Cyprus Mail www.cyprus-mail.com
Friday, October 19, 2012
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CYPRUS
HEALTH
FILM
Skip full of slashed shoes causes a stir on Ledra Street
Weight loss surgery seen as ‘quick fix’ in UK 13
The latest Asterix romp hits screens today centre
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Merkel, Hollande clash pre summit Merkel pushes EU veto power over national budgets, Hollande the priority of banking union By Noah Barkin and Julien Toyer
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ermany and France, Europe’s two central powers, clashed over greater European Union control of national budgets and moves towards a single banking supervisor before a summit of the bloc’s leaders began yesterday. German Chancellor Angela Merkel demanded stronger authority for the executive European Commission to veto national budgets that breach EU rules, but French President Francois Hollande said the issue was not on the summit agenda and the priority was to get moving on a European banking union. The two leaders met privately for 30 minutes just before the start of the 22nd EU summit since the euro zone’s debt crisis erupted nearly three years ago. Afterwards, a French source said they had agreed on the need for a tight timetable for introducing banking union. Addressing parliament in Berlin earlier, Merkel sought to slow the race to create a single European banking supervisor, saying quality was more important than speed. Reluctant to see its politically sensitive regional Landesbanks and savings banks come under outside supervision, Germany says European oversight should cover big cross-border banks only, and rejects any joint deposit guarantee under which richer countries
might underwrite banks in poorer counterparts. Hollande told reporters: “The topic of this summit is not the fiscal union but the banking union, so the only decision that will be taken is to set up a banking union by the end of the year and especially the banking supervision.” Asked why he thought Merkel was dragging her feet, Hollande said it could be related to Germany’s electoral calendar, with elections due in September 2013, adding that the two dominant EU powers had a duty to solve the crisis. In her speech to parliament, Merkel skirted the issue of a possible credit line for Spain, which eurozone officials expect Madrid to request within weeks, but reiterated her desire to keep Greece in the currency area despite chronic debt problems. “We have made good progress on strengthening fiscal discipline with the fiscal pact, but we are of the opinion, and I speak for the whole German government on this, that we could go a step further by giving Europe real rights of intervention in national budgets,” Merkel told the Bundestag lower house. A proposal by German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble to create a superempowered European currency commissioner was a possible way forward, she
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Dolphins ‘can stay awake for 15 days’
Greek police detain a protester during the demonstration marking the 24-hour general strike in Athens yesterday (AFP) SEE STORY PAGE 8
DOLPHINS can stay alert and active for 15 days or more by sleeping with one half of their brain at a time, scientists have learned. The trick of keeping half the brain continuously awake is vital to the sea mammals’ survival, experts believe. It allows them to come to the surface every so often to breath, and remain constantly vigilant for sharks. Scientists in California, US, tested the ability of two bottlenose dolphins to echolocate accurately over periods of time which would have left other animals sleep-deprived and exhausted. The dolphins, a male called Nay and female called Say, had to swim around a pen looking for phantom sonar targets. Each of the eight targets consisted of a device that picked up dolphin sound pulses and sent back “phantom” echoes. When a dolphin detected an echo from an activated target, it responded by pressing a paddle. Correct detection triggered a tone, signalling success, and the dolphin was rewarded with a fish. False alarms led to no tone and no reward. Over three sessions of five continuous days both dolphins did well, with success rates of up to 99 per cent, but Say outperformed her male partner. The scientists then went on to test Say further by repeating the same experiment over a period of 30 days. In the event, a storm cut the trial short after 15 days had elapsed. However, during this time Say’s performance hardly deteriorated at all. The findings were published yesterday in the online journal Public Library of Science ONE.