By Hannes Artens

No doubt, this Sunday's parliamentary elections in Serbia are the most decisive in the country's short but turbulent democratic history. Never since the fall of Slobodan Milosevic the stakes have been so high and prospects so ominous. In two days, the Serbian people will decide on whether they still envision a future in the European family of nations for their nation or decay into self-inflicted isolation and the status of a Trojan Horse for Russian great power aspirations. For the European Union, the elections will determine whether it can count on having an interlocutor in Belgrade to negotiate with past May 11, or face up to a nationalist Serbia acting as a permanent spirit of discord for the entire Western Balkans.

The unilateral declaration of independence of Kosovo on February 17, sent shockwaves through the country that not only culminated in the ravage of several Western embassies and brought the government down, but also dominates this election campaign right down to the last comma on every stump. The collective national trauma of having ultimately lost the very territory mystified as the cradle of the Serbian nation and the impolitic signals the EU sent out over the last weeks render a radical-nationalist landslide a given. According to most recent polls, the nationalist bloc could bank on winning a super-majority of 55%, relegate all reform-minded powers into opposition, and set off to permanently disengage Serbia from Europe.

Silvia Aloisi | Rome | May 7

Reuters - Italy's prime minister-elect Silvio Berlusconi on Wednesday unveiled one of the country's most right-wing governments since World War Two.

The 71-year old conservative read out his cabinet list to reporters after meeting with the head of state at the presidential palace.

Giulio Tremonti will return as economy minister and Franco Frattini will leave his post as European commissioner to become foreign minister in the 21-member cabinet.

The election produced a purge of smaller parties, with only six winning seats versus more than 20 in 2006. One casualty was Berlusconi's estranged Christian Democrat allies, who gave his last government a centrist counterweight to the right.

Its absence, plus the League's surprise gains, appeared to have produced one of the most right-wing governments since fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

May 7

BBC - Tony Blair appears to have lost the French president's backing

Nicolas Sarkozy has withdrawn his backing of Tony Blair to become the first president of the European Union, senior sources have told the BBC.

The French president is understood to have changed his mind after meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

It is thought he feels EU opposition to the former UK prime minister is too strong because he backed the Iraq war.

Sharon Smyth | Madrid | April 30

Bloomberg - Over the past decade, developers built about 100,000 illegal homes in Spain, and consumer advocates say thousands of those are now threatened with demolition as regional governments try to deter clandestine construction. The crusade may discourage the foreign buyers who fueled Spain's housing boom, deepening a slump that began last year.

``The problem is very serious,'' says Rafael Pampillon, an economics professor at the Instituto Empresa in Madrid. ``When a country has a system or set of institutions that allow illegal houses to be built and corruption to exist then evidently foreign investment is going to flee.''

Dublin | April 28

AFP - Ireland, which has seen an immigration surge in recent years, has a new foreigner on its shores, scientists said Monday: the greater white-toothed shrew.

The mammal, Crocidura Russula, has been discovered in parts of the midlands and south-west of the republic. Its natural range is in parts of Africa, France and Germany.

Professor Ian Montgomery, head of the School of Biological Sciences at Queen's University in Belfast, says the animal is likely to have been introduced recently to Ireland and the discovery of a new mammal species in Ireland is extremely rare.

"Most species which occur in Ireland also occur in Britain but the nearest this species of shrew has been found is on the Channel Islands and the Scilly Isles."

Jason Burke | April 27

The Observer - Nicolas Sarkozy came to power a year ago promising radical change. Now even his supporters are disillusioned. Jason Burke journeys through France's heartland to chart the end of an infatuation

Leaning against the bar of the grubby Buffet de Rail in the northern town of St Omer, Mathieu Blanc offered his vision of French politics to the half a dozen coffee- and beer-sipping clients and a single bored barman.

'The problem with Nicolas Sarkozy is that everyone talks about him and no one talks about France or people like us,' the soldier turned chef said, pointing to the picture of the President beneath a local newspaper headline revealing a national approval rating of just 28 per cent. 'Do I think things are going to get better? No, it will probably get worse.'

Nicholas Watt | Boston | April 19

The Guardian - PM uses Boston speech to bury Blair's doctrine of liberal interventionism

Gordon Brown and his wife Sarah meet Ted Kennedy during their visit to the John F. Kennedy memorial library in Boston. Photograph: Adam Hunger/Reuters

Europe and the US will face "terrifying risks" if they fail to join forces to fight global terrorism by combating poverty and disease, Gordon Brown warned yesterday in a speech on foreign policy in Boston.

The prime minister voiced the hope that a "new dawn of collaborative action" would be ushered in next year with the election of a new US president.

On the final leg of his three-day trip to the US, during which he met George Bush and the three presidential candidates, Brown said that American leadership would always be indispensable.

But he made clear that he hopes for a more consensual style of US leadership when either Barack Obama, John McCain, or Hillary Clinton enters the White House next January. Brown indicated that this would allow Europe and the US to move on from the divisions over Iraq.

Alok Jha | April 18

The Guardian - Fears that the rapid draining of water from the top of Greenland's ice sheet may be contributing to the rise of global sea levels have been allayed by new research. Though scientists confirmed that the water can drain away faster than Niagara Falls, it did not seem to accelerate the movement of the ice sheet into the ocean as previously thought.

Receding ice sheets are of major concern to climate scientists because the melting water could lead to a rise in sea levels. In addition, the melting can encourage feedback mechanisms that amplify the warming effects of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere: ice and snow reflect sunlight, so less of them means more heat is absorbed by the Earth. Observations have already shown that the speed at which glaciers at the edge of Greenland are moving into the sea has doubled in the past two decades.

Thousands of lakes form on top of Greenland's glaciers every summer due to the increased sunlight and warmer air. Satellite observations have shown that these lakes often disappear, often in as little as a day, but no one knew where the water was going or how quickly it moved.

Angela Balakrishnan | Potsdam, Germany | April 16

The Guardian - NASA has been outsmarted by a German schoolboy who corrected its estimates of the chances of an asteroid colliding with Earth, it was reported today.

The German Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten newspaper said 13-year-old Nico Marquardt came across the NASA miscalculation after conducting a study as part of a regional science competition.

Richard O'Mara | Baltimore, MD | April 15

CSM - Deciphering latent script on ancient parchment makes curator Will Noel's job an Indiana Jones-style adventure

This is about an ancient book called The Archimedes Codex, bought for $2.2 million in October, 1998, at an auction in New York City by an anonymous collector who sent it to the Walters Art Museum, here to be restored, conserved, and probed for its content. It was thought to contain mathematical theses conceived by the genius of Syracuse (287-212 BC), whose name it bears, ideas not found anywhere else in the world.

April 13

BBC -
Italians are going to the polls in the first of two days of elections for a new parliament and prime minister.

The main contenders for the premiership are centre-right former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and the centre-left former mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni.

With the economy a key election issue, both men have promised modest tax cuts and reductions in bureaucracy.

Correspondents say the race is likely to be close, and the winner may have to broker a deal with smaller parties.

The general election is being held three years ahead of schedule following the collapse of a left-of-centre coalition government led by Romano Prodi. The new government will be Italy's 62nd in 63 years.

** Related thread: The Godfather Part III: Italy's Berlusconi Preens for Comeback


BBC Update, April 14: Berlusconi declares election win
The BBC's David Willey in Rome says the winner could find he has been passed a poisoned chalice, perhaps explaining why neither leader seemed very keen to win this lacklustre campaign.

Paul Hoskins | Dublin | April 13

Reuters - Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern denied reports of a diplomatic row on Sunday after China's ambassador walked out on a speech in which Environment Minister John Gormley accused China of human rights abuses in Tibet.

Television footage showed China's envoy to Ireland, Liu Biwei, conferring with an aide before walking out during a speech on Saturday night in which Gormley said Tibet had been "exploited and suppressed and suffered for too long".

"We have always enjoyed good relations with the Chinese people," said Gormley who leads the Green Party, the junior partner in Ireland's Fianna Fail-led coalition government.

"But we condemn this abuse of human rights and we call on the Chinese government to enter dialogue with the Dalai Lama," Gormley said at a Green Party convention.

Alexander Smoltczyk | April 10

Spiegel Onlne - This weekend's elections in Italy could mark billionaire Silvio Berlusconi's return to power in what would be his third term in office. But rarely have Italian voters been so weary of their politicians -- and rarely has there been so little hope of any real change.

The man is exhausted. He gazes out into the darkness through the windows of the bus. "Italy is a wonderful country. But this political system!" The bus passes the lights of furniture warehouses, factories and brightly lit showrooms. "It's a system that is incapable of assuming responsibility and reaching any decision at all. And the parties are internally divided. The country is tired and sick."

The man on the bus is Walter Veltroni, and his task is to win the Italian parliamentary election this coming weekend.

See Tina's earlier post: History dogs Berlusconi bid to transform Italy

Peter Popham | Rome | April 9

Independent - The Via Appia was first recognised as an important historical legacy by Napoleon, but preserving it is proving to be an uphill struggle

It was the first modern road in the world, shooting like an arrow from the Porta Capena in Rome's city walls all the way to Brindisi on the Adriatic coast, more than 500km (300 miles) away.

Today the Via Appia is at the centre of a regional park, protected by the city of Rome and Unesco as the patrimony of all humanity. At least that is the theory. But although it has become a popular weekend draw for Romans and visitors, the Via Appia is in trouble.

Twenty years ago the regional government passed a law to protect it, but despite its Unesco listing it is fighting off colonisation by property speculators gambling on the likelihood that Silvio Berlusconi will win Italy's upcoming election and his government will, like his two previous ones, enact a condono or amnesty on illegal building.

Sixteen illegally built villas have been condemned and demolished in the park in the past five years, but many have survived. And the way the amnesty law works poses a vivid threat to the park's integrity.

April 7

BBC - Two people have died in Spain after contracting the human form of "mad cow disease", variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), Spanish media has said.

The two died in the central region of Castilla-Leon, one three months ago and the other last week, regional health sources were quoted by news agency AFP.

The disease was first found in humans in 1995 and is thought to be transmitted in infected meat and bone.

One of the dead was 41 and the other was 26, Spanish national radio said.

The health department said these were not the first vCJD deaths in Spain but did not give details, Reuters news agency reported.

April 6

BBC - Vandals have desecrated 148 Muslim graves in France's biggest WWI cemetery, officials have said.

A pig's head was hung from one headstone and slogans insulting Islam and France's Muslim justice minister were daubed on other graves.

President Nicolas Sarkozy condemned the attack as a "hateful act" and the "most inadmissible kind of racism".

Ed Vulliamy | April 6

The Observer - Italians are depressed as their country seems trapped in the doldrums. Ed Vulliamy reports on the malaise gripping a nation

As luck would have it for those enamoured of Silvio Berlusconi's charms, the year's first day of honeyed sunshine in Turin also brought to town the man who would be Italy's President of the Council of Ministers for a third time, and who leads the polls for next weekend's Italian parliamentary elections.

Fittingly for the leader of his new party - the People of Liberty - which he calls 'monarchist' (he being the king), the rally was held outside the palace of Italy's once ruling House of Savoy. It was a while coming, though, with plenty of time to appreciate the girls, quintessential to any Berlusconi event, bouncing around the stage in baseball caps to a melodramatic campaign song, 'Thank Goodness for Silvio'.

It was repeated 16 times before Berlusconi burst on stage, looking recovered from the heart complaint that allowed him to miss his most recent scheduled appearance in court.

Used to accusations of corruption, Berlusconi's prescriptions for Italy are noteworthy: 'We need a new political morality... to abolish the privileges of the political class', and to mount 'an offensive against tax evasion'. The girls in white caps chant 'Silvio! Silvio!' and tearful women reach for his hand.

By agreeing to place an American defence system in Eastern Europe, Nato has given the Kremlin the perfect excuse to further cement its autocratic rule

The Observer - Nato last week set back the hopes for Russia's progress towards democracy, justice and international partnership. It was a geopolitical blunder that will surely come to be regretted in the West, but the biggest losers are ordinary Russians. By caving into most of President Bush's demands, the United States' European allies have supplied the Kremlin with the perfect pretext for continuing to govern Russia in the authoritarian fashion that took hold in the late Nineties, after that brief dalliance with liberal democracy.

Vladimir Putin, who steps down as President in May, hardly bothers to pretend to be a democrat any more. When standing for election in 2000 and 2004 he ensured that any serious rival candidate was vilified. He did the same on Dmitri Medvedev's behalf this year. They showed an almost ridiculous zeal to assure their victories. This was no Mugabe-style situation. Russians vastly prefer them to what they remember of being ruled by Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. All the opinion polls suggested they could win by a landslide without their supporters resorting to the black arts of what is called 'political technology', the monopolising of TV airtime, the killing of troublesome journalists and the bullying of media magnates.

Athens/Nicosia | April 5

Gulf Times - Cypriot President Dimitris Christofias was scheduled to return from an oversees trip earlier than expected after a checkpoint ceremoniously opened a day earlier was forced to close following a dispute over how the street should be policed.

Greek Cypriot authorities temporarily closed the southern entrance to the crossing on Ledra Street late on Thursday, in the main shopping district of the divided capital that had once been barricaded for the last 44 years, just hours after it opened to the public.

The opening was meant to serve as a starting bloc for peace talks between Christofias and Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat.

But the presence of Turkish Cypriot police in the UN controlled buffer zone triggered the abrupt closure of the crossing point for more than two hours on Thursday.

Belfast | April 4

Reuters - Rocket-propelled grenades no longer explode on Belfast's "RPG Avenue" but Michael Culbert, a gunman-turned-community worker, has his work cut out in a city still criss-crossed by walls separating Catholics from Protestants.

Culbert, who served 16 years in the Maze prison outside Belfast for killing members of the British forces, has swapped the Irish Republican Army (IRA) for a job running Coiste, a European Union-funded organization looking mainly after fellow republican ex-prisoners.

Not all paramilitaries have given up violence. Some have joined small but active splinter groups -- like the Real IRA or the Continuity IRA -- while many more have turned to criminal activities, like drug dealing and smuggling.

Bogota | April 4

AFP - Colombian FARC rebels ruled out a unilateral release of hostages on Thursday amid French hopes that they would let a medical mission treat an ailing French-Colombian captive.

Rodrigo Granda, a top FARC guerrilla leader who was released from prison last year, insisted that the government negotiate an exchange of jailed rebels for hostages.

The demand came amid worries for the health of French-Colombian hostage Ingrid Betancourt after six years of jungle captivity.

"Those held in our camps will only be able to leave freely if there is an exchange of prisoners," Granda said in a statement published on the website of ABP, a news agency close to the FARC.

Granda was among 150 rebels released by the government last year. The FARC freed six hostages in January, but Granda said the group would not make any more "peace gestures.

Peter Popham | Rome | April 3

Independent - It still bears its thrilling ancient name, and the antique ruins on the Palatine Hill, the heart of ancient Rome and home of the Caesars, still gaze down upon it. But now it takes a feat of the imagination to see Circus Maximus as it must have been in its pomp.

Today it is little more than a long, narrow park, 340 metres in length, with a small archeological dig fitfully in progress at its south-eastern end. It can still hold a crowd: Genesis played a free concert here last year, and Bob Geldof persuaded Rome's mayor, Walter Veltroni, to let him use it for the Italian leg of the Live-8 spectacular in 2005. The rest of the time it is the haunt of dog-walkers, joggers and the occasional conceptual artist.

But 2,000 years ago this was the most exciting spot in the city. Long before the building of the Colosseum, crowds in their hundreds of thousands packed the stands to watch 12 teams of charioteers scorch the earth. Gladiators and wild animals fought in mortal combat, and the central arena was often flooded so miniature triremes could battle it out for the Romans' delight. If a particularly large number of people had to be crucified, Circus Maximus was the obvious place to do it.

The strip's last big show was in AD549. Then the Barbarians arrived and laid it to waste, and for the next millenium and a half it was no more than a very large allotment with a fancy name.

Dublin | April 2

Irish Independent - Bertie Ahern has sensationally announced that he will be resigning as Taoiseach and Fianna Fail leader next month.The Taoiseach, insisting he has never taken a corrupt payment, said he would retire on May 6.

In a statement, at times tinged with emotion, Mr Ahern said he was resigning in the best interests of the country. He said he had grown tired of headlines about “my life, my lifestyle, my finances”.

Insiders said Mr Ahern also wanted to go on his own terms and his decision to announce his resignation took cabinet colleagues by complete surprise. He will go within days of addressing the US Houses of Congress and a visit here by the Japanese prime minister.

His departure also paves the way for Finance Minster Brian Cowen to succeed.

For over a decade he dominated Dublin politics as deal-maker supreme, negotiator par excellence, master of his once fractious party, skilful manager of the Celtic Tiger and peacemaker in Northern Ireland. But yesterday that career came to an abrupt end amid allegations of tawdry, venal behaviour. MORE

Dennis Overbye | Honolulu, Hawaii | March 29

NYT - Asking a Judge to Save the World, and Maybe a Whole Lot More

More fighting in Iraq. Somalia in chaos. People in this country can’t afford their mortgages and in some places now they can’t even afford rice.

None of this nor the rest of the grimness on the front page today will matter a bit, though, if two men pursuing a lawsuit in federal court in Hawaii turn out to be right. They think a giant particle accelerator that will begin smashing protons together outside Geneva this summer might produce a black hole or something else that will spell the end of the Earth — and maybe the universe.

Scientists say that is very unlikely — though they have done some checking just to make sure.

Elizabeth Nash | Madrid | March 27

Independent - Spain's once-booming property market is in freefall, official statistics have revealed for the first time.

The announcement that house sales had plunged has dashed government hopes for a "soft landing" in the sector that has driven the Spanish economy for more than a decade.

The buying and selling of homes fell by 27 per cent in January compared with the same period last year, Spain's National Statistical Institute (INE) announced yesterday. The collapse coincided with a 25 per cent fall in the granting of mortgages, the biggest drop since 2004. The size of individual mortgages has also fallen, by nearly 4 per cent, as providers fear for the security of their loans.

The indicators published by the state organisation for the first time confirm the widespread fear that Spain's property sector is not just cooling off, but falling sharply. "We have to accept this is not a gentle correction, but a full-blown crisis. We can only hope it will be sharp and short," says Fernando Encinar, a director of Spain's leading online estate agent, idealista.com.