The leaders of 25 EU countries have signed a new treaty they hope will prevent the 17 eurozone nations balance their books and alleviate the currency bloc's crippling debt crisis. The treaty was not signed by the UK or the Czech Republic.

...The Netherlands announced that its "provisional" public 2012 deficit would rise to 4.5 percent of gross domestic product from 4.1 percent forecast before, sparking a pointed rebuke from the European Commission.

"We think that the Netherlands is one country that has been very vocal when supporting the reinforcement of our fiscal surveillance rules," said European Commission economy spokesman Amadeu Altafaj.

And Spain, at the centre of the debt crisis with soaring borrowing costs that have since receded, had to explain why the country's 2011 public deficit estimate grew to 8.5 percent of GDP from a previous forecast of 6.0 percent.

Serbia clinched its coveted status of EU candidate country at a summit in Brussels last night (1 March), after Bucharest dropped its opposition following an agreement on a roadmap that should see Romania enter the Schengen passport-free area in September.

...During a dramatic meeting at the ministerial level on 28 February, Romania took its EU partners by surprise when it announced it had concerns over the rights of ethnic Romanians living in Serbia...

The move raised eyebrows among EU ministers, while in Serbia anti-Romanian sentiments started spreading like a forest fire.

This led to frantic behind-the-scenes talks ahead of the EU summit. In what appeared like a face-saving effort, Bucharest and Belgrade signed a bilateral agreement at the ambassadorial level yesterday morning, providing for the better protection for the Romanian minority in Serbia.

BRUSSELS - Forced to reflect that this week's EU summit might be his last as he trails in polls ahead of April elections, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said he does not have the temperament to lead an EU institution.

"I don't think I have the qualities to be a good European Commission or European Council President," he said in Brussels on Friday (2 March) in response to a press question on his potential future career.

With the first round of elections taking place on 22 April, Sarkozy is polling 3.5 points behind Socialist contender Francois Hollande.

A second round vote, on 6 May, sees Hollande on about 56.6 percent, according to an Ifop poll published Thursday, compared with 43.5 percent for Sarkozy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin seems all but certain to win re-election in Sunday's vote, with current opinion polls putting him at 60%. The runner up, Communist party leader Gennady Zyuganov, trails with only around 15%.

Bellvitge Hospital, which has been one of Spain's most important health facilities for complex surgeries, canceled all of the day's procedures. Among the patients affected by this sudden closure was Silvia López, a 33-year-old woman who was meant to have seven cancerous tumors removed from her rectal area. The cancer has spread to her liver.

"All of these months of chemotherapy and weeks of diet so they can leave us out in the cold at the last minute," she said.

Additionally, a hospital official said there wasn't any money to treat the hundreds of patients -- many of them elderly -- who have come down with seasonal flu. "We have been hit right in the middle of the flu epidemic and there are not enough beds for patients," the spokesman said. The Catalan government of Artur Mas has made some $1.2 billion euros in cuts, or 12 percent of the region's health budget.

Private companies could take responsibility for investigating crimes, patrolling neighbourhoods and even detaining suspects under a radical privatisation plan being put forward by two of the largest police forces in the country.

West Midlands and Surrey have invited bids from G4S and other major security companies on behalf of all forces across England and Wales to take over the delivery of a wide range of services previously carried out by the police.

The contract is the largest on police privatisation so far, with a potential value of £1.5bn over seven years, rising to a possible £3.5bn depending on how many other forces get involved.

This scale dwarfs the recent £200m contract between Lincolnshire police and G4S, under which half the force's civilian staff are to join the private security company, which will also build and run a police station for the first time.

BRUSSELS - An MEP tasked with looking at how EU money is spent in the bloc's 24 independent agencies has caused a stir with her preliminary findings on conflicts of interest and questions about whether the agencies are useful.

...They were all established because member states decided so - most of them in the past ten years. Apart from checking how they manage their accounts, Romanian MEP Monica Macovei - a former justice minister and anti-corruption campaigner - says the very existence of some of these agencies should be questioned when they only produce reports.

...Four of the agencies - dealing with food safety, aviation safety, chemicals registration and medicines registration - are also on her radar due as they have staff recruited directly from industry.

With agencies claiming that experts outside the industry are hard to find, Macovei during a heated debate earlier on Wednesday insisted that this is no excuse for potentially endangering public health. If someone has worked for a company, they should not be allowed to certify the products of that company, says the deputy.

BRUSSELS - The debate on the controversial anti-counterfeit treaty, Acta has moved to the European Parliament, with MEPs set to pose their own questions to the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice.

At the first meeting of the assembly's International Trade committee on Thursday (1 March) - responsible for drafting the parliament's report - MEPs were presented with a petition organised by Internet campaign group Avaaz and signed by 2.4 million people who want to see ratification of Acta halted. Under the terms of the EU treaties, the parliament must give its approval before the treaty can enter into life.

...Last week the European Commission itself bowed to public pressure when trade commissioner Karel De Gucht - who led the EU's negotiating team on Acta - called on the EU court to clarify if existing EU laws on data protection and freedom of expression on the Internet would be compromised by the new regime.

The Government has made a last-minute appeal to the car-maker GM not to close its Vauxhall plant in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, in an attempt to prevent the loss of the 2,100 jobs there.

Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, returned yesterday from a flying visit to New York, where he pleaded with GM bosses to spare Ellesmere Port when the global car giant slims down its European operations shortly. His decision to travel to the US reflects his serious concern that the plant could be at risk.

REUTERS - President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Friday that France would shut its Syrian embassy due to the repression of opposition to President Bashar al-Assad and was ready to step up its support of rebels if the United Nations can give a green light.

"We will do nothing without a U.N. Security Council resolution," Sarkozy told a news conference at a European summit in Brussels, noting France supported the creation of a humanitarian zone close to one of Syria's borders.

"There's no question of acting directly or indirectly unless the Council has established legal conditions for a humanitarian zone, for arms delivery for the opposition or for corridors."

Voting began Friday in Iran's parliamentary elections as loyalists of Iran's most powerful figure, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, seek to prevent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's supporters from winning a majority.

(Reuters) - For two weeks, an armed band of former Haitian soldiers has occupied an old military camp in the capital where they carry out military training in defiance of the government.  "We took control of something that is ours. No one can force us to leave this place," said David Dorme, the leader of the group and a former army sergeant, even though Haiti's army was disbanded in disgrace almost two decades ago.

(AP), PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Several thousand supporters of two-time President Jean-Bertrand Aristide filled the streets of Haiti's capital Wednesday on the eighth anniversary of his ouster, accusing the country's current leader of not doing enough to improve their lives.  It was the largest demonstration against President Michel Martelly since he took office in May, and pointed to mounting political strife between the president and his critics as the country struggles to rebuild from the 2010 earthquake.

MercoPress: Surgeons "completely" removed a lesion from Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's pelvis and the populist leader is in good physical condition after the operation in Cuba, Venezuela's vice president said on Tuesday.

LIMA, Peru (AP) -- People identifying themselves as activists in the Anonymous hacker movement said Wednesday it wasn't technical prowess but police infiltration that yielded 25 arrests in a sweep in Europe and South America. (...) Interpol, which announced the arrests Tuesday, did not say how it encountered the 25 suspects, who it says were involved in cyberattacks originating from Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Spain that targeted sites including Colombia's defense ministry and presidency and Chile's Endesa electricity company and national library.

(Colombia Reports): Reports have emerged of two further alleged FARC offensives in the southwest department of Cauca, following Thursday's attack on a power station, reported Colombian media Friday.

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) -- Bolivian authorities say at least 30 people have been injured in a fight between two communities over land for growing quinoa, the Andean "supergrain" whose popularity with worldwide foodies has caused its price to soar. Oruro state police chief Ramon Sepulveda says combatants used rocks and dynamite against each other Wednesday and Thursday. A government commission was dispatched to the two high plains communities south of La Paz.

ILOCA, Chile, Feb 29, 2012 (Tierramérica) - Two years after the earthquake and tsunami in south-central Chile, the worst natural disaster to hit the country in half a century, thousands of families who saw their homes destroyed are still waiting for a solution.

While the fashion pack are hitting the catwalks at Paris Fashion Week, students at London's Kingston University are trying to lower the industry's carbon footprint by using biodegradable materials to produce luxury clothes, shoes and accessories.

The fashion industry has a high environmental footprint.

The manufacture of synthetic fibers like polyester alone produces nearly five times as much carbon dioxide per kilogramme as some organic cotton and more than twice as much as hemp, according to a Stockholm Environment Institute study.

Waste industry reports say that more than one million tonnes of textiles are thrown away every year, with most going to landfill and only 25% recycled.

A Czech bid for almost €2 billion of free allowances under the EU's Emissions Trading System (ETS) - equal to almost half Prague's 2012 budget deficit - has drawn heavy fire from Brussels and European environmentalists, who say it will do little to combat CO2 emissions.

The application for 107 million free allowances (worth €1.88 billion) was made under the little known `10c derogation' which exempts 10 of the newer member states from the ETS's full auctioning rules until 2019, if the resulting funds are used to modernise, diversify, and clean up electricity generation.

The average cost of a litre of petrol has risen to 137.44p, topping the previous all-time high of 137.43p a litre in May 2011, the AA said.

...Diesel is up to 144.67p a litre which is another new record.

AA president Edmund King said: "This new record for petrol and diesel just confirms what every family and business knows - fuel prices are hurting them badly and there seems no stopping them.

"We have asked the Chancellor to do what he can to protect the UK economy from fuel market volatility and record high prices which are stemming growth."

A scientific study in Poland has found that shale gas extraction at one site produced some toxic refuse but that the waste was reused and didn't harm the environment.

The report was presented today by the Polish Geological Institute, which carried out its study last year when a company, Canadian Lane Energy, began test drilling near Lebien, in northern Poland.

Poland has some deposits of shale gas and is hoping to exploit them to cut its dependence on Russian natural gas. It hopes to repeat what has happened in the United States, where large shale gas discoveries in the past 10 years have given the country independence in the gas sector.

Resistance to the March 9 cuts has especially strong in the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party to Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), as well as in the CDU itself.

Members of parliament in the ruling coalition had complained that the March 9 date for the incentive cuts would damage confidence among suppliers and dealers in the photovoltaic industry, which has more than 100,000 jobs in Germany.

...The CSU is also opposed to the plans that would cut incentives by 30 percent for large solar power plants of more than 1,000 kilowatts. The CSU will only agree to cuts of 15 percent, sources said.

Some related news (links in German):

• In the first two months of 2012, power generation in Germany from wind and solar rose 42% year-on-year (to 13.2&nsbp;TWh). The total is more than what the eight nuclear reactors shut down last year after Fukushima would be able to produce [that would be 8.422&nsbp;GW net power producing 12.1&nsbp;TWh; albeit that's unreal as at least two of the eight were already down pre-Fukushima with little hope of a re-start any time soon].
• In prices at electricity exchanges, electricity in France was more expensive than in Germany every month from October 2011. Last month it was 8.25&nsbp;c/kWh vs. 5.49&nsbp;c/kWh.

Almost a year after the Fukushima disaster, 52 of Japan's 54 nuclear power plants have been shut down. The reactor explosion destroyed the population's trust in nuclear energy. But the atomic lobby -- and the country's industrial needs -- could block a possible phase-out.

High levels of pollution may be turning the planet's oceans acidic at a faster rate than at any time in the past 300 million years, with unknown consequences for future sea life, researchers said Thursday.

The acidification may be worse than during four major mass extinctions in history when natural pulses of carbon from asteroid impacts and volcanic eruptions caused global temperatures to soar, said the study in the journal Science.

An international team of researchers from the United States, Britain, Spain, Germany and the Netherlands examined hundreds of paleoceanographic studies, including fossils wedged in seafloor sediment from millions of years ago.

They found only one time in history that came close to what scientists are seeing today in terms of ocean life die-off -- a mysterious period known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum about 56 million years ago.

A linguistics professor in Bamberg is considered the most powerful member of Germany's burgeoning Pirate Party, even though he holds no office. Martin Haase engages in politics almost exclusively through the Internet using the party's Liquid Feedback software. The platform is flattening the political hierarchy and is unique among German political parties.

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 2, 2012 (IPS) - In 2008, delegates meeting for the annual U.N. Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) agreed that much greater investments in women and gender equality were a critical - and overlooked - aspect of sustainable development.

For example, according to UN Women, while the international community gave 7.5 billion dollars in official development assistance to rural development and the agricultural sector in 2008-2009, a mere three percent was spent on programmes in which gender equality was a principal objective, and only 32 percent to those in which gender equality was a secondary objective.

Four years later, there has been some forward movement in a number of countries, but in many others, progress remains slow and uneven, a situation that is exacerbated by the ongoing global financial crisis.

Rural women continue to face limited access to productive resources, such as agricultural inputs and technology; only five percent of agricultural extension services are provided for women farmers.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 1, 2012) -- Depression is common enough -- afflicting one in ten adults in the United States -- that it seems the possibility of depression must be "hard-wired" into our brains. This has led biologists to propose several theories to account for how depression, or behaviors linked to it, can somehow offer an evolutionary advantage.

Some previous proposals for the role of depression in evolution have focused on how it affects behavior in a social context. A pair of psychiatrists addresses this puzzle in a different way, tying together depression and resistance to infection. They propose that genetic variations that promote depression arose during evolution because they helped our ancestors fight infection.

An outline of their proposal appears online in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.

David Cameron confirmed today that he did ride a horse which was lent by police to former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks.

The Prime Minister apologised for allowing a "confusing picture" to emerge over recent days about his direct connection with the animal.

He told reporters that the horse, Raisa, was among his mounts when he rode, before becoming Prime Minister, with Mrs Brooks's husband Charlie, a friend since they attended Eton school.

"I have not been riding with him since the election. Before the election, yes, I did go riding with him," he said at a press conference in Brussels.

"Game Change", a highly anticipated HBO film about Sarah Palin's vice presidential bid, hits small screens on March 10. Starring Julianne Moore, the movie has set tongues wagging among former McCain campaign workers.