Robert Marquand | Paris | July 1

CSM - On Monday, the French legislature passed a radical new law making it illegal to be part of a "gang" – if it's one that has been or may be violent.

The move is part of a recent law-and-order initiative by President Nicolas Sarkozy that the French palace is tying to new forms of youth crime at a time of economic crisis. Earlier this month, France banned the wearing of masks during public protests.

The new antigang law says that anyone identified with a group, formal or informal, known by police to have committed criminal acts, or is intending to, may be subject to a three-year sentence or a 45,000 euro (US$63,000) fine.

Christian Estrosi, of Mr. Sarkozy's ruling center-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party, spearheaded the new antigang law that passed late Monday night.

CSM - Facing a reported $1.2 billion budget deficit, accusations of corruption, and a parliamentary commission investigation, Leonid Chernovetsky, mayor of Kyiv (Kiev), knew he needed to give the performance of his life.

He didn’t disappoint. After jogging and doing 15 chin-ups, he stripped down to a Speedo and swam 15 meters. “I want to demonstrate to the whole world that I am absolutely fit physically and mentally,” he announced.

A millionaire businessman and evangelical Christian, Mr. Chernovetsky has gained a reputation for wacky ideas. With Kyiv facing an economic crisis, Chernovetsky proposed charging fees to enter cemeteries, selling his kisses in a raffle, and selling burial plots for frogs.

Infighting among opposition members has prevented them from mounting a consolidated challenge. After the parliamentary commission ordered him to have a mental-health check, Chernovetsky took a few weeks off on sick leave.

June 30

The Independent - At least 14 people were killed and 50 injured overnight in Italy when a freight train hauling liquefied petroleum gas derailed and exploded as it passed their homes, officials said today.

About 1,000 people were evacuated following the blast just before midnight on Monday in the Tuscan seaside town of Viareggio, about 350 km (220 miles) north of Rome.

Thirty-seven people were serious injured, with 16 of them in critical condition, including a two-year-old who was badly burned and was being transferred to a hospital in Florence, rescue workers said.

"The emergency and danger are not over. The area has been sealed off and search and rescue operations are ongoing," said Guido Bertolaso, head of Italy's civil protection agency.

"We have a convoy with four train wagons that are still carrying liquefied petroleum and are off the tracks, on their sides .... so the area is still at a really high risk level because the fire is still smouldering."

Jerusalem | June 30

Reuters - French President Nicolas Sarkozy has urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "to get rid of" Israel's ultranationalist Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Israeli media reports said on Tuesday.

Sarkozy's office had no immediate comment on the remarks Israeli newspapers and Channel 2 television attributed to him from his talks last Wednesday in Paris with Netanyahu. "You must get rid of this person," the Haaretz newspaper and Ynet website quoted Sarkozy as telling Netanyahu.

Netanyahu's office issued a statement saying "in light of the latest media reports", the prime minister voiced his "full confidence" in Lieberman during a meeting with ambassadors from European Union countries.

The reports said Sarkozy compared Lieberman, accused of racism by Israeli Arab lawmakers, with French far-rightist Jean Marie Le Pen, but retracted the remark after Netanyahu countered that the foreign minister left a different impression in private conversations.

A spokesman for Lieberman, leader of the ultranationalist Yisrael Beitenu party, said that if Sarkozy made the comments, they would amount to "intolerable" meddling in Israeli affairs.

John Lichfield | Paris | June 26

The Independent - Families of 11 engineers murdered in Karachi in 2002 point finger of blame at French government

A political scandal is gathering pace over claims that 11 French submarine engineers were murdered in a bomb attack in Karachi seven years ago to punish France for the non-payment of arms contract "commissions" to senior Pakistani officials.

Lawyers for the French victims' families believe the attack, allegedly carried out by Islamist terrorists, was in fact part of a web of financial chicanery and political manoeuvring which may yet severely embarrass senior figures, including the French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari.

Cahal Milmo | June 26

The Independent - Sewing machine needle tipped with anthrax was developed for war effort

Tipped with a sewing machine needle and finished with a tail made from a drinking straw, they looked more like a schoolboy's toy than a terrifying weapon. For Britain's wartime scientists, however, these tiny projectiles were the sharp end of a chilling project to secure victory over the Nazis by bombarding German troops with poisoned darts.

A secret file that details British research to develop the lethal anti-personnel darts, carrying a toxin likely to have been anthrax or ricin, casts rare light on the work that was carried out by the Allies during the Second World War into chemical and biological weapons that could be deployed against Hitler's forces.

The document, released at the National Archives in Kew, London, reveals how scientists at Porton Down in Wiltshire, the site of Britain's top secret weapons laboratory, worked between 1941 and 1944 to perfect the projectiles to ensure the maximum number of casualties and the quickest death for enemy soldiers.

Entitled Research Into Use of Anthrax and Other Poisons for Biological Warfare, the report said the idea of using darts dated back to the First World War but the novelty of adding a poison, either coated on to a grooved point or injected through a hollow needle, meant that a viable weapon to cause "death or disablement" had been created.

June 24

BBC -

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has denied allegations he paid prostitutes who attended parties at his official residencies.

In an interview with Italian gossip magazine Chi, the 72-year-old leader insisted he had never paid for sex.

He alleged a prostitute at the centre of the scandal had been paid to make false accusations against him.

This is the first time Mr Berlusconi has spoken at length about some of the most serious accusations involving his private life.

An Italian model, Patrizia D'Addario, said last week she had been paid more than $1,000 (£609, 720 euros) to attend a party in his residence in Rome, in the company of other women.

He added: "I never understood where the satisfaction is when you're missing the pleasure of conquest."

June 24

The Independent -

A group of pensioners has been accused of kidnapping and torturing a financial adviser who lost over €2m of their savings.

The pensioners, nicknamed the "Geritol Gang" by police after an arthritis drug, face up to 15 years in jail if found guilty of subjecting German-American James Amburn to the alleged four-day ordeal.

Two of them are said to have hit him with a Zimmer frame(pic) outside his home in Speyer, western Germany, before he was driven 300 miles to a home on the shores of a lake in Bavaria.

Mr Amburn (56) says he was burned with cigarettes, beaten, had ribs broken, was hit with a chair leg and chained up "like an animal".

The incident began on Tuesday last week after Mr Amburn, the head of an investment firm called Digitalglobalnet, was allegedly attacked by two men aged 74 and 60.

Another couple, retired doctors aged 63 and 66, later arrived to join in the alleged torture.

Angelique Chrisafis | Paris | June 22

The Guardian -

Nicolas Sarkozy today took a hard line in France's latest row over Islamic dress, saying full veils and face coverings were a sign of women's debasement and "not welcome" on French soil.

More than 50 MPs, mostly from the president's centre-right UMP party, last week backed calls for a parliamentary inquiry to debate whether Muslim women who wear full-body religious veils with only their eyes visible posed a threat to the republic's secular values and gender equality. A government spokesman had suggested that a law could eventually be proposed to ban full coverings from being worn in public in France.

Sarkozy today used his first state of the nation speech to defend the French republican principle of secularism and attack full Islamic veils.

BBC: Types of veils

Clifford J Levy | Kiev | June 22

NYT - Ukraine, which has suffered a roundhouse blow from the economic crisis, has had no finance minister since February. It also has no foreign minister or defense minister. The transportation minister just stepped down. The interior minister has offered to resign as well, after being accused of drunken behavior.

The president and the prime minister are no longer speaking, though they were once allies and heroes of the Orange Revolution, which brought a pro-Western government to power in 2005. The spirit of that uprising has apparently been squandered in a country that seems permanently gripped by political paralysis.

The public appears so frustrated that the leader of the opposition, who has close ties to the Kremlin and is often portrayed as the villain of the Orange Revolution, is the early favorite to win the presidential election next January.

Ian Traynor | Brussels | June 19

The Guardian - European leaders tonight sought to revive the ill-fated Lisbon Treaty reforming the way the EU is run by delivering pledges shoring up Irish independence in the hope of securing a Yes vote in an Irish referendum in October.

But Brian Cowen, the Irish prime minister, told a summit of 27 government chiefs in Brussels that he would not win the referendum, expected on 2 October, unless the "guarantees" were legally enshrined in a new protocol that could cause problems for Gordon Brown and other European leaders by reigniting old feuds over the treaty.

In June last year, the Irish derailed the Lisbon project by rejecting the treaty in a referendum. The rest of the EU has agreed to assure Ireland that the new regime will not affect Irish military neutrality, ­abortion laws, taxation policy and the Irish are also guaranteed a seat in the European Commission.

Henry McDonald | June 17

The Guardian - More than 100 Romanians fleeing racist attacks in Belfast have been moved to a council-run leisure centre after taking refuge overnight in a church.

The 115 Romanians were transferred to the O-Zone complex this morning.

The sports centre in the city's Ormeau Park has become a temporary home for the Romanians, many of whom have said they want to leave Northern Ireland.

Belfast's lord mayor, Naomi Long, said the repeated attacks on the Roma families close to the university district had brought shame on the city.

Michael Day | Milan | June 16

The Independent - Global warming is already causing flooding in the north and water shortages in south, report says

The dramatic effect of climate change on the Alps comes into focus as never before this week with the publication of a major report which reveals that the mountain range is rapidly dividing into two contrasting climatic zones, each posing new problems.

The Convention on the Protection of the Alps is a statutory EU body set up in 1991 and its magisterial second report, published tomorrow, which has been seen by The Independent, reveals that the northern ranges of the Alps are suffering ever more serious flooding while the parched southern mountains see less and less snow.

According to the report, precipitation in the south-east of the region has fallen nearly 10 per cent in the past 100 years while rain and snowfall in the north-west ranges has increased by the same amount over this time.

* Michael McCarthy: Don't be fooled by this winter's powder. The Alpine snow line is already in retreat

James Marson | Kyiv, Ukraine | June 14

The Independent - In a country hit hard by economic downturn, the industry is expected to double to $1.5 billion this year.

When Tonya came to Kyiv (Kiev) from her small hometown in western Ukraine to study, it was a route out of the dreary provincial life she had grown to hate. She struggled to make ends meet. Her parents, with a combined monthly income of around $200, were hardly in a position to help fund her studies.

Tonya feared she would have to give up and return home. But then she found a way to stay: selling her body to foreign men.

"My choice was to work as a prostitute or go home," she says, glancing around nervously. "I would never have done it but for the circumstances. I don't want to work as a prostitute, but I need to get an education so I can get a decent job."

Tonya is one of thousands of women who are part of an industry that has boomed in Ukraine since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991: sex tourism.

The problem is already so acute that Yuriy Lutsenko, Ukraine's interior minister, declared on national television earlier this year that "The country is becoming a paradise for sex tourism before our eyes."

Daniel Howden | June 11

The Independent -

The rich world is failing to deliver on its side of an historic pact to improve the living conditions of millions of people in Africa, according to an assessment released today.

Only a third of the aid promised by the G8 group of industrialised nations has made its way to sub-Saharan Africa. This year's Data report describes the collective G8 assessment as "grim", blaming "exceptionally poor progress" by France and Italy, which were singled out as being responsible for 80 per cent of the funding shortfalls.

Almost a decade since they were set, the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, designed to eradicate extreme poverty by 2010, remain out of reach and rich nations are in danger of "defaulting" on their commitments.

The G8's self-imposed deadline is 18 months away but only $7bn (£4.3bn) of the $21.5bn in aid that was promised at the Gleneagles summit in 2005 has been delivered, according to One, the authors of the Data report.

The auditors are scathing in their assessment of France under President Nicolas Sarkozy and Italy under Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. "Certain members of the G8 are meeting and even beating the targets they set for themselves", says the report, which praises Germany and Britain, but "France's delivery is disappointing, and Italy's performance is an utter failure".

Michael Day | Milan | June 10

The Independent -

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi flies into Rome today on his first visit to Italy, celebrating the end of decades of animosity between his country and its former colonial power.

Since the countries signed a treaty in August last year, in which Italy agreed to pay £4.5bn over 20 years as compensation for Italy's colonisation of the North African country, business ties have flourished. Successive Italian governments have bent over backwards to accommodate the mercurial Col Gaddafi, who for decades was seen as a terrorist-sponsoring international pariah.

Roman authorities are making plans for the unexpected this week as he prepares to pitch his Bedouin tent, together with a possible planeload of camels and stallions, in the grounds of the Eternal City's sumptuous 17th-century Villa Doria Pamphili palace. As ever, his female bodyguards in green fatigues and red berets are expected to guard him round the clock.

During his visit, Col Gaddafi will meet the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, the President, Giorgio Napolitano, and the heads of both houses of parliament. He has also asked for a meeting with 700 Italian women achievers. The encounter will take place in a city concert hall on 12 June.

Claire Soares | June 9

The Independent - Amid the deluge of bewilderingly long and indigestible political manifestos, that of Sweden's Pirate Party was refreshingly brief – an internet file-sharing free-for-all, a ban on monitoring emails and the abolition of patents. Standing on essentially a single issue might have seemed like cloud-cuckoo land but the Scandinavian fringe party picked up more than 7 per cent of the Swedish vote at the weekend, capturing a seat in the European Parliament.

Not bad going for a bunch of pirates who have only been around for three years and whose supporters dub them the "geek" party.

"Last night, we gained political credibility," founder Rick Falkvinge, 37, told BBC radio. "The establishment is trying to prevent control of knowledge and culture slipping from their grasp. People were not taken in."

One factor in the Pirate Party's incredible rise – coming fifth overall in the country – was the guilty verdict in the Pirate Bay trial in April when four Swedes were sentenced to a year in prison for running one of the world's biggest file-sharing sites. According to Mr Falkvinge, membership of what some see as the political wing tripled in a week just at the time the European election campaign was getting going.

The other factor is the party's appeal to the young on technology issues where mainstream groups have been caught napping. The Pirate Party – which claims to always have someone online even in the early hours of the morning – has accused the establishment of "declaring war against a whole generation". It ended up being the first-choice party for voters under 30 at the weekend, with turnout higher than ever before in Sweden.

Claire Soares & John Lichfield | Paris | June 6

The Independent - Fears that low turnout and gains by far right will be repeated across the EU

The first killer punch of the European election campaign was struck yesterday by the maverick Dutch politician, Geert Wilders, who scooped 17 per cent of the vote and almost a fifth of his country's seats in the European Parliament running on a populist, anti-immigrant, law and order agenda.

The Dutch result, released two days early – before most Europeans had even cast their votes – sent jitters around a continent fearful that a miserably low turnout will help extremists on both the left and right.

Mr Wilders, refused access to Britain as a rabble-rouser earlier this year, has perfected a form of tolerant intolerance with his Freedom Party and its smartly-suited, middle-class, anti-Islamic and "pro-liberal" values. While the Christian Democrats of Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende managed to keep hold of the largest share of the votes (albeit with the loss of two seats and a mere three-point lead), the Freedom Party romped home in second.

The platinum-blond maverick shot to international prominence for branding the Koran a "fascist book" and releasing a film, Fitna, which depicted Islam as inherently violent. "This is fantastic, a great day for the people who crave another Netherlands, another Europe," declared a triumphant Mr Wilders who won four of the 25 seats up fro grabs. Having beaten the Labour party, the other main bloc in the Prime Minister's coalition, into third place, he claimed the government no longer had a mandate. "The cabinet should step down, the sooner the better," he told Dutch television, although analysts said that was wishful thinking.

The train pulled out of Sirkeci Station at 10pm sharp, bound for Bucharest. Within an hour the slow rocking of the train put me to sleep. Sometime around 300am the train stopped, the conductor rapped on the door, shouting "immigration" and the passengers filed out in a stupor. Passport stamped I climbed aboard and went back to sleep. Thirty minutes later there was another sharp rap on the door: "customs!" The officers tore my cabin apart, like cops back home with a warrant. Finally, after fifteen minutes of pillage they left, satisfied there was no contraband in my meager belongings. I fell alseep, only to be awakened again thirty minutes later by a huge, semi-toothed Bulgarian border officer. "Passport?"

I handed it over. He glanced at it long enough to realize I was American, snorted and handed it back. "Okay," he said, "good night."

"That was easy enough," I thought and went right back to sleep. I don't know how much time passed, but once again, I was awakened by a hard thump, followed by two quick knocks on my door, like rapid gunshots.

"What now!" I exclaimed in frustration.

"Eet iz passport kontrol," came a woman's voice behind the door. I fumbled with the lock on my door as images of a snaggle-toothed, heavy Bulgarian matron danced through my head. I flipped on the light, and slid open the door.

More after the jump.

It took a while for me to figure out why everything so was so calm and peaceful. (Mind you, this is very relative.) But as I was walking down the very European streets of Bucharest this afternoon (and very communist city planning it is) it came to me: I've been in the east for a very long time. A week or two shy of a year. It's just strange being in Europe. And like I said, being in Romania is very relative. It's still a pretty wild place. But, compared to my time in Bulgaria almost ten years back, it is crystal clear that accession to the European Union has drastically changed Bulgaria and Romania for the better. There is a lot of wealth here now. And the former Eastern bloc countries, while the people can still be very grim and unhappy, have a measure of stability. And it's definitely not the East. The smells are different. The lifestyle and the stares, the driving habits, the architecture, a thousand different little subtle things, plus the food are just flat out different. Seriously, I've only seen one Lada, and that was in the countryside of Bulgaria this morning! How can it be Eastern Europe and have no effing Ladas?!?

It's a strange adjustment for me to make. I've spent so much time the last 10 years in the East--I haven't been to 'Europe' except for a short stint in 'oh-so-civilized Denmark' in 2007--that I find it odd. I'll probably have a wicked case of culture shock when I get to Germany in a week or so. Oy!

Amsterdam | June 1

DPA - There was a time when the Dutch were enthusiastic supporters of projects to draw Europe closer together politically.

But in the run-up to the European Parliament elections, one thing is strikingly clear while watching people in an outdoor shopping district on a recent sunny afternoon in Amsterdam. No one is even paying attention to the election billboards.

'I am not going to vote next week,' 27-year old Marieke van der Ven told the German Press Agency dpa.

'Normally, I would vote for the leftist Liberal D'66. But, in the European elections, they joined forces with the rightist Liberal VVD. I think that is absurd. So why should I even bother?'

Van der Ven is no exception, says political communications professor Claes de Vreese, of the University of Amsterdam.

Last month, his University of Amsterdam Centre for Politics and Communication, along with the polling agency TNS NIPO conducted a study that showed 61 per cent of the Dutch support EU membership - but only 24 per cent have confidence in Brussels' institutions.

'The Dutch are afraid the European Union is becoming too large. They fear losing their cultural identity. They are also unhappy with the European Union's functioning.'

Took the train from Istanbul to Bucharest last night. It was a fun train ride. I'll let the pictures do the talking.

Paris | June 1

AFP -
An Air France passenger jet with 215 people on board is missing after dropping off radar over the Atlantic off the Brazilian coast Monday, a Paris airport official said.

Air France crash: 'No hope' of survivors

The Air France plane that disappeared between Brazil and France with 228 people on board today has almost certainly crashed with no survivors, airline and government officials have said.

They believe the Airbus A330-200 aircraft crashed after running in to lightning and thunderstorms over the Atlantic Ocean.

"We are probably facing an air catastrophe," the Air France chief executive, Pierre-Henri Gourgeon, told a news conference.

He said the aircraft went through a thunderstorm with strong turbulence at around 3am BST.

An automated message was received at 3.14am indicating a failure of the electrical system, Air France said in a statement.

** Air France plane disappears from radar screens

Jonathan Owen | May 31

The Independent - For D-Day to succeed, two bridges had to be taken. As the 65th anniversary approaches, the men who stole into France in six gliders recall the fight that morning.

"It was one of the "most outstanding flying achievements of the war", said Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory after the smoke had cleared and the casualties had been tallied. Codenamed Operation Deadstick, six gliders carrying 139 men from the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry formed the sharp point of a spearhead that was to be hurled on to France's Normandy beaches on 6 June 1944: D-Day.

read more after the jump

Michael Booth | May 31

The Independent - A pioneering company in Denmark is giving people with autism the chance to apply their skills to jobs from IT to product testing. The result is a huge success that's about to be rolled out across Europe. Founder Thorkil Sonne tells Michael Booth how his workforce's superhuman recall and unflinching focus could teach the rest of us a thing or two