EU Referendum (Free subscription) | 6 hours ago
No messing – no irony: this is truly good journalism, a job that only the media can do. The Sunday Times has run a "sting" operation on a corrupt EU official in Brussels. The story opens as follows: A top official in Peter Mandelson's European Union trade department has leaked highly sensitive commercial information in return for the promise of financial benefit. In a six-month investigation, The Sunday...
Turkish Digest (Free subscription) | yesterday
"Turkey ready to discuss diplomatic ties with Armenia 06 September 2008, 12:44 CET (AVIGNON) - Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan said diplomatic ties would be discussed during his historic trip to Armenia to watch a football match Saturday but warned against raising expectations. Babacan and Turkish President Abdullah Gul were to begin their landmark visit to Yerevan, with which Turkey has no diplomatic...
Turkish Digest (Free subscription) | yesterday
"Sarkozy welcomes Gul's 'courageous, historic' visit to Armenia 06 September 2008, 22:59 CET (PARIS) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Saturday welcomed Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul's visit to neighbouring Armenia as 'courageous and historic.' 'While the region is in the midst of a serious crisis, (his visit) is a courageous and historic gesture for Turkish-Armenian relations,' Sarkozy, who...
Concurring Opinions (Free subscription) | yesterday
It's official: the European Union released a report last week projecting that deaths will outnumber births in its 27 member states by 2015, only seven years from now. While the population in some E.U. nations (including Cyprus, Ireland, Luxembourg, and...
Turkish Digest (Free subscription) | yesterday
"Turkey’s strategic importance to open the door of European Union In early June during a joint news conference of Turkish and European officials, the first question that Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ali Babacan faced was not on the accession process, but the recent situation on indirect talks between Israel and Syria." More: Turkey’s strategic importance to open the door of European Union
Boston Globe (Free subscription) | 05/09/2008
European Union nations will redraft key strategy guidelines to add climate change, energy shortages and cybercrime as threats to the security of the 27-nation bloc, the EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana said Friday.
Say Anything (Free subscription) | 05/09/2008
Sex sells. We know this. The advertising people around the world have made an industry out of using scantily-clad women (and to a lesser extent men) to sell everything from spark plugs and tractors to consumer electronics. But now the European Union wants all that to end : MEPs want TV regulators in the EU to set guidelines which would see the end of anything deemed to portray women as sex objects...
The Black Kettle (Free subscription) | 05/09/2008
The Economist: DEPENDING where you live in Europe and whom you blame for the Russian-Georgian war, the European Union’s emergency summit meeting on September 1st was a triumph, a failure or just the best that could be expected. Against objections from some Russia-friendly quarters, chiefly Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, the EU condemned Russian actions in Georgia, agreed to step up efforts...
Fark.com (Free subscription) | 05/09/2008
: meepozoid: For Gawd's sake, how are we supposed to get men's attention without the showing of the breastesses'Can you cook?this. my last girlfriend almost never cooked for me. made me a sad panda. i think a good relationship involves both partners sharing the cooking duties, and even if one is better at it or has the schedule to do the majority of the cooking, the other one should occasionally whip...
EU Referendum (Free subscription) | 4 hours ago
On Friday morning I bought three newspapers at my local newsagent (no, I don’t keep them in business, the various lottery and other ticket buyers do): the Daily Telegraph, the International Herald Tribune and the Wall Street Journal Europe. (Yes, I do recycle those newspapers when I have finished reading them – I have two cats.) Then I looked at the headlines of one of the most important stories. Our...
EU Referendum (Free subscription) | yesterday
.... when I came across this gem on Just One Minute. Apparently, Barack Obama, the Democrats' Presidential candidate (not Vice-Presidential though that is the one he is fighting) said at a Bon Jovi event - I think I know what that means - that "We won't be bullied". Presumably, he means that he will not be bullied by the terrifying Sarahcuda, a new and potent weapon that the Republicans found in the...
EU Referendum (Free subscription) | yesterday
The party conference season starts early this year, kicked off by the UK Independence Party which has previously shoehorned its weekend event in between the Labour and Conservative conferences. And, as always happens when UKIP takes a higher profile than normal – i.e., ceases to be invisible for a brief moment – the detractors leap into breach. This time, it is the europhiliac Independent but, in its...
EU Referendum (Free subscription) | yesterday
It comes to something when this blog feels impelled to hand out plaudits to the left-wing Guardian but it deserves some applause for its front page story today which headlines: "Revealed: Brown's £1bn power windfall". This lifts the lid on the bizarre, arcane and thoroughly disreputable financial arrangements for funding the government's obsession with wind energy – but only in part. More detail comes...
Mark Mardell's Euroblog (Free subscription) | yesterday
Foreign ministers strolled in the late summer heat of southern France towards their meeting, passing the impressive palace of pale stone where once popes ruled and were imprisoned as part of a power struggle over the future of Europe. Now, the rulers of Europe - or at least some of them - are meeting to discuss a struggle over its most eastern boundaries: the Georgia crisis. From the outside, the...
EU Referendum (Free subscription) | yesterday
If anyone has been thinking that we are exaggerating about the looming energy crisis, read The Times today. It tells us that, yesterday, "the crumbling state of Britain's electricity network was exposed" when power station breakdowns caused the first energy shortage of the autumn. National Grid was forced to call for more power from electricity generators after a series of unexpected breakdowns left...
