Hot on the heels of yesterdays report that road maps using miles instead of kilometres are now in danger, Tim Worstall tells us the story of the Belgian town council which is trying to implement standardised clothing rules. As I suggest in comments this issue is not as trivial as it seems, and Maaseik is far from the only municipality across Europe to try to implement dress regulations.

A German man has canned the noxious-smelling exhaust fumes of East Germany’s cult Trabant car and is doing a brisk trade selling the scent to those nostalgic for the former Communist state.

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Foul play is apparently not suspected:

The mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe, has fired another French broadside at London’s successful 2012 Olympic campaign by accusing the prime minister Tony Blair and the head of the bid Sebastian Coe of breaking International Olympic Committee rules by criticising their rivals.

Well, well, well….

I can’t stop laughing at this goofy story. Maybe it’s just me. God, I hope it really was a misunderstanding.

Via Susan.

The FT has a timely piece of Spain’s drought. You see, it isn’t simply a question of special pleading on my part :). And note the little detail, 700,000 new homes built last year. I suppose at least when the construction sector stops all those builders will be able to finally cool off.

A severe drought in Spain, the worst since records began in 1947, is playing havoc with livelihoods, sparking forest fires and threatening millions of tourists with water rationing as they head for the beaches this summer.

Worse yet, 2005 is unlikely to be a freak year. Spain is getting hotter and drier, with average temperatures rising by 1?C since 1960. The European Environment Agency estimates that average temperatures will rise by a further 4?C over the next century.

Winters are now so mild that storks have stopped their annual migration to north Africa. Scientists are witnessing desertification many estimate that up to one third of the country may be a desert within 50 years.

“Ufff”, my partner said as she put to rest a bunch of plastic bags she had just managed to drag from the supermarket, “so many things to buy”. I was pealing the spuds at the kitchen sink at the time, preparing the lunch, but I still managed to lean over, give her a kiss, and remind her that not everything can be bought: as the Beatles used to say “money can’t buy you love”. Then I remembered this headline.

Cabins designed in the Netherlands, (made in China no-doubt), sex workers from Eastern Europe (some 40,000 of them apparently), (capital possibly kindly provided by hedge funds), and customers from Western Europe, the US and Japan. Well, comparative advantage triumphs again. I imagine the terms of the Bolkestein directive will not be applied.

Romansch, a direct descendant of Latin and one of Switzerland’s four official languages, is hitting the news. The reason – Google is now offering search capability in Romansch, a language spoken by just 35,000 people in the mountains of southeastern Switzerland.

Why does this kind of news always seem to come from Denmark?

Curvy women are more likely to live longer than their slimmer counterparts, researchers have found. Institute of Preventative Medicine in Copenhagen researchers found those with wider hips also appeared to be protected against heart conditions. Women with a hip measurement smaller than 40 inches, or a size 14 would not have this protection, they said. The researchers say hip fat contains a beneficial natural anti-inflammatory…..

“It has been widely reported that if you are apple-shaped, your risk of developing cardiovascular disease is likely to be greater than if you are pear-shaped. “This study provides additional evidence of the association between hip circumference and cardiovascular protection among women.