A Serbian judge decided Tuesday to hand over arrested former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic to the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague, news reports said.

Belgrade judge Milan Dilparic's ruling came after he questioned Karadzic on Monday night, the Tanjug state news agency reported. Karadzic's lawyer, Svetozar Vujacic, said he would appeal, Tanjug said. He has three days to file an appeal.

 

Serbian authorities announced late Monday they had arrested Karadzic, 63, after 12 years in hiding. The independent Beta news agency reported that Karadzic was arrested in Serbia, ending more than a decade in hiding.

 

The UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia indicted Karadzic in 1995 on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and breach of the Geneva Convention for his alleged role in leading the brutal ethnic cleansing of non-Serbs during Bosnia's 1992-95 ethnic war.

The Irish rejection of the Lisbon Treaty has sent shockwaves across the EU. But the treaty is still no lost cause, says German Foreign Minister Steinmeier in an exclusive essay for DW-WORLD.DE.

Frank-Walter Steinmeier is German foreign minister and vice chancellor. He is also deputy chairman of the Social Democratic Party.

 

Whither Europe? We are asking that same question yet again. One year ago, we were all relieved because the EU appeared to have survived its crisis. While it had parted ways with its constitution, it was still committed to plans for a reform treaty. Months later, this had evolved into the Lisbon Treaty.

 

And today? The treaty has been ratified 23 times. But it was vetoed once, on June 12, in the Irish referendum. The looks of consternation on the faces of the European foreign ministers who met up in Brussels a few days later are still a vivid memory to me.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has backed French proposals for the EU to sign an "association" pact with Ukraine in September, amid uncertainty over what the move could mean for Ukraine's EU membership aspirations.

"This agreement will not only mean a strengthened partnership. It can also qualify as an associate member agreement," the chancellor said after meeting Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko on a brief visit to Kiev on Monday (21 July).

Kiev is keen to get on the EU membership path

Her comment came one day before EU foreign ministers come together in Brussels on Tuesday to rubber-stamp plans for the EU-Ukraine summit in Evian, France on 9 September, where the two sides aim to sign the political chapter of a new bilateral deal.

The title "association agreement" - recalling the "association" treaties signed with former eastern bloc countries before the 2004 EU enlargement - would be a diplomatic victory for Kiev, which has pushed for an EU membership perspective since it broke away from the Russian sphere of influence in the 2004 Orange Revolution.

French President Nicholas Sarkozy has proposed to the Irish prime minister that a second referendum on the Lisbon Treaty be held on the same day as elections to the European Parliament next June.

Mr Sarkozy made the suggestion during a private discussion with Prime Minister, or Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, according to reports in the Irish Times, during a six-hour whistle-stop trip to Dublin to meet with government leaders and campaigners from both sides of the treaty battle.

Mr Sarkozy spent three minutes with each campaigner.

At the same time, publicly, the French president denied that he had said Ireland must vote again.

"I never said that Ireland had to organise a new referendum. I said that at some stage or another the Irish had to be given the opportunity to give their opinion."

Last week, he told a private session with deputies from his UMP party in Paris that Ireland would have to hold a second referendum, according to an attendee of the meeting.

It's another balmy weekend on the beach in Naples. By the rocks, a couple soak up the southern Italian sun. A few metres away, their feet poking from under beach towels that cover their faces and bodies, lie two drowned Roma children.

The girls, Cristina, aged 16, and Violetta, 14, were buried last night as the fallout from the circumstances of their death reverberated throughout Italy.

It is an image that has crystallised the mounting disquiet in the country over the treatment of Roma, coming after camps have been burnt and the government has embarked on a bid to fingerprint every member of the minority. Two young Roma sisters had drowned at Torregaveta beach after taking a dip in treacherous waters. Their corpses were recovered from the sea - then left on the beach for hours while holidaymakers continued to sunbathe and picnic around them.

Italy's top appeals court has reversed its notorious ruling of nine years ago that a woman wearing tight jeans cannot by definition be raped or sexually molested since the removal of the garment requires her "collaboration and consent".

A 37-year-old man from Padua convicted in 2005 of sexually molesting his partner's teenage daughter by inserting his hands inside the front of her jeans had appealed to the Court of Cassation, citing its 1999 ruling and claiming that he could not have committed the alleged "libidinous act" because the girl's jeans were too tight.

Nicolas Sarkozy narrowly avoided a critical political defeat last night when his flagship proposals to give the French constitution its biggest overhaul in half a century were passed by a margin of just one vote.

The president, who has made the reform of key institutions a priority of his premiership, scraped to victory as 539 politicians came out in support of the changes, while 357 voted against. He had needed a majority of three-fifths - or 538 votes - for the reform to go through.

As the result of the highly controversial ballot was read out, a collective murmur of surprise echoed around the chamber at Versailles, scene of the special session of France's MPs and senators.

It had been unclear right up until the last moments which way the vote would go. For days the Elysée Palace has been rallying recalcitrant Gaullist members of Sarkozy's majority UMP party and urging those undecided to back the reforms.

Debate in the Senate ammounted to a total of three days.

It is likely that the law will be eventually judged anti-constitutional but it will already have absolved its scope of blocking all current trials and investigations into Berlusconi's fervid, reiterative and questionable activities. The David Mill's trial will be blocked as soon as the law is published in the official gazzette.

No other democracy has a law of such sweeping immunity to prosecution. In fact only four states allow for presidential or royal immunity. But then in a nation where parliamentary sovereignty has been reduced to a gaggle of sycophants who were appointed rather than elected, the word "democracy" applies only in its authoritarian sense. We have a new Duce.

Solar power from Saharan sun could provide Europe's electricity, says EU

· Huge £35bn supergrid would pool green sources
· Brown and Sarkozy back north African plan

• Alok Jha, science correspondent
• The Guardian,
• Wednesday July 23, 2008
• Article history

A concentrating solar power (CSP) plant in Spain that uses panels to refl ect light on to a central tower to produce electricity. Similar plants are proposed for north Africa. Photograph: AP

A tiny rectangle superimposed on the vast expanse of the Sahara captures the seductive appeal of the audacious plan to cut Europe's carbon emissions by harnessing the fierce power of the desert sun.

Dwarfed by any of the north African nations, it represents an area slightly smaller than Wales but scientists claimed yesterday it could one day generate enough solar energy to supply all of Europe with clean electricity.

Speaking at the Euroscience Open Forum in Barcelona, Arnulf Jaeger-Walden of the European commission's Institute for Energy, said it would require the capture of just 0.3% of the light falling on the Sahara and Middle East deserts to meet all of Europe's energy needs.

Enel: in Sicily One of the First Off-Shore Wind Farms in the Mediterranean Tuesday, Jul 22, 2008

Rome, 10 July 2008 - Enel has deposited the project design for one of the first off-shore wind farms in the Mediterranean Sea. The request for an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) has been delivered by Enel to the Ministry of the Environment and the Region of Sicily.

Italy's first off-shore wind facility will foresee the installation of 115 large generators with a capacity of between 3 and 5 megawatts each in the waters of the Gulf of Gela at least 3 nautical miles off-shore, between the towns of Licata (in the province of Agrigento), Butera and Gela (both in the province of Caltanissetta).

The project, developed through a joint venture between Enel (57%) and Moncada Costruzioni (43%), will have a total installed capacity of between 345 and 575 MW. The maximum cost of the investment will be about 500 million euros. Once fully operational, the plant will generate 1,150 million KWh of power, enough to meet the needs of 390,000 households, avoiding CO2 emissions of about 815,000 metric tons a year.

Light therapy 'beats plaque bugs'

Plaque can damage the teeth and gums Scientists have developed a mouthwash that allows plaque-causing bacteria to be destroyed using nothing more than a bright light. It works using the same principles as some skin cancer treatments. Leeds Dental Institute say it may be available inside three years for home use - perhaps with the light attached to the head of a toothbrush. The same team is also working on a "repair solution" to help the body grow new enamel. They believe this could reduce the need for "drilling and filling". In our experiments, we've been using standard white light - I've been using a conventional security light Dr Simon Wood Leeds Dental Institute Both projects are being spearheaded by Professor Jennifer Kirkham, who believes they could make a big difference to dental care. The mouthwash uses "photodynamic therapy", and Professor Kirkham sees it as a way to help people who find it hard to use a toothbrush. Antibacterial molecules in the liquid are absorbed only by plaque-causing bacteria, and activated when a bright light is shone into the mouth, killing them.

Aijaz Ahmad: The United States economy is stagnant and faces the possibility of a real Depression. Its currency has lost a quarter of its value on global markets in three years. No country in the entire history of humankind has ever owed as much money to foreigners as the US does today, and this debt rises by about a billion dollars a day. Its military expenditures are higher than those of the next twenty countries combined. It's time to question basic assumptions about US foreign policy.

Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama recently introduced his Senior Working Group on National Security, including former Clinton advisers Anthony Lake, Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright. Real News Network's Analyst Pepe Escobar explores Obama's true foreign policy colors in his commentary, explaining that this group of Clinton-related names tells a lot about Obama's view of the world.

Presidential rivals Barack Obama and John McCain will finish off the primary campaign season with a joint appearance at the California mega-church run by Rick Warren, best-selling author of The Purpose-Driven Life.

The forum at 22,000-member Saddleback Church shows that the two candidates are actively contesting the evangelical Christian vote, a segment that has in the past voted Republican.

Evangelicals have been cool to McCain's candidacy, opposing, for instance, his support for stem-cell research. Meanwhile, Obama has talked at length on the campaign trail about his faith, and has sought inroads among constituencies that Democrats have long neglected.

Saddleback, where the charismatic Warren preaches, is known as a member of the next generation of Christian leaders poised to take the helm of the evangelical movement from the likes of James Dobson of Focus on the Family and televangelist Pat Robertson.

AMMAN, Jordan: For what feels like forever, Israelis and their Arab neighbors have been hopelessly deadlocked on how to resolve the Palestinian crisis. But there is one point they may now agree on: if elected president, Senator Barack Obama will not fundamentally recalibrate America's relationship with Israel, or the Arab world.

From the religious center of Jerusalem to the rolling hills of Amman to the crowded streets of Cairo, dozens of interviews revealed a similar sentiment: the United States will ultimately support Israel over the Palestinians, no matter who the president is. That presumption promoted a degree of relief in Israel and resignation here in Jordan and in Israel's other Arab neighbors.

"What we know is American presidents all support Israel," said Muhammad Ibrahim, 23, a university student who works part time selling watermelons on the street in the southern part of this city. "It is hopeless. This one is like the other one. They are all the same. Nothing will change. Don't expect change."

India's government today survived a knife-edge parliamentary vote of confidence, clearing the way for a landmark nuclear deal with the US that marks the end of its international isolation as a rogue nuclear weapons state.

The vote came after weeks of political horse-trading which saw allegations of MPs being offered million-pound bribes, others being assured of cabinet berths and claims that some MPs had been kidnapped.

Just hours before the vote opposition MPs brought 10m rupees into the parliament to highlight the corruption claims, which will now be investigated by the parliamentary authorities.

In the end the vote was won comfortably - with a majority of 19 - partly because MPs were brought in on hospital trolleys and others convicted for murder were released from prison to attend parliament. General elections can now take place next May, when the government's five-year term expires.

The Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, today arrived in Moscow on his latest arms-buying spree, saying that his country needed to buy more weapons to defend itself from the United States.

Chávez met Russia's president Dmitry Medvedev this morning. He is expected to sign a billion-dollar arms deal with Russia for new missile defence systems and diesel-powered submarines.

"I have great hopes we will be able to continue building our strategic alliance," Chávez said after landing in Moscow for a two-day trip.

He added: "The deals will guarantee the sovereignty of Venezuela which is being threatened by the United States."

Chávez's latest visit to Moscow - his sixth - is likely to irritate Washington. It comes at a time when relations between Russia and the US are already under strain over a host of issues.

The Argentine government has renationalised the country's airline, Aerolineas Argentinas, nearly 20 years after it was privatised.

It is the latest major company to be renationalised in Argentina, after a wave of privatisation in the 1990s.

The Spanish group Marsans agreed to sell Aerolineas and its subsidiary Austral for an undisclosed sum.

Aerolineas now carries a debt of nearly $900m (£450m) and is losing money to the tune of about $1m a day.

The first official image of a Russian-European manned spacecraft has been unveiled.

It is designed to replace the Soyuz vehicle currently in use by Russia and will allow Europe to participate directly in crew transportation.

The reusable ship was conceived to carry four people towards the Moon, rivalling the US Ares/Orion system.

Unlike previous crewed vehicles, it will use thrusters to make a soft landing when it returns to Earth.