The French health ministry released an alert on Tuesday just after eight individuals died and seven became ill in two European countries through using heroin contaminated with anthrax.

Tour de France 2010

The 2010 Tour will be launched from the south side of Rotterdam, for a prologue time-trial. The launching pad will actually be set up in Zuidplein, from where the riders will move north.

The choice of Rotterdam, a vast urban centre with one million two hundred thousand inhabitants, is directly in keeping with the special start of the Tour in London in 2007. The proposed project – “Rotterdam and the Tour, a new energy” – seduced us. It fits into an overall policy that aims to an even bigger place for the bicycle in the city’s heart, while leaning on the popularity of the biggest cycling race in the world, the Tour de France. From the banks of the Thames to the biggest port in Europe: the same desire, the same will.

British Catholic Bishop Richard Williamson is clearly the most dangerously deluded man in the world. His denial of the Holocaust is at best naive – at worst it is the mind of a very sick individual.

In November 2008, he told Swedish television that he did not believe any Jews had died in gas chambers during the World War II.

We have all heard it said that “money is the root of all evil” and probably thought that was a bit of an exaggeration. But when we understand how money is created in the modern world we can then understand the main cause of many major problems: ever increasing taxation; pensions disappearing; inequitable distribution of wealth; inflation; national debt; currency crises and devaluations; recessions; depressions; and even the failure of government in a democracy to govern in the interest of its electors.

Money was invented to be a tool for facilitating trade, but has now become a tool used by the rich to govern the world. If you have any doubt about that, please read on.

The French plan to rescue the financial industry do not disrupt competition, says EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes .

The European Commission on Thursday cleared French and Dutch plans to preserve their lenders from the global credit squeeze.

Both were judged to be in line with EU rules on community aid and with guidelines reported by the European Union’s executive arm on 13 October.

These say that any rescue package should be limited in time and range and must not discriminate against foreign-based banks operating in that country.