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Merkel's Constitution Plot Revealed
The European Constitution will get a cosmetic makeover that doesn't change its legal substance, according to a letter sent to heads of government by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Euro-MP and Telegraph columnist Daniel Hannan got his mitts on a copy of the letter and discusses its contents in today's newspaper.
Having It All
Where's the best place to find serious conservative commentary in the British press? We're thinking that the Telegraph's Political Blogs are picking up stories that the newspaper edition chooses to ignore.
Yesterday, we were impressed by Damian Thompson's look at the liberal elite. Today, Tory Euro-MP Dan Hannan reports on the shocking double standards of left-wing members of the European Parliament.
Third Man Keeps Singing
Do you remember those television talent shows, where contestants who outstayed their welcome would be removed from the stage by a giant hook? The French presidential election is beginning to look that way, as third-place contender François Bayrou looks unwilling to leave the limelight.
Yesterday he announced he would back neither of the remaining contenders (though it is thought he finds Ségolène Royal the lesser of two evils). He announced the formation of a new centrist party and pledged to take part in a television debate with Mme Royal before May 6th's final round.
Sarkozy: Iran Is A Threat
French Presidential contender Nicolas Sarkozy says that he would fight for sanctions to stop Iran developing a military nuclear programme if elected.
Bayrou's Choice
Latest News: François Bayrou has refused to back either candidate for the May 6 final round poll.
From The Archives
Two years ago, Jacques Chirac lost the referendum on the European Constitution. It was the perhaps the most devastating blow in a series of events which undermined his presidency.
He wasn't the only loser: France's Socialist Party, whose leadership had called for a Yes vote on the treaty, was left painfully divided as its supporters flocked to the No camp.
The Constitution looked dead in the water. Britain's presidency of the European Union was looming, a six-month spell Tony Blair was determined to use to renew the EU by pushing liberal measures (and ignoring the Constitution). Chirac responded by talking tough on France's untouchable agricultural policies (a key Blair target) and demanding that Britain lose its rebate from the EU...
Wooing Bayrou
Tender words and tough love for France's centrist leader
François Bayrou, the much-touted "Third Man" in France's presidential election is preparing to make the biggest speech of his life. He may have delivered more important addresses in his long political career, but none will have had all France - and much of the outside world - hanging on his every word.
Today, at 15.30 (14.30 GMT), he is expected to give his response to pleas from supporters of Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal over who his supporters should vote for in the final round of the election.
Taliban Terror Continues
Newspapers are reporting that the Taliban's latest atrocity has been greeted with horror around the world. The group has issued a video of a twelve year old boy beheading a captive who the Islamist group claim was a US informer.
New Boys Club
Damian Thompson's blog in the Telegraph is rapidly becoming one of the mainstream media's best commentary on religious, cultural and conservative issues.
Today's is no exception.
France's Iron Lady?
The Guardian's cartoonist Steve Bell must be praying for a Nicolas Sarkozy victory next week. He has his Sarko schtick worked out already - a crazed, hairy-legged dwarf dragged up in Margaret Thatcher costume and wig.
His Ségolène Royal caricature, in contrast, is crap. A kind of bony, squinting Marianne. Cartoonists need visual tags to identify their subjects and make their job easier - Bell's most famous and persistent image is of former PM John Major in his y-fronts, which he is reported to have tucked his shirt into.
A Minority Position On Iran?
Telegraph reports on Iran nuke claims - should say more about background
Earlier this month, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that Iran had begun enriching uranium on an industrial scale. Alarms sounded, warning that the Islamic Republic, whose leader has vowed to "wipe Israel from the map", was close to building a nuclear weapon.
However, analysts believe that much of Ahmadinejad's claims are bluster and that the Iranian weapons programme is facing "severe technical difficulties."
Fashion Victims
German terrorist plotted to kidnap designer Karl Lagerfeld
If there's anything more bizarre than the wacky world of high fashion, it's the loony land of hard left extremism. The two came together, or nearly did, back in 1977 when members of Germany's Baader-Meinhof terrorist movement schemed to kidnap rich public figures, among them Chanel fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld.
Boris Yeltsin Dies
He had the moves.
Boris Yeltsin has died aged 76. He became Russia's first democratically-elected President in 1991, succeeding Mikhail Gorbachev.
Sarkozy Faces Battle Royal
The centre-right candidate must overcome an anti-Sarkozy alliance to win the Presidency.
And Then There Were Two
Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal progress to second round of French elections
Polls have closed in the first round of France's presidential election and exit polls predict success for centre-right candidate Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist Ségolène Royal.
Sarkozy won 29.6 percent of votes; Latest counts put Royal at 25.1 on a turnout of 85 percent, the highest for fifty years.
About Those WMDs...
"A concerted effort by the US intelligence and political world to stifle... an explosive revelation of their own lethal incompetence."
Former US Air Force special investigator Dave Gaubatz claims that he found Saddam Hussein's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons bunkers.
Gaubatz says he visited the facilities - buried deep underground, in four separate sites - between March and July 2003. He advised the Iraq Study Group to excavate the bunkers, "before someone else did." The group failed to do so, citing dangers and numerous conflicting reports of other potential WMD sites at the time.
EU Criminalises Racial Hatred
European Union interior ministers are accused of creating 'Thought Crimes' by agreeing that incitement to racial hatred merits status as an EU-wide crime.
Blair: No Referendum
Here's the downside to Tony Blair's declaration that a new Europe doesn't need a Constitution on the scale of the document rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005: There will be a slimmed-down treaty, but Britons will not be offered a vote on it.
Speaking in the FT, the Prime Minister said that any new treaty would merely update existing agreements, and would not have the characteristics of a constitution.
The Peace Of The Wasteland
China has warned against new sanctions against Sudan, following reports that the Sudanese government is flying arms and heavy military equipment to the Darfur region in violation of a UN Security Council resolution.
Russia: We Want Berezovsky
The Guardian reports on the danger of a new Moscow-London rift following Russia's demand that UK-based dissident tycoon Boris Berezovsky be handed over.
Berezovsky was interviewed in the newspaper earlier this month, when he claimed that he was planning a coup against Vladimir Putin. He said that he believed Putin could only be overthrown by force.
Christians Murdered In Turkey
Two Turkish Christians and a German guest were found dead yesterday in what seems to have all the hallmarks of a Islamist ritual murder.
The three, who ran a publishing house that printed Bibles, were found bound hand and foot to chairs with their throats slit. Another man was severely injured in the attack, and a fifth is in a critical condition after he jumped from a window in an attempt to escape the killers.
Authorities in the conservative eastern region are said to be looking into an Islamist link: The murders appear to have been carried out in the tradition of Turkey's branch of the Hezbollah terror group.
Mugabe Blames Greed
Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has identified the greed of businesses as the main cause of his country's economic collapse.
Speaking at a rally celebrating 27 years of independence, Mugabe blamed businesses as well as "opposition saboteurs" bent on violence for high inflation, which analysts estimate as running at 2000 percent. Over 80 percent of Zimbabwe's population is thought to be unemployed.
Vote Fear
French election diary
After months of trailing Nicolas Sarkozy in the opinion polls, Ségolène Royal's supporters are jubilant following a new poll suggesting she and the centre-right candidate are neck-and-neck in the second round.
It's the sort of good news Royal's candidacy has needed since January. Following a triumphant 2006, this year has not been kind to the Socialist Party candidate. A series of foreign policy gaffes, a whispering campaign within her own party (which, unbelievably, still continues) and the rise of centrist François Bayrou left Royal's campaign rattled and worried about its chances of reaching the second round, never mind beating the Sarkozy machine in May.
Euro 2012 For Poland
Football: Italy may be world champions, but the country's recent history of crowd violence and match-fixing seems to have damaged its standing with European soccer's governing body, UEFA.
Today it was announced that Poland and Ukraine will jointly host the Euro 2012 football championship, not Italy, which was previously a firm favourite for the tournament.
The New London
Does Zurich need more bankers? Switzerland's finance minister Hans-Rudolf Merz seems to think so: During a series of meetings with business leaders aimed at giving London some competition, he was told that a ten percent tax rate for fund managers might be the best way to lure "high net worth individuals" away from the British capital.
Ain't Nothing Like A Dane
You'd think Mediterranean sunshine, wine and la dolce vita would make people happier than Lego, Carlsberg and Peter Schmeichel but you'd be wrong: Denmark's citizens are the happiest in Europe, while the inhabitants of the EU's more glamourous southern nations are the most miserable.
"We Don't Need No Constitution"
What with him having only weeks left in his job, one would wonder why Tony Blair continues to care about such things, but this week saw some rare good news from Europe for the British PM when he found an important ally in the EU Constitutional debate.
Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende declared with Blair that the EU doesn't need a constitution, and instead should concentrate on fixing existing treaties. "An amending treaty within the existing European treaties that makes the rules work more effectively" is what's needed, says Blair.
News Round-Up
Do No Evil: The UN isn't bothered, so leave it to the multinationals. Google has put satellite images of destroyed villages and refugee camps in Sudan's Darfur region on its Google Earth download, so users can get an idea of the scale of the government-backed genocide there.
Google teamed up with the US Holocaust Museum for the project.
The story is covered in some depth by the media. Bizarrely, however, news sites such as The Daily Telegraph, the BBC and CNN don't actually point readers at the site where the downloads can be found. Indeed, CNN prefers to point readers at its own in-house interactive, which shows "how the technology works."
The hack at Germany's Spiegel demonstrates even less initiative, commenting that a search on Google Earth for "Darfur" opens a map of Darfur, Minnesota.
Are they really that frightened of sending readers to Google? For anyone interested - and you ought to be - download the Crisis in Darfur overlay on this page.
French Election Diary
With the first round of the presidential election only eleven days away, it is becoming increasingly clear that the contest isn't so much the four-way race the media is depicting, but rather a struggle between Nicolas Sarkozy and Everyone Else.
Sarkozy has a lead of somewhere between six and eight percent over his nearest rival, Ségolène Royal, for next Sunday 22 April's first round. In the second round - presuming he and Royal come first and second, as most polls predict - opinion polls suggest he could win by a margin of between four and eight percent.
For many in France, the presidential election has become a referendum on Nicolas Sarkozy.
Bishops Praise Iran
The story of Britain's recently-released hostages goes from horror to farce. Two bishops - one the Army's top priest - have praised Iran's "mercy" and "forgiveness" in releasing the men and one woman last week.
Neither Bishop of the Forces, the Rt Rev Tom Burns or the Bishop of Rochester, Right Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, felt it was worth pointing out that Iran had provoked the crisis in the first place. Indeed, Rev Burn's mention of the Iranians' forgiveness would go so far as to suggest that he is going against the government and Armed Forces line and suggesting that the seamen were in the wrong.
British Sailors Fly Home
Hostages arrive in London as UK papers brown-nose "Mahmoud"
The fourteen men and one woman held captive by Iran for nearly two weeks should arrive in the UK shortly, following their surprise release yesterday.
The British Prime Minister has welcomed their release, claiming that Britain has no argument with the people of Iran. However, he angrily denied claims that a deal had been done to secure their release, and repeated criticism of Iran's role in Middle Eastern terrorism.
Meanwhile, some British papers are getting all starry-eyed about Iran's hardline President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Speedy Sarkozy
A French motoring magazine has been stalking presidential contenders for the past few weeks, and discovered that tough-cop Nicolas Sarkozy's entourage is the worst offender for breaking speed limits.
Auto Hebdo clocked the former interior minister's car doing 130kph (81mph) in a 70kph zone. The newspaper claims that had Sarko's driver been caught by police, he would have faced an immediate ban and a €1500 fine.
Quote Of The Day
"The difference is that the French spend their rail investment money on engineering — while we spend ours on consultants’ fees, legal bills, diversity officers, £1.1 million in bonuses for the directors of Network Rail and just about anything other than physically building railways. The result is a bizarrely inflated cost of running trains — which is costing taxpayers four times as much in subsidy as before privatisation."
- Ross Clark in The Times on the differences between British and French railways, the day after France's Paris-Strasbourg TGV train broke a rail record of 574.8km/h (356mph) in a test run.
Good Governance
Two good articles on government worth looking out for. In Prospect Magazine there's a fine examination of how a light but deft government touch revived London's fortunes as a financial capital and world city. The feature offers a few questions on how the city will cope with challenges arising mostly from its own success: Housing, transport, resentment from London - and Britain's - have-nots.
Meanwhile, blogger Tim Worstall comments on different, and often opposing views of Americans and Europeans on the role of government.
Iran: Hostages To Be Freed
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has announced that the fifteen British servicemen will be freed immediately.
He made the surprise announcement at a press conference this afternoon, during which he pinned medals to the Revolutionary Guardsmen who seized the fourteen men and one woman nearly two weeks ago.
UPDATED: See below.
The Stalement Stales
No change in situation; EU mulls position
Hopes that an end to the Iran hostage crisis was imminent seem to have faded this morning. Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair says that London thinks Iran wants a negotiated settlement, though neither nation is willing to shift on the location of the British boats when they were seized.
Iran has now aired footage or photographs of all 15 hostages.
Sarkozy's Protectionist Twist
After resigning his position as Interior Minister to concentrate on his candidature for president of France this spring, Nicolas Sarkozy says he is determined to block foreign takeovers of strategic French companies.
Those Who Ignore History...
The latest report from the topsy-turvy fairyland that is the British edukashun system suggests that schools are dropping "controversial" subjects like the Holocaust, the Slave Trade and the Crusades "for fear of causing offence."
According to a report in the Telegraph, some schools have stopped giving lessons on the Holocaust for fear that Muslim students would respond with anti-Semitic remarks.
This insane situation mirrors that in some schools in France, where teachers complain that some children respond angrily to history lessons about the Holocaust. However, France's schools seem to be made of sterner stuff than the British, and lessons continue. This might be due to France's insistence on a centralised learning platform, much criticised by educational liberals. However, the British example shows that important lessons are skipped by schools unwilling to face down extremists in their communities.
The Hidden Genocide
It's hard to believe - but barely surprising - that much of the Mainstream Media passed over this story. Damian Thompson, blogging in the Daily Telegraph, reports on efforts by Iraqi jihadis to wipe out Iraq's remaining Assyrian Christians.
The campaign of terror is particularly horrifying. Thompson writes of how Islamists crucified a fourteen year old boy: Another story tells of how a baby was slaughtered by a related group.
