The EPP has been on the winning side in parliament 93 percent of the time, voting Yes or No when the majority of MEPs voted Yes or No, in the 792 votes that took place in the past year, the survey, carried out by academics in the VoteWatch project, said.

The level is the same as in the assembly's previous sitting. But in the meantime, the Liberal group has moved into first place (97%) while the centre-left Socialists and Democrats (S&D) group has gone up from 90 percent to 92 percent.

The developments come despite the fact the EPP was the biggest winner in last year's elections.

...The centre-left Liberal-S&D coalition has made its mark the most forcefully in the budget, environment and civil liberties areas. But the "kingmakers" tend to vote with the EPP on economics, industry, trade and development.

"The idea that the last government was serious about advancing Britain's influence in Europe turns out to be an unsustainable fiction [...] We are determined to put this right," Hague told diplomats at the Foreign Office.

Labour foreign affairs spokesman David Miliband derided Hague's assertions, noting the Conservatives left the main centre-right group in the European Parliament last year.

"The idea that this coalition will bring renewed influence to the European Union [...] is just plain wrong," he said.

Hague said the number of senior British officials in the EU's executive Commission had fallen by a third since 2007 and Britain was sharply under-represented at junior official level.

The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition formed after Britain's May 6 election has worked constructively with its European partners so far, surprising some European diplomats who had expected a more Eurosceptic stance.

Christian Wulff was sworn in as Germany's new head of state on Friday, promising to serve the country dutifully as its 10th president.

"I am aware of the responsibility that comes with taking this office," Wulff told members of the lower house, the Bundestag, and the Bundesrat upperhouse, adding that he was "filled with joy, earnestness, and humility to serve Germany and Germans as president."

AFP - France's embattled Labour Minister Eric Woerth hit back on Friday at reports that he agreed a 30-million-euro tax refund for L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, who is at the centre of a growing scandal.

The Mediapart website reported that Woerth had approved the cheque for France's richest woman in 2008 when he was budget minister, in line with a law capping income tax for high earners.

"Contrary to what is being said, Eric Woerth, then budget minister, did not 'give his approval' for the payment of Mrs Bettencourt's tax refund," said a Labour Ministry statement.

"The budget minister does not intervene in any circumstance in this procedure," it added.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The future centre-right government in Slovakia will not block the creation of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), the €750 billion eurozone support mechanism.

"The decision about political agreement on the European stabilization mechanism is irreversible and therefore the new government will not block its creation," the Slovak Democratic and Christian Union party (SDKU), the leading party in the future coalition government, said in a statement on Thursday (1 July).

...The formal SDKU statement ends a potential deadlock on the bail-out fund, which requires approval by all 16 eurozone countries.

The deadlock emerged after outgoing Slovak PM, Robert Fico, said he would not sign the ratification instrument unless the incoming new government had first declared that it backs the EFSF, with Mr Fico sensing that his solitary signature could be used as a political weapon against him in future.

...Iveta Radicova, the likely new prime minister, had in pre-election debates called it "bad, dangerous and [the] worst possible solution."

Actually, she said she won't sign it after the elections, too.

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

Officials from Iceland, the Netherlands and the UK have held two days of talks in Iceland's capital Reykjavik over the settlement of a £2.3bn banking dispute.

The money was lost in Iceland's banking crash in 2008, when British and Dutch depositors were left out of pocket after the Icesave bank collapsed.

The latest talks, on hold due to elections in the UK and Netherlands, were the first since March.

It is hoped that further talks can be held at the end of the summer.

Iceland has said it will honour its commitments, but the nation's voters rejected an agreement at a referendum in March.

The UK government has indicated it is prepared to block Iceland's accession to the European Union unless the dispute is sorted out.

European Council President Herman Van Rompuy has shed light on the ambitions of his Task force on economic governance, which has been entrusted by EU leaders to propose sanctions for countries breaking public debt and deficit limits.

Speaking at the European Business Summit on 30 June, Van Rompuy stressed that the Task force was trying to define a system of "smart sanctions".

He explained that his team aimed at strengthening the Stability and Growth Pact, not only at the stage where a country exceeds the 3% threshold for public deficits, but also in a preventive phase.

The task force is not looking for "a nuclear bomb" with one big sanction, he assured but is rather looking at imposing "more automatic" sanctions in a gradual way, "without too much interference from political bodies".

"Some scenarios that should be included will not be included, at least in what will be publicly revealed, which will be sugar-coated to avoid market panic," according to an informed source close to policymakers.

"Under some scenarios European banks would come out bankrupt and of course they are not going to publish that," the source added.

It is unclear whether the tests that are made public will include possible losses on sovereign defaults in Greece, Portugal or Spain, though these will probably form part of the exercise.

"Policymakers decided to disclose stress tests without realising the full implications," argues Nicolas Veron, from the Brussels-based Bruegel think tank.

"They are running the risk of enhancing not suppressing market uncertainty if they do not provide the information that the market is concerned about," Veron added referring to the sovereign debt crisis.

In-company training will be a key step towards realising the Commission's "New Skills for New Jobs" plan, said EU Employment Commissioner László Andor.

Speaking at the European Business Summit on 30 June in Brussels, Andor said "skills in Europe have to be brought up to date with the current challenges and new demands in the world economy".

The Hungarian commissioner argued that it was vital to focus on the EU "laggards" in terms of in-company training. The disparities between member states are still too great, he said, noting that the figure for levels of in-house upskilling was as high as 80% in the UK but as low as 10% in Greece.

Yuriy Ryzhenkov, Chief operating officer of DTEK, said he had met with commissioners and MEPs in Brussels in an effort to present his company's positions.

He described DTEK as a privately-owned company, with 100% of the capital belonging to Rinat Akhmetov, a businessman who also owns the Shakhtar Donetsk football club. Akhmetov's personal fortune is estimated at $5 billion by Forbes magazine.

DTEK integrates enterprises from coal production to electric power generation and distribution, and employs 52,000 people. The company is a major player in the South-Eastern part of the country, where 12 million people live. Its main facilities are located in Donetsk, and the regions of Lugansk, Zaporizhya and Dnipropetrovsk.

AFP - President Barack Obama said Friday the US economy was headed in the right direction, but not quickly enough, after new jobs figures added to fears the recovery was slowing.

Obama put a positive spin on monthly Labor Department figures that showed the economy lost jobs for the first time since December, with 125,000 posts disappearing last month, mainly due to a cut in temporary census jobs.

"Our economy has created nearly 600,000 private sector jobs this year," Obama said.

NORWAY: A fanfare by Bergen's FMKV Military Band greeted the inauguration of the city's first tram line by Queen Sonja on June 22.

Accompanied by government ministers, the Queen travelled on one of the fleet of 18 orange and white Variobahn trams from Nesttun to Kaigaten, where she alighted and cut an orange ribbon at Festplassen. The Bybanen line was formally handed over to Hordaland County Council which is responsible for public transport services in the region.

IRAQ: Canadian consortium TransGlobim International has announced a US$600m 30-year concession to finance, build and operate a 37 track-km monorail linking three major Shi'ite pilgrimage sites in Najaf. Construction is expected to take three years, and a second phase would extend the line to the international airport.

...Meanwhile, Deputy-Mayor of Baghdad Ibrahim Hussain led a delegation which visited French consultancy Systra at its Paris headquarters from June 22 to 24 to discuss the proposed US$3bn Baghdad metro project. The two parties expect to finalise an agreement to conduct a feasibility study for two underground lines in the near future. Eight international companies had been shortlisted for the design contract.

INTERNATIONAL: Fresh from its München assembly plant, a new Siemens multi-system electric locomotive targeted at European operators is being put through its paces at the Wegberg-Wildenrath test centre in Germany. Christened Vectron, the four-axle machine is destined to be one of Siemens' star exhibits at the InnoTrans 2010 event in September.

Changes in standards, legislation and acceptance procedures lie behind the German company's decision to develop another locomotive platform to follow the successful Eurosprinter and Eurorunner designs.

This is more or less just a re-branding stunt.

The Vectron uses many components from other Siemens products. The drive for the 160 km/h version is derived from the ER20 Eurorunner, the train control package from the ES64F4 four-system Eurosprinter, traction control from the ES64U4 Taurus family, and the nose and cab front - designed to be easily replaced in the event of a collision - from the latest Eurosprinter locomotives.

NETHERLANDS: A further year's delay to the launch of high speed domestic services on HSL-Zuid has been confirmed by Transport Minister Camiel Eurlings, who has admitted to the Dutch parliament that there is no prospect of the AnsaldoBreda V250 trainsets entering revenue service before the December 2011 timetable change at the earliest.

... For the last few months, I and others have watched, with amazement and horror, the emergence of a consensus in policy circles in favor of immediate fiscal austerity. ...

... long-term rates have plunged again. Far from fleeing U.S. government debt, investors evidently see it as their safest bet in a stumbling economy. Yet the advocates of austerity still assure us that bond vigilantes will attack any day now if we don't slash spending immediately. ...

... So the next time you hear serious-sounding people explaining the need for fiscal austerity, try to parse their argument. Almost surely, you'll discover that what sounds like hardheaded realism actually rests on a foundation of fantasy, on the belief that invisible vigilantes will punish us if we're bad and the confidence fairy will reward us if we're good. And real-world policy -- policy that will blight the lives of millions of working families -- is being built on that foundation.

U.S. stock buybacks are back.

According to Morningstar, U.S. companies have already announced over $150 billion stock buybacks this year, which is a huge increase from the less than $20 billion announced during the same period last year.

While enormous, these new cash commitments are just a fraction of the $1 trillion U.S. non-financial companies have sitting on their balance sheets.

How about a 100% tax on stock buy-backs and a credit for business investment in wind infrastructure and electric rail infrastructure?

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

AFP - A fugitive suspect in Rwanda's 1994 genocide with a five-million dollar reward on his head has been arrested in Uganda, police said on Friday.

Suspect Jean-Bosco Uwinkindi, accused of helping to orchestrate the mass killings, was arrested after entering Uganda from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

"The people in Arusha were tracking him. As soon as he crossed into Uganda, which was on 26th or 27th (June), they informed us. We picked him up on Wednesday in Mbarara," said Edward Ochom, head of Uganda's Criminal Investigation Directorate.

...According to a copy of his indictment, Uwinkindi, 59, was a pastor at Pentecostal Church near Kigali during the genocide, and allegedly collaborated with an extremist political organisation that professed hatred for the Tutsi ethnic group.

In early April 1994, Uwinkindi is accused of helping organise and instruct groups of Hutus to kill Tutsis, and after allowing Tutsi women and children to seek refuge in his church, he ordered their execution, according to the indictment.

REUTERS - The former head of South Africa's police force was found guilty on graft charges on Friday, making him one of the most senior officials to be brought to justice for corruption in the country. Prosecutors said Jackie Selebi, formerly a leading anti-apartheid activist and well-connected in the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party, had links to organised crime and received about 1.2 million rand ($155,200) to ignore drug trafficking.   Judge Meyer Joffe said he found Selebi, a former Interpol president and an ally of ex-South African President Thabo Mbeki, guilty of corruption.

In July last year, the north-eastern city of Maiduguri was the scene of bloody clashes between Boko Haram - which means western education is taboo - and the police.

Many lives and properties were lost in the four day clashes.

The leader of the sect, Mohammed Yusuf was definitely killed. His deputy, Abubakar Shekau, was shot and believed to have died.

Now, after a whole year, Shekau has resurfaced and released a 25-minute video clip to a journalist who in turn, narrated his encounter with the sect leader to the Daily Trust newspaper.

He has vowed to continue Boko Haram's fight against Western education and culture in Nigeria.

US President Barack Obama signed a law on Thursday imposing tough new sanctions on Iran's banking and energy sectors, hoping to curb nuclear work that Tehran says is for energy production but Washington suspects is aimed at bomb-making.

"The German mediator's offer which we agreed to accept called for the release of 1,000 terrorists. This is the price I am prepared to pay to bring Gilad home. I said yes to the deal and it is ready for immediate implementation," Netanyahu said.

AFP - Four people including two foreigners were killed as suicide bombers and gunmen stormed a US aid organisation in Afghanistan Friday in an attack claimed by the Taliban.

Seven other foreigners were injured in the dawn attack, NATO said, while police said at least 20 Afghan civilians and police were hurt.

At least four suicide bombers attacked the premises of Development Alternatives Inc (DAI) in the northern city of Kunduz and two detonated their explosive vests, Mohammad Omar, the governor of Kunduz province, told AFP.

Multiple suicide blasts at a crowded Sufi shrine in Pakistan's second largest city, Lahore, killed dozens of people killed and injured scores more. No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attacks.

AP - President Barack Obama on Thursday blamed U.S. immigration policy gridlock on "political posturing and special interest wrangling.''

Seeking to rally new momentum to an issue that many advocates had hoped would be completed by this point, Obama laid out his rationale for a comprehensive approach to fixing what he and others, Republicans included, say is a broken immigration system.

...He said in a speech the problem cannot be solved "only with fences and border patrols'' but said the government should be held accountable for its responsibility to secure the border. Obama also said businesses should face consequences for knowingly employing illegal immigrants and that those who enter the country illegally should own up to their actions before they can begin the process of becoming citizens.

Authorities said in a court filing that Juan Lazaro made a lengthy statement after his June 27 arrest in which he discussed some details of the operation, which prosecutors said involved Russian moles living under assumed identities in American suburbs.

Among other things, he admitted that ``Juan Lazaro'' was not his real name, that wasn't born in Uruguay, as he had long claimed, that his home in Yonkers had been paid for by Russian intelligence, and that his wife, the Peruvian journalist Vicky Pelaez, had passed letters to the ``Service'' on his behalf.

He also told investigators that even though he loved his son, ``he would not violate his loyalty to the `Service' even for his son,'' three assistant U.S. attorneys wrote in a court memo. They added that Lazaro also wouldn't reveal his true name.

(T)he largest hindrance to solutions for all of the problems we've discussed - be it the Deficit, Energy, Education or the Wars -- goes back to one place: the current Political Process in our country.... - and just to get the ball rolling, here are four of my favorite solutions:

1. ONE FOR ME, ONE FOR YOU

I don't have to explain to anyone why we need to fix the campaign finance system. The question is how do we do it fairly. Publicly financed campaigns are one solution, but they seem to go against our very nature as Americans. After all, who wants to be forced into having their tax money going to politicians they don't like? Meanwhile, infringing on the amounts people can donate gives an advantage to wealthy candidates. But I think there is pretty easy solution to this:

I propose that we make a law that charges 100% fee on all political spending, with the that fee going into a public campaign financing fund that given solely to candidates with low campaign coffers on a per petition signature basis. This means that if a well-moneyed candidate like Barack Obama wants to spend $740 million of campaign donations, $370 million of that can go to his campaign and the other half to public campaign fund.

....

And if you don't want your money going to candidates you don't like, then don't get in to the game in the first place.

2. DISCLOSE EVERYTHING TO ALL

It is a sad state of affairs when corporations, who clearly don't work for us, are forced to disclose more to than Politicians who do (or at least are paid by us). We need to put the legal onus on Politicians to disclose every single potential conflict of interest, be it an invite to a BBQ or getting their nephew a job with a contractor. This means that if it could in any conceivable way be considered a conflict, it's on them to disclose it even if there is no specific rule against it. Then, if they are found being negligent of material disclosure, they need to be fired, fined and possibly jailed.

His third suggestion is a seven year waiting period before anyone who has served in government can take a job in a related industry or lobby former colleagues. Not bad, but the real problem, assuming these changes could be passed as law, would be how they would be overseen and enforced.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

Europe should turn to natural gas in its search for the affordable and reliable energy sources of the future, energy company representatives said at the European Business Summit (EBS) yesterday (1 July).

The EU must address the twin challenges of cutting its emissions by 20% from 1990 levels by 2020 while securing sufficient energy supplies for the future, in a market that is currently heavily dependent on foreign imports.

"Natural gas is gaining momentum, particularly in the area of energy generation," said Tom R. Walters, president of ExxonMobil Gas & Power Marketing.

He argued that replacing coal generation with gas could help the EU to meet its climate goals as it produces significantly fewer carbon emissions while allowing renewable energy technologies more time to develop.

Moreover, natural gas-fired generation "is well-positioned to provide the flexible supplies" that could balance the future energy system, which will be increasingly based on intermittent renewable energy generation, he added.

A remote town in Alaska called Eagle has recently installed a new hyper-kinetic river turbine; the 25kw turbine is attached to a barge in the Yukon River which rotates, therefore generating electricity. The turbine does not require a dam, yet it is able to provide enough power for the village which has a population of 68. Other cities to have installed hyper-kinetic turbines rather than constructing dams include Cornwall in Ontario, Canada and New York, however with both of these cities the percentage of powered produced by the turbines is minimal compared to the amount required by the cities.

The latest city in line to experiment with underwater turbines is Paris. According to reports in the UK's Guardian newspaper, Paris will install eight turbines under the city bridges in an attempt to raise energy from the currents of the Seine.

Concerns about large-scale marine pollution, fuelled by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, are set to be heightened by a new development in exploitation of the oceans: deep-sea mining.

The Chinese government has just lodged the first application to mine for minerals under the seabed in international waters, in this case on a ridge in the Indian Ocean 1,700 metres (more than 5,000ft) below the surface.

The Chinese are hoping to recover valuable metals such as copper, nickel and cobalt - used in mobile phones, laptops and batteries - as well as gold and silver, in an area of currently inactive "hydrothermal vents", underwater geysers driven by volcanic activity.

To draw attention to the amount of plastic debris in the ocean, Electrolux launches `Vac from the Sea' which will produce several vacuum cleaners from recovered plastics, while the Plastiki, a boat made entirely from plastic bottles, sails from San Francisco to Sydney.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Union's top court has ruled that a pregnant worker transferred to another job while pregnant should not be paid less than she was before the pregnancy.

The European Court of Justice ruling on Thursday (1 July) said this does not necessarily mean the full average salary received beforehand, as some extra payments may relate to certain tasks that are no longer applicable.

...The court looked at two similar cases in coming to its decision. In the first case, a purser - the chief flight attendant responsible for handling money aboard an aircraft - with Finnair, the Finnish national airline, Sanna Maria Parviainen, had sued her employer after she was transferred to a ground job on lower pay upon becoming pregnant.

...In the second case, Austria's Ministry for Science and Research had refused to continue to pay a junior hospital doctor, Susanne Gassmayr, an allowance for on-call duty while she was pregnant and later during maternity leave.

The fossilised remains of an extinct sperm whale with teeth each more than a foot long has been unearthed in Peru by scientists who believe the great predator ate other whales to survive.

The new species has been named Leviathan melvillei after the Hebrew word Livyatan, meaning a large, mythical sea monster, and in honour of the American novelist Herman Melville, author of The Whale, also known as Moby Dick.

..."This new sperm whale likely had a body length in the range of the living sperm whale Physeter macrocephalus, which is the largest-known toothed whale," said Olivier Lambert of the National Natural History Museum in Paris. "So Leviathan is not the biggest whale feeding on large prey, but it has the largest teeth, and possibly the most powerful bite. With such large teeth on upper and lower jaws, robust mandible and vast area of origin for jaw muscles, we think Leviathan was able to feed on large prey."

The most obvious candidates for the whale's diet were the large, blubbery baleen whales that existed at the same tim, some 12 to 13 million years ago, added Dr Lambert, the lead author of the study describing the extinct sperm whale published in the journal Nature.

German football has a reputation for ruthless efficiency. But not this national team. With its ethnic mix, youth and flair, the 2010 Mannschaft is easy to love, one Irish fan writes from Berlin. Even non-Germans will be cheering them on.

...As a football fan myself -- I moved to Berlin four years ago especially for the World Cup in Germany -- the football fever makes sense. I'm Irish and used to passionate and energetic, if somewhat ineffective, players who battle gamely before succumbing to a brave defeat at the hands of a bigger nation. I love the underdog -- for years I thought I could never love Germany for that exact reason.

...Germany has always produced players that seem to have the winning mentality deeply ingrained in their psyche, as their three World Cup victories and three European Championships confirm. The price for this success was players largely devoid of personality...

But the team of 2010 has something else going for it too. This is arguably the most ethnically diverse team in the tournament. The squad, with 11 players of a non-German background, is representative of modern-day Germany: Multi-cultural, talented, dynamic and determined.

Mesut Özil is third-generation Turkish-German, and recites the Koran before games to help him focus. Mario Gomez has a Spanish father. Sami Khedira's father is Tunisian. Podolski, Miroslav Klose and Piotr Trochowski were all born in Poland. Cacau -- real name Claudemir Jeronimo Barreto -- was born in Brazil and arrived in Germany 10 years ago. He received his German passport just in time to make the World Cup squad.

As someone who aspires to one day hold a German passport of my own, I find his story inspiring. So too, surely, do the 15.6 million Germans with roots in foreign countries. Many are fully aware of their underdog status as they try to find their niche in a society in which integration can be difficult.

A South Korean professor who claimed he could make tap water into holy water will face fraud charges, police say.

The man, named as Prof Kim, claimed he could digitally capture the elements of holy water from Lourdes, France, that believers say has healing powers.

He had sold devices to more than 5,000 people, making almost 1.7bn won ($1.3m, £870,000).

Eight people, including Prof Kim's wife and brother-in-law, will also be charged.

The famous shrine to the Virgin Mary at Lourdes offers water which some believe has healing powers.

Mr Kim had claimed his ceramic and paper filters, and plastic cards used in water purifiers, had captured those powers for onward transmission.

ScienceDaily (July 1, 2010) -- The discovery in Gabon of more than 250 fossils in an excellent state of conservation has provided proof, for the first time, of the existence of multicellular organisms 2.1 billion years ago. This finding represents a major breakthrough: until now, the first complex life forms (made up of several cells) dated from around 600 million years ago.

AP - Federation president Jean-Pierre Escalettes is ashamed of France's World Cup fiasco and accepting a large share of responsibility for what happened. Escalettes resigned on Friday before the federation's federal council, but he is staying on the job until July 23. An announcement on his successor had been widely expected after Friday's meeting, but officials wanted more time to choose one.

At a news conference, Escalettes offered his first lengthy public explanation to the French about what he called the ``debacle'' at the World Cup. France finished the first round without a single victory, and worse, there were open conflicts between the squad and team management.

At one point, France players boycotted a training session to protest Nicolas Anelka's exclusion from the squad following an expletive-filled tirade directed at coach Raymond Domenech.

...``I have always appealed to my heart and mind, in my professional life and in life in general, and there, I found myself up against youths for whom these arguments had no weight,'' he said.

...Domenech's last gesture at the Cup was his refusal to shake hands with the rival coach after France's final loss to South Africa.

Escalettes said he was ``disappointed in (Domenech), but above all disappointed in myself.''

Escalettes was widely criticized for his decision to stand by Domenech despite France's humiliating first-round exit at Euro 2008.

Wesley Sneijder dumped favourites Brazil out of the World Cup as Holland finally got the better of their South American nemesis.

But they had to come from behind to avenge their heartbreaking defeats of 1994 and 1998 and book their place in the semi-finals.

Robinho, who had already had an effort ruled out for offside, fired the Brazilians ahead with just 10 minutes gone, and the Dutch struggled to cope during the opening 45 minutes.

But Felipe Melo's 53rd-minute own goal gave them fresh impetus and Sneijder won it 22 minutes from time as Melo was dismissed for stamping on Arjen Robben.

...Dutch legend Johan Cruyff had claimed dismissively before the game that he would not pay to watch this Brazil team...

When Ghana face Uruguay in the World Cup quarter-final on Friday, football fans across Africa will unite to support the continent's last remaining team in the tournament. Ghana is only the third African team to reach the quarter-finals.