Eideard

France and Germany may effectively run the European Union, but Finland has been demonstrating how even a small country can disrupt their grand designs.

By insisting that it receive collateral from Greece in return for aid, Finland is threatening to upend an agreement that euro zone countries, led by France and Germany, made in July to expand the E.U. bailout fund.

Finland would contribute less than 2 percent of the guarantees provided to the fund, known as the European Financial Stability Facility. But the country’s demands, the subject of intense negotiations in recent days, threaten to derail the fragile consensus that is preventing Greece from defaulting on its debt.

Finland is the most vivid example of the way domestic politics can become Continental problems, threatening the unity of the 17 euro zone members as they face their deepest crisis ever. But Germany, the Netherlands and Austria — all wealthy countries with strong economies — also harbor deep opposition to bailing out Greece, Portugal, Ireland or any other country that may become overwhelmed by debt…

In Finland, Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen faces discontent within his governing coalition as well as pressure from a nationalist opposition group, the True Finns, which rode euro-skepticism to big gains in April parliamentary elections…

Finnish officials say they want to resolve the collateral issue and contribute to the bailout fund. But they are also adamant that the country must receive guarantees.

“We have to listen to the people of Finland,” said a government official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. “Collateral is an absolute condition for Finland to be involved.”

It is unclear what the collateral might consist of — jokes making the rounds suggest that Greece could pawn the Acropolis or the island of Corfu. And any concessions made to Finland would probably then be demanded by other countries like Austria, where citizens are also grumpy about having to provide tax dollars to support Greece…

They may be jokes to NYTimes writers; but, that was exactly the same response from my favorite banker when we got into a discussion of exactly these fiscal issues — the European Union not being a fiscal union.

Confederacies still haven’t anymore viable economic solutions than they have political solutions. A simple agreement for commerce and currency doesn’t guarantee sound monetary policy for seventeen different economies.

It doesn’t even matter if there’s television to watch at the bar. Conversation takes a higher priority. And beer.

Results from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have all but killed the simplest version of an enticing theory of sub-atomic physics.

Researchers failed to find evidence of so-called “supersymmetric” particles, which many physicists had hoped would plug holes in the current theory. Theorists working in the field have told BBC News that they may have to come up with a completely new idea.

Data were presented at the Lepton Photon science meeting in Mumbai. They come from the LHC Beauty (LHCb) experiment, one of the four main detectors situated around the collider ring at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern) on the Swiss-French border.

According to Dr Tara Shears of Liverpool University, a spokesman for the LHCb experiment: “It does rather put supersymmetry on the spot”…

The experiment looked at the decay of particles called “B-mesons” in hitherto unprecedented detail. If supersymmetric particles exist, B-mesons ought to decay far more often than if they do not exist. There also ought to be a greater difference in the way matter and antimatter versions of these particles decay.

The results had been eagerly awaited following hints from earlier results, most notably from the Tevatron particle accelerator in the US, that the decay of B-mesons was influenced by supersymmetric particles.

LHCb’s more detailed analysis however has failed to find this effect.

This failure to find indirect evidence of supersymmetry, coupled with the fact that two of the collider’s other main experiments have not yet detected supersymmetic particles, means that the simplest version of the theory has in effect bitten the dust…

The worry is that the basic idea of supersymmetry might be wrong. “It’s a beautiful idea. It explains dark matter, it explains the Higgs boson, it explains some aspects of cosmology; but that doesn’t mean it’s right.

“It could be that this whole framework has some fundamental flaws and we have to start over again and figure out a new direction,” he said.

There can be more varied, implicitly more complex variations on the supersymmetry theory; but, for many young physicists – or old physicists with youngish brains – it’s time to start all over again.

Astronomers have spotted an exotic planet that seems to be made of diamond racing around a tiny star in our galactic backyard.

The new planet is far denser than any other known so far and consists largely of carbon. Because it is so dense, scientists calculate the carbon must be crystalline, so a large part of this strange world will effectively be diamond.

“The evolutionary history and amazing density of the planet all suggest it is comprised of carbon — i.e. a massive diamond orbiting a neutron star every two hours in an orbit so tight it would fit inside our own Sun,” said Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.

…The planet is probably the remnant of a once-massive star that has lost its outer layers to the so-called pulsar star it orbits…

In the case of pulsar J1719-1438, the beams regularly sweep the Earth and have been monitored by telescopes in Australia, Britain and Hawaii, allowing astronomers to detect modulations due to the gravitational pull of its unseen companion planet…

In addition to carbon, the new planet is also likely to contain oxygen, which may be more prevalent at the surface and is probably increasingly rare toward the carbon-rich center…

Just what this weird diamond world is actually like close up, however, is a mystery.

I’d like to think of it as something at least as bright as the rocks Elizabeth Taylor used to haul around.

Notable photos in the past 24 hours from Reuters

A Palestinian boy carries a table inside a kindergarten that was damaged during an Israeli air strike in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip…

A court in Bolivia has sentenced seven members of a reclusive conservative Christian group to 25 years in prison for raping more than 100 women. The men, members of a Mennonite group, secretly sedated their victims before the sex attacks.

The victims’ lawyer said the 2000-strong Mennonite community where the rapes happened welcomed the sentence.

The group follows a strict moral code and rejects modern inventions such as cars and electricity.

An eighth man was sentenced to 12-and-a-half years for supplying the sedative used to drug the women.

The rapes happened in the Mennonite community of Manitoba, 150km north-east of the city of Santa Cruz.

The court heard that the men sprayed a substance derived from the belladonna plant normally used to anaesthetise cows through bedroom windows at night, sedating entire families.

They then raped the women and girls. The youngest victim was nine years old…

Prosecutor Freddy Perez said colony elders suspected something was wrong when they wondered why one man was getting up so late in the mornings, and they decided to shadow him.

He was then spotted jumping through a window into one of the victim’s houses.

Tough enough being part of a non-Catholic religion in most of Latin America. An often-reclusive group like these Mennonites will now have to deal with years of innuendo and rumor – even though they caught these thugs and turned them over for prosecution.

Doesn’t have to be that way. There are some really successful Mennonite communities in northern Mexico. They coexist peacefully with local Catholic families and provide full employment at many of their organic farms.

The death of a man stung by an Asian hornet has exacerbated fears over the invasive species that has taken France by storm and could reach Britain within three years.

Patrice Verry, 38, was stung by one of the predators on Saturday after trying to wave it away with a kitchen towel at a barbecue in Lherm, in the Haute-Garonne region of southwestern France.

He collapsed minutes later and never regained consciousness, police said. In June another man died in the Médoc region after receiving several stings.

The local mayor said the number of hornet nests had “exploded” in the area. “Our villages are powerless,” said Jean Aycaguer…

The bee-eating invaders, unmistakable due to their dark hue and yellow feet, first settled in the forests of Aquitaine, but quickly spread to surrounding areas along waterways, thriving due to a total lack of indigenous predators.

There are now thought to be 2,000 nests and the voracious insects’ battlefront has reached the shores of northern Brittany. Two nests were recently found in Spain…

“We have modelled its potential spread by cross-checking data from France and Asia, and concluded it is capable of living anywhere in Europe and certainly in Britain,” said Mr Muller.

Its widespread presence means it is now impossible to eradicate. “This species is now part of French fauna. We’ll just have to get used to living with it,” said Claire Villemant of the Museum of National History.

I know you can’t get it right every time; but, don’t the French inspect shipping containers for non-native flora and fauna? Back in the day I recall being notified by the Department of Agriculture that a non-native species of termite was discovered in wooden packing crates from Japan. We were required to provide several samples of crates from our warehouses for testing by the USDA – and then destroy all the crates by burning them.

For all I know, we may not be doing that anymore in the US either.

Maritime surveillance and monitoring systems that require remote power at sea often rely on diesel generators that need frequent maintenance and fuel replenishment. Now New Jersey-based wave energy company Ocean Power Technologies (OPT) has commenced sea trials of an autonomous wave energy device that provides clean energy for sea-based radar and communications systems in remote ocean locations and in all wave conditions.

…Like the company’s existing PowerBuoy offerings, the autonomous PowerBuoy generates electricity via a piston-like structure located below the surface of the water that rises and falls as the PowerBuoy bobs up and down with the waves to drive a generator. For the sea trial, the PowerBuoy has been fitted with radar network and communications technology from Rutgers University’s Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences in partnership with CODAR Ocean Sensors.

Designed for maritime surveillance in the near coast, harbors and beach zones, the PowerBuoy provides power at the lower levels needed for the vessel detection and tracking systems and includes power management and energy storage capabilities that ensure operation in extended periods of zero wave activity. The system has also been designed to remain maintenance-free for three years…

The autonomous PowerBuoy was deployed on August 11, 2011 by a U.S. Coast Guard vessel approximately 20 miles off the coast of New Jersey. The ocean testing will see it being integrated with the Rutgers University-operated, land-based radar network that provides ocean current mapping data for NOAA and U.S. Coast Guard search and rescue operations.

Rock on! Wave power makes so much sense.

Face it folks, this planet is mostly ocean. Skipping the advantages of wave power is like some of the idiots who own public utilities in the American Southwest skipping solar power.

Bruce Plante’s cartoons appear in the Tulsa World.

Click on photo for video story

For more than an hour Friday morning a driver was stuck inside his tractor-trailer as it balanced precariously on the edge of a raised section of Interstate 40, with only thin air between portions of the truck and the pavement 40 feet below.

Firefighters not only freed him, but kept the rig from falling off the I-40 Crosstown bridge after a multiple-vehicle accident triggered by an erratic driver during morning rush hour downtown, an Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper said.

Firefighters broke a window and spoke to the driver as wreckers got into position and crews used cables and chains to secure the rig after the 8 a.m. crash. The driver, whose name has not been released, was lodged in the sleeping compartment of the cab and waited to be freed.

“He was scared to death in the truck thinking he was going to fall over the edge,” patrol Capt. Chris West said…

Fire Deputy Chief Marc Woodard said about 30 firefighters were involved in rescuing the driver.

Scary situation. I’d be afraid to fart.