Iceland's women are blaming men for the financial crisis that has brought the country to its knees, They are now looking for a female solution to clean up the mess. Caretaker Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir is heading into this weekend's election with good chances of winning.

It's not shadenfreude that can be read between the lines when Halla Tomasdottir talks about Iceland's financial crisis and her country's bankruptcy, but there may be a bit of satisfaction. "A lot had gone wrong, some things didn't make sense and it couldn't go on that way," the economist says. "We warned it would happen."

Halla was general director of the chamber of commerce when she issued those warnings, but nobody wanted to listen to her advice. She then parted ways and started her own company together with banker Kristin Petursdottir. Kristin had been a manager at the British subsidiary of the crisis-stricken Icelandic bank Kaupthing. Together, Halla and Kristin formed Audur Capital, a financial and investment company that would take a new path.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The happiest children are to be found in the Netherlands while Britain is among the worst countries in Europe in which to grow up, a new study examining children's wellbeing in 29 European countries has shown.

The report, by the Child Poverty Action Group, compares 43 separate criteria such as health, education and housing standards in EU member states as well as Norway and Iceland.

Children are best off in the Netherlands and Scandinavia

The Netherlands followed by Sweden and Norway are the countries considered to be the best places in which to be a child.

At the bottom of the league are Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania and Malta.

One of Germany's biggest terrorism trials is underway this Wednesday. The authorities have accused four men of plotting a series of terror attacks, on a scale comparable with the London and Madrid bombings. 

The Sauerland cell was named after a region in western Germany where police seized three terrorism suspects in September 2007, along with hundreds of kilos of bomb-making materials. The fourth suspect was arrested in Turkey and extradited to Germany last November.

The four men, whose ages range between 23 and 30, are accused of planning to bomb discos, restaurants, airports, the Federal Prosecutors' Office, and US army installations, in a spate of attacks allegedly planned for October 2007.

The bombings were to take place across Germany, from the American base at Ramstein to cities such as Dortmund, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Cologne and Munich.

Both the current and future EU president countries have come out in support of Ankara's bid for membership. Meanwhile, Turkish police detained more than 30 people suspected of ties to al-Qaeda.  

Turkey's Anatolia news agency reported on Tuesday that anti-terrorist authorities detained 37 individuals in early morning raids in five provinces. The agency added that seven of the suspects were thought to have received armed training in militant camps in Afghanistan.

A Turkish newspaper reported in March that Ankara had been given intelligence from the US that al Qaeda was possibly planning attacks in Turkey.

EUOBSERVER / ZAGREB - The structural reforms Croatia still needs to carry out are more likely to hold up its EU membership bid than the current border dispute with Slovenia, a senior EU official has warned.

"I would be more concerned about structural reforms [in Croatia]" than about the border dispute, Vincent Degert, head of the European Commission's delegation in Croatia told a group of journalists in Zagreb on Monday (20 April).

Croatia wants to enter the EU by 2011, but reforms - in the agriculture sector, among others - could cause problems

Mr Degert spoke about justice reform, as well as the need to restructure Croatia's shipyards and the agriculture sector, as some of the key areas where progress is still needed.

"These are the hardcore reforms," he said, with Croatia hoping to finish membership negotiations within the next eight months and enter the EU by 2011.

UOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The battle between internet pirates and copyright holders shifted to Strasbourg this week, with a move that threatens to hold up a major European Union telecoms bill and unravel France's flagship legislation on cutting off internet access for illegal downloaders.

MEPs in the European Parliament's industry committee on Tuesday (21 April) passed an amendment to the telecoms bill requiring that internet cut-offs can only be put in place after a decision by judicial authorities.

Internet piracy is turning into a key issue for young voters ahead of the June elections

The bill itself is a much broader legislative initiative that aims to substantially reform the European telecoms sector, focusing on infrastructure rather than content, with both parliament and EU member states largely in agreement on the package.

But last September, MEPs overwhelmingly backed a similar amendment that intended to put a stop to France's "three strikes law," under which copyright scofflaws would see their internet stopped for up to a year.

LONDON -- After a string of embarrassing revelations about expense claims by members of Parliament, Prime Minister Gordon Brown proposed Tuesday that the expense-account system be overhauled "to restore people's confidence that M.P.'s are there to serve the public and not themselves."

Legislators in the House of Commons are the beneficiaries of an array of perks and reimbursements, all of them perfectly legal, for expenses associated with running their offices, traveling between London and their districts, and having homes in both places. Members of Parliament earn base salaries of $92,795. In a recent 12-month period, they claimed an average of nearly $200,000 in expenses.

It emerged this month that the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, regularly claims that her sister's house in London, where she rents a room when Parliament is in session, is her primary residence. That has allowed Ms. Smith to draw the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars in the so-called second-home allowance for the house in Worcestershire, where her family lives and where she lives during weekends and the long stretches when Parliament is not sitting.

The ignominy is evidently too much to bear. When he flies to international summits President Sarkozy is confronted by a number of private jets that dwarf his French Airbus A319.

Even the Spanish and German leaders arrive in bigger aircraft, let alone Barack Obama's mighty Air Force One.

Next month work will begin on a project to give Mr Sarkozy wings in keeping with his ambitions when French engineers take possession of an aircraft that will be turned into an ultra-modern presidential airliner.

Although not quite as big as the Boeing 747-200 that is Air Force One, the French A330-200 will be at least ten metres longer and two metres higher that the aircraft used by other European leaders. It will also be far more luxurious -- as befits a man who called Mr Obama inexperienced, questioned the intellect of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Spanish Prime Minister, and disparaged Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, in comments to MPs last week.

An attempt by Europe to bring its "last dictator" in from the cold by inviting Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarussian president, to a summit of 27 EU government leaders could backfire by aggravating EU divisions, it was feared yesterday.

Many European leaders are hoping that Lukashenko - who has been in power for 15 years, has been blacklisted by Brussels on account of his authoritarian rule and was until recently subject to a travel ban - will not take up the invitation to the Prague summit on 7 May.

The summit is to launch the EU's new "eastern partnership" policy with six former Soviet bloc states, aimed at increasing Brussels' clout in the region at the expense of Moscow's.

Lukashenko, head of the most isolated state in Europe, has been invited together with the leaders of Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Moldova. The Czech foreign minister, Karel Schwarzenberg, delivered the invitation in person to Belarus's president in Minsk on Friday.

French Prime Minister Francois Fillon has warned that hundreds of workers at the Continental tyre company who trashed a government building on Tuesday to protest planned layoffs should face charges, calling their acts "unacceptable".

AFP - Prime Minister Francois Fillon warned Wednesday that workers who vented their anger by trashing a government building should face charges, as fears grew of French labour unrest turning violent.
   
Workers from the German-owned Continental tyre company went on a rampage Tuesday after a court refused to block the company's decision to shut down their factory and scrap 1,200 jobs.
   
A few hundred employees ransacked offices of the regional administration in Compiegne, northeast of Paris, smashing windows, overturning desks and wrecking computers.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Parliament has approved a watered-down version of an energy package aimed at further liberalising the bloc's electricity and gas markets, while strengthening consumer rights.

Initially targeting full separation of transmission and production activities in energy giants like E.ON or GDF - also known as "unbundling" - the compromise approved on Wednesday (22 April) by the European Parliament gives big energy players the option of keeping the two types of activities, but under stronger supervision.

Electricity transmission networks

The EU goal is to facilitate network access for smaller energy companies without their own grids, as well as to ease up cross-border investments and trade in EU's €300 billion electricity and gas market, which is still fragmented by national barriers.

"The package will give the EU a clear regulatory framework needed to ensure a properly functioning internal market and to promote much needed investment, especially by cross-border and regional cooperation," EU energy commissioner Andris Piebalgs told MEPs in a plenary debate ahead of the vote.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission has said it is ready to investigate and take action against any European boats or European-owned fishing companies that fly flags of convenience that engage in illegal fishing off the coast of Somalia.

This month, Abdirahman Ibbi, the deputy prime minister and minister of fisheries and marine resources in the new Somali national unity government, said that an estimated 220 foreign-owned vessels were still engaged in unlicensed and illegal fishing in Somali waters, most of them of European origin.

Commissioner Borg is ready to investigate allegations of European illegal fishing in Somali waters if presented with evidence

The European commissioner for fisheries, Joe Borg, on Wednesday (22 April) told reporters that he had no information regarding Mr Ibbi's allegation.

"I am certainly prepared to look into it if we are provided with specific details on this," he said during a press conference presenting a paper reviewing the state of the European Common Fisheries Policy. "But the information I have is that it is nowhere near close to those figures that have been mentioned."

Building firms and green groups welcomed the budget announcement to spend £375m on energy efficiency in buildings over the next two years, but said it was much too little to kickstart an ailing construction industry and would barely reduce carbon emissions.

The chancellor Alistair Darling said that energy efficiency - stopping heat leaking out of buildings - was "the easiest and quickest" way to reduce carbon emissions and the benefits would be distributed between homes, offices and public buildings.

"These measures will support employment and save 380,000 tonnes of CO2 and around £60m in energy bills each year," said the full budget report. The UK emits 531m tonnes of CO2 a year, making the total savings 0.14%.

Greenpeace dismissed the measures as "woeful". "The emissions saved per year represent about two weeks' emissions from Radcliffe-on-Soar coal-powered station - Britain's third biggest power station," said the environment group's spokesperson.

Officers who deliberately conceal their identification numbers will face the sack, Britain's top policeman has said.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson said it was "totally unacceptable" not to wear the numerals.

His comments follow allegation against several officers at the G20 protests - including the man who pushed newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson before he died.

New footage has emerged of the moments leading up to his death, as a third post-mortem examination was held.

The footage is in the link.  It doesn't support the police claim that there was a confrontation prior to the attack.

First there was the `wee fee', then the charge for the privilege of checking-in, now it seems budget airline Ryanair has finally tipped the scales by announcing it is considering a fat tax.

But, just when you thought they couldn't possibly take this any further, there's more.

The company needs customers' help to figure out how to charge the fat tax and its offering the following options:

Charge per kg over 130kg/20 stone (male) and 100kg/15 stone (females).

Charge per inch for every waist inch over 45 inch (male) and 40 inch (female).

Charge for every point in excess of 40 points on the Body Mass Index (+30 points is obese).

Charge for a second seat if passengers' waist touches both armrests simultaneously.

Stephen McNamara, spokesman for Ryanair, explained the four options being offered appeared to be the "simplest".

I've been working very hard trying to get some good stuff together for a post.

Firstly, I went to my classmates, who are studying the European Union to find out some of their thoughts. They all seemed to feel positive, but picked up on the age old questions, and ultimately were all left asking, `who's actually standing in the EU Elections?' And we're studying it! So what can everyone else think?

I then went to the North West Liberal Democrat Conference and was lucky enough to have been able to interview an MEP, Chris Davies. Although the video came back edited, my questions were taken out, and even changed a little, he said some interesting stuff. Apologies for the cheesy music!

Perhaps time to look at what the Union of European Federalists (UEF) has to say in its manifesto Stronger together in a federal Europe, the clearest constructive election programme I have seen to date.

Predict09.eu is a prediction of the outcome of the June 2009 European Parliament elections and the resulting make-up of the next European Parliament. The prediction is based on a statistical model of the performance of national parties in European Parliament elections, developed by three leading political scientists: Simon Hix (London School of Economics), Michael Marsh (Trinity College Dublin), and Nick Vivyan (London School of Economics). The prediction will be updated each week until the elections on 4-7 June.

All EU countries are represented.

There was no party that covered my preference, even GroenLinks (Greens) was too light on European integration...

Berlin has little choice but to help German banks rid themselves of toxic assets at taxpayers' risk, write media commentators. But in doing so it must insist on a radical restructuring of the publicly owned state banks, or Landesbanken, which have outlived their usefulness.

 Clouds loom over Germany's top banks in Frankfurt, the financial capital. Germany moved closer to ridding its banking sector of toxic assets on Tuesday at a meeting of government ministers and financial regulators who said they expected to have a firm plan to set up "bad banks" -- waste dumps for junk securities that are weighing down banks' balance sheets -- in place by the summer.

The officials agreed to work on finalizing a draft law in the coming weeks, present it to Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet by mid-May and get it approved by parliament by the summer.

The value of toxic assets in German bank balance sheets is estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of euros. The bad banks plan, under which banks can set up state-guaranteed companies and transfer their junk securities into them, is aimed at regenerating the financial system and boosting the stalled flow of credit into the economy, which is in its worst recession since World War II.

British tourists are being encouraged to holiday on the South Coast this summer by two Dorset towns which will accept unwanted euros.

Businesses across Bournemouth and Poole will accept the European currency in a move to welcome holidaymakers that may shun trips to the continent.

Hotels, restaurants and guest houses are among the traders which plan to take on the scheme.

Tourism chiefs believe the move could be worth about £10m to the region.

The figure is based on the estimate of half a million tourists each spending 20 euros as a part of their holiday budget.

Chancellor Alistair Darling today gambled on a rapid economic recovery to rebuild Britain's battered finances as he revealed that borrowing this year would hit a record £175 billion.

In a grim Budget statement he outlined the full depth of the economic crisis.

Mr Darling warned that output would shrink by 3.5 per cent this year - more than doubling his previous forecast.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel met with industry, banking, government and union leaders in Berlin on Wednesday to discuss how to best cope with the fallout from the current economic crisis.  

A week before the German government is to issue its next economic forecast, Merkel called representatives from key businesses, banks and unions to a meeting in Berlin to try to assess the size of the crisis, and hammer out a course of action to avoid massive layoffs.

The government has already passed two stimulus packages it says are worth 81 billion euros ($104.7 billion), but the coalition is considering additional measures. It has, however, rejected calls from service-industry union ver.di and metal-workers' union IG Metall to finance a third, 100-billion-euro stimulus package.

Economics Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg said the "overwhelming majority" of participants at the meeting agreed that talk of a third stimulus package "lacks any foundation."

Many analysts and commentators are pointing out that the second derivative of economic activity is turning positive (i.e. economies are still contracting but a slower rather than accelerated rate) and that green shoots of an economic recovery are blossoming.

RGE Monitor's analysis of the data suggests that the global economic contraction is still in full swing with a very severe, a deep and protracted U-shaped recession.

Last year's economic consensus forecast of a V-shaped short and shallow recession has vanished. While the rate of economic contraction is slowing compared to the free fall rates of Q4 of 2008 and Q1 of 2009, we are still a long way away from the economic bottom and from a sustained recovery of growth.

In particular, in Europe and Japan there is little evidence of a positive second derivative of economic activity.

After noting that the action in the stock futures market has been moving around furiously since the big bank CEOs met with Obama, Jessie suggests the following:

To our minds, it is just as likely that we are being set up for a terrific leg down. In our experience the big dogs tend to dominate certain portions of the short side at the apogee of a stock market pump. Our target for a failure point on the SP June futures is about 858-864.

-Skip-

Let's see if they can keep it floating up. This does not look like a sustained ramp however, but the pump that sets up the dump.

-Skip-

The best probability based on the data at hand is that we are seeing a pump and dump, in order to provide some income to the beleaguered banks through their proprietary trading desks.

We have not been tracking it, but we wonder if Goldman Sachs has fully placed its large secondary equity offering designed to pay back their TARP funds. The markets often miraculously levitate in sympathetic conjunction with key IPOs and equity tranches.  If they have, then the pump and dump gains in likelihood.

Mr Darling is doing his best to clean up the mess left by his predecessor, Gordon Brown. The fiscal profligacy of Mr Brown, now prime minister, after New Labour's first term and his leadership since 1997 in the global financial regulatory race to the bottom have left the UK suffering from multiple imbalances. It is in its worst fiscal shape ever in peacetime - in the G8, only the US and Italy come close. It has a bloated financial sector, including a banking sector that is too large to save unless state support is restricted to the UK high street banking bits of UK-based global banking groups. It has a distorted and moribund housing sector and excessively indebted households.

...

Under the best possible scenario, taxes will have to be raised and/or public spending cut on a permanent basis by between 5 and 6 per cent of GDP to regain fiscal sustainability. The necessary permanent fiscal tightening could easily be larger. The pain will be widely felt. The ambition to bring British infrastructure back up to the level it achieved at the end of the 19th century has been postponed by another quarter-century. Education and health will suffer.

...

Mr Darling will therefore need luck as well as skill and determination to get Britain through this Great Contraction without having to go another round in the financial crisis. I would consider the case for a government of national unity. It would help if Mr Brown - responsible more than any one for this debacle - were to resign.

So more and more I'm starting to thing there may be a single explanation after all, that the regulators of these markets were captured by powerful forces that wanted the game to continue.

The power of regulators, and the will to enforce the regulations, must match - in fact exceed - the will and power of those being regulated to resist having constraints placed on their behavior.

I've talked about why ideology may have eroded the will of regulators, but their will is partly a function of their power. So long as we allow huge, clearly over-sized financial institutions to exist, this problem will potentially be present.

BERLIN, April 21 -- European prosecutors are likely to investigate CIA and Bush administration officials on suspicion of violating an international ban on torture if they are not held legally accountable at home, according to U.N. officials and human rights lawyers.

Many European officials and civil liberties groups said they were disappointed by President Obama's opposition to trials of CIA interrogators who subjected terrorism suspects to waterboarding and other harsh tactics. They said the release last week of secret U.S. Justice Department memos authorizing the techniques will make it easier for foreign prosecutors to open probes if U.S. officials do not.

Some European countries, under a legal principle known as universal jurisdiction, have adopted laws giving themselves the authority to investigate torture, genocide and other human rights crimes anywhere in the world, even if their citizens are not involved. Although it is rare for prosecutors to win such cases, those targeted can face arrest if they travel abroad.

South Africa goes to the polls today in an election that is all but certain to bring Jacob Zuma, head of the ruling ANC party, to victory. Zuma had corruption charges against him dropped just two weeks before the vote.

AFP - South Africans went to the polls Wednesday in general elections all but certain to propel the ruling ANC party's controversial leader Jacob Zuma to the presidency.
   
Lines formed early outside voting stations with a record more than 23 million South Africans registered to cast ballots.
   
"Most of the voting stations have opened. Where there are problems we are dealing with them," Independent Electoral Commission spokeswoman Kate Bapela told AFP.

Working through the quite detailed and long sadism and torture report Inquiry Into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody" (pdf) the most significant admission to me is the footnote 1219 on page 158:

Notwithstanding differences between the legal status of detainees held in Iraq and those in Afghanistan, the [Special Mission Unit Task Force] used the same interrogation approaches in both theaters. In addition, the [Combined Joint Task Force 7] interrogation policies included techniques that had been authorized for use at GTMO. By September 2003, interrogation approaches initially authorized for a war in which the President had determined that the protections of the Geneva Conventions did not apply, would be authorized for all U.S. forces in Iraq.

Abu Ghraib was not an accident but official policy promoted from the very top and many people knew that.

JERUSALEM -- The new Israeli government will not move ahead on the core issues of peace talks with the Palestinians until it sees progress in U.S. efforts to stop Iran's suspected pursuit of a nuclear weapon and limit Tehran's rising influence in the region, according to top government officials familiar with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's developing policy on the issue.

"It's a crucial condition if we want to move forward," said Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon, a member of the Israeli parliament and former ambassador to the United States. "If we want to have a real political process with the Palestinians, then you can't have the Iranians undermining and sabotaging."

The emerging Israeli position, a significant change from that of previous governments, presents a challenge for President Obama, who has made quick progress on Palestinian statehood a key foreign policy goal. Obama is also trying to begin engagement with Iran as part of a broad effort to slow its nuclear program and curtail its growing strength in the Middle East.

U.S. officials are wary of linking the two issues and, if anything, would like to do the reverse of what Israel has proposed, by using progress in the Israeli-Palestinian talks to curb Iranian influence, which is wielded in the region through anti-Israeli organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas.

"We have to be pretty careful how you approach that kind of connection," said a senior U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. "We are dealing with Iran because there are behaviors out there that are deeply troubling. We would be doing that regardless of other issues. By the same token, the Palestinian issue is an issue that obviously evokes a great deal in the region."

TEHRAN --Iran announced officially on Wednesday that it welcomed talks over its nuclear program, and said that it was ready to offer a proposal to resolve the dispute over its uranium enrichment activities, the state-run IRNA news agency reported.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced last week in a speech that Iran would take part in the talks. Wednesday's statement appeared to be an official response to an April 8 invitation by six major powers, including the United States, for a meeting to find a diplomatic solution.

The statement also said that Iran would continue its ongoing nuclear work in "active collaboration" with the United Nations nuclear agency and in the framework of the main international treaty that aims to halt the spread of nuclear weapons and promote peaceful uses of nuclear power.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran will continue its nuclear activities in an active collaboration with the International Atomic Energy Agency in the framework of the N.P.T., along with other member nations," it said, referring to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned in unusually bleak terms Wednesday that Pakistan's fragile government is facing an "existential threat" from Islamic militants who are now operating within a few hours of the capital.

...

Clinton spoke as militants expanded into new territory adjacent to the Swat Valley and 60 miles from Islamabad, and top U.S. officials continue to make regular visits to Pakistan. Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is visiting now. A special U.S. envoy, Richard C. Holbrooke, was there this month.

Clinton's comments to the House Foreign Affairs Committee underscored increasing U.S. alarm at how the militants' strength has grown even as the Obama administration has begun trying to implement a new strategy for stabilizing the country. U.S. officials are worried not only about the stability of Pakistan, but also about neighboring Afghanistan, where they are committing an extra 21,000 troops this year to try to stanch the advances of the Taliban and allied insurgents.

Germans are celebrating the fact that the government has banned genetically modified corn. But the country's almost blanket opposition to genetic modification ignores the fact that it might just help scientists find a solution for feeding a swelling global population.

 Will opposing genetically modified plants ultimately lead to more people starving? All's well again in the world of Bavaria's conservative Christian Social Union (CSU) party, an outspoken opponent of genetic engineering and genetically modified (GM) plants. German Agriculture Minister and CSU member Ilse Aigner has slapped a ban on MON 810, a type of GM corn seed produced and marketed by the American agricultural corporation Monsanto, and opponents of the technology are celebrating the victory. Germany's governing Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the CSU's sister party, opposed the ban at first but eventually supported it. Now the CDU hopes that its support will lead more Bavarians to return the favor by voting for the CSU in the upcoming German and EU parliamentary elections.

The inhabitants of rural Bavarian towns, whose fields have become battlegrounds for people for and against genetic engineering, can now breathe a sigh of relief. But the real problems are just beginning -- only in other places.

Alien life does exist but the truth is being covered up by the United States government, former NASA astronaut Edgar Mitchell has claimed.

Mr Mitchell, who was part of the 1971 Apollo 14 moon mission, made the claims in a talk to the fifth annual X-Conference - a meeting of those who believe in UFOs and other life forms.

He also said he had attempted to investigate the 1947 'Roswell Incident', which some believe was the crash-landing of a UFO, but had been thwarted by military authorities.

ScienceDaily (Apr. 22, 2009) -- A team of astronomers from University College London (UCL), including undergraduate students, have discovered that an exotic world passes directly in front of the Sun-like star it orbits, revealing for the first time that it is about the same size as Jupiter.

And rather than travelling to one of the major observatories in Hawaii or Chile, the students made the discovery with a telescope at UCL's University of London Observatory (ULO) in the capital's northern suburb of Mill Hill.

The work was partly funded by a grant from the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) and will be presented on Tuesday 21st April at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science conference by ULO astronomer Dr. Steve Fossey; Ingo Waldmann, a final-year undergraduate and David Kipping, a PhD student working in the field of exoplanet science.

The team were alerted by the exoplanet science website http://www.oklo.org, run by Greg Laughlin of the University of California Santa Cruz. Using infrared space observations, Greg predicted that a planet (HD 80606b) would pass in front of its parent star (HD 80606) in a so-called transit event.

On the evening of 13th February, prompted by his alert, Dr Fossey and five UCL undergraduate observers started monitoring the brightness of HD 80606, and some 10 hours later at just after 4 am they discovered they had found the planet's transit.

[...]

The planet, called HD80606b, is unusual in that it travels in a highly elliptical orbit about its parent star. At its furthest point, it is almost as far from its star as the Earth is from the Sun. But every 111 days it is briefly a scorching 10 times closer to its star than Mercury is to the Sun. A hypothetical observer above the cloud tops of the planet would see its parent star swell to 30 times the apparent size of the Sun in our own sky.

HD80606b now holds the record for both the longest orbital period and most eccentric orbit of all transiting planets and with such extreme variations in heating it presents a fascinating object for further study.

ScienceDaily (Apr. 21, 2009) -- Up to 30,000 residents and tourists could be under threat from a newly discovered tsunami risk in the Caribbean, according to experts in disaster risk management.

The heavily populated coast of Guadeloupe will have little warning if a tsunami is triggered by the collapse of a volcano on the nearby island of Dominica.

A team of geologists, led by Dr Richard Teeuw from the University of Portsmouth, have discovered that a flank of the volcano Morne aux Diables ("Devils' Peak") shows signs of collapse and if so, a million-ton chunk of rock could crash into the sea, producing tsunami waves up to almost 3 metres (10 feet) high.

Such a rock fall could also weaken three million tones of rock upslope, potentially resulting in much larger landslides and waves of up to five metres. 

Dr Teeuw said: "It's not a case of if this landslide and tsunami will happen, but when. The trigger will probably be a major earthquake, occurring after the heavy rain and coastal erosion of the hurricane season.  It could happen in a hundred years or it could happen next week. 

Premier and his starlet minister learn the dark art of satire, reports Peter Popham

Silvio Berlusconi's light-hearted dalliance with a television starlet whom he subsequently appointed to his cabinet has been made the subject of an oil painting in which both are shown in the nude.

Two years ago the Italian Prime Minister told the starlet, Mara Carfagna - and millions watching on TV - that he would marry her like a shot if he wasn't married already. His wife, Veronica Lario, demanded and obtained a public apology but last year Mr Berlusconi made her Minister of Equal Opportunities in his new government. Now Italy's most celebrated virtual couple find themselves together on a gallery wall near Savona in Liguria. Mr Berlusconi is depicted with a pair of giant wings extending protectively around his naked minister. Both wear sober, almost prudish expressions. Mr Berlusconi might be about to whisper sweet political nothings in his protegée's ear; Ms Carfagna, on the other hand, has her eyes directed towards the premier's (discreetly covered) genitals.

But Ms Lario arguably has the last laugh, starring stark naked in a canvas of her own, angelic wings spread wide, with a pair of enormous, very soft-looking breasts and a ghostly smile on her chalk white face.

NEW YORK--Sources at The New Yorker said a new article by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh "blows the lid completely off" a subject matter far too soul-crushing for the human brain to process. Hersh, renowned for breaking stories on events such as the My Lai Massacre and Abu Ghraib, is said to have plumbed every last, depressing detail of the newly uncovered topic, which likely involves an inconceivable combination of violence, drunken abuses of power, wanton disregard for the sanctity of human life, and a chain of deceit and corruption leading all the way to the top. According to a recent poll, none of The New Yorker's nearly 1 million subscribers had summoned the strength to crack the story's first paragraph, instead turning to the new Roz Chast cartoon on the next page. (A very reliable source)

A breed of giant cattle created by the Nazis can now be seen in Britain for the first time after a farmer imported the huge creatures to graze conservation land.

There are brilliant images here.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

However, in the course of the neverending reorganisation of the company, the ministry and the company heads kept delaying the decision about whether my branch should continue to have that benefit. In practice, that meant that instead of getting new rail passes, the validity of the old one was extended.

So, here I am with the rail pass of 2007, the validity of which was just extended again...

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