...the Le Pen family feud threatening to engulf the party escalated further on Friday after Marine Le Pen, its president, made an unprecedented televised appeal to her ageing father, Jean-Marie, to quit politics and fall on his own sword following his inflammatory comments belittling the Holocaust and hailing France's Nazi-collaborationist Vichy regime. The 86-year-old master provocateur, who remains honorary party president, defiantly vowed to resist and attack. The Front National executive meets next week, desperate to hand Marine Le Pen the procedural dagger with which to commit political patricide, but her target clearly refuses to die.

...Some political opponents have claimed the Le Pen feud is just a premeditated pantomime, with father playing bad cop to daughter's good cop, allowing them to appeal to all bases, accused of peddling the same old tendencies of xenophobia, Islamophobia and anti-immigrant feeling, sweetened with euphemisms and wrapped up in the time-old far-right credo that France is for the French.

Insiders and experts, however, say the rift is definitive and not mere stage-fighting. Most believe that Marine Le Pen is at a point of no return, and she must make a clean break from the father she entered politics to impress.

Polls show French voters feel she will gain from the spat. It could allow her to move out of the shadow of the second world war, the Holocaust and antisemitism, but many ideas expressed by her father in the controversial interview that brought the row to a head - that France should join Russia to save the "white world", that he understood why some fight democracy, as well as a diatribe of homophobia - remain to be clearly addressed point by point.

Belgrade was upset. Left out of Europe, an isolated Albania had threatened to unify with Kosovo, and awaken conflicts in the Balkans, Prime Minister Edi Rama had said.

Rama's statement was a message to Brussels on the necessity of intensifying Kosovo's EU accession which, according to Tirana and Pristina, is progressing too slowly.

On the other hand, some Belgrade analysts believe that Rama's statement was aimed "the public at home," while Kosovo Foreign Minister Hashim Thaci said that Rama's statement had been misinterpreted.

Rama made it clear that the primary objective was unification through European integration. However, the mere mention of the word "unification" is a very sensitive subject in the Western Balkans.

When Ukrainians toppled a pro-Russian president last year, nowhere was the euphoria greater than in Lviv, a short drive from the EU border, where people have dreamt for generations of escaping Moscow's orbit.

More than a year of war and economic collapse later, nowhere else has the disillusionment been felt more harshly.

...after a tough winter and with no sign of economic pain ending any time soon, support for the war is eroding, even here. According to a poll by research company GfK, over half of residents of western regions believe the government must avoid further bloodshed at any cost.

...Donations to the war effort have dropped noticeably, said part-time volunteer Yuriy Yatnisa, 24, standing in an old military tent that serves as a makeshift centre to collect money and food for the troops at the front.

Adair Turner, former chief of the UK Financial Services Authority, is the new chairman of the Institute for New Economic Thinking. He tells DW calibrated use of the ECB's balance sheet could end the eurozone crisis.

Facebook has admitted that it tracked users who do not have an account with the social network, but says that the tracking only happened because of a bug that is now being fixed.

The social network hit out at the report commissioned by the Belgian data protection authority, which found Facebook in breach of European data privacy laws, saying that the report "gets it wrong multiple times in asserting how Facebook uses information".

...Some of the claims listed by Facebook are not made in the report, including one that states "there's no way to opt out of social ads". The report clearly states that "users can opt-out from appearing in so-called Social Ads".

OK, there's been some amazingly stupid contracts written over the years including more than a few marriage ones. But among people who really ought to know what they're doing this one from France probably does take the biscuit. It's a hybrid life insurance/savings product and there's nothing very strange or stupid about those. It also allows the policy holder to allocate funds among the various fund flavours offered by the company. Again, nothing very strange or stupid there. However, here's the catch.

It allows the policy holder to switch funds this Friday based upon the prices of those funds last Friday. And that isn't just stupid that's doolally.

[...]

I said it gets better: and it does. Herve-George is, under the terms of the contract, allowed to add more funds under the original terms of the contract. He's made arrangements with a hedge fund or two (who wouldn't like 70% per annum returns?) to inject perhaps a further €20 million.....and you can see where this is going, can't you? At some point Max owns the company, then France, and then the entire planet. FT Alphaville gleefully calculates for us when this is going to happen. Might not be in my lifetime but it's likely to be in Max's.

Valentina Lisitsa, a Ukraine-born pianist, was scheduled to play Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No 2 with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra on Friday night, but her performance was scrapped amid "ongoing accusations of deeply offensive language" on Twitter, said the orchestra's president, Jeff Melanson.

Lisitsa had posted graphic images and angry rhetoric about the conflict in east Ukraine and criticised western journalists for supposed bias in covering the events. Canada has a large Ukrainian diaspora.

"Supposed" bias...

Lisitsa said she planned to give a free concert at a church in Toronto on Friday instead of the official performance. Later, however, she said the performance had been cancelled. She wrote on Twitter: "I feel like I am taking part in some Orwell reenactment. Just wow. Surreal."

It is the latest instance of the conflict in Ukraine causing artistic upheaval. The Russian rock musician Andrey Makarevich was subjected to a smear campaign in Russian media after playing a concert in territory held by the Ukrainian government in east Ukraine. The popular Ukrainian band Okean Elzy have stopped playing concerts in Russia since the Maidan revolution in Kiev, and the Ukrainian government has banned films that are perceived to glorify Russia's military.

In the highest-profile classical music case, the Russian opera star Anna Netrebko caused controversy when she donated 1m roubles (£13,400) to the Donetsk opera house, handing the money over to a separatist leader and being photographed holding the flag of the Russian-backed separatist territory Novorossia.

Again, everyone rushes into the new Cold War.

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

Pakistan's parliament has dealt a blow to Saudi hopes of defeating Yemen's Houthi rebels, with MPs voting overwhelmingly for the country to remain out of the conflict.

Friday's vote, which came as tensions continued to rise between Riyadh and Tehran over the conflict in Yemen, will make it extremely hard for the prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, to offer anything more than symbolic help.

...intensive farming still harms the environment to an alarming extent, according to a study conducted by the Federal Environment Agency (UBA). The use of pesticides and fertilisers as well as intensive animal husbandry, have a negative impact on humans and nature, the 40-page document indicates.

"Over the last 30 years, innovation and technical progress in most sectors has led to great successes in reducing the amount of substance that reaches the environment. But agriculture emissions show only marginal improvements," the study's authors write.

...In 2012, agriculture-related emissions were around 70 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent - about 7.5% of the year's total greenhouse gas emissions. This means that after industry, which made up 84%, agriculture was the second largest emitter in Germany.

Biodiversity is also threatened by intensive farming. Agriculture burdens the environment with nitrogen, phosphorus and heavy metals. Broad-spectrum pesticides not only wipe out parasites, but also kill other beneficial insects.

The Conservative energy and climate change minister, Matthew Hancock, has taken £18,000 from a key backer of the UK's leading climate sceptic lobby group, the Guardian can disclose.

According to official records, Hancock has accepted five donations over the years from City currency manager Neil Record, who has given money to the Global Warming Policy Foundation and is on the board of its campaigning arm.

The most recent donation to the MP was £4,000 in November last year - after Hancock became a minister with responsibility for energy.

...Hancock was last week criticised by green campaigners for hiring a private jet to fly himself back to London from Aberdeen after signing a climate change deal with the Mexican president.

Failure to act against the climbers who boarded the Polar Pioneer rig 750 miles north of Hawaii on Monday would result in "irreparable harm" and "monetary damages", the document seen by the Guardian shows.

The Greenpeace activists, from the US, Germany, New Zealand, Australia, Sweden and Austria, used inflatable boats and climbing gear on Monday to board the rig where they still remain and have unfurled banners in protest at the planned drilling in the polar region.

Shell filed papers with an Alaskan court on Tuesday seeking an injunction for the removal of the activists and damages, with a spokeswoman saying it condemned the "illegal activity" of the environmental group.

A leaked version of the Shell complaint is candid about the risks the campaigners pose to its Arctic drilling plans, which were announced in January after the company shelved drilling in 2014. The company has already spent $1bn (£0.7bn) preparing for the 2015 drilling.

Record numbers of US coal-fired power plants are set to close this year, and analysts at Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) say this will likely see power sector emissions drop 15.4% below 2005 levels.

Research published today indicates 23GW, 7% of US coal capacity, will come offline due to a combination of low gas prices, new mercury emission standards and the age of closing power plants.

...At the same time investment in renewables is rising fast, with a new 18 gigawatts (GW) of clean energy due to starting feeding into the US grid this year.

BNEF says new solar installations will hit an "all-time high" of 9.1GW, led by California, while new wind build will hit 8.8GW, with a third of new projects in Texas.

Vancouver has become the latest city to commit to running on 100% renewable energy. The city of 600,000 on Canada's west coast aims to use only green energy sources for electricity, and also for heating and cooling and transportation.

Cities and urban areas are responsible for 70-75% of global CO2 emissions and that's where "real action on climate will happen" said Park Won-Soon, Mayor of Seoul, South Korea at the ICLEI World Congress 2015, the triennial sustainability summit of local governments where Vancouver made the announcement.

But ouch...

Fukushima robot dies three hours after entering radioactive reactor vessel

...Chatitze Molla Sali ...is the first woman from Greece's Muslim minority to have taken a case to the European court of human rights, disputing a ruling based on sharia law that stripped her of part of her inheritance.

When her husband died in March 2008, he left her all his possessions in a will certified by a Greek solicitor. His family promptly disputed the legacy, complaining to the local mufti that under sharia Muslims are not allowed to make a will. Sali appealed to the civil courts, which endorsed her claim. But in October 2013 Greece's supreme court ruled that matters of inheritance involving members of the Muslim minority must be settled by the mufti, as required by sharia law.

Some might be surprised that Islamic law should be enforced in a country under Greek Orthodox influence, where church and state are officially separate. In fact it is a throwback to the troubled relations between Greece and Turkey. After more than four centuries of Ottoman occupation, Greece regained its independence in the early 19th century. But it was only in July 1923, after years of conflict, that the two countries finally agreed on clear borders, under the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne.

The accord provided for a massive movement of population, with both parties agreeing to send hundreds of thousands of the other's nationals to their respective countries. The only exception to this rule was that Turkey pledged to maintain the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and not to expel its Greek minority. In exchange the 120,000-strong Muslim community of western Thrace was allowed to stay put. Officially known as the Muslim Minority of Greece, it consists mainly of Turks, but also Bulgarian-speaking Pomaks.

Last night the LHC team for the first time accelerated a beam up to 6500 GeV, which is the target for this year. The next big step will be to store two beams at this energy, and bring them into collision with a total energy of 13000 GeV. That's when the new physics starts!

11 April 1945 – World War II: American forces reach the Buchenwald concentration camp shortly after the Buchenwald Resistanceoverpowered the last guards. After the withdrawal of US forces behind the demarcation line, the Soviet occupiers would re-use it as NKVD special camp No. 2

12 April 1365 – the First Treaty of Guérande seals the end of the War of the Breton Succession, a major proxy war in the Anglo–French Hundred Years' War

...So how can we be sure that Numb: diary of a war correspondent* is not a macabre hoax?

It is supposedly based on computer files and notes found by the journalist's wife after her husband died, aged 55, last year. She was then put into touch with a ghostwriter, a former Irish lawyer who conceals his own identity by calling himself Louis La Roc (see his website).

In the book, La Roc gives the alleged serial killer and his widow false names: Alan and Kay Buckby. In her foreword, she claims that her husband "led a dubious second life, alien to the one we shared at home with our two children".

She explains that after he was killed - when a tree fell on him while he was out walking in a storm while carrying a saw - she came across his files and diaries.

They revealed his part in horrific crimes going back 30 years and beginning when he reported from Northern Ireland in the 1980s.

Republican senator Rand Paul walked out of a live interview with the Guardian on Friday, in the third testy exchange he has had with a journalist since launching his campaign for president three days ago.

Paul, who said during his campaign launch on Tuesday he would like to see "any law that disproportionately incarcerates people of color is repealed", responded awkwardly when asked which specific piece of legislation he would repeal.

It's not the first time this shallow fake maverick runs for President, so I am surprised he can't stand the heat he gets for his nonsense.

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