online contact form.

Earlier on ET:

afew:

This may have been mentioned before, but it bears repeating anyway:

The President of the European Commission is running a cyber-poll on whether to maintain the 10% biofuels target for 2020 or not.

With over 38,000 votes, the NO is running at 87%.

Click on over there and let Barroso know what you think.

Continental Europe should take the lead in devising new rules for financial markets because the Anglo-Saxon model of regulation has failed, Angela Merkel has told the Financial Times.

The German chancellor said ahead of next month's Group of Eight summit, which is expected to discuss new regulation, that the largely "Anglo-Saxon" organisation of financial markets undervalued the growing weight and importance of the eurozone.

In particular, she called for a European credit ratings agency to counterbalance the dominance of Moody's and Standard and Poor's. "Europe has developed a certain independence thanks to the euro," she said. "But . . . in terms of the rules, the transparency guidelines and the entire standardisation of financial markets, we still have a strongly Anglo-Saxon-dominated system.

"I think that in the medium term Europe will need a working ratings agency because the robust currency system of the euro has not yet secured sufficient influence over the rules governing financial markets."

A European ratings agency is among several suggestions Germany has made in the G8 leading industrial nations as part of a proposed overhaul following the credit squeeze.

Berlin also wants to ban the agencies from rating products they helped to create. Ms Merkel said she would welcome new capital adequacy ratios for banks, linking the amount they must put aside to the level of risk in their asset portfolios.

"We need to think about the relationship between capital and risk," Ms Merkel said. "But these rules can only be discussed at an international level."

"The eventuality of an Irish rejection would be a problem not only for the French presidency but for Europe," Sarkozy said. "It's for the Irish to decide on this, but what Madame Merkel and I have decided is that, whatever happens, the reaction will be a Franco-German one."

"Brown could come under strong pressure to abandon the treaty's ratification, now in its final stages in the British Parliament, and declare the EU's attempts to reform itself over," Hugo Brady, research fellow at the Center for European Reform in London, said in a policy paper.

"If the treaty is abandoned, EU countries are likely to give up on attempts to ratify wide-ranging reform treaties, preferring instead the ease of working more closely together through avant-garde groups on matters such as defense, foreign policy or taxation."

integrationists have been making noises about enhanced cooperations, two-speeds, core Europe, Europe with variable geometry, etc since the Treaty of Amsterdam (and getting louder in the last couple of years) and if the Treaty of Lisbon fails that will be the only way forward and it will be taken.

But diplomats would struggle to give the Irish any genuine commitments to address the issues of concern raised in the Irish referendum campaign, since most fall outside the scope of the treaty.

...

The most likely option is that the treaty would be abandoned and that the EU would attempt to revise its current arrangements only when it prepares to admit the next nation due to join, Croatia, in 2011 or 2012.

Andrew Duff, Liberal Democrat spokesman on constitutional issues in the European Parliament, said that a rejection of the treaty in Ireland would mean its demise.

...

He also said that ideas of forming an advance guard of countries excluding Ireland would be difficult without the Lisbon treaty because there are fewer possibilities to do so under the existing Nice Treaty.

I don't suppose this will have any impact on Irish voters tomorrow....

You can't be me, I'm taken

SEOUL: South Korea's entire cabinet offered to resign Tuesday as tens of thousands of people filled boulevards in central Seoul in the largest demonstration yet against President Lee Myung Bak and his young but already unpopular government.

The cabinet's offer to resign came as Lee struggled to find a breakthrough in the biggest political crisis to face his 107-day-old government, a dispute set off by fears that an agreement to reopen markets to American beef could expose the public to mad cow disease.

But Lee's trouble runs deeper than discontent over the beef deal. Political analysts said Lee, once hailed as a potential savior of South Korea's troubled economy, has lost public confidence over a broad range of policies at a time when the nation is grappling not only with a slowing economy, but also with the continuing issue of North Korea's nuclear weapons programs.

"Lee Myung Bak, out," the protesters shouted, brandishing yellow and red cards that carried the same message.

KRANJ, Slovenia: Opening a farewell tour of Europe, President George W. Bush won European support on Tuesday for a proposal to consider tougher sanctions on Iranian banks as a lever against Tehran's nuclear program.

Bush held a final summit with leaders of the European Union in this small town in Slovenia, the country he chose for his first foray into Europe as president seven years ago.

A joint statement after the meeting urged Iran to "comply with its international obligations concerning its nuclear activities." The International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna has registered "serious concern" about Iran's suspected research into the development of nuclear weapons.

The issue has become more immediate following a warning by Israel's transportation minister, Shaul Mofaz, that an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites would be "unavoidable" if weapons programs proceed.

PARIS: Global demand for oil is likely to be slightly lower than previously estimated as the effect of shrinking government subsidies for fuel in Asia softens demand in the region, the International Energy Agency forecast Tuesday.

The agency forecast in its monthly Oil Market Report that global oil consumption would average 86.8 million barrels a day in 2008, or 70,000 barrels a day below the estimate that it made in its last report. Still, that would make overall demand 0.9 percent higher than in 2007.

The IEA is an energy policy adviser to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, a group of 30 advanced economies, mostly in the West.

The reduction of price subsidies in recent weeks for fuel in non-OECD countries including Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and India, "should slightly tame oil demand growth in that region," it said.

Changes are happening in the OECD economies that will have an effect on demand, the report said, but they will "take time to filter through." It cited the reduction in flights by airlines in the face of soaring fuel costs.

As EU and US leaders meet this week in Slovenia, Arab League chief Amr Mussa urged them to talk seriously about peace in the Middle East.

"I trust there will be a serious discussion about the prospects of peace in the Middle East, and on whether it will be possible as promised to have a Palestinian state by the end of the year," Mussa told a news conference in Ljubljana Monday.

Slovenia, which currently holds the EU's rotating presidency, hosted Mussa on a two-day visit just ahead of the EU-US summit to be held Tuesday.

"We hope... there will be a viable real state by the end of the year," he said. "This is a question that should be addressed to him (President Bush), an appeal that should be expressed."

 

Initial reports, however, suggest that the question of a Middle East peace agreement is not on the table at this conference.

The summit on soaring food prices convened by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome on June 4-5 concluded with a wide-ranging declaration demanding international support and action - while failing to address a root cause behind the price surge.

The declaration called on the international community to increase assistance to developing countries, in particular the least-developed countries and those that are most adversely affected by high food prices, increase investment in agriculture, provide balance of payments support and/or budget support to food-importing, low-income countries, and to provide more funding needed for UN agencies to expand assistance.

The declaration also called for increasing the resilience of world's

food systems to climate change, more dialogue on biofuels and their relation to food security, and for liberalizing international trade in agriculture by reducing trade barriers and market distorting policies.

While these recommendations are laudable, the declaration did not addressed one of the root causes for explosive food prices, a purely monetary cause, and did not lay out an immediate action plan for the short-run stabilization of food prices.

Nearly 120 years after the last massacre of Native Americans by the United States cavalry at Wounded Knee, some of the lands confiscated from their descendants are to be returned to the Oglala Sioux.

Badlands National Park in South Dakota, which encompasses Wounded Knee, is one of the poorest parts of the US. It has few paved roads. Unemployment is shockingly high among the Sioux. Alcoholism is rampant and there are high rates of suicide and imprisonment of American Indians.

After decades of protests, the park service is now planning to return the southern part of the park to Indian control. It will take an act of Congress to approve, but is expected to occur next year. Though broadly welcomed by the Sioux residents, there are those who say the land should be returned to the original owners for private use rather than to the tribal council as a park.

The shadow of Wounded Knee hangs over much of the discussion. The Sioux were among the last to fight against American expansion into the West. In the dying days of 1890, their leader, Sitting Bull, was assassinated. About 120 of his followers along with 230 women and children took refuge at Pine Ridge, South Dakota, where they were surrounded by the US cavalry.

SAN FRANCISCO - As California prepares to vote on a $9.95 billion bond measure to finance a statewide bullet-train network, the Union Pacific Corp railroad is warning advocates of the planned rail system that it will not share its right-of-way corridors.

The No. 1 U.S. railroad, in a recent letter, told the California High Speed Rail Authority its tracks do not belong in the corridors. The notice came as a surprise amid a relatively smooth approach to the November election for the authority's long-awaited bond measure.

<snip...>

The system's passenger tracks would likely have to share, to some extent, Union Pacific's existing right-of-way corridors, and that is unacceptable, said Scott Moore, a vice president of public affairs for the railroad.

"Regardless of where it is we're not interested," Moore said Monday, noting Union Pacific has plans of its own for its right-of-ways, with international trade through California's seaports on the upswing as Asian economies expand.

Union Pacific sees a future in which it hauls more and more freight, potentially requiring new tracks for additional trains towing various types of cars, including those that carry double-stacked shipping containers.

The railroad would need to expand within its existing corridors, such as its Sunset Route line linking Los Angeles and El Paso, Texas, and it would require room for growth in urban centers, such as in and around the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, California.

"The capacity needed for the future is something we're very concerned about," Moore said.

President Bush has admitted to The Times that his gun-slinging rhetoric made the world believe that he was a "guy really anxious for war" in Iraq. He said that his aim now was to leave his successor a legacy of international diplomacy for tackling Iran.

In an exclusive interview, he expressed regret at the bitter divisions over the war and said that he was troubled about how his country had been misunderstood. "I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric."

Phrases such as "bring them on" or "dead or alive", he said, "indicated to people that I was, you know, not a man of peace". He said that he found it very painful "to put youngsters in harm's way". He added: "I try to meet with as many of the families as I can. And I have an obligation to comfort and console as best as I possibly can. I also have an obligation to make sure that those lives were not lost in vain."

The unilateralism that marked his first White House term has been replaced by an enthusiasm for tough multilateralism. He said that his focus for his final six months in office was to secure agreement on issues such as establishing a Palestinian state and to "leave behind a series of structures that makes it easier for the next president".

Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and UBS, the banks most exposed to Ambac and MBIA, could face further writedowns of up to $10bn after the bond insurers last week lost their fight to retain their triple A credit ratings.

The banks have used the bond insurers to hedge holdings of complex bonds such as collateralised debt obligations and other mortgage-backed securities.

The prospects of further writedowns related to bond insurers, also known as monolines, could deepen concerns over the financial health of US and European banks.

Ambac and MBIA, which guarantee more than $1,000bn of bonds, raised cash earlier this year to prop up their capital bases, damaged by exposure to mortgage-backed bonds. Al-though concerns have eased that bond insurer downgrades could damage the entire financial system, there remains the potential for individual banks and investors to suffer further pain from Ambac and MBIA's problems.

Meredith Whitney, analyst at Oppenheimer, said in a report this week that UBS had the largest exposure to monolines of $6.3bn, Citigroup came second with $4.8bn and Merrill Lynch followed with $3bn.

The value of CDOs and mortgage-backed bonds has plunged amid soaring foreclosure rates in the US. This week, CDOs in default crossed the $200bn mark, according to specialist publication Total Securitization. Many of these bonds had triple A ratings when they were issued and large amounts were retained by banks.

S&P cut Ambac and MBIA to double A; Moody's expects to downgrade Ambac to double A and could cut MBIA to single A

Another domino falling...

"Dieu se rit des hommes qui se plaignent des conséquences alors qu'ils en chérissent les causes" Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet

John McCain on Tuesday promised a clampdown on corporate malpractice if elected president and vowed to give shareholders a veto over executive pay.

The Republican presidential candidate said government had become beholden to big business and too forgiving of corporate abuses.

"For too long, government has been the voice of big business," he told a small-business conference in Washington. "Even when very large businesses violate their trust, they seem to be held to a different standard - getting away with conduct that would leave any small-business owner broke."

Oh, really?

"Dieu se rit des hommes qui se plaignent des conséquences alors qu'ils en chérissent les causes" Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet

The US trade deficit widened in April to its highest level in more than a year as the soaring cost of imported crude oil offset another record-setting month for US exports, a Commerce Department report revealed on Tuesday.

The trade gap in goods and services rose by 7.8 per cent to $60.9bn from a downwardly revised $56.5bn the previous month, representing the biggest increase in more than two years. The US trade deficit is now at its widest since March 2007.

Exports climbed by 3.3 per cent to a record $155.5bn, helped by aircraft, agricultural machinery and medical equipment sales.

Although the weaker US dollar is encouraging foreign buyers to purchase US-made goods, the surging cost of imported commodities is offsetting some of that progress.

Costly oil imports are likely to continue weighing on the US trade deficit given the recent spike in crude prices above $130 a barrel.

However, if price increases are stripped out, the real trade deficit narrowed a fraction in April to $46.9bn, providing encouragement to some economists at the start of the second quarter.

Chinese officials have accused the US of harbouring "hostility" to investments by foreign government-controlled entities and of drifting towards "investment protectionism" in proposed regulations that set out how cross-border deals ought to be vetted.

The Chinese Securities Regulatory Commission said in a letter to the US Treasury that the proposed regulations left "too much room for interpretation" by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, or Cfius, an inter-agency panel chaired by the Treasury, and left the body with "excessive authority".

The proposals were also criticised by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce. "This discriminating provision apparently tilts toward investment protectionism and is tinged with the colour of politicising economic issues. It therefore stands as a grave impediment for the normal course of investment in the US," it said.

This new study from the Commonwealth Fund, showing a sharp rise in the number of Americans with inadequate insurance, is getting some well-deserved attention. Just to be sure it's credible, I checked out the Kaiser Family Foundation's data, which bear indirectly on the issue; KFF's data show declining overall rates of coverage, and at least a suggestion that very large deductibles are becoming much more common.

The really important thing to realize is that this deterioration in coverage took place in the best years of the Bush economy. The system is now falling apart so fast that things get worse even during periods of economic expansion.

As he launches out on his first days of true general election campaigning, consider Obama's most recent moves.

His innovative and daring campaign advisors have plotted out an artful game plan, and it's every bit as shrewd as Obama's caucus/internet based bid for the Democratic nomination.

But on the other hand, I just listened to the debut of his newly bulked-up economic team during one of those wonkish conference calls for reporters.

And I have to say, if sweeping change is what Obama is all about, I didn't hear it on that call.

Controversy surrounding the US military's new Africa Command has forced the Pentagon to put plans for establishing a headquarters in the continent on a slow track, US defense officials have said.

The Pentagon still hopes to have a command headquarters in Africa, but officials acknowledge it will take time to overcome negative regional perceptions.

...

The problem became evident when General William Ward, the head of AFRICOM, toured the region after assuming his post in October and found that Africans were convinced the United States wanted to establish bases and send troops to the region.

...

AFRICOM, headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, becomes fully operational October 1. It will stay in Germany for at least several years, defense officials said.

The Vatican has given warning that the West's efforts at inter-faith dialogue must not be "held hostage" by Islam and are in danger of becoming "obsessed" with it at the expense of other religions.

Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, head of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue, said that the Church "has to have regard for all religions". He said that the council had this week discussed new guidelines for inter-faith dialogue.

"What was interesting about our discussions was that we did not concentrate on Islam because in a way we are being held hostage by Islam a little bit," he told the Catholic website Terrasanta.net. "Islam is very important, but there are also other great Asiatic religious traditions. Islam is one religion."

Pope Benedict XVI has convened an unprecedented Catholic-Muslim forum for October. He has also sought to make amends for his controversial speech at Regensburg University two years ago, when he appeared to suggest that Islam was irrational and inherently violent. He later visited Turkey and prayed at the Blue Mosque in Istanbul alongside the local imam.

Italian pacifists planning an antiwar march during President Bush's farewell visit to Rome this week staged a protest outside a city centre prison that has been partially emptied to house arrested demonstrators in the event of disturbances.

The protesters, dressed in convict clothes, said a decision to move 230 inmates from the Regina Coeli prison on the Tiber embankment was "a grotesque attempt to intimidate us".

Piero Bernocchi, their spokesman, said an "entirely peaceful" protest march would go ahead tomorrow afternoon to coincide with Mr Bush's arrival.

Mr Bush will hold talks on Thursday with Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister, and President Napolitano before an audience with Pope Benedict XVI on Friday. Mr Bush told Italian state television: "I know Mr Berlusconi and trust him."

A Japanese firefighter has been sacked after driving fire engines and ambulances for more than 20 years without a licence.

The man, who worked in Takaoka City, was only discovered during a routine inspection of licences last week.

According to his bosses, he appeared reluctant to produce his licence, but when he did the inspector realised the man was using his father's licence.

Vietnamese authorities say they are mystified as to who owns a Boeing 727 which has been abandoned at Hanoi's Noi Bai airport.

The plane was flown in from Siem Reap in neighbouring Cambodia in late 2007 and has been unclaimed ever since.

An airport official told the BBC that they believe the owners could be an airline based in Cambodia.

The official said that if it remains unclaimed, the plane will have to be sent for scrap.

An attempt to stop homosexual women calling themselves lesbians begins in Athens today with a court hearing that comes amid growing national debate over gay rights in one of Europe's most socially conservative countries.

The hearing has been initiated by plaintiffs on the Aegean island of Lesbos, who say they are unhappy that gay women have "usurped" a term that locals claim should have only geographical connotations.

a few days into the Euro 2008 football championships fans are being advised not to fly their flags - because they could damage the environment. Engineers have declared that the flags, which are usually attached to window frames, cause wind resistance, which alters a car's aerodynamics and causes it to burn more fuel.

Austria's automobile club, the OAMTC, says attaching two flags to a car leads to an increased petrol consumption of "up to half a litre a kilometre on motorways and rural stretches".

Half a litre per kilometre?  That would give my car a range of about 80km.

Do you think they mean a half kilometre less per litre?

France's most popular television news presenter, Patrick Poivre d'Arvor, will be dumped this summer in favour of a rising female star who was once linked romantically with President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Laurence Ferrari, 41, will take over in September as the figurehead of the 8pm news on the TF1 channel. There were reports last November that Ferrari had been seen dining with the recently divorced President but speculation about an imminent marriage came to nothing. Soon afterwards M. Sarkozy began his whirlwind romance with his future wife, Carla Bruni.

M. Sarkozy is said, however, to have lobbied his billionaire friend, Martin Bouygues, owner of TF1, for Ferrari's promotion. There are no doubts about the journalist's ability, but her promotion was interpreted by French newspapers yesterday as part of a "Sarko-friendly" revolution at TF1.

Poivre d'Arvor, 60, who has presented the show for 21 years, has slipped in the ratings in the past 12 months. He was savaged in a recent book, Madame, Monsieur, Bonsoir, by anonymous TF1 journalists, as lazy, arrogant and biased towards the centre-right.

A poll in the Guardian

Currently 80% against the US, will this go the way of Piebag's biofuels I wonder ?

keep to the Fen Causeway