...which might make a corporate president smile in recognition: chauffeured cars; daily and monthly stipends that can add tens of thousands of euros to basic salaries; jobs for relatives paid out of a E150,000 (about $180,000) a year secretarial allowance; free health care; pensions that, as one legislator put it, can put "gin on the terrace"; and, most stunningly, a travel expense procedure that reimburses legislators for as much as 10 times the amount of their airfare ticket prices. According to payroll and expense records obtained by the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times, a legislator can add well over E100,000 to a base salary when all the tax-free benefits are calculated...

...Budgeted at nearly E100 million in the aggregate, European deputies' benefits easily top those for members of any EU-member national parliament. (The U.S. Congress, in which members of the House receive million-dollar budgets to finance sizable staffs is another story, but nepotism in hiring is barred there and reimbursement is generally tied to actual costs incurred.) ["Perks at EU Parliament: A system out of control?"]

HAMTRAMCK, Mich. - A noise-ordinance change that would allow mosques to broadcast calls to prayer on loudspeakers will be put to a citywide vote after opponents gathered hundreds of petition signatures. [...] The council had voted unanimously last month to allow the Bangladeshi Al-Islah Mosque to broadcast the call to prayer five times a day. [...]

The Al-Islah mosque plans to begin broadcasting the calls on Friday. Abdul Motlib, head of the mosque, said he was confident the measure would win a citywide vote. "Hamtramck has 23,000 people. If 500 or 600 people go against us, we're not losing nothing."

"Fahrenheit 9/11" was the first documentary to win Cannes' prestigious Palme d'Or since Jacques Cousteau's "The Silent World" in 1956.

"Yeah, it's like an op-ed piece in the newspaper. These are my opinions. I'm very up front about them. I don't try and disguise them. I don't try to present them as objective news. They're not. They're very subjective."

[T]oday's press works to put the worst possible face on the war. ... Hence the endless dwelling on the abuses in the Abu Ghraib prison and the breathless speculation that it would drive Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld from office. Instead, an ABC/Washington Post poll showed the public 69 percent to 20 percent against Rumsfeld's resignation. Hence the much lesser coverage given to the murder of Nick Berg. Hence the microscopic coverage of the finding of the deadly poison sarin in an improvised explosive device -- mustn't give credence to the possibility that Saddam was conducting (as inspector David Kay said) weapons of mass destruction programs.

55% of national journalists say they think the press is "not critical enough" of President Bush; only 24% of the public agrees. Thirty-four percent of the public thinks the press is "too critical," vs. a mere 8% of the national press. Thirty-five percent of both groups characterize coverage of the president as "fair."

All this suggests that journalists not only are considerably more liberal than the general public but also wish their own coverage were more liberal than it is.

"Call [criticism the media for biased coverage] a fallback strategy: the media lost the war," says Tom Rosenstiel, a former Los Angeles Times correspondent who now runs the non-profit Project for Excellence in Journalism. "It's very convenient politically for an administration that's under fire for its war policy to blame the messenger. [...]"

Teenage rape victims fleeing war in the Democratic Republic of Congo are being sexually exploited by the United Nations peace-keeping troops sent to the stop their suffering. The Independent has found that mothers as young as 13 -- the victims of multiple rape by militiamen -- can only secure enough food to survive in the sprawling refugee camp by routinely sleeping with UN peace-keepers.

Crime did not fall in England after handguns were banned in January 1997. Quite the contrary, crime rose sharply. Yet, serious violent crime rates from 1997 to 2002 averaged 29 percent higher than 1996; robbery was 24 percent higher; murders 27 percent higher. Before the law, armed robberies had fallen by 50 percent from 1993 to 1997, but as soon as handguns were banned, the robbery rate shot back up, almost back to their 1993 levels. Australia has also seen its violent crime rates soar after its Port Arthur gun control measures in late 1996. Violent crime rates averaged 32 per cent higher in the six years after the law was passed (from 1997 to 2002) than they did the year before the law in 1996. The same comparisons for armed robbery rates showed increases of 45 percent. The 2000 International Crime Victimization Survey, the most recent survey done, shows that the violent crime rate in England and Australia was twice the rate in the US.

[R]ead history... to know that yesterday's Jews were bad predecessors and today's Jews are worse successors. They are killers of prophets and the scum of the earth. Allah hurled his curses and indignation on them and made them monkeys and pigs and worshippers of tyrants. These are the Jews, a continuous lineage of meanness, cunning, obstinacy, tyranny, evil, and corruption....

Mr. el-Bashir came to power in a military coup in 1989. His National Islamic Front regime is so tyrannical and brutal it has earned the moniker the "Taliban of Africa." It practices Sharia law to its most extreme. It supports a penal code known as hudud that includes cross-amputation [the severing of the right hand and left foot.] The government sanctions stoning young women to death for committing adultery.

Mr. el-Bashir has been trying to expand Sharia law to all of Sudan. His latest attempt to expand the reach of Sharia came during negotiations aimed at ending another conflict in the country--a 21-year civil war between the black Christian Sudan People's Liberation Army in southern Sudan and the Arab Muslim government in the north.The application of Sharia has been one of the unresolved issues.

The purpose of the 1921 Martin Act is to arm the New York attorney general to combat financial fraud. It empowers him to subpoena any document he wants from anyone doing business in the state; to keep an investigation totally secret or to make it totally public; and to choose between filing civil or criminal charges whenever he wants. People called in for questioning during Martin Act investigations do not have a right to counsel or a right against self-incrimination. Combined, the act's powers exceed those given any regulator in any other state. Now for the scary part: To win a case, the AG doesn't have to prove that the defendant intended to defraud anyone, that a transaction took place, or that anyone actually was defrauded. Plus, when the prosecution is over, trial lawyers can gain access to the hordes of documents that the act has churned up and use them as the basis for civil suits.

The Bush administration's decision to expedite FDA approval for AIDS-related drugs--from years to weeks--shows two things. One, the FDA's approval process is dictated largely by politics, not science. Two, the administration knows that the FDA unnecessarily delays the marketing of drugs to people who need them.

The best way to make sure drugs are safe and readily available is not to make the FDA more efficient, but to make the FDA irrelevant. Let doctors and patients--not government officials--decide what's the best treatment. That's the American way.

Iran acknowledged Sunday it had a strong dialogue with embattled Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi, but rejected accusations that he passed classified intelligence to Iran. Chalabi's long-standing contacts with Iran have left some in the U.S. government suspicious about his intentions.

Finally, it's hilarious to see this crowd of diplomats and intelligence officers attacking an Iraqi for talking too much to Iranians, when Powell's State Department and Tenet's CIA has been meeting with Iranians for years.

All of this is the inevitable result of the fundamental misunderstanding of the war against the terror masters. It is a regional war, not a war limited to a single country. Since we refuse to admit this, we are unable to design an effective strategy to win. Deceiving ourselves, we lie to the mirror, saying that defeats are really victories [re: Fallujah], that Baathists are our friends and independent minded Shiites are our enemies [re: Chalabi], and that appeasement of the mullahs will end their long war against the United States. ... Has anyone told the president?

[T]he average U.S. corporation pays 40 percent of its profit in federal and state tax, compared with 33 percent in officially Communist China and 24 percent in Russia, according to the accounting firm of KPMG...

Crown Prince Abdullah said on Saudi state-run television that "Zionists" are behind terrorist attacks in his country. Abdullah and other Saudi officials have consistently blamed al Qaeda for attacks on Saudi soil, and the terrorist network has claimed responsibility for several. Abdullah did not suggest that Israelis or Israel supporters plotted or carried out any of the attacks. But he said, "I am 95 percent sure that Zionism is behind the attacks, for I believe that [Zionists] play in the minds of those who are committing the attacks." He did not spell out precisely how he believes Zionists influence those launching the acts of terrorism in his kingdom. [CNN]

The French government yesterday described the 35-hour working week as a financial disaster that was costing the state billions of pounds and promised to reform the system despite fierce union opposition.

This "war on ambition," as I dubbed it, has been enforced by such repugnant measures as searching the briefcases of young executives as they leave their office buildings, to ensure that they are not taking extra work home with them.

"Very low down the list is an Islamic theocracy, in which mullahs and religious leaders have a lot of influence, such as in Iran," said Burkholder, who polled in Baghdad in August and nationwide in late March and early April for CNN and USA Today.

RUSSERT: In those free, open and fair elections, if the Iraqi people choose an Islamic theocracy similar to what we have in Iran, we would accept that? POWELL: We will have to accept what the Iraqi people decide upon. [...] [Emphasis added]

At a meeting of the Group of 8 industrialized nations on Friday, Secretary of State Colin Powell stated that the United States military would withdraw from Iraqi if that nation's new government requests it. The foreign ministers of Britain, Italy, and Japan joined him in pledging they also would withdraw their troops if asked. This is the Bush Administration's answer to the question of whether it truly intends to transfer sovereignty of Iraq to Iraqis on June 30.

This is the sacrifice the Bush Administration intends to make to prove that the United States did not invade Iraq for the 'selfish' purposes of national security. President Bush has often claimed that the invasion benefits the Iraqi people. Now he is going farther. To prove that their liberation from Saddam Hussein's dictatorship was a purely altruistic act, Mr. Bush is now deliberately putting the security of the American people up for a majority vote -- by a majority of the Iraqi people.