Latvia's health minister has resigned after refusing to support spending cuts, needed to secure international loans to avoid the country going bankrupt. 

Health Minister Ivars Eglitis said in a statement that he had resigned because he refused to support cuts to spending for Latvia's health system, which could lead to job cuts and hospital closures.

"As a doctor and a healthcare specialist I cannot accept this," Eglitis said in a statement.

The health cuts are part of a wider package of measures approved by parliament on Tuesday. The Latvian government hopes to cut the budget by 500 million lats (715 million euros) to help it meet the terms of a 7.5-billion-euro bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Farmers angry at falling milk prices caused traffic chaos in the EU capital on Thursday (18 June) morning, in a distraction from the official EU summit agenda.

Between 500 and 1,000 mostly Belgian tractors began snaking their way toward the Parc de Cinquantenaire in the heart of the EU quarter at around 8.30 am local time.

The heavy policing gave the summit venue a warlike atmosphere

The columns, moving at speeds of just 30 km/hour on all three lanes of the main E40 highway leading into Brussels, caused tailbacks over 20 km long. Disruption was also expected on the E411 and E19 roads.

The farmers plan to make a tour of Brussels city centre before congregating at the park, where they aim to spend the night and to resume the protest on Friday.

The growing numbers of women in France who wear the burka, the head-to-toe Islamic veil, are causing concern among French lawmakers who want to set up a national commission to investigate the phenomenon. 

Close to 60 legislators signed a proposal Wednesday, June 17, calling for a parliamentary commission to look into the spread of the burka, a garment that they said amounted "to a breach of individual freedoms on our national territory."

"Today, in many city neighborhoods, we see several Muslim women wearing the burka, which covers and fully envelops the body and the head, like a moving prison, or the nijab which allows only the eyes to be shown," said Communist MP Andre Gerin, a legislator and one of the leaders of the drive for the parliamentary commission.

"We find it intolerable to see images of these imprisoned women when they come from Iran, Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia. They are totally unacceptable on the territory of the French republic," Gerin wrote in a text outlining his proposal.

Details of MPs' expenses claims were finally published by the House of Commons today - but with much of the detail that led to a public outcry blacked out.

The release of tens of thousands of claim forms and receipts on the Parliament website more than a year after the High Court ordered their publication is likely to lead to demands for greater openness.

It is impossible to identify many of the abuses which came out as a result of the earlier leak of the same material to the Daily Telegraph before crucial details were blacked out.

There are no addresses for MPs' homes, meaning it would have been virtually impossible to identify so-called "flipping", whereby MPs switch the designation of their second properties to maximise their claims.

Also redacted are the names and details of people and companies to whom payments were made using expenses.

Growth in presidential spending 'seven times greater' than rest of state

Soaring French presidential expenses under Nicolas Sarkozy have come under blistering political attack - despite the absence of either duck pond or moat at the Elyseé palace.

A report by an opposition MP claims the cost of running the presidency leapt by 18 per cent last year and that the cost of day-to-day expenses, such as food, jumped by more than 50 per cent to €500,000 (£426,000) a week. Less surprisingly, the cost of official visits by the hyperactive President rose by over 26 per cent.

René Dosière, a Socialist deputy who has specialised in scrutinising presidential expenses for many years, accused President Sarkozy of breaking an electoral promise to make the traditionally secretive operation of the Elyseé Palace more transparent and less onerous for the taxpayer.

He said that the increase in Elyseé spending in 2008 was seven times greater than the overall growth of state expenditure. "Spending restrictions imposed on all other departments, from which every state employee suffers in his daily work, do not extend to the presidency," said M. Dosière.

A committee of the Dutch Lower House wants to make free downloading illegal, a futile attempt to stop the practice say internet users. MPs from the Christian Democratic party (CDA), the Labour Party (PvdA), the Socialist Party (SP) and the conservatives (VVD) presented their `copyright bill' in the Lower House on Wednesday.
 
Currently only uploading is illegal. Debates in the Lower House showed that many MPs think downloading should also be punishable.
 
The Lower House says the ban should only take effect when there are viable legal alternatives. These are practically absent in the Netherlands. The committee recommended the entertainment industry find a solution. Chair of the committee Arda Gerkens said "it is their own commercial problem. They should solve it, not the legislator."
 
In 2007, the Dutch Justice Ministry announced it would step up its game against piracy but said it would focus on people who upload copyrighted material on a large scale. Ms Gerkens is quick to clarify that they "don't want to act against 13-year-old girls who download their favourite songs", but says that "we need to teach children that music and movies are not for free."

Letter reveals former PM was aware of guidance to UK agents

Tony Blair was aware of the ­existence of a secret interrogation policy which ­effectively led to British citizens, and others, being ­tortured during ­counter-terrorism investigations, the Guardian can reveal.

The policy, devised in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, offered ­guidance to MI5 and MI6 officers ­questioning detainees in Afghanistan whom they knew were being mistreated by the US military.

British intelligence officers were given written instructions that they could not "be seen to condone" torture and that they must not "engage in any activity yourself that involves inhumane or degrading treatment of prisoners".

EU leaders are meeting for key talks in Brussels to discuss the banking industry and the troubled Lisbon Treaty. Leaders are also expected to back a second term for Jose Manuel Barroso as European Commision chief. 

Delegates at the European Union summit are slated to determine who will act as the 27-member bloc's chief executive for the next five years. Portuguese incumbent conservative Jose Manuel Barroso appears to be the only contender for the post, and he's already received conditional support from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

 

The conservative ex-Portuguese PM is likely to get the bloc's political blessing for another five years at the helm of the EU executive, diplomats said, with the overriding sentiment being that stability is key during the economic crisis and institutional change.

 

The Commission helps draw up European law and will control an operating budget of 138 billion euros ($192 billion) next year. 

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - EU leaders will gather in Brussels on Thursday and Friday for a summit at which they hope to pave the way for Irish voters to say yes to the bloc's new set of institutional rules as well as nominate the next president of the European Commission.

The two issues have been occupying the political and legal minds in Brussels for the last month as they both concern the future workings of the bloc.

Ireland's Lisbon guarantees and the nomination of the commission president are set to dominate discussions

The leaders are expected to sign off a series of guarantees - on tax, so-called ethical issues and neutrality - as part of an overall package designed to persuade Irish citizens to vote yes to the Lisbon Treaty in a second referendum, expected late September or early October.

While diplomats say the texts themselves are - after weeks of negotiations and fine-tuning - unlikely to be controversial, their legal format remains an open and controversial question.

BRUSSELS -- There is just one credible candidate for the post of president of the European Commission: José Manuel Barroso, the former prime minister of Portugal who holds the position now and wants a second term.

And while no one seriously doubts that he will get it eventually, Mr. Barroso is being made to sweat for his job.

A dinner of European leaders in Brussels on Thursday has been transformed into a glorified job interview in which Mr. Barroso will have to make his pitch.

If that goes well, he will do the same thing all over again in the next few weeks, in front of bigwigs at the European Parliament. And then follows at least one and possibly two confirmation votes among all the European deputies.

EUOBSERVER/BRUSSELS - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Thursday (18 June) refused to withdraw his own candidate for the European Parliament's presidency, Mario Mauro, although Polish ex-premier Jerzy Buzek is believed to have broader support not only within the centre-right, but also with the opposition.

Silvio Berlusconi believes his candidate is the best because he is a "church-going Catholic"

Speaking to journalists after a meeting of centre-right leaders, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced that there will be a vote in the European People's Party on 7 July, as his bilateral discussion with the Italian premier failed to trigger a consensus on a single candidate for the EU legislature's presidency.

Mr Berlusconi's tough stance however could be just tough bargaining for a better portfolio in the next EU commission or maybe the presidency of an institution like the European Central Bank, as Italy has not had a prominent position in any EU institution in recent times, except for the commission presidency led by Romano Prodi.

EU talks on the Lisbon Treaty have been marred by a rift over demands made by the Republic of Ireland - which rejected the treaty in a 2008 vote.

Irish PM Brian Cowen wants a protocol put into the EU's founding treaty to safeguard Ireland's sovereignty over its military, tax and abortion laws.

Some EU countries fear reopening the debate may encourage treaty opponents.

The EU leaders did agree in principle to a new framework of rules to oversee the financial sector.

And they also gave unanimous backing to a motion nominating Jose Manuel Barroso for a second term as president of the European Commission.

UNANIMOOUS BACKING FOR BARROSO

Barroso, a former Portuguese prime minister, set out his plans to the EU leaders over dinner.

"We want to have a strong president, a strong partner who communicates well," Fischer [Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer, whose country holds the EU's collective presidency] said. "I am very glad that Jose Manuel Barroso received unanimous support."

Barroso, 53, still needs the European Parliament's approval next month and a more formal endorsement by the EU leaders. But his centre-right allies are the biggest force in the assembly and he is expected to win enough votes to be reappointed.

A record-low turnout in an election to the parliament this month showed widespread discontent with the EU's handling of the economic crisis under Barroso, but he represents continuity in fighting problems such as soaring unemployment.

Barroso has said he wants to lead Europe out of crisis, rebuild the EU's financial and supervisory system, protect jobs, combat climate change and help secure Irish voters' approval of the Lisbon treaty streamlining EU decision making.

"Our citizens want to see action," he told reporters.

Investment by Europe's cleantech venture capitalists is shifting from energy generation to energy efficiency -- like smart electric meters.

The scenic Geneva lakeshore-complete with luxury houses and boutique fashion retailers-seems an odd place to tackle climate change. But in a five-star hotel on the Avenue de France in the center of the Swiss city, clean technology entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and bankers gathered on June 17 and 18 to do just that. The agenda: Identify Europe's leading cleantech startups and make deals to fund the fight against global warming.

 Venture capital is now going to projects beyond energy generation. The summit, organized by the nonprofit European Tech Tour, comes at a tough time for the nascent green sector. Global venture capital investment in cleantech, which encompasses everything from solar panels to energy-efficiency lightbulbs, fell by almost half in the first quarter of 2009, compared with the same period a year earlier, to $1 billion, according to researcher The Cleantech Group. If broader mergers and acquisitions activity is included, consultantcy New Energy Finance calculates that investment in green energy similarly halved year-over-year, to $13.3 billion in the first quarter of 2009.

"This year could be considered the first down year for cleantech," says Richard Youngman, Cleantech Group's managing director. "That's not surprising after the growth we've seen over the last six years, but the long-term drivers [for cleantech investment] remain in place."

EU leaders are set to grapple with two particularly thorny issues at a summit in Brussels - the Lisbon Treaty and how to tighten financial regulation.

The leaders also have the easier task of nominating the conservative Jose Manuel Barroso for a second term as EU Commission president.

He has no rival - and even has backing from some centre-left leaders.

The summit follows European elections which saw a general swing to the right and some gains for Eurosceptics.

EU leaders are anxious to draw a line under the Lisbon Treaty debate.

But there has been much wrangling over the legal guarantees that the Irish government requires in order to put the Lisbon Treaty to a second referendum, likely to be held in October.

Should the European Commission - "Brussels", in the popular parlance - be allowed to step in to order the UK government to save a failing bank, whether it wants to pay the price or not?

The government worries that the City of London, with its 600 banks, 420 of them European, and its flow of 250bn euros a year, could be hit hard by new tighter rules on financial institutions. The debate about this will be the centrepiece of Thursday's meeting of the EU's 27 prime ministers and presidents.

Of course, after the financial crisis there is a clamour for stricter rules and it has been taken up with enthusiasm by France, Germany and the European Commission. The plan on the table is for a new three-headed EU watchdog to control banks, insurance and securities.

Former Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Sir Fred Goodwin has bowed to public anger over the size of his pension by agreeing to give up more than £200,000 a year of the controversial reward.

Goodwin, who left the bank in October when RBS had to be bailed out with £20bn of taxpayers' money, was originally awarded £703,000 a year when the bank was rescued by the government last year.

For the past week, I have put the Green Shootometer in the garden and have taken regular readings.  The upshot is: the glass is definitely half empty - or half full.  Let me explain.

As is clear from the most interesting blog post by Barry Eichengreen and Kevin O'Rourke, and its recent update on VoxEU, the global economy is, as regards some key activity indicators (industrial production, world trade, world stock markets), tracking the Great Depression of the 1930s with frightening precision and tenacity (see also Martin Wolf's recent  column "The recession tracks the Great Depression" on this).    They date the start of the current global contraction in April 2008.

However, somewhat to my surprise, central bankers and policy makers turn out to be capable of learning, even across generations.  The lessons of the 1930s appear to have been learnt.  New mistakes are being made all over the place, especially as regards moral hazard, the too-big-to-fail problem and other incentives for excessive risk taking in the financial sector, but that won't become a serious problem until the next bust following the next financial and asset market boom and bubble.

...

Global financial markets have normalised, in the sense that spreads have return to the levels just before Lehman fell over.  I must admit to feeling, in early September 2008, that financial market conditions were far from favourable, however.  So cardiac arrest may have been seen off, the patient is not about to jump out of bed and do a horlepiep.  Access to capital markets has been restored for many of the larger firms, but the cost of funding tends to be high.   In part, the recent burst in capital market funding represents a diversion of funding demand away from the banks, which are generally still in a zombified state.  It also tends to be unavailable to SMEs.

...

As far as I'm concerned, I've been down so long, it looks like up to me.

They were handing out the photocopies by the thousand under the plane trees in the centre of the boulevard, single sheets of paper grabbed by the opposition supporters who are now wearing black for the 15 Iranians who have been killed in Tehran - who knows how many more in the rest of the country? - since the election results gave Mahmoud Ahmadinejad more than 24 million votes and a return to the presidency. But for the tens of thousands marking their fifth day of protests yesterday - and for their election campaign hero, Mirhossein Mousavi, who officially picked up just 13 million votes - those photocopies were irradiated.

For the photocopy appeared to be a genuine but confidential letter from the Iranian minister of interior, Sadeq Mahsuli, to Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, written on Saturday 13 June, the day after the elections, and giving both Mr Mousavi and his ally, Mehdi Karroubi, big majorities in the final results. In a highly sophisticated society like Iran, forgery is as efficient as anywhere in the West and there are reasons for both distrusting and believing this document. But it divides the final vote between Mr Mousavi and Mr Karroubi in such a way that it would have forced a second run-off vote - scarcely something Mousavi's camp would have wanted.

Headed "For the Attention of the Supreme Leader" it notes "your concerns for the 10th presidential elections" and "and your orders for Mr Ahmadinejad to be elected president", and continues "for your information only, I am telling you the actual results". Mr Mousavi has 19,075,623, Mr Karroubi 13,387,104, and Mr Ahmadinejad a mere 5,698,417.

Metal deposits may be key to green car revolution but government in La Paz yet to agree deal

Stand in the middle of Salar de Uyuni, the world's greatest salt desert, and the first word that springs to mind is ­nothing. As far as the eye can see, ­nothing. Not a shrub or tree, not a hill or valley, just an endless expanse of white.

This salt flat in Bolivia, the landlocked heart of South America, is a harsh and eerie landscape, perhaps the closest thing nature has to a void. From the Incas to the present day, humanity has made little impression here.

But that may be about to change. Dig down and you find brine - water saturated with salt - rich in deposits of lithium, the lightest metal.

The US is "in a good position" to protect its territory from a potential North Korean missile strike, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has said.

His comments came in response to a report that North Korea was considering launching a missile towards Hawaii.

"We do have some concerns if they were to launch a missile to the West, in the direction of Hawaii," Mr Gates said.

The US has approved the deployment of missiles and radar to "provide support" in the event of an attack, he added.

Who can rattle their sabre the loudest?

The fate of Iran rested last night in a grubby north Tehran highway interchange called Vanak Square where - after days of violence - supporters of the official President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at last confronted the screaming, angry Iranians who have decided that Mirhossein Mousavi should be the president of their country. Unbelievably - and I am a witness because I stood beside them - just 400 Iranian special forces police were keeping these two armies apart. There were stones and tear gas but for the first time in this epic crisis the cops promised to protect both sides.

"Please, please, keep the Basiji from us," one middle-aged lady pleaded with a special forces officer in flak jacket and helmet as the Islamic Republic's thug-like militia appeared in their camouflage trousers and purity-white shirts only a few metres away. The cop smiled at her. "With God's help," he said. Two other policemen were lifted shoulder-high. "Tashakor, tashakor," - "thank you, thank you" - the crowd roared at them.

This was phenomenal. The armed special forces of the Islamic Republic, hitherto always allies of the Basiji, were prepared for once, it seemed, to protect all Iranians, not just Ahmadinejad's henchmen. The precedent for this sudden neutrality is known to everyone - it was when the Shah's army refused to fire on the millions of demonstrators demanding his overthrow in 1979.

Khamenei and Ahmadinejad will not let in international inspectors to see their full nuclear programme, much less control it, because, they say, the CIA used information gathered by inspectors in Iraq to know where to bomb. Netanyahu, in turn, has convinced himself Ahmadinejad is an incarnation of the genocidal anti-Semitism that stalked Europe down the centuries. His rhetoric becomes as crazed as Ahmadinejad's. When asked how he sees Iran, he replied: "Remember Amalek."

The Amalekites are the primordial enemies of the Jews in the Torah. In I Samuel xiv, 3, God says: "Go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass."

Irrational fear and tribal-religious manias are now driving both sides and, until this week, a violent show-down looked ever more likely.

But the uprising in Iran offers a radically different route. If the Iranian political system can be made to bend to the will of the Iranian people, we will see there is a peaceful solution that has been waiting for us all along. The most detailed study of Iranian views, carried out by the independent Centre for Public Opinion, found that 94 per cent of Iranians want nuclear power, and 52 per cent want the nuclear bomb. But there is a crucial clause. More than 70 per cent agree that if the US and EU offer a peace package where they guarantee there will be no invasion and instead bring aid and investment, they will let inspectors closely monitor their nuclear power programmes and renounce nuclear weapons for good.

This is a way out of the ratchet of fear. It averts a bombing campaign that would spread another bushfire of mutual loathing through the world, and forestalls the risk of an endless Gazan missile crisis at the heart of the Middle East. It is not inconceivable that a deal could be struck with a weakened Ahmadinejad still in power, but it would be far more likely under a reformist with the people at his back.

Most peculiarly, Fowler's "agenda" for APA was encapsulated in the phrase "Working Together," a noble idea that to the best of my knowledge was never attached to any actual substantive agenda. Instead, it served as a means of social control, a subtle injunction against raising any of the conflict-laden issues, challenges, or ideas that need to be addressed in any vital and accountable organization. The governance of the APA became either conformist or placid and increasingly detached from the real world.

The result was that much of the activity of the APA Council of Representatives, the legislative group with ultimate authority in the APA governance, turned away from substantive matters into an odd system of fawning over one another. Many members appeared to simply bathe in the good feeling that came from "working together." The bath was characterized by grandiose self-referents and shared lofty opinions of one another. As it became more and more detached from reality, the organizational dysfunction became more pronounced, but this was ignored and obscured by the self-congratulatory organizational style. During this period, isolated dissent from rank-and-file members was stifled with a heavy-handed letter from the APA attorney threatening legal action or by communications from prominent members of the APA governance threatening "ethics" charges if policy protests were not discontinued. (It is unethical for psychologists to lie, and I can attest that one former APA president concluded that disagreeing with him was per se "lying.") 

Deliberations on Torture

This same grandiosity was ubiquitous in the governance's rhetoric at the heart of the Association's discussions on torture. Banning psychologists' participation in reputed torture mills was clearly unnecessary, proponents of the APA policy argued.  To do so would be an "insult" to military psychologists everywhere.

the banality of evil...

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

On Jan. 27, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned Congress, "The spigot of defense funding opened by 9/11 is closing." Right after Gates' defense budget was released on May 7, the Pentagon's comptroller, Robert Hale, confirmed to the press: "The spigot is starting to close." A closing spigot implies less money, but the new 2010 defense budget shows quite clearly that the spigot is not closing; it's stuck - full on. Not counting the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon's annual appropriations for 2009 were $514 billion. For 2010, Gates is requesting $534 billion. The flow is to increase by $20 billion.

Progress towards a new global climate agreement has been slow. SPIEGEL spoke with China's head climate negotiator Yu Qingtai about Western responsibility for CO2 emissions in China and frustration in the developing world.

SPIEGEL: China is now the largest emitter of CO2 in the world. Is China recognizing its responsibility for climate change?

Yu Qingtai: We take climate change very seriously, but don't forget that we are 1.3 billion people. The difference in per-capita emissions between China and the developed nations is still huge. You can't tell Chinese people that being born in China means being allowed just 20 percent or 25 percent of the CO2 emissions allowed somebody born in Europe.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Shaping the global climate change deal at the upcoming UN conference in Copenhagen is a main priority of the Committee of Regions, an EU advisory body representing the bloc's regional and local governments.

A global deal negotiated in Copenhagen in December by world leaders will ultimately have to be implemented by regional and local authorities, with the Committee of Regions aiming to be a "policy shaper" in this regard, its president, Luc van den Brande, told EUobserver ahead of the CoR plenary session starting on Wednesday.

The climate change deal reached in Copenhagen will have to be implemented by local and regional governments

During the session, representatives of local and regional governments were set to adopt several recommendations to be tabled in Copenhagen, for instance to involve them in the planning, adoption and implementation of national climate change strategies and action plans.

The EU regions also wanted their own representative "in the EU delegation" at the Copenhagen conference, according to the draft resolution.

It is said that the way to someone's heart is through the stomach. Could integration follow the same path? A German butcher has just announced his newest creation: the döner bratwurst.

In countries like Germany where sausage dominates the culinary offerings, there is one golden rule: Never, ever ask what's in a wurst. There is, after all, a distinct chance that you won't like the answer.

Döner kebab? Sausage? Or both? One German sausage meister, however, has recently broken that rule -- and has done his part to promote German-Turkish integration in the process. He has come up with a brand new product: the döner bratwurst.

The new product is made completely from veal and is stuffed into a casing made of sheep's intestine, thereby avoiding pork out of respect for Muslim dietary restrictions. "One can eat it alone with ketchup or in a pita with salad just like a regular döner," inventor Stefan Voelker told the tabloid Bild. Voelker, the report says, is fond of creating new sausage variations in his free time.

1. Zürich
   
2. Copenhagen
   
3. Tokyo

1. Vancouver
   
2. Vienna
   
3. Melbourne

The housing minister has declared the population decline in the Netherlands a national problem. Experts say communities need to begin accepting that there's going to be fewer Dutch people around in the future.

With 16.5 million people and a population density of 488 per km², the Netherlands is one of the most densely populated countries on the planet. It seems an unlikely country for ghost towns, such as can be found in eastern Germany or rural France. Yet that is exactly what experts are warning for.

At a conference on Wednesday, government officials and researchers get together to discuss how Dutch municipalities can deal with a diminishing population.

The Dutch minister for housing, Eberhard van der Laan, said he was "slightly depressed" after visiting the southern cities Heerlen and Maastricht earlier this year. There he saw what is unheard of in the west of the country - unoccupied houses, boarded-up shops, schools closing down and companies moving away. Van der Laan has since declared the population shrinkage a national problem.

I am fortunate in that my kids, when they were mere tots, bullied me into giving up smoking.  As soon as I lit up in their vicinity, they would cry out "daddy, you are going to die!".  Worse than that, they used to rat me out to my wife when I snuck outside for a quick smoke behind the shed.  It was a battle I could not win, so I quit.  Filthy habit.

...

Many of the smoking-related deaths are horrible.  All are premature.  But the usual announcements of deaths caused by smoking are framed as if the poor unfortunate smokers would, if only they had not succumbed to the evil weed, lived for ever or, at least, would have lived longer, with a good quality of life and would have experienced a `good death'.

Living through the deaths of friends, family and loved ones, I am as sure as a person with only one life to live can be, that there are deaths that are even worse than the worst smoking-related deaths.  Having watched non-smokers die of bone marrow cancer, of a long sequence of minor strokes, of the result of a fall causing a major breakage of brittle bones, of a slow brain tumour, of Parkinson's disease and of senile dementia has cured me of the notion of a gentle death or good death.

So please, when there is a public announcement that X number of people died during 2009 as a result of smoking-related illnesses, please provide the public with two bits of information.  First, how much longer the victims of smoking would have lived if they had not smoked and, second, what they would have been expected to die of instead.

...

Smoking is a terrible addiction.  Taxation, regulation and education should be used to minimise its incidence. Still, if I ever were diagnosed with Huntington's disease or some other terrible and terminal affliction, I would light up, and not just to save the NHS some money.

Italian premier 'could have women in large numbers for free', says representative

Silvio Berlusconi's lawyer has denied fresh allegations in the Italian media that women received money to attend parties at the prime minister's residences in Rome and Sardinia, saying Berlusconi did not need to pay for women.

"He does not need people to bring him women," Niccolò Ghedini told the newspaper Corriere della Sera. "It's seems a bit over the top to think that Berlusconi needs to pay €2,000 [£1,700] for a girl to go with him. I think he could have them in large numbers for free."

Public prosecutors in the southern city of Bari said they were investigating whether payments allegedly made to at least four women by a local entrepreneur, Giampaolo Tarantini, to attend parties "in exclusive locations in Rome and Sardinia" constituted an "induction into prostitution".