A freeze on the 2014-2020 budget will not be possible unless agreed policies are slashed, the European Parliament said in a vote yesterday (8 June), challenging countries that want to freeze the EU's long-term spending to reflect austerity at home.

A minimum increase of 5% in the EU budget is needed if the bloc is to complete all its agreed objectives, such as putting in place a common diplomatic service and boosting its economy, the Parliament said.

Otherwise, EU countries will need to state clearly which policies they are ready to drop, MEPs said, citing possible cuts in regional and farm spending which together make up the bulk of the EU's budget.

"We need to put an end to the bad habit of accepting political commitments at European level and then denying their financing," said Salvador Garriga Polledo (European People's Party), the Spanish MEP steering the report on the seven-year budget through the EU assembly.

"When we are asking for increases, it is not because we are inventing things," added German member Jutta Haug (Socialists & Democrats), chair of the Parliament's special committee on policy challenges, which has worked for a year to produce the report. "We just want a realistic and implementable budget," she said.

The resolution backing the committee's conclusions was adopted on Wednesday (8 June) by 468 votes to 134, amid 54 abstentions.

The deadly E. coli outbreak in Europe and Russia's ban on EU vegetables are likely to be prominently discussed at today's summit (9 June) of EU-Russia leaders. Russian officials have said the ban could be "reduced and regionalised" should the EU produce "credible guarantees" of the safety of a given country's products.

Ahead of the EU-Russia summit, which opens today in Nizhny Novgorod (see 'Background'), Russian Ambassador to the EU Vladimir Chizhov said the issue of what he termed 'EU coli' would "not pass without attention".

Last week, Russia banned imports of fresh vegetables from the EU, accusing Brussels of sowing chaos by failing to provide information about the E.coli outbreak. The European Commission called the Russian ban on EU vegetables "disproportionate" and urged "the immediate withdrawal of the measure". EU countries exported €594 million worth of vegetables to Russia last year.

Chizhov stated that before any lifting of the Russian ban, "there should be a clear picture of what it was and how it appeared. Perhaps at some point it will be proven that the source is limited geographically". He said he was "confident" that the EU would be able to do this.

WARSAW, Jun 6, 2011 (IPS) - President Alexander Lukashenko has locked most of his rivals in jail, but the Belarus opposition continues to work diligently to isolate the dictator.

The December 2010 elections left Lukashenko - president of Belarus since 1994 - at helm for one more term. But subsequent events have revealed how unpopular at home and isolated internationally Lukashenko really is.

On the surface, the president is on top. Courts have sentenced not only opposition leaders, but also scores of other participants in the demonstrations that followed announcements that Lukashenko had won the election with 80 percent of the vote. An estimated 20,000 disgruntled people assembled in the main square of the capital, Minsk, Dec. 19 - violence during these demonstrations is widely believed to have been provoked by Lukashenko lackeys in order to pave the way for a crackdown against his opponents.

By the end of May Lukashenko had settled scores with all his rivals. Eight men stood against him in the elections. One - Victar Tiareshchenka - was a stooge, standing solely to generate the illusion of a competitive election. Two others - Yaroslav Romantchuk and Ryhor Kastusiou - blamed the opposition for the unrest in Minsk, toeing the official line and saving their necks.

(Reuters) - The European Central Bank signalled a July interest rate rise and raised the stakes on Thursday in its stand-off with governments over a new bailout for Greece by rejecting any form of debt restructure.

ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet said the bank would exercise "strong vigilance" on inflationary pressures, deploying a phrase that has consistently been used in the past to signal a hike was a month away.

Trichet used precisely that code in March to flag an April rate rise to 1.25 from 1.0 percent, which was the ECB's first tightening in two years.

EU has to 'learn lessons' from botched handling of E. coli outbreak.

The European Union's procedures for handling food-safety alerts are to be reviewed in the wake of Germany's botched handling of an outbreak of E. coli.

Lessons would be learnt, said John Dalli, the European commissioner for health and consumer policy, once the crisis was over. "We should look at our systems and see what changes could be made," he said, adding that it was not the time for recriminations.

But his remarks to MEPs in Strasbourg amounted to thinly veiled criticism of Germany.

"It is crucial that national authorities do not rush to give information on the source of infection that is not proven by bacteriological analysis," he said, adding: "This spreads unjustified fears [among] the population all over Europe and creates problems for our food producers."

In an upcoming memoir covering his 12 years at the Elysee Palace, former French president Jacques Chirac has finally provided some juicy details about his relationship with successor Nicolas Sarkozy.

For years people here have been yearning for anecdotes to substantiate widespread rumors about Chirac and Sarkozy's shared animosity. But Chirac has always disappointed inquisitive journalists.

The first volume of his best-selling memoir "Every step should be a goal", which covered the ex-president's life from birth to his ascension to France's highest office, disappointed those cravings once more.

But this week two French magazines, Le Nouvel Observateur and Le Point, have published excerpts from the book French politics junkies will soon be drooling over.

...To start the former president says he feared long ago that Sarkozy would stoke tensions within his party and divide it even further.

Chirac describes his successor as "nervous, brash, full of ambition, and full of himself". He explains in painful detail why on two occasions he dashed Sarkozy's hopes of becoming prime minister.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Buoyed by their recent success in the polls, the Austrian and French far right have made a fresh push for respectability in the European Parliament. A blurring of the 'softer' far right with eurosceptic parties may be in the offing.

Austria's Freedom Party in particular called on the eurosceptic alliance in the chamber, the Europe of Freedom and Democracy grouping led by Britain's Ukip and Italy's Northern League, to let their two MEPs join.

FPO Party leader and MEP Heinz-Christian Strache alongside French Front National chief Marine Le Pen in the parliament in Strasbourg announced deeper co-operation between their two far-right parties at a Wednesday press conference.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said the European Union must have an elected leader to give it the "clear leadership" to successfully spar with rising powers such as China in the future.

Previously touted as a potential candidate for European Council President, Blair said the fundamental reasons behind European integration had altered.

The war in Iraq isolated Blair from many of his European colleagues

"The rationale for Europe now is power, not peace," he told The Times newspaper in an interview published on Thursday (9 June), adding that European citizens were willing to support this new direction for the European project.

"The crucial thing is to understand that the only way that you will get support for Europe today is not on the basis of a sort of postwar view that the EU is necessary for peace."

EUobserver reviewed all 27 national recommendation documents. For highlights, scroll to the bottom of the page

EUOBSERVER / ANALYSIS - The European taskmaster has cracked the whip. However much austerity has been imposed by EU member states, it is simply not enough.

That is the overriding message from the European Commission that runs through its recommendations for each of the 27 member states in the new, post-crisis system of radically centralised oversight and correction of national economic policies by the EU known as the 'European Semester'.

"We are now implementing the new system of European governance," commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso said in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, heralding the unveiling of 27 detailed - or 'granular', to use the adjective EU officials use - national prescriptions, telling member states what they are getting right and wrong with their fiscal policies and what they must do to 'fix' their economies.

For months, dozens of US states have been facing shortages of a drug necessary in lethal injections administered to death-row prisoners. But German Economics Minister Philipp Rösler this week declined a request from his counterpart, Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke, to help out.

German Vice Chancellor Philipp Rösler is generally eager to please. Indeed, many questioned whether he would have the necessary toughness when he recently took over control of the Free Democratic Party, Chancellor Angela Merkel's junior coalition partner.

But in Washington this week, he had no trouble rejecting a request from his American counterpart, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke. Many states in the United States have run into shortages of a key drug used in executions. And Locke, according to Rösler on Wednesday, asked if perhaps Germany could help out.

Elections are looming in Turkey and, once again, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's AKP party is expected to emerge victorious. SPIEGEL spoke with Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, 52, about Turkey's disappointment over Europe and Ankara's influence in the Arab world.

SPIEGEL: Minister Davutoglu, Turkey has been seeking European Union membership in vain for more than 20 years. Why do you even want to be part of Europe anymore?

Davutoglu: I can give you three reasons why we belong in the European Union. First, Turkey has been a part of European diplomacy for centuries. We are not China. Second, Europe needs Turkey for strategic reasons. The EU can only become a major power together with Turkey. And third, we share central political values that are laid down in the Copenhagen criteria. Turkey is an important member of the family of democracies.

Leaving nuclear safety to Member States to deal with is no longer tenable. Joint surveillance would give credibility to proponents of nuclear energy and at the same time limit lobbying from the energy giants.

Prime Minister Petr Nečas was correct when, during his trip to Germany last week, he asked whether the Czechs should continue to decide for themselves on nuclear power. By its very nature, the question stirs up a hornet's nest here in the Czech Republic. However, if one disregards the prejudice against "Brussels" and the spasmodic clutching at national "sovereignty" and looks at the issue rationally, the answer should be: No, we need not and should not have to decide ourselves.

Creating a single European office for nuclear safety is necessary for several reasons. Nuclear energy is not entirely a matter for individual states, as any accident would impact neighbouring countries. Second, the necessary confidence in national nuclear authorities is lacking. We see this in the Czech Republic, where nuclear power stations have become such an emotional issue that the head of the nuclear supervisory agency celebrates their opening, and what's more, before they have even been approved.

Silvio BerIusconi faces a potentially devastating blow to his fragile hold on power this weekend when Italians vote in four referendums that are being seen as a proxy vote on his political future.

Amid signs that a growing number of Italians are becoming fed up with the corruption trials and sex scandals engulfing the prime minister, the referendums on Sunday and Monday are an opportunity for voters to express their dissatisfaction with his three-year-old government.

Similar referendums played a key role in toppling another scandal-prone Italian prime minister, Bettino Craxi, who was forced to flee into exile in Tunisia in 1994 amid corruption allegations.

The votes concern the revival of Italy's nuclear power industry, two votes on the proposed privatisation of water utility companies and a "legitimate impediment" law introduced by Mr Berlusconi which allows him to evade court hearings on the basis that he has more important duties.

Numerous disagreements among ministers, notably on private sector participation, may preclude an Ecofin deal in time for the European Council; Jean-Claude Trichet threw down the gauntlet at Wolfgang Schäuble, rejecting any form of voluntary bondholder participation; says ECB would not participate in a voluntary debt exchange, and would stick to its rules on collateral policies; says the EU should explore alternative ways of participating the private sector, including privatisations and FDI; Trichet also pre-announced a rate rise in July; Fitch Ratings said a voluntary rollover is hardly credible at a time like this, and threatened it might downgrade other peripheral countries; FT Alphaville has a comment according to which a deal remains the most likely outcome of the current stand-off; George Papandreou got his cabinet to sign off on the medium-term austerity and reform plan; Troika report omits the sought-after debt sustainability study, and makes no reference to the EU's wish to co-opt the Greek opposition; Bundestag plans to strengthen German government's spine by passing a resolution on the need for a private sector bail-in; Financial Times Deutschland reports that Merkel may agree a deal on Greece, but subject it to a subsequent parliamentary vote; the German constitutional court will hold a hearing in the case against the Greek loan and the EFSF on July 5; Christine Lagarde faces new accusations in the Tapie scandal, as a result of which the legal uncertainty surrounding her candidacy for the IMF continues; Nicolas Sarkozy is having second thoughts on a constitutional balanced budget amendment; Paul Krugman notes that Iceland's CDS have come down to under 200bp, while Ireland's linger at close 700bp; a column in the Irish Times says the Irish government changed strategy on the EFSF interest rate debate, focusing already on the next programme; the Irish finance minister said he did not rule out tax increase; in Portugal, meanwhile, the trade unions warn that the economic reform programme agreed with the EU and the IMF was unconstitutional.

(Reuters) - Emerging markets face "monstrous" risks this year, with investors continually ignoring intensifying inflationary pressures and credit bubbles, leading market strategist Richard Bernstein warned on Wednesday.

Emerging markets have been the darling of the financial world since 2009, as global investors have pursued stronger returns and driven by a belief that countries such as China and Brazil will lead global growth in the next few years, while developed world economies remain nearly stagnant.

Bernstein, who now runs his own firm after being chief investment strategist for Merrill Lynch & Co, said the love affair with emerging markets is overdone.

"I think what people are completely missing is that the risk is not here in the United States," he told the Reuters 2011 Investment Outlook Summit. "The risk is in emerging markets. There are just monstrous risks in emerging markets right now in my opinion."

(Reuters) - Top Democratic and Republican lawmakers met on Thursday to discuss taxes and other hurdles to a debt-reduction deal aimed at allowing the United States to keep borrowing money at rock-bottom rates.

June 9 (Bloomberg) -- JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon's public questioning of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke on bank regulatory costs has "thrown down the gauntlet" in the industry's increasingly aggressive fight to curb higher capital requirements and other rules.

"They threw out the first ball, now can they play the game?" said William Poole, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, in an interview yesterday. "How persuasively can Dimon and others make their case?"

Dimon, head of the most profitable U.S. bank, took an unusual step in pressing Bernanke in a public forum on June 7 on whether regulators have gone too far in reining in the U.S. banking system and are slowing economic growth. The U.S. unemployment rate rose to 9.1 percent in May as the S&P/Case- Shiller index of property values in 20 cities showed that U.S. home prices slumped in March to their lowest since 2003.

June 9 (Bloomberg) -- Household wealth in the U.S. climbed by $943 billion in the first quarter of 2011 as rising share prices outstripped declines in home values.

Net worth for households and non-profit groups increased at a 6.8 percent annual pace to $58.1 trillion after rising at a 19 percent pace in the previous three months, the Federal Reserve said today in its flow of funds report from Washington. American households also cut debt for a 12th consecutive quarter.

The 5.4 percent increase in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index last quarter helped boost household wealth that remains below pre-recession levels. Stock declines, a weakening housing market and rising unemployment in the current quarter probably means households will continue saving and cutting debt, slowing the spending that accounts for 70 percent of the economy.

"The easy part of the repair of balance sheets may be behind us," Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York, said before the report. "It'll be tougher to get big increases in household wealth. We need to at least see house prices showing signs they are approaching stability."

Reuters: Hillary Clinton may leave State Department to seek World Bank presidency

New revelations from WikiLeaks show how the US micromanaged Haiti's economy and politics to align it to US interests.

According to the cables, the Obama administration apparently sought to limit the minimum wage for Haitian textile workers.

They also show that the US government backed Haiti's presidential poll - despite reservations over a ban on the country's largest political party. 

Italy has said it will appeal a decision by Brazil's highest court to stop the extradition of an Italian fugitive convicted of four murders in the 1970s.

It vowed to take its case to the International Court of Justice after Cesare Battisti, a former far-left fighter in Italy, walked free on Thursday.

Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, denounced the decision by Brazil's supreme court while the country's youth minister said it was "a slap in the face for Italian institutions, an act unworthy of a cvilised and democratic nation".

Franco Frattini, Italy's foreign minister, said Italy would "activate every possible judicial mechanism ... in particular through the International Court of Justice in The Hague, the Netherlands.

Brazil's nine member court ruled by a 6-3 majority that the decision take by Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the former president, to deny the Italian extradition request and authorise Battisti to remain in Brazil complied with a bilateral treaty.

Battisti, 56, a former member of the radical Armed Proletarians for Communism (PAC) group, became an international fugitive after escaping from an Italian jail in 1981 and spent decades evading justice living in Mexico, France and Brazil.

He was convicted in his absence by an Italian court in 1993 for the murders of four people in the 1970s, charges he has denied, and sentenced to life imprisonment.

More than 2,400 Syrians have fled into neighbouring Turkey to escape the unrest in Jisr al-Shughur and other towns, according to the UN and Turkish officials.

Refugees started entering Turkey on April 29, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

But the flow of refugees has increased sharply this week. More than 1,000 people crossed the border in the last 24 hours, the UNHCR said on Thursday.

CAIRO, Jun 9, 2011 (IPS) - Egypt's border with the Hamas-run Gaza Strip was reopened to Palestinian travellers Wednesday after a series of squabbles over operational procedures had temporarily brought cross-border traffic to a halt.

"The situation at the border has been ambiguous," Essam al-Arian, a leading member of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood movement (which is ideologically affiliated with Hamas), told IPS. "After having been closed briefly - first by the Egyptians and then by the Palestinians - the border has now been reopened again."

On May 28, Egyptian authorities opened the Rafah Border Crossing to human traffic, allowing Palestinian passengers to freely enter and exit the coastal enclave for the first time in four years. The Rafah terminal is the only crossing along Egypt's 14-kilometre border with the Gaza Strip, and the strip's only land crossing not controlled by Israel.

Egyptian authorities increased the terminal's working hours from six hours a day to eight, and from five days a week to six (it remains closed on Fridays). What's more, Palestinian travellers - except men between the ages of 18 and 40 - were exempted from having to obtain travel visas.

The UN nuclear watchdog is to report Syria to the Security Council over its alleged covert nuclear programme.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) voted to rebuke Syria on claims of an undeclared nuclear reactor.

The alleged structure, which Syria has maintained was a non-nuclear military site, was destroyed by Israel in 2007.

The IAEA's move comes as international pressure mounts on the UN Security Council to censure Syria over its lethal crackdown on protests.

European nations on Wednesday presented a separate draft resolution to the Council condemning Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime.

Western and Arab countries involved in the Libya campaign have pledged money to a new funding mechanism for the rebels, stepping up international pressure on Col Gaddafi's regime.

Italy is sending $586 (400m euros; £360m), France $420m, and Kuwait $180m.

The Libyan rebels have said they need $3bn over the next four months.

The pledges came at a meeting of the Contact Group on Libya in Abu Dhabi. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Col Gaddafi's days were "numbered".

"As time passes, maintaining our resolve and unity only grows more important," she told the meeting of the Contact Group - which includes Britain, France and the US, as well as Arab allies Jordan, Kuwait and Qatar - convened to prepare for the post-Gaddafi era.

WikiLeaks Haiti: Let Them Live on $3 a Day : The factory owners told the Haitian Parliament that they were willing to give workers a 9-cents-per-hour pay increase to 31 cents per hour to make T-shirts, bras and underwear for US clothing giants like Dockers and Nautica.  But the factory owners refused to pay 62 cents per hour, or $5 per day, as a measure unanimously passed by the Haitian Parliament in June 2009 would have mandated. And they had the vigorous backing of the US Agency for International Development and the US Embassy when they took that stand.

Voices From El Salvador: As of Friday, June 2nd, the Salvadoran Legislative Assembly and the Presidency succeeded in sabotaging the Judiciary. A legislative initiative led by the National Coalition Party (PCN) proposed to change the process by which the Constitutional Court operates, requiring unanimity among the five magistrates on the bench to approve a decision. Such consensus is rare and would essentially prohibit the court from producing new decisions. Without deliberation, debate or amendments, the legislation passed Thursday afternoon and PCN representative Elizardo González Lovo left the assembly before the session was over to take the reform directly to the presidential palace to be approved or vetoed.  To the dismay and shock of many, President Funes signed the reform within hours and it was made effective immediately.

Colombia Reports: Colombia's Minister of Social Protection said that between 40 and 45 health insurance companies (EPS) will be permanently eliminated beginning in mid-October. The government's decision follows a major corruption scandal in which health insurance companies embezzled more than $2.5 billion.

MercoPress: Brazil's central bank increased late Wednesday its benchmark interest rate for the fourth straight meeting after consumer prices exceeded the upper limit of its target range for the first time since 2005.

Durango, Mexico: Despite arriving two hours late, the Peace Caravan receives a surprisingly busy welcome in Durango.  The week-long caravan, led by Mexican poet Javier Sicilia, reached the city at 9 p.m. on Monday, the third day of its trek across northern Mexico to the US-Mexican border. But the streets are full of people - something extraordinary for this city, where in the past couple of years an unofficial curfew usually starts at around this time.

Peru under Humala:

The Motley Fool: Humala has been saying things to calm the business and financial spheres ever since he won the first round of the presidential vote in April. His move to the political center has been both obvious and necessary, as he had to garner enough votes from the undecideds in Peru. As for the course he'll take, it's likely to be something you could roughly pigeonhole as center-left. The most likely model is one that has typical left-wing policies in place for social and wholly internal issues, such as health-care plans, the setting up of his PEN250 (U$90) per-month state pension for all Peruvians over 65 years of age (no matter whether they've previously contributed or not), improvements in schooling, free meals for schoolchildren, general infrastructure, etc. Meanwhile, I see macroeconomic policies staying largely the way they've been in Peru for the last eight years, with a tightly controlled deficit, an independent Central Bank and an economy minister that will leave Peru on the same autopilot it's been through the Garcia government.

Foreign Policy In Focus: Humala is already being pressured from all sides. He will have to implement the promises of his campaign to develop economic and social policies that will make Peru a more equitable and inclusive society - promises which brought him over 30 percent of the vote in the first round. But he won on Sunday by moving beyond his political base to gain support from more moderate sectors who in many instances voted for Humala in order to prevent Keiko Fujimori from being elected president, which they feared would mean a return to the corrupt and undemocratic practices of her father's government. While some of these moderates support Humala's core idea of the need to achieve a more just country, they may have very different ideas about how to achieve that change.

Humala is also under tremendous pressure from conservative economic elites who are threatening to withdraw investments from the country if he strays from economic orthodoxy and who will no doubt show resistance to even moderate policy change, such as increasing taxes on mining companies (hardly considered radical in Latin America today). Experiences in neighboring countries, such as Bolivia, give credence to concerns of attempts at economic sabotage by those staunchly opposed to Humala. (...) Humala's victory is a stunning metaphor for the long-standing divide between Lima and the rest of the country. In stark contrast to past Peruvian elections, as noted in Otra Mirada, for the first time Lima and the agro-export northern regions of the country did not determine the winner.

Meanwhile, the right wing licks its wounds.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Activists are demanding that a series of killings of gays, lesbians and transgenders in Puerto Rico be treated as possible hate crimes, saying there is an alarming rate of violence against these groups on the U.S. island. In the last year and a half, at least 18 such people have been killed, three of them just this week, but authorities refuse to treat the cases as bias crimes, Pedro Julio Serrano, founder of the gay rights group Puerto Rico for Everyone, said Thursday.

America's military alliance with Europe -- the cornerstone of U.S. security policy for six decades -- faces a "dim, if not dismal" future, U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates said Friday in a blunt valedictory address.

In his final policy speech as Pentagon chief, Gates questioned the viability of NATO, saying its members' penny-pinching and lack of political will could hasten the end of U.S. support. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formed in 1949 as a U.S.-led bulwark against Soviet aggression, but in the post-Cold War era it has struggled to find a purpose.

"Future U.S. political leaders -- those for whom the Cold War was not the formative experience that it was for me -- may not consider the return on America's investment in NATO worth the cost," he told a European think-tank on the final day of an 11-day overseas journey.

A comprehensive assessment of tropical forest management reports a 50 percent increase in the area of tropical forest under sustainable management in just five years, but cautions that key drivers of that increase-growing demand for certified timber and funding for climate change initiatives-could have only a marginal impact in the long-term.

Drawing on detailed data on each of the 33 countries that together control almost all of the world's tropical rainforests and tropical timber production, the report released by the Japan-based International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) also warns that more than 90 percent of the global tropical forest estate continues to be managed poorly or not at all. And, looking ahead, the report suggests that forces favoring forest destruction, such as higher food and fuel prices, could easily overwhelm those that favor forest conservation.

ITTO is an intergovernmental body charged with promoting the sustainable management, use and trade of tropical forest resources. The combined annual tropical timber exports (including logs and sawnwood and finished products like furniture) of the 33 producer countries of ITTO are valued at well over $US 20 billion.

William C. Ramsay argues that German politicians have not been forthcoming with the public regarding the costs of abandoning nuclear power.

Ambassador William C. Ramsay is deputy executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA) and a former United States deputy assistant secretary of state for energy.

This commentary was originally published by the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI).

"In polarised politics, the voter must take on faith the wisdom inherent in the principled political position. Who cannot be impressed by the nuclear catastrophe at Fukushima, especially after living through the fallout from Chernobyl?

But is it reasonable to send the voter to the booth with only half the information? Does the German voter have any idea what it means to shut down its nuclear power in just ten years? Have German politicians made any effort to tell them?

Nuclear plants supply 25% of German electricity with virtually no carbon footprint and with a minimum exposure to foreign suppliers of nuclear fuel cycle services unlike the German vulnerability to disruptions in oil and more recently gas supplies.

WASHINGTON, Jun 9, 2011 (IPS) - One key component of the Plan B climate stabilisation strategy is solar energy. Solar is even more ubiquitous than wind energy and can be harnessed with both solar photovoltaics (PV) and solar thermal collectors.

Solar PV - both silicon-based and thin film - converts sunlight directly into electricity. The growth in solar cell production climbed from an annual expansion of 38 percent in 2006 to an off-the-chart 89 percent in 2008, before settling back to 51 percent in 2009.

At the end of 2009, there were 23,000 megawatts of PV installations worldwide, which when operating at peak power could match the output of 23 nuclear power plants. Germany, with an installed PV power generating capacity of almost 10,000 megawatts, is far and away the world leader in installations.

On the manufacturing front, the early leaders - the United States, Japan, and Germany - have been overtaken by China, which produces more than twice as many solar cells annually as Japan. World PV production has roughly doubled every two years since 2001 and exceeded 20,000 megawatts in 2010.

Historically, photovoltaic installations were small-scale - mostly residential rooftop installations. Now that is changing as utility- scale PV projects are being launched in several countries.

Ireland risks being fined by the European Commission over a bitter battle for the traditional right of rural families to dig peat to burn as fuel at home.

It took two Irishmen to pull me out of Woodfield Bog in County Galway.

Tugging on my right arm was Luke 'Ming' Flanagan, a newly elected independent member of the Irish Parliament, or Dail.

Pulling on my left was the press officer of the Turf Cutters and Contractors Association (TCCA), an organisation turned militant by an EU ban limiting rights to harvest peat for Irish home fires.

It is easy to get stuck in the mire when covering turf wars.

Like many rural families, Luke 'Ming' Flanagan's have turf-cutting - or turbary - rights on a bog that is among Europe's most threatened habitats.

Bogs may seem like vast beige wastelands with just the occasional rock for interest, but up close they are a squelching forest at your feet.

(Reuters) - Imagine a country where corruption is rampant, infrastructure is very poor, or the quality of security is in question. Now what if that country built a nuclear power plant?

It may sound alarming but that is what could happen in many developing countries which are either building nuclear power plants or considering doing so - a prospect that raises serious questions after Japan's experience handling a nuclear crisis.

A trove of U.S. diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks and provided to Reuters by a third party provide colorful and sometimes scary commentary on the conditions in developing nations with nuclear power aspirations.

In a cable from the U.S. embassy in Hanoi in February 2007, concerns are raised about storing radioactive waste in Vietnam, which has very ambitious plans to build nuclear power plants. Le Dinh Tien, the vice minister of science and technology, is quoted as saying the country's track record of handling such waste was "not so good" and its inventory of radioactive materials "not adequate."

Winnipeg -, Jun 09, 2011 (Commodity News Service Canada, Inc. via COMTEX) -- Prices for feed wheat in western Canada having seen a significant jump throughout the first half of the 2011 calendar year, thanks in large part to strong demand from the ethanol sector.

In the middle of November, Husky plants in Minnedosa, Manitoba and Lloydminster, Saskatchewan were paying producers C$4.25 and C$4.55 per bushel respectively for feed wheat deliveries. Now, farmers are receiving C$6.80 per bushel in Minnedosa and C$6 per bushel in Lloydminster for their feed wheat.

Jake Davidson, executive manager of Winter Cereals Canada, said the plant in Minnedosa used a heavy ration of corn throughout the winter, and are now looking find some wheat. However, he added wheat supplies are tight right now, and hard to find.

Infrared emissions above the epicenter increased dramatically in the days before the devastating earthquake in Japan, say scientists.

Geologists have long puzzled over anecdotal reports of strange atmospheric phenomena in the days before big earthquakes. But good data to back up these stories has been hard to come by.

In recent years, however, various teams have set up atmospheric monitoring stations in earthquake zones and a number of satellites are capable of sending back data about the state of the upper atmosphere and the ionosphere during an earthquake.

A biological sensor is a critical part of a human cell's control system that is able to trigger a number of cell activities. A type of sensor known as the "gating ring" can open a channel that allows a flow of potassium ions through the cell's wall or membrane - similar to the way a subway turnstile allows people into a station. This flow of ions, in turn, is involved in the regulation of crucial bodily activities like blood pressure, insulin secretion and brain signaling.

But the biophysical functioning of the gating ring sensor has not been clearly understood. Now, UCLA researchers have uncovered for the first time the sensor's molecular mechanism, shedding new light on the complexity of cells' control systems.

The findings, published in the June 10 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry and featured as a "Paper of the Week," could lead to the development of specific therapies against diseases such as hypertension and genetic epilepsy.

Just as a smoke detector senses its environment and responds by emitting a sound signal, cells control their intracellular environment through molecular sensors that assess changes and trigger a response.

Australia has backtracked partially on its hard-line policy of sending young asylum seekers to Malaysia as part of a controversial exchange deal.

Last week the Labor government said there would be no exemption for unaccompanied minors arriving illegally in Australian waters by boat. As with adult asylum seekers, the children will be sent to Malaysia to be kept in detention centers until their refugee claim is assessed.

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said otherwise it would encourage people smugglers in Asia to put children on unseaworthy boats beside often dozens of desperate people who have paid thousands of dollars for the treacherous journey.

"I don't want unaccompanied minors, I don't want children getting on boats to come to Australia thinking or knowing that there is some sort of exemption in place," Bowen told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. last week.

But Bowen faces mounting pressure from human rights groups and biting criticism from Members of Parliament, including from his own party. One MP said the Labor Party is more concerned about exports of live cattle than children.

Birds do it. Bees do it. Even little kids picking strawberries do it. Every creature that forages for food decides at some point that the food source they're working on is no richer than the rest of the patch and that it's time to move on and find something better.

This kind of foraging decision is a fundamental problem that goes far back in evolutionary history and is dealt with by creatures that don't even have proper brains, said Michael Platt, a professor of neurobiology and director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University.

Platt and his colleagues now say they've identified a function in the primate brain that appears to be handling this stay-or-go problem.

They have found that the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), an area of the brain known to operate while weighing conflicts, steadily increases its activity during foraging decisions until a threshold level of activity is reached, whereupon the individual decides it's time to move on.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 9, 2011 (IPS) - In the powerful verses of the song "Haiti", Brazilian musicians Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil described similarities between two countries at different ends of the development spectrum in Latin America, summed up by the words "Haiti is here".

One after another, the verses offer day-to-day images of the discrimination and marginalisation experienced by blacks in Brazil, so similar to the situation in Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, and so different from the life of middle-class whites in South America's powerhouse, which is now one of the world's largest economies.

"Look at the rows of soldiers from above, almost all of them black/beating the backs of black criminals/of mulatto thieves and others who are almost white/treated like blacks/just to show others who are almost black/(and who are almost all black)and to show the almost white, who are as poor as the blacks/how the blacks, the poor and the mulattos/and the almost white, who are so poor they are almost black/are treated" says the 1993 song.

"We all liked to sing that song," Rubem César Fernandes, executive director of Viva Rio, a Brazilian NGO active in Haiti since 2004, told IPS.

HARARE, Jun 9, 2011 (IPS) - In her glory days, death-row inmate Rosemary Khumalo (66) lived life dangerously on the edge. She was a sanguinary fortune hunter who would resort to anything, even murder, to land her loot, according to court records of her trial.

Her last crime in 1998, which ended with the murder of her businessman suitor Maxwell Sibanda, marked the end of her life of crime, and ushered in her new life as a death-row inmate at Zimbabwe's notorious Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison in 2000.

Convicted of the murder of Sibanda and armed robbery in 2000 and sentenced to death, now a frail and pale shadow of her former self, Khumalo has been waiting for her execution for over a decade.

"I have petitioned the President (Robert Mugabe) for clemency more than five times. Two of these petitions have been turned down while three have not yet been responded to.

"I am now frail and suffer ill heath. I have become hypertensive and all I plead for is mercy. This waiting, not knowing when I will be executed has become torture that is worse than the death sentence I am waiting for," Khumalo told IPS from her cell at Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison.

While Khumalo has been on death row the longest, she is not alone; there are 51 others awaiting execution in Zimbabwe. The last person to be hanged in this southern African country was Mandlenkosi `Never' Masina Mandha who was executed in July 2005.

Pakistan's Prime Minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, has ordered an inquiry into the killing - on camera - of a young man by paramilitaries.

Video footage shows the man, Sarfaraz Shah, begging for his life before being shot by the paramilitaries in Karachi.

The Rangers say the young man was caught trying to rob someone. His family denies this.

An inquiry is already under way into the killing of five unarmed Chechens last month by the security forces.

The Millennials, Religion and Abortion Survey, a new report out today from the Public Religion Research Institute, is one of the largest ever conducted on the relationship between people's moral values and their views on abortion. The researchers surveyed more than 3,000 American adults of all generations, with a particular eye to explaining what the researchers call the "apparent paradox" of the Millennial Generation's views on abortion--the rest of our views (on everything from religion to gender equality) should correlate with support for abortion rights, and yet we are still ambivalent. Although the study's authors don't come up with a single answer for the paradox, they do have some interesting new findings about the influences that shape opinion on abortion--one of the more surprising discoveries was that shows like MTV's 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom, which depict young, usually unwed mothers, do sway Americans' feelings about abortion.

In addition to asking their subjects the usual questions (religious affiliation, race, etc.) the researchers turned up four more novel factors that they say influenced people's feelings about abortion: 1)  Whether the person has a "situationalist" or "principle-based" approach to morality, 2) Whether they know  someone who has had an abortion, 3) Whether they've watched TV shows like MTV's 16 and Pregnant, and 4) Whether they've recently seen ultrasound images.

For more than three hundred years the UK's constitution has functioned remarkably well on the basis of the historic compromise reached in the course of the 17th century. The 1689 Bill of Rights forbade the impeachment or questioning of parliamentary debates and proceedings `in any court or place out of Parlyament'. Parliament in return has made it a rule, enforced until now by the speakers of both Houses, that it will not interfere with the decisions of the courts, whether by anticipating their judgments or by attacking them. If Parliament does not like what the courts do, it changes the law. The sovereignty of Parliament as the final source of law and the sovereignty of the courts in interpreting and enforcing the law are the twin pillars on which democracy and the rule of law in the UK rest. It was the courts themselves which, in the 19th century, extended the privilege of Parliament to cover any fair and full report of what was said there even if it was libellous.

When a member of either House, protected by the privilege which prevents his being prosecuted for it, consciously breaks a High Court injunction by naming an individual who has been anonymised by court order, it suggests two possibilities. One is that he does not understand the constitution; the other is that he does and has set out to transgress it. In spite of protests from members of both Houses who understand very well what is at stake, neither speaker appears at present to have taken any steps against the offenders.

This is the seriousness of the naming of Fred Goodwin in the House of Lords and Ryan Giggs in the House of Commons as claimants who had obtained injunctions forbidding their identification. It does not have to do with limiting free speech in Parliament: it has to do with the misuse of that undoubted historic freedom.

Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen has been arrested on suspicion of sexual assault, the BBC understands.

The married MP for North West Leicestershire was arrested in central London in the early hours of Thursday.

The backbench MP and former Royal Marine, who entered Parliament last year, is accused of assaulting a 29-year-old woman, the BBC understands.

The 46-year-old was not charged and has been released on police bail until the middle of next month, sources said.

The Conservative Party declined to comment on the arrest, saying it was a "matter for the police".

The legal battle between L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt and her daughter Francoise Meyers has re-erupted.

On Wednesday French daily Le Monde reported that Meyers had made a fresh application for her mother to be made a ward of court (effectively under the guardianship of a judge), an issue that was apparently resolved in December 2010. Meyer states that she is seeking to protect the estate and her eventual inheritance.

The application, according to the newspaper, centres on the role of Pascal Wilhelm, a lawyer who has a "mandate for future protection" which effectively makes him the executor of Bettencourt's estate should she become incapable of managing it herself.

Meyer has long argued that her mother should be made a ward of court and is seeking to have Wilhelm's control over her estate curtailed.

In a court order dated March 25, which was also published in Le Monde, a judge ruled that "Liliane Bettencourt's cognitive faculties had been significantly altered by brain disease."

Christine Lagarde, the leading candidate to take the top job at the International Monetary Fund, subjected herself to an online job interview with the world's Twitter users last night, declaring that she was following a "call for duty".

In a series of light-hearted exchanges with internet users across the globe, she claimed her greatest assets for the job were "my ability to include, to build consensus, to médiate when needed, to give confidence, and to reach out to governments".

However, the French economist was decidedly coy about her plans for the organisation, responding to one Twitter user asking about the IMF's future with simply a winking face and four exclamation marks.

BBC News - What is it like to take a course in Blair studies?

With the ink barely dry on his page in history, university students are already able to study a course on Tony Blair's government. During the past year they've had the chance to quiz some of his ministers, mandarins and even the man himself.

"One of the exam questions was, 'Was Alastair Campbell the best in the business?' That was the one Tony Blair enjoyed hearing about the most," jokes 21-year-old Sian Cleary.

"I think it's his own quote so maybe that's not surprising!"

Sian is one of 12 students who took the Blair Government course at Queen Mary, University of London this year.

When you have almost 7,000 rings already, what's one more?

Deemed as the "world's most pierced woman," Elaine Davidson married Douglas Watson, a conservatively-dressed, piercing-free civil servant, at a low-key wedding ceremony in Scotland, the Telegraph is reporting. The Brazilian-born Davidson, 46, opted for a flowing white dress and floral tiara, but offset the traditional look by painting her face -- already studded with 192 piercings -- green, blue and yellow.