AFP- German car company Opel will close its plant in Antwerp, Belgium this year, GM Europe announced on Thursday.

"We must make this announcement now so that we can secure a viable future for the entire Opel and Vauxhall operations," GM Europe President Nick Reilly said in a statement.

The Opel site, which will close "in the course of 2010," employs 2,600 workers, the statement said.

The EU's highest court has told Germany to ease a restriction on Polish workers, calling it "discriminatory".

The EU's Court of Justice objects to a rule which says that only German firms or foreign firms with a branch in Germany can hire Polish workers.

The case against Germany was brought by Poland and the European Commission.

The court however upheld Germany's right to maintain limits on the number of hired workers from ex-communist states. The limits run until May 2011.

French police say they have arrested a Rwandan doctor who is wanted in his homeland on charges of genocide and war crimes.

Sosthene Munyemana was detained by police on Wednesday in Bordeaux, in the southwest of France, under an extradition warrant issued by Rwanda.

The 45-year-old, who had been working in a hospital emergency ward in the region for eight years, had been on an Interpol list of wanted men since 2002.

Munyemana denies taking part in the 1994 genocide, in which an estimated 800,000 people died in the space of around three months.

The European Parliament is poised to accept the new European Commission, following the resolution of a dispute involving the Bulgarian nominee.

Rumiana Jeleva withdrew her candidacy for the post of EU commissioner for humanitarian aid after fellow politicians accused her of  incompetence and dubious business practices. Bulgaria has named World Bank official Kristalina Georgieva to replace her.

The parliament cannot veto an individual commissioner-designate, but can threaten to block the team as a whole if it has doubts about one or more nominees.

Italy's parliament gave its first nod yesterday to a draft law drastically cutting the duration of trials, a measure critics say is tailor-made to stop pending court cases against Silvio Berlusconi.

The Senate, where the Prime Minister has an ample majority, approved the so-called "short trial" draft bill - one of the most radical reforms of Italy's snail-paced justice system since the end of the Second World War - by 163 to 130 votes. It will now go before the lower house, where it is all but certain to get the green light.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The record industry has for the first time played the nationalism card in its efforts to battle online piracy.

Hoping to up the pressure on governments to introduce harsh French-style anti-piracy laws - which include imposing fines, cutting off internet access and even jailing - offenders, the record industry has warned that illegal downloading and streaming is killing off non-anglophone music in countries such as Spain, France and Brazil, which until now had vibrant music scenes.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The EU has converted 54 out of the European Commission's 136 foreign delegations into embassy-type missions authorised to speak for the entire union.

The move follows the coming into force last year of the Lisbon Treaty, which has the creation of a new EU diplomatic corps as one of its main provisions.

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All 136 commission delegations were renamed "EU delegations" on 1 January. But only the 54 placements were at the same time quietly given fresh powers in line with their new names.

The super-delegations have taken on the role previously carried out by the national embassies of the member state holding the six-month EU presidency at any given time.

As such, they now co-ordinate the work of the member states' bilateral missions to the countries in question. The heads of the 54 delegations are also empowered to speak on behalf of the EU as a whole. But their statements have to be pre-approved by the 27 EU countries during meetings in Brussels.

BERLIN -- Three months after the United States announced a reformulated missile-defense plan for Poland, the Polish defense minister has announced that American surface-to-air missiles will be deployed near Russian soil.

The minister, Bogdan Klich, said Wednesday that an undisclosed number of missiles would be deployed in the vicinity of Morag, in northern Poland, just 35 miles from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. He said the missiles could arrive as soon as late March or early April.

He said the decision to base the missiles near Morag, and not Warsaw, had no political or strategic significance. "The only reason was the good infrastructure," Mr. Klich said.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek is planning to send a letter to the Council of Ministers, the EU institution representing member states, calling for a suspension of a recent agreement that was to enable the continued transfer of EU citizens' banking data to US investigators.

The US screens certain data held by Swift as part of its fight against terrorism

The decision to call for a delay to the interim deal, scheduled to enter into force on 1 February, was made by leaders of the parliament's different political groups during a meeting in Strasbourg on Thursday (21 January).

MEPs were infuriated when the Council agreed the interim deal with the US on 30 November last year, just a day before the EU's new rulebook, the Lisbon Treaty, came into force, which handed the euro-deputies a greater say over data protection issues.

The controversial deal was negotiated to help the US out of a legal hole, following the relocation of the US database of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift) to the Netherlands on 1 January.

It's been a year since Barack Obama was inaugurated president of the United States on 20 January. But despite his inspiring speeches, he is no Franklin Roosevelt, and even if he were, he needs 60 out of 100 votes in the US Senate to pass anything. Since the end of world war two, a power has emerged with the real potential to carry the world forward

opinion

by steven hill

When I first began travelling to Europe for research in the late nineties, I was trying to understand differences between the political systems and democratic institutions of the United States and Europe. I interviewed politicians, leaders, journalists, bureaucrats, political party leaders, union officials and business leaders. I had conversations with shop vendors, business owners, CEOs, taxi drivers, young people, people on buses, in elevators, restaurants, and cafés, in their homes and in the street, sometimes whether they wanted to talk or not. It was not only the political systems in Europe that were quite different. Europe's institutions had been slowly taking shape during the cold war years. It was a fertile incubation period thanks to the Pax Americana which allowed each nation to take slow steps down its own development path. Europe's brand of `social capitalism' proposes a bold new path for human development, its leadership manifesting in the following ways:

EU justice ministers have put off a request by the US to install full-body scanners at airports across Europe. Studies must first confirm that the devices are safe and don't invade privacy, the ministers say. 

Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, said the European Commission was currently conducting such studies.

"Once we have these studies on the table we will make a decision," he told Janet Napolitano, US Homeland Security Secretary, at a press conference following Thursday's talks in Toledo, Spain.

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said  Berlin could reach a decision about installing full-body scanners at German airports by the middle of this year.

Usefulness - The current international line between Turin and Modane is used at 30% of its actual capacity and the motorway is used at less than 50% capacity.
Traffic forecast - Up until now the traffic forecasts made by the project workers have turned out to be erroneous. They are based on the concept of infinite growth that says that for every extra point of GDP, there'll be a growth in traffic of 1.4 points. According to the estimates, the current line should be saturated already by this year. This has not happened. Growth still does not exist and goods transport decreases constantly and consequently the need for transport.
According to LTF {Lyon Turin Ferroviaire} the future line would find stability on its balance sheet with 40 million tons of transported goods a year. The current line can transport at least 20 million. Today 4.8 million are carried. Even by transferring all the goods currently transported on the motorways to the railways that would get to the utilization of the current railway of about 50% of its capacity.

Costs - Mauro Moretti , the CEO of Trenitalia has declared that the estimated cost of the line is 120 million per kilometre, that's 3 or 4 times more in relation to the average costs in France (see the article in "Il Sole 24 ore" on 13 January 2010). Furthermore, the estimated costs generally increase 2 to 3 times by the end of the work. Italy has also signed up to an economic agreement by which 65% of the international part would be charged to our country.

Mircea Geoana, who lost the Romanian presidential election in December, getting 49.66% of the vote, blames witchcraft, specifically a "negative energy attack" during a debate that caused him to perform badly. And in fact, President Traian Basescu did go to that debate with a parapsychologist slash clairvoyant slash mind-control expert.

between him and alistair campbell, hmmm. i dunno.

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

China has declared itself the first major economy to recover from the global economic downturn as data showed economic growth accelerated to 10.7 per cent in the final quarter of 2009.

GDP for the whole year totalled 8.7 per cent according to government figures released on Thursday, easily beating targets.

However, the raft of data released by the National Bureau of Statistics also showed inflation picking up, adding to pressure on the government to prevent overheating in the economy.

"China has become the first, on the whole, to achieve recovery and stabilisation in its economy," Ma Jiantang, the bureau's commissioner, told reporters in Beijing.

But he added that in the face of ongoing "uncertainties" and a weak global outlook, the government would avoid major changes in economic policy.

The figures put China's total gross domestic output for 2009 at $4.9 trillion, bringing it closer to overtaking Japan as the world's number two economy after the US.

President Barack Obama today declared his intent to take on Wall Street by announcing plans for stringent rules on the banking sector that prompted comparisons with the draconian regulations introduced after the Great Depression.

In the boldest move taken by any government around the world to respond to the financial crisis, Obama told banks they would no longer be able to take risky bets with their own capital to make money on the financial markets.

Banks which take deposits will not be allowed to use their own money to take bets on markets, run hedge funds or make private equity investments through what he called the "Volcker rule" after former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker.

He also wants to prevent further consolidation of the financial system in the US and will ban takeovers and mergers among American firms in the sector.

In news that economists described as "very encouraging", the CBI reported in its quarterly survey of the industrial sector that the level of businesses' optimism for the coming year has hit the highest level in 15 years, while orders to factories are starting slowly to recover.

The business lobby also found that companies' access to finance is improving, and that they are slowly starting to invest again.

The news will come as a relief, since the past year saw the biggest fall in industrial and business investment since the 1930s, as companies nationwide cancelled their expansion plans in the face of the credit crisis. Since then, there has been scant evidence that businesses are starting to invest again.

PARIS -- When it comes to rescuing banks, the Swedes are earning a reputation as trendsetters. First they set a standard for recovering from disaster; now they want to export their idea for how to pay for it.

The country went through its own crippling banking crisis during the early 1990s, after the bursting of a domestic credit bubble. It rebounded relatively smoothly through an aggressive bailout policy built around nationalization and carving banks' troubled assets off into a so-called bad bank.

That blueprint was followed to varying degrees over the past year or so in the United States, Japan, Britain, the Netherlands and other countries.

Henri Proglio, the newly appointed president of French public electric company EDF, who is also chairman of private water management firm Veolia, has given up the smaller of his two salaries amid mounting public criticism.

Henri Proglio, the new head of French energy company EDF, has chosen to give up the smaller of the two salaries he was receiving amid fierce criticism from French opposition politicians.

Proglio was to be paid 1.6 million by EDF and a further 450,000 by Veolia, a water and waste management company, where he remains chairman of the board after joining EDF management. He has given up the smaller, Veolia payments. What sparked public anger was not so much the amounts in question (130 times the French national average), but more that Proglio has fingers in both pies: speculation is rife that EDF and Veolia could merge in the future, presenting an obvious conflict of interests.

Our friends at ContraryInvestor have published some remarkable data this evening in their twice weekly (subscription) analysis of the economy and the markets. This is one of the best analysis sites we follow, and highly recommend that you at least take advantage of their complimentary monthly newsletter.

This data suggests that the Fed's purchases of Market Backed Securities from the banks serves not only to artificially depress mortgage rates and the long end of the yield curve. The purchases occur, with a remarkably high correlation of 86%, during monthly stock market options expiration weeks in the US.

The data is intriguing to say the least. As you may recall, option expiration in the US stock indices occurs on the third Friday of every month. We have pointed out in the past that this monthly event is often the occasion of some not so subtle racketeering by the funds and prop trading desks of the banks in separating the option players from their positions, and pushing prices around to maximize the pain.

....

It might not be a coincidence, but there could be some unrelated event in the mortgage markets that also occurs on the third Friday or Thursday of each month. We are not aware of it, but that does not mean it does not exist. Anyone who might know of such a cross correlation would be kind to let us know of it.

But otherwise, it would be a good question to ask of the Fed. Are they in fact supplying extra liquidity to the banks at certain intervals to support a manipulation of the market to boost their prop trading results? (Bold added)

Can anyone find Bernake in this photo? I see Goolsby, Roemer, Geithner, Frank, Volker, Orzag, Summers, Dodd, one who I can't identify and one hidden behind Obama, but no one who could be Bernanke. Scheduling conflict?

WASHINGTON -- President Obama wants to cut down to size those too-big-to-fail banks. But his vow on Thursday to rewrite the rules of Wall Street left many questions unanswered, including the big one: Would this really prevent another financial crisis?

The president's proposals to place new limits on the size and activities of big banks rattled the stock market, but banking executives were perplexed as to how his plan would work. Indeed, many insisted the proposals, if adopted, would do little to change their businesses.

Moreover, it was unclear if the twin proposals -- to ban banks with federally insured deposits from casting risky bets in the markets, and to resist further consolidation in the financial industry -- would have done much if anything to forestall the crisis that pushed the economic system to the brink of collapse in 2008.

Mr. Obama appeared to be leaving crucial details to be hashed out by Congress, where partisan tussling has already threatened another reform the president supports -- the creation of a consumer protection agency that would have oversight over credit cards, mortgages and other lending products.

Does Obama's proposal solve the problem? Not according to R C Whalen:

If you accept situations such as AIG and other cases where Buy Side investors (and, indirectly, the US taxpayer) were defrauded through the use of OTC derivatives and/or structured assets as the archetype "problems" that require a public policy response, then the Volcker Rule does not address the problem. The basic issue that still has not been addressed by Congress and most federal regulators (other than the FDIC with its proposed rule on bank securitizations) is how to fix the markets for OTC derivatives and structured finance vehicles.

Between now and Feb. 22 when the new credit-card rules go into effect, you'll see a lot of excited media types talking about all of the good to come out of those regulations, but as a consumer you should worry about what's still on the menu. The card issuers have been cooking up all kinds of new things that their bottom line will find appetizing, but that may make you sick....

Not surprisingly, lenders are using fees as a main weapon. About 80% of all credit cards carry no annual fee, but many issuers are starting to put fees in place. Even if they don't charge an annual fee, issuers are adding "inactivity fees" for consumers who don't use the card to make purchases or those who don't make a certain amount of purchases in a 12-month period. Lenders are also hiking balance-transfer fees, and removing caps and limits that might otherwise make transfer offers more consumer-friendly. Issuers also are raising minimum finance charges, so that if your balance is so much as a penny, the lender is guaranteed a charge of, say, five bucks.

Read more...

Benjamin Netanyahu and his colleagues in the Israeli government have been announcing that the only "army" of Lebanon is the Hizbollah, the Iranian-armed and Syrian-assisted guerrilla force whose bunkers and missiles north of the Litani river might just tip the balance in the next Hizbollah-Israeli war. And Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the chairman of the Hizbollah, has been making some even more interesting threats: that his forces will "change the face of the Middle East region" if there is another war with Israel. No-one is in much doubt about what this means. The newly resurfaced Lebanese roads near the border - courtesy of Hizbollah money - suggest that someone might want to move men at high speed towards the frontier. Perhaps even to cross the border.

Up to 18,000 people are homeless after days of fighting between Christians and Muslims in the Nigerian city of Jos.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said that people have been sheltering in colleges, hospitals and schools since clashes began on Sunday.

More than 460 people in and around the central Nigerian city have been killed.

Nigerian authorities have relaxed a 24-hour curfew in the northern city to allow thousands of residents whose houses have not been destroyed to return home.

The strong presence of troops and police has helped restore calm in the capital of Plateau state, with no reports of major violence for nearly 24 hours.

Long backlogs of patients injured in the Haiti earthquake are building at medical clinics as aid workers warn of more deaths from untreated injuries and disease in overcrowded makeshift camps.

The warnings come as the US prepares to send 4,000 more troops to Haiti to help the relief effort. The new contingent of soldiers and marines diverted from deployments in the Gulf and Africa will take the US presence to about 16,000 troops.

Earth-moving equipment is being used in an effort to speed up the burial of 200,000 people estimated to have died in last week's disaster while estimates of those made homeless have leapt by a third to 2 million.

Pakistan's army has said it will launch no new offensives on militants in 2010, as the US defence secretary arrived for talks on combating Taliban fighters.
Army spokesman Athar Abbas told the BBC the "overstretched" military had no plans for any fresh anti-militant operations over the next 12 months.
Our correspondent says the comments are a clear snub to Washington.
The US would like Pakistan to expand an offensive against militants launching cross-border attacks in Afghanistan.
.

WASHINGTON -- Sweeping aside a century-old understanding and overruling two important precedents, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.

The ruling was a vindication, the majority said, of the First Amendment's most basic free speech principle -- that the government has no business regulating political speech. The dissenters said allowing corporate money to flood the political marketplace will corrupt democracy.

The U.S. military is gearing up for a possible influx of Haitians fleeing their earthquake-stricken country at an Army facility not widely known for its humanitarian missions: Guantanamo Bay.

Soldiers at the base have set up tents, beds and toilets, awaiting possible orders from the secretary of defense to proceed, according to Maj. Diana Haynie, a spokeswoman for Joint Task Force Guantanamo Bay.

The upset results of the Massachusetts US Senate special election are being widely dissected by pundits looking for explanations and ramifications coming out of this election. The obvious culprit  is "Obamacare" but as with most things in life, the explanation is not so singular. However, make no mistake: President Obama bears nearly full blame for the debacle last night in MA.

I endorsed Obama but wasted little time tearing into him for appearing too deliberate and calculated during times of financial crisis even before he took office. While many will point to the epic health care reform battle as the key turning point (and the fact that Republicans managed to gather public support by defending MEDICARE borders on a comedy of errors to rival any Bush-ism), Obama made key mistakes long before the special election. The most egregious of these was to steadily demoralize his fervent support base with constant back-tracking on election promises and actual change.

The most glaring blunder was Obama's failure to put the wood to Wall Street. Speaking from a realpolitik view, Obama should have chopped Wall Street heads whether or not those heads deserved to roll -- the American public would have supported a nice lynching and Republicans would have been hard-pressed to defend the bankers and their brethren. Instead, Obama made a decision very early in his administration to continue Bush's financial sector policies for the most part, partly due to the fact that much of Obama's campaign money came from there -- thus, my post in June of last year, calling the new President the same as the old one. Now, of course, Wall Street is headed for record bonuses despite 10% unemployment and Obama cannot deflect the blame onto W. Bush -- at least during the twilight of Bush's administration, both Wall Street and Main Street truly felt the pain. Under Obama, Wall Street flourishes while Main Street flounders. This is now Obama's cake and the voters in Massachusetts made him eat it last night.

The latest winter storm moved through Southern California with a wallop this afternoon, flooding roads, causing tornado-like winds in Ventura and Santa Barbara and causing small mudslides in foothill communities.

The storm brought winds of up to 80 mph and waves recorded at up to 20 feet. The brunt of the storm has moved to the east, but more showers and isolated thunderstorms are forecast through Friday.

[Updated 4:16 p.m.: Acting Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today proclaimed a state of emergency in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Francisco and Siskiyou counties due to the series of storms. In a prepared statement, Brown cited the loss of human life, injuries, flooding, heavy snows, loss of power and mudslides as reason for the state of emergency. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger  is currently in Washington D.C.]

Ventura County fire officials said that they had received reports that a tornado touched down in the eastern end of the city of Ventura near North Bank Drive and Montgomery Avenue, downing power lines and causing damage to cars, outbuildings and agriculture, as well as toppling a tree into a home.

Reporting from Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, and In Mexico City -- U.S. military officials in Haiti said the use of three additional airfields and the capital's seaport beginning today will boost of the flow of food, water and medical attention to earthquake victims, while Haitian officials began to lay out plans for housing hundreds of thousands of displaced people.

Air Force Gen. Douglas Fraser, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, said the military has begun using two airfields in the neighboring Dominican Republic and another south of Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital, which was devastated in the Jan. 12 quake.

Those extra airports are aimed at taking some of the burden from the Port-au-Prince airport, which has been swamped by aid shipments and military flights since the earthquake. The airport, now run by the U.S. military, is handling 120 to 140 flights a day, but there is a waiting list of 1,400 flights, Fraser said.

Fraser said the seaport, which was closed after being heavily damaged in the quake, would reopen today on a limited basis -- handling about 150 containers daily -- with the arrival of a landing craft with "port-opening" capabilities. The port should be able to handle up to 250 containers a daystarting Friday, when a commercial ship is to arrive.

Seaborne shipments are expected to dramatically increase the quantities of goods and equipment for the relief and recovery effort.

A Justice Department-led task force has concluded that nearly 50 of the 196 detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should be held indefinitely without trial under the laws of war, according to Obama administration officials....

"We're still moving forward and in a much more deliberate and less haphazard manner than was the case before," said an administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the recommendations have not been made public. "All policies encounter reality, and it's painful, but this one holds up better than most."

The task force has recommended that Guantanamo Bay detainees be divided into three main groups: about 35 who should be prosecuted in federal or military courts; at least 110 who can be released, either immediately or eventually; and the nearly 50 who must be detained without trial....

Moving a significant number of detainees to the United States remains key to the administration's now-delayed plan to empty the military facility. The federal government plans to acquire a state prison in Thomson, Ill., to house Guantanamo Bay detainees, but the plan faces major hurdles....

The task force comprised officials from the departments of Defense, State, Homeland Security and Justice, as well as agencies such as the CIA and the FBI. Officials said that the process of assessing the detainees was extremely challenging and occasionally contentious, but that consensus was reached on each case in the end....

Some European officials, who would like to see Guantanamo Bay closed without instituting indefinite detention, are advocating the creation of an internationally funded rehabilitation center for terrorism suspects in Yemen and possibly Afghanistan. They say such a facility would gradually allow the transfer of all detainees from those countries back to their homelands, according to two sources familiar with the plan...

"There is lots of really good expertise on rehabilitation, and the administration needs to invest in it."

Read more...

The rules of the competition are simple: the award goes to whoever in my opinion -- assisted by climate scientists and specialists -- managed in the course of 2009 to cram as many misrepresentations, distortions and falsehoods into a single online article, statement, lecture, film or interview about climate change.

The first contestant was the man after which this beautiful trophy was named, the famous strangler of facts, the Telegraph Terror, Christopher Booker. In just one short column in the Sunday Telegraph, he managed to drop six and a half clangers. I thought that would set a high bar for the other contestants. How wrong I was.

The Indonesian government has announced plans to sell tigers as pets for £67,000 a pair in what it claims is a move to protect the critically endangered species.

However, environmental groups have criticised the scheme as a money-making scam that will do nothing to save tigers, which face an increased risk from poachers on the eve of the Chinese Year of the Tiger.

Three people have already applied to follow in the footsteps of Michael Jackson and Mike Tyson and keep a tiger as a pet.

The criteria for taking ownership of 30 available tigers is having a spare billion rupiah (£67,000) and a minimum of 5 sq kilometre of land on which to keep the animals.

The government said the tigers would be constantly monitored in their new homes and any mistreatment would be punished by fines or jail.

The future of the EU's Low Carbon Revolution hangs in the balance as it becomes likely its emissions targets will be delayed again.

The ongoing uncertainty is rooted in the EU's offer to the Copenhagen climate summit of a 30% emissions cut.

But this was dependent on "comparable effort" from other big polluters.

Observers say there is a world of difference between the upper and lower targets - but Europe still hasn't decided how high to aim.

A cargo of highly radioactive nuclear waste set sail for Japan last night, after a breakthrough agreement that will cut Britain's stockpile of high-level waste by almost 40 per cent over the next decade.

After years of planning, a programme to repatriate all 925 tonnes of foreign atomic waste from Britain to Japan and four other countries began yesterday.

Under heavy security, 28 steel canisters of waste, each weighing half a tonne but sheathed in 100-tonne steel flasks, were moved by rail from the Sellafield plant in west Cumbria, where they have been held in temporary storage since the 1990s, to the port at Barrow-in-Furness. There they were loaded on to the Pacific Sandpiper, a custom-built, double-hulled ship that will be protected by armed guards throughout the six to eight-week sea journey to the Far East.

Members of the German government and leading utility providers are set to begin negotiations in Berlin on Thursday over a possible extension of the lifespans of the country's nuclear power plants. The government says it would funnel profits from the reactors towards promoting renewable energies.

One of the biggest poker games in recent German history was set to begin on Thursday in Berlin as the government begins to negotiate a partial retreat from the country's 2001 move to abandon nuclear energy.

Ronald Pofalla, Chancellor Angela Merkel's chief of staff, invited the executives responsible for nuclear power at Germany's top four energy utility companies as well as senior officials from the Economics and Environment ministries for top-level meetings about the future of atomic energy in the country. The government is playing down the importance of the meeting, with the Economics Ministry describing it as "routine." Participants belong to the so-called Monitoring Group, a panel formed by the former government of Gerhard Schröder's center-left Social Democrats and the Green Party to monitor Germany's atomic energy phase-out at regular intervals.

But Thursday's meeting is actually far more spectacular because the exact opposite of the Schröder government's policy will be at issue: reversing the phase-out, an issue that divides Germany like few others. The meeting isn't scheduled until Thursday evening, but anti-nuclear organizations planned protests in front of the Chancellery in the capital throughout the day.

WASHINGTON -- For the first time in the history of the Clean Air Act, the federal government has reached settlements that will require a glassmaker and a cement company to add pollution controls at all their plants across the country.

Lafarge, the nation's second largest maker of Portland cement, and Saint-Gobain Containers, the second largest manufacturer of glass containers for beverages and foods in the U.S., agreed to add up-to-date pollution control devices, accept emissions limits and pay penalties to settle complaints that they violated the law.

There have been similar company-wide settlements for air pollution violations for coal-fired power plants, the largest source of air pollution, but this was the first such settlement in the cement and glass sectors, which also rank near the top as big pollution sources.

The settlement will require the companies to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter. The pollutants are known to trigger asthma and other respiratory problems, contribute to heart disease, cause acid rain and damage water quality.

The Environmental Protection Agency has targeted coal plants, oil refiners, and cement and glassmakers for enforcement of air pollution rules known as "new source review," which require companies to add modern pollution controls when they expand or upgrade.

Ordinary cotton and polyester fabrics have been turned into batteries that retain their flexibility.

The demonstration is a boost to the nascent field of "wearable electronics" in which devices are integrated into clothing and textiles.

The UK has become a world showcase for open government data, with the launch today of a government website hosting 2,500 public data sets - more than the best-known rival, data.gov in the US.

The official launch by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, and Nigel Shadbolt, professor of computer science at Southampton University, comes just under a year after Berners-Lee met prime minister Gordon Brown, who was hosting a dinner for recipients of the Order of Merit.

"Gordon Brown said to me, 'How should the UK make the best use of the internet?' and I replied that the government should just put all of its data on it," Berners-Lee recalled. "And he said 'OK, let's do it'."

Amid the flat, wide fields of central France, a team of re-trained secretaries and IT experts is packaging Europe's literary heritage for the digital era.

Put less grandly, they turn pages for a living.

The company they work for, Safig, is one of the few European firms to digitize books, using automatic and human page-turners. That places them right at the center of France's plan for a massive online library, and its attempts to negotiate a digital books deal with US internet giant Google.

They say that the French are the biggest moaners in Europe, and it's no lie! They have several expressions for when they need to let off steam. Whilst the Poles go into a `white fever', the Spaniards `turn black' - it's the saying of the week

When Poles get mad, they go into a cobbler's fury (doprowadzać do szewskiej pasjil); according to national stereotype, they drink a lot. The drinking connection follows through in France. You know that a native is going through a delicate emotional phase when they groan ça me saoule. Literally, it means `it's making me drunk,' but it's the equivalent to the English expression (accompanied by hand to head gesture) `I've had it up to here': they've had their measure (`dose') - and it's not of alcohol. You can also be accused of getting on general French nerves by hitting one's system (taper sur le système), running on the bean (courir sur le haricot - here the vegetable meaning toe in French slang) or simply blowing one up (ça me gonfle). If a Frenchie comes out with the words bollocks (couilles), balls (burnes) or arse (cul), leave them be and scuttle on your way - you're clearly being a nuisance. 

Former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards finally came forward today to admit that he fathered a child with a woman that he hired before his second White House bid.

Edwards, a former U.S. senator from North Carolina and 2004 vice presidential candidate, confirmed this in a statement released to The Associated Press, after initially denying that he'd fathered a child during his affair with videographer Rielle Hunter.

Teachers like to say there are no dumb questions.

Teachers need to work in tourism offices.

Travellers are expected to be curious. But some might be better off doing a tiny bit of research before they open their mouths.

We contacted several tourism offices and asked for the oddest questions they've received. Teachers, take note.

According to Jennifer Haz, of the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau, one inquiring mind asked: "Can you tell me which beach is closest to the ocean?"

Paul Gauger, of the VisitBritain.com office in New York, responded to our inquiry with a list of questions that included: "Why did they build so many ruined castles and abbeys in England?"

And a visitor to Scotland wanted to know what time the Loch Ness monster was fed.

Organisers of the "Antiquities Theft in Israel" in Jerusalem could not have chosen a more fitting name for their exhibition.

On Wednesday burglars broke into the a museum in Ashdod where hundreds of artefacts recovered from the black market were on show and snatched several valuable items, including a silver ring belonging to Alexander the Great.

   When:             Monday, January 25 from 19:30
   Where:            Le Café Epicerie
   Location:         38, rue Sambre et Meuse (10th arrondissement)
   Métro stations: Belleville or Colonel Fabien)

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Went to a couple of GreenDrinks Beijing get-togethers, and it was a good way to meet other people (from NGOs, corporations, entrepreneurs, media, government, just interested individuals) who were concerned about and/or active in environmental sustainability and social reform.  This will be my first time to go to a GreenDrinks Paris get-together.  Apparently they have a get-together on the last Monday of each month (same time, same location).

La Chine dorme. Laisse la dormir. Quand la Chine s'éveillera, le monde tremblera.