(Reuters) - Credit ratings agencies hammered Greece on Monday after senior euro zone policymakers acknowledged that Athens will need a second bailout package soon to avert a disorderly overhaul of its debt obligations.

Officials said the European Union was also looking to lower interest rates on rescue loans to Ireland within weeks and eyeing easier bailout terms for Greece as the common currency area floundered deeper into crisis.

But ratings agency Standard & Poor's suggested far more radical measures would be required to make Greece's 327 billion euros ($470 billion) debt mountain sustainable, saying Athens may have to reduce the face value of its bonds by up to 70 percent, implying big losses for investors.

S&P downgraded Greece's credit rating further into junk territory to B, just one notch above Pakistan's, hitting Greek bank stocks as investors sought safety in German bonds. The euro slid to its lowest level in three weeks against the dollar.

Anyone who thinks this is "Economy" and not 100% political is wrong.

The small village of Moneygall, in Ireland, is awaiting the visit of President Barack Obama later this month.

The President is paying a visit to the ancestral home of his great great great grandfather before he emigrated to the USA.

The latest waves of immigrants arriving on the Italian island of Lampedusa are from Libya and cannot be sent back as they are fleeing a conflict zone. The European Commission has called on EU countries to help Italy share the burden.

Some 500 boat people from Libya were rescued yesterday (8 May) after their frail vessel hit rocks off the Italian island of Lampedusa.

In a separate development, sixty-one immigrants died of hunger and thirst before their vessel finally reached shore on 10 April, back in Libya where they had started from.

Only 11 passengers survived the trip, and two of them died soon afterwards. According to the Guardian newspaper, Western military ships in the area ignored the boat in distress. Naval spokespeople declined to comment.

Two environmental groups said on Monday (9 May) they had sued Europe's chemicals watchdog for withholding information about the production of toxic chemicals.

The lawsuit, filed by activist lawyers ClientEarth and chemicals campaigners ChemSec, says the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) breached transparency laws by refusing to disclose the names of facilities producing 356 potentially dangerous chemicals.

ECHA is Europe's agency for evaluating and restricting more than 30,000 substances that currently face little regulatory oversight, many of them a potential risk to human health.

Companies wanting to sell chemicals must register them with ECHA, including details on toxicity, which the agency will publish on its website.

Investigation found that US biodiesel was being shipped through Canada to avoid duty.

The EU has decided to impose duties on imports of biodiesel from Canada that originated in the United States.

On Thursday (5 May), the Council of Ministers agreed to impose an anti-dumping duty of €409.2 per tonne on imports from Canada. It also imposed the same penalty on imports of US diesel blends containing less than 20% biodiesel. The duties will be backdated to 13 August 2010.

The decision followed an investigation by the European Commission into whether US biodiesel was being shipped through Canada in order to avoid duties imposed on US biofuel in March 2009. The investigation followed a complaint by the European Biodiesel Board (EBB) that there was an increase in imports from Canada after duties were imposed on US biodiesel export. In 2007, the EBB complained that European biodiesel producers were losing out because of subsidised imports from the US.

As security crackdown continues in Syria, EU diplomats suggest its leader could be targeted.

An ongoing security crackdown in Syria has increased pressure on the European Union to freeze the assets of Bashar Assad, Syria's president, and to ban him from entering EU member states.

"There is an ongoing review of the situation in Syria and a constant re-assessment of the list" of people against whom sanctions are in force, a diplomat said. He said that the situation in Syria would be "critical" in assessing whether Assad, whose family has ruled the country with an iron fist for the past four decades, would be added to the list.

On Friday (6 May), member states' ambassadors on the EU's Political and Security Committee failed to agree sanctions against Assad, although they imposed visa bans and asset freezes on a dozen of his associates. Those sanctions are currently being finalised and are expected to enter into force in the coming days. A largely symbolic arms embargo took effect last month.

Germany registered a net gain of 128,000 immigrants last year, the largest increase since 2004. Poland, Romania and Bulgaria were the most common countries of origin, followed by the United States and Turkey.

According to the the Federal Statistics Office, 798,000 people immigrated to Germany in 2010, 77,000 more than in the previous year (+11 percent). Meanwhile, 671,000 left the country, 63,000 fewer than in 2009 (-9 percent).

The rise in population reverses a two-year period when more people left the country than arrived. However, immigration in 2010 still did not match the heights seen during the post-reunification 1990s, when typically saw 800,000 people entered Germany each year.

In 2010, 684,000 immigrants of the total were foreigners, while about 115,000 were expatriate German nationals returning home.

President Barack Obama is set to formally announce the deployment of US military aircraft to Poland, in a move that could damage Washington's relations with Moscow.

Mr Obama visits Poland at the end of the month and is expected to confirm the stationing of F16 combat aircraft on Polish soil during meetings with Bronislaw Komorowski, his Polish counterpart, and other central and eastern European leaders.

Citing diplomatic sources, the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza claimed that 16 US jets will move from their current home at the Aviano air force base in Italy to Lask in central Poland, and will be stationed on a rotational basis from 2013.

The American president is also expected to hold talks about stationing SM-3 interceptor missiles in Poland as part of Washington's plans for a missile defence shield. The United States already has a Patriot missile battery in Poland.

A court in Austria has approved the extradition of former Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader, who is wanted in Croatia on suspicion of corruption. Sanader was arrested in Austria on an international warrant in December. 

A court in Austria ruled on Monday that former Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader can be extradited back to Croatia to face charges of corruption there, relating to his time as prime minister from 2003 to his resignation in 2009.

Sanader was arrested in Austria on December 10 after Croatia issued an international arrest warrant. He is suspected of corruption and embezzlement, and Croatian media suspect he funneled millions of dollars from state-owned companies into his own political party and other private accounts. Since his arrest, Sanader has been held in an Austrian prison.

As Russia celebrates Victory Day on May 9, marking the end of World War II in Europe, a new study is shedding light on the conflicted relationship Russians still have with Germany. 

Though 66 years have passed since the end of World War II, celebrations remembering the Allied victory over Nazi Germany still have an important place in Russia today.

Last year, for the first time ever, Allied troops took part in the annual military parade in Moscow commemorating the anniversary. Their participation was designed to express the historical ties that bound the nations in this dark chapter of history.

A question of historical accuracy

The participation of the German Federal Armed Forces, the Bundeswehr, in such a parade would have the potential to be seen as a gesture of reconciliation. A recent study, however, found that 57 percent of Russians firmly reject the idea of German participation.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - It may be Europe Day, but a new haiku from the bloc's president celebrating the occasion could not mask unease across the Union, with criticism of the partisanship of the European Central Bank growing in Ireland and Greece suffering from yet another credit-rating downgrade.

EU flag: anti-EU populism is growing, warns the commission

On 9 May 1950, one of the two main founders of the EU, Robert Schuman, presented his proposal for an organised Europe, known as the "Schuman declaration" - considered to be the birth of the European project.

Sixty-one years later, European Council President Herman van Rompuy in a prepared video message conceded that the bloc was in a "difficult" period, but offered the 27 states a freshly written poem as a birthday present.

"A corona of stars / Rolling over the deep blue sea / Together forever," the haiku read.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has appeared in court on charges he bribed a witness to perjure himself in another trial.

It is the first time he has appeared in court over allegations he paid his former British lawyer David Mills to provide false testimony.

Mr Berlusconi faces two other corruption trials and is also accused in another case of paying an underage prostitute and of abuse of power.

In all cases he says he is innocent.

International high representative for country condemns Bosnian Serb officials for 'violating' Dayton peace accords.

Bosnia-Herzegovina is facing its most serious crisis since it was established as a state 15 years ago, the international representative for the country has warned, accusing Bosnian Serb officials of threatening its viability.

In a regular report to the United Nations, Valentin Inzko, an Austrian diplomat who represents Bosnia, accused Bosnian Serb authorities of engaging in "concrete actions which represent the most serious violation of [the 1995 the Dayton peace accords that ended the Bosnian war] that we have seen since the agreement was signed".

The peace accord divided the country into two: a separatist Bosnian Serb Republic, known as Republika Srpska, and a Muslim-Croat federation.

Juncker's spokesman Guy Schuller admits to lying about the secret meeting; Juncker himself is quoted as saying :"when it becomes serious, you have to lie", thereby undermining the credibility of the EU's policy response; Lucas Zeise says lies are a hallmark of an economic policy end game, with the eurozone now very likely to break up; Jean Claude Trichet has proposed another €50bn loan for Greece; Greek tax revenues fall way short of the plan; there are reports that Angela Merkel will travel to Brussels for emergency consultations; euro falls further, and bond spreads rise; an FDP politician has tabled a motion to end all eurozone rescue packages; there are huge recriminations in Brussels against the Germans for leaking the meeting, and for undermining the Greek stabilisation efforts; S&P downgrades Greece, and says that even a voluntary debt restructuring constitutes default; Finnish parties start difficult negotiations about Portugal's bailout package today; Portuguese banks borrowed €48bn from ECB in May; new FDP chief Philipp Rösler becomes economics minister, asserting his power in the party; German exports and imports reach new records, with net exports rising; the euro, meanwhile, is far more popular in France than it is in Germany.

Analysts believe that Spain's budget deficit will grow by two-tenths- from the current 6 percent of GDP to 6.2 percent - if growth doesn't meet the Zapatero administration's projected goal, of 1.3 percent. Market indicators have shown that Spain will only experience 0.8 percent growth, which will also bring on the cuts, say officials.

...

The Bank of Spainlast week announced thatthe Spanish economy had started theyear with "weak" growth driven by the export sector, while domestic demand remained negative.

In its monthly economic bulletin for April released Friday, the central bank calculated GDP posted quarter-on-quarter growth of 0.2 percent in the first quarter, the same rate as in the previous three months. Annual growth, however, accelerated slightly to 0.7 percent from 0.6 percent.

Europe's debt crisis has returned full circle to the problem that started it over a year ago: How to save the malfunctioning Greek state from running out of money.

Greece has been slipping farther behind its targets for cutting its budget deficit and is expected to need nearly €30 billion ($43 billion) of extra financing for 2012, according to euro-zone officials.

The country's growing reliance on aid from other euro members is fueling a debate over whether Greece should hold talks with its private creditors about extending the maturity of its bonds, a step that Germany is quietly pushing but other euro nations are resisting.

It's quite simple really - Germany makes things which people in countries with growing economies want to buy.

As China grows, so does its demand for the machinery which its factories need - and for the accoutrements of wealth which its new rich think they need, like flashy BMWs.

It is true there may be a "bungee effect" - the economic fall was so fast and far that the springing back from recession now seems all the stronger - the German economy grew by 3.6% last year, much more than comparable economies like that of Britain or the United States.

But that bounce from down does not explain Germany's current robustness.

After all, the fall was deep in the US and Britain, too.

One difference is that Germany did not have a property bubble which then burst, leaving consumers and companies pulling in their belts to a painful degree to pay off debt.

May 9 (Bloomberg) -- After a 40 percent drop in sales from October 2008 to February 2009, Materials Processing Inc. laid off workers, changed the way it sets prices and took fewer risks in the volatile commodities markets.

The efforts returned the Logansport, Indiana-based metals- processing company to profitability starting in March 2009, and sales are back to pre-crisis levels, said Chief Executive Officer Clay Barnes.

"We aggressively restructured and are going to be around for our customers for a very long time," he said.

Once-ailing manufacturers are enjoying a robust rebound as cost-saving moves from job cuts to a greater reliance on technology help drive stronger-than-forecast growth. The shift has helped set the stage for a potential "manufacturing renaissance," says James Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Minneapolis-based Wells Capital Management. He predicts the industry will set the pace for U.S. expansion and the American stock market during this decade, as technology did in the 1990s.

The past three years have been a disaster for most Western economies. The United States has mass long-term unemployment for the first time since the 1930s. Meanwhile, Europe's single currency is coming apart at the seams. How did it all go so wrong?

Well, what I've been hearing with growing frequency from members of the policy elite -- self-appointed wise men, officials, and pundits in good standing -- is the claim that it's mostly the public's fault. The idea is that we got into this mess because voters wanted something for nothing, and weak-minded politicians catered to the electorate's foolishness.

So this seems like a good time to point out that this blame-the-public view isn't just self-serving, it's dead wrong.

The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. The policies that got us into this mess weren't responses to public demand. They were, with few exceptions, policies championed by small groups of influential people -- in many cases, the same people now lecturing the rest of us on the need to get serious. And by trying to shift the blame to the general populace, elites are ducking some much-needed reflection on their own catastrophic mistakes.

Let me focus mainly on what happened in the United States, then say a few words about Europe.

Whether it is interpreted as "the desire to reassure markets" on the part of frightened governments, or as a pretext to impose choices driven by ideology, this submission to dictatorship is not acceptable, since it has proven its economic inefficiency and its destructive potential, both at the political and social levels. A real democratic debate on economic policy choices must be opened in France and Europe. Most of the economists who participate in public debates do so in order to justify or rationalize the submission of policies to the demands of financial markets. Admittedly, all governments have had to improvise Keynesian stimuli plans, and even sometimes to nationalize banks temporarily. But they want to close this parenthesis quickly. The neoliberal paradigm is still the only one that is acknowledged as legitimate, despite its obvious failures. Based on the assumption of efficient capital markets, it advocates reducing government spending, privatizing public services, flexibilising the labour market, liberalizing trade, financial services and capital markets, increase competition at all times and in all places...

As economists, we are appalled to see that these policies are still on the agenda, and that their theoretical foundations are not reconsidered. The arguments which have been used during thirty years in order to guide European economic policy choices have been undermined by the facts. The crisis has laid bare the dogmatic and unfounded nature of the alleged "obvious facts" repeated ad nauseam by policy makers and their advisers. Whether it is the efficiency and rationality of financial markets, or the need to cut spending to reduce debt or to strengthen the "stability pact", these "obvious facts" have to be examined, and the plurality of choices of economic policies must be shown. Other choices are possible and desirable, provided that the financial industry's noose on public policies is loosened.

We offer below a critical presentation of ten premises that still inspire decisions of public authorities all over Europe every day, despite the fierce denial brought by the financial crisis and its aftermath. These are pseudo "obvious facts" which are in fact unfair and ineffective measures, against which we propose twenty-two counterproposals that we would like to bring into the debate. Each of the proposals is not necessarily unanimously supported by all the people who have signed this manifesto, but they have to be considered seriously if we want to drive Europe out of the current dead end.

Following earlier clashes with Muslims, Christians marching against the military in the Egyptian capital of Cairo have come under attack. This recent violence has left at least 12 people dead.

While some blamed hardline Muslims, others said the clashes were symptomatic of rampant lawlessness in the country following the revolution that overthrew long-time leader, Hosni Mubarak.

Pakistan has denied allegations of complicity or incompetence in the Osama bin Laden case.

Yousuf Raza Gilani, the country's prime minister, said that it was "disingenuous" for anyone to accuse either the Pakistani state or its various institutions, including its intelligence agencies, of "being in cahoots" with al-Qaeda.

Addressing parliament on Monday, Gilani said it was Pakistan's spy agency that had given "key leads" that ultimately led to the US raid on the compound in Pakistan's Abbottabad where bin Laden lived.

He said that his country attached high importance to its relations with the United States, but warned that "unilateral actions" such as the raid on bin Laden's house in Abbottabad ran the risk of serious consequences.

Blaming "all intelligence agencies of the world" for failing to track bin Laden, Gilani said that an inquiry has been ordered, to be led by Pakistani Lieutenant-General Javed Iqbal.

Heavy gunfire has been heard in a western suburb of the Syrian capital, Damascus, after the army cordoned off the area, human rights activists say.

Clouds of black smoke could also be seen over Muadhamiya. Three people were killed there, an activist told the BBC.

Security forces are also continuing their efforts to crush anti-government protests in the cities of Homs and Deraa, and the coastal town of Baniyas.

State media meanwhile said 10 labourers had been killed in an ambush by gunmen.

Foreign journalists have not been allowed to enter Syria, so the reports are difficult to verify independently.

South Sudan has pledged to strike claims to Abyei region off its draft constitution, an AU-mandated panel announced on Sunday, as north and south Sudan together with the UN reached an agreement on a timeframe to withdraw all unauthorized forces from the hotly-contested region.

Tension recently flared up between north and south Sudan after the latter issued a draft constitution laying claims to Abyei, prompting northern official to threaten to break their earlier promises to recognize South Sudan independence which was gained via a referendum held in January as part of the 2005's Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).

Following a meeting with Sudan's second Vice-President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha in Khartoum yesterday, the member of the AU High-Level Implementation Panel on Sudan (AUHIP) and former president of Burundi Pierre Buyoya told reporters that they had conveyed to Taha the pledges the panel had received from the Government of South Sudan not to take any unilateral measures regarding Abyei and drop claims to the region's ownership from the south's draft constitution.

Close allies of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have been accused of using supernatural powers to further his policies amid an increasingly bitter power struggle between him and the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Several people said to be close to the president and his chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, have been arrested in recent days and charged with being "magicians" and invoking djinns (spirits).

Ayandeh, an Iranian news website, described one of the arrested men, Abbas Ghaffari, as "a man with special skills in metaphysics and connections with the unknown worlds".

The Obama administration parceled out $2 billion Monday for high-speed rail projects in the Northeast, Midwest and California, repurposing a pot of funds rejected in February by Florida's new Republican governor.

Amtrak's Washington-Boston Northeast Corridor is the biggest winner, getting nearly $800 million of the funds; followed by the Midwest, with $400 million going toward Chicago-Detroit and Chicago-St. Louis routes; and California, with $300 million for the state's planned San Francisco-Los Angeles high-speed route. An additional $336 million is designated for new locomotives and passenger cars for the Midwest and California.

What can the United States and the European Union do to put an end to the massacre in Syria? The first painfully obvious observation is that Syria is not Libya. If Colonel Gaddafi's regime is more than holding out against the popular revolt given tepid support by the West, the state presided by the ex-ophthalmologist Bashar al-Assad is a much harder nut to crack, given that the Western powers feel incapable of going beyond verbal condemnations and economic sanctions- which have shown their ineffective nature on many occasions in the past.

Popular protest has erupted once more in Deraa, the town where the spark of revolt took flame some weeks ago; it is surfacing, though with justified fear of the brutality of repression, in the capital, Damascus, and fills the streets whenever it can in other towns.

Independent sources estimate at some 800 the civilians so far shot down by the so-called forces of public order, which on Sunday brought tanks into Homs and other smaller towns. On Saturday they did likewise in Baniyas, a coastal city which the regime considers one of the strongholds of the revolt of the Sunni majority against the Alawite regime. The Syrian regime, with its usual cynicism, reckons the number of dead at only about 150, more than half of whom it claims belonged to the security forces.

Microsoft Corp. said Tuesday that it has agreed to buy the popular Internet telephone service Skype SA for $8.5 billion in the biggest deal in the software maker's 36-year history.

Buying Skype would give Microsoft a potentially valuable communications tool as it tries to become a bigger force on the Internet and in the increasingly important smartphone market.

Microsoft said it will marry Skype's functions to its Xbox game console, Outlook email program and Windows smartphones. The company said it will continue to support Skype on other software platforms.

Frank Delaney ~ Ireland

Poland said the development of shale gas across the EU should obtain the status of "a common European project," adding that it intends to promote the development of unconventional gas during its upcoming EU presidency.

A Polish minister said that research in his country on developing shale gas (see 'Background') was advancing at "unprecedented speed" and that Warsaw was willing to share its experience "in the EU framework".

Speaking at an event in Brussels organised on Friday (6 May) by Demos Europe, a think-tank, Maciej Szpunar, under-secretary of state at the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that the discussion for developing shale gas across Europe was "more timely than ever".

The Fukushima disaster raised question marks over the future development of nuclear energy, and with petrol prices skyrocketing, there was a need for "innovative solutions" and shale gas certainly provided an answer to the challenge, he said.

The rising price of gas on the wholesale market, where companies buy their energy from, has caused suppliers' costs to rise.

If companies increase customers' bills to recoup these rising costs it would be the second time bills went up in just six months and would almost certainly take energy bills to the highest on record.

The warning came from Centrica, the parent company of British Gas. It said the wholesale price of gas and power for delivery next winter is around 25 per cent higher than last year, but the price paid by households has yet to reflect this higher price.

The company, which has around 16 million energy accounts, said its results for 2011 were likely to be "materially influenced" by the recovery of higher wholesale prices and other costs.

It said: "Market conditions for our residential energy supply business are significantly more challenging than in 2010." It added that, "end-user prices [had] yet to reflect this higher wholesale market price environment".

As much as we all enjoy the warm weather, some rain would be welcome.

The scale of just how dry the start of 2011 has been is evident in some fascinating data from one of Europe's latest Earth observation satellites.

Smos senses the moisture in the top layers of soil, and it is very clear in these maps that the ground across the UK and much of Europe is now gasping for water.

Last month was the warmest April on record in Britain.

It was also the 11th driest month, with on average just half the usual rainfall. And in parts of south-east England, there was less than 10% of normal precipitation.

Renewable technologies could supply 80% of the world's energy needs by mid-century, says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

In a report, it says that almost half of current investment in electricity generation is going into renewables.

But growth will depend on having the right policies in place, it says.

The IPCC is charged with providing analysis on climate issues to the world community, and its conclusions have been endorsed by governments.

The summary of its Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation (SRREN) was released on Monday following a meeting in Abu Dhabi at which representatives of all IPCC member governments signed off the wording.

An exhaustive investigation into the incidence of childhood cancer in Britain over a period of 35 years has failed to find any increased risk of leukaemia among children living near nuclear power stations.

The independent committee of scientists that carried out the study investigated 13 nuclear power plants across Britain and failed to find one that has a statistically significant "cluster" of childhood cancers among families living near by.

The findings will almost certainly be used by the Government to support its case for building a new set of nuclear power stations to meet UK energy demands over the coming decades, which many environmentalists have opposed on health grounds as well as risks to the environment.

Scientists appointed by the Government to review the evidence of a link between radioactive emissions from nuclear power stations and childhood leukaemia said the risk is "extremely small, if not zero" and that in future it would be more profitable to investigate other potential causes of the cancer, such as viral infections, rather than radiation.

As the use of biotechnology increases and more companies move forward with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's approval to begin full-scale commercialization of seed mixtures in transgenic insecticidal corn, many researchers believe pest monitoring will become even more difficult.

"Seed mixtures may make insect resistance management (IRM) risky because of larval behavior and greater adoption of insecticidal corn," said David Onstad, professor in the Department of Crop Sciences at the University of Illinois and lead author in a recent article published in the Journal of Economic Entomology.

On the other hand, Onstad said block refuges present a different suite of risks because of adult pest behavior and the lower compliance with IRM rules expected from farmers.

"It's likely that secondary pests not targeted by the insecticidal corn, as well as natural enemies, will respond differently to block refuges and seed mixtures," Onstad said.

In the fall of 2007, workers at the Byron nuclear power plant in Illinois were using a wire brush to clean a badly corroded steel pipe -- one in a series that circulate cooling water to essential emergency equipment -- when something unexpected happened: the brush poked through.

The resulting leak caused a 12-day shutdown of the two reactors for repairs.

The plant's owner, the Exelon Corporation, had long known that corrosion was thinning most of these pipes. But rather than fix them, it repeatedly lowered the minimum thickness it deemed safe. By the time the pipe broke, Exelon had declared that pipe walls just three-hundredths of an inch thick -- less than one-tenth the original minimum thickness -- would be good enough.

Though no radioactive material was released, safety experts say that if enough pipes had ruptured during a reactor accident, the result could easily have been a nuclear catastrophe at a plant just 100 miles west of Chicago.

To paraphrase Ortega y Gasset, perhaps in Europe we do not know what is happening to us, and that is just what is happening to us. A tentative explanation is that, at these levels, we have only converted the European project into a set of things we do jointly, and no more than that; and that the European zeal includes scant reflection on how we ought to move forward from Brussels and what ideals we should hew to.

Right from its origins as a political undertaking, European integration has certainly always been an agreement aimed at satisfying the self-interest of the member states, and it is a very good thing that it continues along those lines. Alan Milward, the leading historian of the birth of the European Communities, defined the enterprise of Jean Monnet and his fellow thinkers as the "European rescue of the nation state." It was an attempt to allow each state to survive in the aftermath of the Second World War.

For this, certain policies had to be integrated, and surrendering sovereignty was to yield positive results for all. Joseph Weiler, for some the major theoretician of the integration process, has emphasised how the battle from Brussels against economic protectionism and the excesses of nationalism is actually breathing new life into national identities and making them more appealing, not less.

New research has revealed how infection by a parasitic fungus dramatically changes the behavior of tropical of carpenter ants (species Camponotus leonardi), causing them to become zombie-like and to die at a spot that has optimal reproduction conditions for the fungus. The multinational research team studied ants living high up in the rainforest canopy in Thailand.

A paper describing the research will be published in the BioMed Central open-access journal BMC Ecology on 9 May 2011.

"The behavior of these infected zombie ants essentially causes their bodies to become an extension of the fungus's own phenotype, as non-infected ants never behave in this way," said David P. Hughes, the first author of the research paper and an assistant professor of entomology and biology at Penn State University.

Using transmission-electron and light microscopes, the researchers were able to look inside the ant in order to determine the effect of the fungus on the ant. They found that the growing fungus fills the ant's body and head, causing muscles to atrophy and forcing muscle fibres to spread apart. The fungus also affects the ant's central nervous system. The scientists observed that, while normal worker ants rarely left the trail, zombie ants walked in a random manner, unable to find their way home. The ants also suffered convulsions, which caused them to fall to the ground. Once on the ground, the ants were unable to find their way back to the canopy and remained at the lower, leafy understory area which, at about 9 or 10 inches (25 cm) above the soil, was cooler and moister than the canopy, provided ideal conditions for the fungus to thrive.

If tourists find Rome unusually quiet next Wednesday, the reason will probably be that thousands of locals have left town in fear of a devastating earthquake allegedly forecast for that day by a long-dead seismologist.

For months Italian internet sites, blogs and social networks have been debating the work of Raffaele Bendandi, who claimed to have forecast numerous earthquakes and, according to internet rumors, predicted a "big one" in Rome on May 11.

The national television network RAI has run programs aimed at calming rising panic among Romans. The civil protection agency has issued statements reiterating the official scientific view that earthquakes can't be predicted.

Yet many residents of the Eternal City aren't listening.

Bristol, UK (SPX) May 09, 2011
The end-Permian extinction, by far the most dramatic biological crisis to affect life on Earth, may not have been as catastrophic for some creatures as previously thought, according to a new study led by the University of Bristol.

An international team of researchers studied the parareptiles, a diverse group of bizarre-looking terrestrial vertebrates which varied in shape and size.

Some were small, slender, agile and lizard-like creatures, while others attained the size of rhinos; many had knobbly ornaments, fringes, and bony spikes on their skulls.

The researchers found that, surprisingly, parareptiles were not hit much harder by the end-Permian extinction than at any other point in their 90 million-year history.

Eugene OR (SPX) May 09, 2011
University of Oregon researcher Richard Taylor is on a quest to grow flowers that will help people who've lost their sight, such as those suffering from macular degeneration, to see again.

These flowers are not roses, tulips or columbines. They will be nanoflowers seeded from nano-sized particles of metals that grow, or self assemble, in a natural process - diffusion limited aggregation. They will be fractals that mimic and communicate efficiently with neurons.

Fractals are "a trademark building block of nature," Taylor says. Fractals are objects with irregular curves or shapes, of which any one component seen under magnification is also the same shape. In math, that property is self-similarity. Trees, clouds, rivers, galaxies, lungs and neurons are fractals, Taylor says, today's commercial electronic chips are not fractals, he adds.

Eye surgeons would implant these fractal devices within the eyes of blind patients, providing interface circuitry that would collect light captured by the retina and guide it with almost 100 percent efficiency to neurons for relay to the optic nerve to process vision.

With his political career wrecked owing to plagiarism, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg now joins an odd band of politicians from across the globe that have been caught out by their academic qualifications.

Last year in Pakistan the country's supreme court ordered the vetting of a 160 elected officials following a spate of allegations that many of them had forged their degree certificates.

US politician Joseph Biden was forced to withdraw from the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination race after it was revealed he had plagiarised his best speech from Neil Kinnock.

The German equivalent of M16 - the BND foreign intelligence service - is still refusing to de-classify thousands of secret documents detailing the hidden past of Adolf Eichmann, the notorious architect of the Holocaust whose trial began in Israel 50 years ago this spring.

Eichmann was responsible for organising the mass transportation of millions of Jews to the gas chambers of Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps throughout the Second World War. Historians are unanimous in concluding that he played a central role in masterminding the "Final Solution".

There has been speculation that Eichmann almost certainly acted as a BND informer and that the intelligence agency's reluctance to declassify its file on him is part of a continued attempt to keep its reputation clean until Germany's Second World War generation is dead and buried.

However, in the interests of fairness and balancedness, afew of the ET bored stated, "Ridiculous. There is no link between reading Salon and still not knowing shit. Period. Sorta."

Paul Krugman, in the NY End of Times, opined, "well, i guess, i mean, if you read the comment section of Frank Schnittger's latest depression, you know what i'm saying, it's like all Greek to me, all that economics and shit. But the Salon, no fuckin way."

the Pulitzer Prize Kommitat on Internet Literacy stated, "We suppose it's better than television, though the Bild Zeitung still has better photos."

With tension mounting in gay communities as Eurovision approaches, the chairdominant of the SPARK (Society for the Preservation of Androgenous Restructuring Krap) told submissives that reading Salon is way better than, and more relaxing, than targeting poor Southern countries, who are already submissive. S/he was at a loss to describe the Pakistani response.

So you're on your own. Make your choice, but please keep in mind that we have been required by post 9/11 thought process and attendant regulation that there is no chance we will remind you that there's still a vastet basket of shit around the coast of Japan, but which is low-lying enough, unlike some of our best economists, to be off the radar screen.

(ET Moderation Technology: WTF?)

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

Dutchman Frans Willeme is hoping to become mayor of the German border town of Nordhorn. He was previously mayor of Dinkelland, a Dutch municipality just seven kilometres away. Dutch mayors have to have Dutch nationality, but in Germany all EU citizens are eligible.

The local Christian Democrats invited him to stand for office, believing his Dutchness could be an advantage. "He approaches people very easily. The Dutch are great salesmen."

On May 10, 1981, François Mitterrand won his first presidential election, marking the start of a 14-year period in office that is being fondly commemorated across France. But it's the future - not the past - that haunts the commemoration ceremonies.

The French can't seem to get enough of François Mitterrand even 30 years after he was elected president.

Over the past few days, the distinctively patrician face of the former French president is everywhere, sometimes in profile, sometimes directly locking the camera - and the viewer - with his unsmiling gaze.

On May 10, 1981, Mitterrand was elected president of France, becoming the country's first - and so far only - Leftist president under the Fifth Republic. He was subsequently re-elected in 1988 and held office until 1995, just months before his January 1996 death from prostrate cancer.

A friend of mine has committed this work of art, to give emphasis to the conflicts our planet has experienced in the last century.

I find the picture at the same time appaling and appealing. What do you think of it?