When the European Union and Russia held their most recent summit meeting in May, the Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, stunned European diplomats when he passed out copies of his book denouncing the fight against global warming — a central policy of the 27-nation bloc he was supposed to lead. In a few months he will be asked to sign the Lisbon Treaty, which aims to enhance the bloc’s role on the world stage by creating, among other things, a permanent European presidency. The treaty has finally approached ratification after years of setbacks, but Mr. Klaus, one of its fiercest critics, has warned that it will create a centralized “superstate.” - NY TIMES.com

The European Union rescinded a two-decade-old regulation in an attempt to end what it calls unnecessary marketing standards. "Bureaucrats are telling us what's a perfect peach, and I think that a perfect peach is actually a very elusive thing, and it doesn't always have to do with how it looks at all," food columnist Diane Henry says. The rules against misshapen produce are followed more stringently in some EU member states than in others. "I have to say that the problem in Britain with this is that we seem to me to be quite law-abiding," she says. "I go to France and I go to Portugal, and they don't care what shape their tomatoes are, and they don't care what shape their cucumbers are. They seem to think, 'Well, it's just laws and we'll break them.' That's quite the Mediterranean spirit in a way, but in Britain we tend to slavishly follow [the rules]." - NPR.org

OPINION - The underlying rationale Obama's foreign policy is the ending of American sovereignty. The progressive classes in Britain and Europe have signed up to this idea for years. Dubbed ‘transnational progressivism’, it is based on the belief that the nation state is in and of itself the cause of all the ills of the world, from prejudice to war. Nations cause nationalism; nationalism causes conflict; abolish nations and you abolish conflict and usher in the brotherhood of man. - SPECTATOR.co.uk

Most Americans don’t yet grasp the scale of the Obama project. The naysayers complain, oh, it’s another Jimmy Carter, or it’s the new New Deal, or it’s LBJ’s Great Society applied to health care… You should be so lucky. Forget these parochial nickel’n’dime comparisons. It’s all those multiplied a gazillionfold and nuclearized – or Europeanized, which is less dramatic but ultimately more lethal. - STEYNONLINE.com

Israeli intelligence agencies recently succeeded in thwarting a major Hizbullah terror attack against an Israeli target in Europe, Channel 2 reported Wednesday, citing security officials. The attack was reportedly thwarted by Israel in conjunction with a European intelligence agency. - JERUSALEM POST

Social services intervened because of concerns over the age and health of the grandparents. The children have been in foster care for two years while their grandparents battled the social services department in court. However, the cost of legal bills forced them to drop the case and relinquish their rights.

"Since Brits are frightfully embarrassed about bringing up God in public, it is a godsend in some ways to have the atheists do it for us." - Nick Spencer, of Theos, a public theology think tank