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Next Wednesday, scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Switzerland will switch on the $6 billion Large Hadron Collider, a 27-kilometer particle accelerator that will create physical conditions that haven't existed in the universe since the big bang. It all sounds totally awesome, unless you're one of the very few people who think that the LHC will create a black hole that will expand to consume the planet.

Opponents of the LHC have filed suits in Hawaii and the European Court of Human Rights seeking to prevent the historic experiment, but it's highly unlikely that the court will take action. Scientists involved in the project have also been receiving death threats.

According to a newly released report, naturally occuring cosmic rays regularly produce more powerful collisions than the LHC, so the fact that we're even alive to worry about this is a good sign. Cory Doctorow quotes one physicist saying, "Look, it's a 10^-19 chance, and you've got a 10^-11 chance of suddenly evaporating while shaving."

So we can be pretty confident that the end of the world is not coming next Wednesday. But just in case, it's been great blogging for you all.

(Hat tip: Chris Blattman)

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If you've ever had a burning desire to have your voice projected through a megaphone in Norway, today is your last chance.

This summer, a group of artists erected a 23-foot-tall, wind-powered "telemegaphone" on top of a mountain in western Norway that overlooks the village of Dale and a scenic fjord. Dial 47 90 369389, and your voice will be projected through the telemegaphone and across the scenic Nordic landscape. Sing, yell, yodel, pontificate. Better yet, play a concerto.

Today's the last day, however. Tomorrow, Sept. 6, the telemegaphone is being turned off -- deer season is commencing.

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Silvio Burlusconi's appearance with Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi over the weekend seemed to be a historic first: the Italian prime minister formally apologized and agreed to offer financial compensation for decades of colonial occupation. An elaborate ceremony -- complete with the repatriation of an ancient statue of Venus that had been relocated to Rome -- marked the signing of a "friendship and cooperation agreement" between the two countries.

Yet it wasn't a completely altruistic measure for the Italians, who stand to benefit from their "reparations" to the former colony:

“We have written a page in history. Now we will have fewer illegal immigrants leaving from the coast of Libya and coming to us, and more Libyan oil and gas,” declared Mr Berlusconi, according to Italian reports

Indeed, the $5 billion Italy will pay in annual installments of $200 million will largely come in the form of investments in Libyan infrastructure. While the agreement marks the first time a former colonial power offered compensation to an Arab country, special economic ties between former colonies and mother countries are, of course, nothing new.

The question now is whether Italy will follow suit with its other, less resource-rich, former colonies like Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Say it ain't so:

Ireland's drinks industry is suffering from withdrawal with pubs closing at the rate of one a day, as the party years of the Celtic Tiger boom become a blurred memory. The economic downturn allied to a changing drinking culture has led to 400 pubs closing over the past year, according to Michael Patten, chairman of the drinks industry representative body.

(Hat tip: Passport reader Eric Jon Magnuson)

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Here are some things you can no longer do in certain parts of Italy:

• No building sand castles in Eraclea
• No wearing noisy wooden clogs in Capri
• No gatherings of three or more people in parks at night in Novara
• No mowing your lawn on the weekends in Forti dei Marmi

As part of a countrywide effort to fight crime, Italian mayors have been given more law-and-order powers, but some mayors appear to have gone way overboard. One man in Vicenza was fined for lying down at the park to read a book, though after the man vented on national radio, the mayor said he would remove the ban.

Sounds like some Italian mayors need to lighten up and have some summertime fun.

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Remember Jean-Marie Le Pen, the ultra-nationalist French politician who shocked the world by reaching the second round of France's 2002 presidential election? The leader of the anti-immigrant, anti-semitic, anti-everything Front National is more or less a Ku Klux Klan member who was born on the wrong continent.

That's why it's so beautifully ironic that, faced with millions of Euros worth of debt after voters apparently didn't respond so well to his "Keep France for the French" motto in the 2007 legislative elections, Le Pen's party is selling its lavish Paris headquarters to a Chinese university. Perhaps the Front had trouble finding a pure-blooded French buyer willing to be associated with them.

The Guardian writes that the well-known building next to the Seine was "a symbol of the upward mobility of the party when it was purchased 18 years ago." I guess the sale is a symbol of the party's future drowning in the neighboring river.

These are tough times for Le Pen. He already had to sell his bulletproof car on eBay to try to pay off debts. Hopefully the dear leader of French neo-Fascism will be able to keep his white hood and robe.

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Turns out the wine and cheese set isn't as "civilized" as one would think. At least that's the case in France's Languedoc-Roussillon region, which happens to be the world's biggest wine-growing area by volume, Time reports:

Hurting from overproduction and cheap imports and punished lately by the rising cost of gas, a small group of local winegrowers has resorted to "wine terrorism" in a violent attempt to shock the French government into helping them.

Targets have included "public and private buildings, supermarkets, tanker trucks hauling cheap imported wine, and businesses accused of gouging growers with ever shrinking prices." So far, only one of the guerrilla grape growers has been hurt, but the violence and destruction have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of damage.

While the rising cost of gas has exacerbated their situation, the wine terrorists aren't exactly a new phenomenon. Last summer, the guerrilla growers released a video threatening "blood will flow" unless the French government moved to raise wine prices. And in 1907, the French army shot six demonstrators during a revolt of winemakers in the region. These grape gripes, it appears, go back a long way.

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Given the country's history, Italy's attempts to curb crime have gotten disturbing in recent days. As if the country's scapegoating of immigrants wasn't enough, now hear this: An Italian mayor has banned group gatherings in certain areas.

Under the edict, passed in the mid-sized northern city of Novara, gatherings of more than two people would be prohibited in public parks and gardens. Mayor Massimo Giordano claims that the policy will help cut down on noise and vandalism, but his opponents say it smacks of fascism. The parallels are certainly there: Mussolini prohibited gatherings of five or more people in the 1920s, as part of his creation of an Italian police state. Sure, Navaro's 350-euro fine hardly rivals Il Duce's punishments, but the point is pretty clear: There are "better ways to tackle the city's problems," as opposition councilor Sara Paladini puts it, that don't require such heavy-handedness.

Moves like Giordano's seem to fit a worrisome trend in Italy. Just today, the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi ordered troops to begin patrolling Italy's streets in an effort to combat crime in major cities. While the 2,500 troops won't have powers of arrest, their presence is still pretty disconcerting (especially for tourists, some of whom have already asked if Italy is in the throes of civil war).

And it's hard to imagine the policy will truly increase security. It seems more like a poor smokescreen for ridding the streets of unwanted immigrants, who have already been subject to other discriminatory policies in Italy as of late. Berlusconi should get tougher on the country's real problems and real criminals (like the Mafia) and stop putting the blame on a few incidences of pickpocketing. Or la bella vita could be in jeopardy.

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Reeling in the polls and mindful of the criticism generated by his predecessor's trips abroad, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown isn't venturing too far for his summer vacation. But Boris Johnson, London's candid Conservative mayor, thinks this is a bad idea.

In Daily Telegraph column last week, Johnson proclaimed he will eschew the lead of many of his colleagues in British politics and is heading overseas:

Some time before the end of August, I will grab a week's leave, like a half-starved sealion snatching an airborne mackerel, and whatever happens that leave will not be taken in some boarding-house in Eastbourne. It will not take place in Cornwall or Scotland or the Norfolk Broads. I say stuff Skegness. I say bugger Bognor.

I am going to take a holiday abroad, and in my view it would be absurd, hypocritical and frankly inhumane to do anything else...

Johnson has some words of wisdom for Brown, too, encouraging the embattled prime minister to take a real vacation and "get away somewhere hot." Above all else, however, Johnson considers his overseas holiday to be for the good of Britain:

As I prepare for my last-minute booking, I consider it my patriotic duty to find a destination as sunny and foreign as possible, so that I can push some cash towards hard-pressed UK travel agents, and so that we minimise, on compassionate grounds, the number of British citizens exposed to the sight of my swimming trunks.

Barack Obama, at the very least, must be feeling along the same lines. He'll be heading for his native Hawaii sometime in mid-August.

First bikes, and now... electric cars? Oui, says Paris's Mayor Bertrand Delanoë, who recently proposed a program that would soon put 4,000 of the zippy, fuelless vehicles on his city's streets. "Autolib'" would mimic Paris's widely successful Velib' (bike rental) system, with hundreds of lots situated around the city to provide pick-up and drop-off points for vehicle users.

While there are still plenty of details to work out -- including rental costs and how to monitor car lots -- Autolib's expected start date is a little over a year from now. Some Parisians can hardly wait, especially given skyrocketing gas costs and parking headaches. Others are looking forward to the program for environmental reasons, including Greenpeace France's President Pascal Hunting:

Today we have consumer habits, whether it’s going to Ikea or elsewhere, which necessitate that once in a while, even those who can’t afford cars need to use one...we should be open to this type of initiative, knowing that there is not one solution to the problems of transportation and climate change."

Some Parisians have pooh-poohed the plan, including members of the city's influential Green Party, who claim that their city's goal should be to reduce car use altogether. Others worry about worsening the already notorious Paris traffic.

As for moi, I think the mayor is onto something. But if some of the problems the bike rental program has faced are any indication, Delanoë might want to figure out a security plan before Paris's cool new rides start turning up in Australia.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy comes perilously close to endorsing Barack Obama in his comments to Le Figaro and CNN.

Ben Smith:

Obama? He's my pal," the president told Le Figaro. "Unlike my diplomatic advisers, I never believed in Hillary Clinton's chances. I always said that Obama would be nominated."

Sarkozy added that an Obama victory "would validate" his strategy of reconcilation with the United States.

(Le Figaro does note that Sarkozy is careful not to predict the winner.) And in a separate item from Smith:

Barack Obama's adventure is an adventure that rings true in the hearts and minds of Americans and Europeans," Sarkozy said, per CNN's interpretation. He also recalled his meeting with Obama in 2006.

"One [of the two men] became president, so it's up to the other person to do the same thing," he said.

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The scuttlebutt on Barack Obama's speech in Berlin, due to hit in less than an hour now, is that he's going to use the occassion to demand more of Europe, particularly when it comes to boots on the ground in Aghanistan.

Coming from the lips of George W. Bush of John McCain, it's the kind of appeal that would go mostly unnoticed. But coming from Obama, it's going to seem to many like a "Sister Souljah moment" -- the act of telling a friendly audience what it needs, but doesn't necessarily want to hear. With Obama seen in many quarters as too Europhilic, (gently) criticizing Europe is savvy campaigning.

Politics aside, it's doubtful Europe can rise to the challenge. German officials and politicians have been fretting for days that Obama would ask them to send more troops, and Chancellor Angela Merkel has vowed to resist the Illinois senator's entreaties. Germany is already planning to send an additional 1,000 soldiers to Afghanistan in the fall, and that was hard enough politically for Ms. Merkel to pull off. Nicolas Sarkozy has talked tough, but is in the midst of downsizing the French military. Britain may be able to redirect some of the forces it is planning to withdraw from Iraq, but British officers are already complaining loudly of being overstretched.

It'll be interesting to see if Obama comes up with any creative workarounds, such as an appeal to newer NATO powers to step up. But given that he isn't visiting anywhere east of Berlin, that would be an odd move to make.

UPDATE: Der Speigel reports that "tens of thousands of people" are making their way to the speech site.

Apparently Russia isn't the only country ready to play politics with its resource exports, BBC reports:

Libya's state shipping company says it has halted oil shipments to Switzerland in protest at the brief arrest of leader Muammar Gaddafi's youngest son.

Yes, the son's name is Hannibal. He was charged with assault. It's not the first time he's been in trouble, either.

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Even as a power-sharing deal between President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party and Morgan Tsvangirai's Opposition for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe seems to be moving forward, deep doubts still remain.

EU leaders don't seem impressed by the negotiations. Yesterday, they slapped an additional 37 people and four companies, all of whom are now blacklisted, with new sanctions including restrictions on banking and travel. This brings Zimbabwe's blacklist total -- which already included Mugabe and several members of his cabinet from earlier sanctions in 2002 -- up to 172 people.

Meanwhile, Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga -- who was in a similar position as Tsvangirai during Kenya's disputed election last December -- has said that a "peaceful, decent exit" would be appropriate for Mugabe.

If choosing a U.S. president were up to the French, the Germans, and the British, Barack Obama would have a lock on the presidency. As Gallup reports today, large majorities in three countries the Illinois senator plans to visit this week would rather see Obama elected than John McCain. They also say that which candidate wins "makes a difference" to their country.

This poll fits well our intuitions about Europe's big three: They tend to favor Democrats, and they don't like George W. Bush. In 2007, Gallup found that approval of U.S. leadership in those countries had sunk to disturbing depths: -- reaching just 8 percent in Germany, 9 percent in France, and 20 percent in Britain. Gallup attributes the low numbers to the Iraq war, the U.S. stance on climate change, and anger over Guantánamo.

The differences between Obama and McCain on these issues, at least on a superficial level, appear to be narrowing. Both Obama and McCain have pledged to withdraw troops from Iraq -- they are now arguing over whether to set an explicit timetable for doing so or whether to allow "conditions on the ground" to be the determining factor. Both Obama and McCain want to join international efforts to combat global warming, though Obama would push for greater emissions cuts. And both senators would like to see Guantánamo shut down. From a European perspective, either senator would be a step up from Bush (or at least the Bush of 2004).

If Obama does win in November, the great expectations he is setting in Europe could come back to haunt him. As Anne-Marie Slaughter, quoting a German friend, wrote last year, "Underneath every America-hater is a disappointed America-lover." Last week, one European diplomat shared with me his fear that the real Obama can't possibly live up to the hype. (Try, for instance, counting the votes in the Senate for a climate-change bill with real teeth.) This is the moment, then, for Obama to tell Europeans that he is going to let them down. Better they hear it from his own lips now than figure it out on their own, two years down the road.

I know you've all been on the edge of your seats since we blogged this a couple months back, but a ruling has been reached in the great Greek lesbian lawsuit. To recap, residents of the island of Lesbos had sued a prominent Greek gay rights organization to prevent them from using the word "lesbian" to describe gay women. If victorious, they had plans to take their crusade worldwide.

The court just ruled that the Gay and Lesbian Union of Greece (and anyone else for that matter) is free to continue saying lesbian. Glad we cleared that up.

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If you plan on being in London any time soon, you might end up disappointed if you try ordering Peking duck at a restaurant. Inspectors have been going around with tape and sealing shut the special ovens used to prepare the Chinese delicacy.

The ovens, which—surprise—are made in China, lack a Conformité Européenne (CE) mark indicating that they comply with safety regulations on carbon monoxide emissions as established by Eurocrats in Brussels. For the record, there have been no reports of injuries, accidents, or other health problems caused by the 6-foot-tall ovens.

It's another example of Brits being pushed around by EU diktat. Last year, the contentious issue was whether Britain would have to sell beer by the liter, rather than the beloved pint.

In other questionable food regulation news, Italy's anti-immigrant Northern League party has proposed a law in the Lombardy region that would ban Chinese restaurants and Middle Eastern kebab vendors from historic city centers, on the grounds that such eateries would mar their unique character. (Ironically, that logic is also what got Starbucks to withdraw from Beijing's 600-year-old Forbidden City last year.)

Back in London, it may be a month until restaurants can get CE-marked ovens installed and put Peking duck back on the menu.

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It was only a matter of time before the declining dollar affected the world of sport. In years past, the Europe's prime basketball talent bolted across the pond for the superior pay and play of the NBA. Now, the trend appears to be heading in the opposite direction, thanks to the rising euro and an influx of Russian investment in the European league. Suddenly, playing in Europe doesn't sound like such a bad idea after all.

Former New Jersey Net Bostjan Nachbar (above left, with Dallas's Dirk Nowitzki) is the latest player to spurn the NBA and sign a more lucrative contract with a European team, which pays in the much more attractive euro, and often tax-free:

The NBA had better be careful," Nachbar said. "European teams are offering a lot of money. It's much more, considering there are no taxes, than what I could make signing for the midlevel exception."

Once confined to players with previous overseas experience, the trend is spreading to home-grown Americans, too. Highly rated high schooler Brandon Jennings, struggling with academic issues, shocked the college basketball world by opting to play in Europe instead of attending school. And Atlanta's Josh Childress, unhappy with the state of contract negotiations with the Hawks, is weighing an offer to play in Greece.

Although the NBA, already cultivating the Chinese market, has been eyeing European expansion, I don't think this is exactly what Commissioner David Stern had in mind.

The Rolls-Royce brand is most firmly associated with ultra-luxury cars, but its engineering wing, Rolls-Royce plc, is also actually the second-largest maker of airplane engines in the world. Now, the company is diversifying even further, with plans to set up a full-fledged nuclear division to "manufacture equipment and provide advice to governments on their atomic energy programs."

Rolls-Royce has been supplying safety instrumentation and control technology to France's nuclear reactors for some time now, and it also has nuclear clients in the United States, China, and the Czech Republic -- creating a separate nuclear division is likely part marketing and part expansion. Since the company projects an almost 70 percent increase in the value of the civil nuclear industry by 2023, it's no surprise that it would try to leverage its unique skills and experience to cash in on the purported "nuclear renaissance."

It is surprising that the article explicitly mentions decommissioning (of aging nuclear plants) and cleanup (of plants and other nuclear sites) as potential moneymakers. Companies that deal in nuclear reactors and related products usually focus on the potential for profit in new nuclear plants and a large expansion in the use of nuclear power. Decommissioning and cleanup will become increasingly prominent issues as the world's current nuclear fleet ages, and often responsibility for such problems is laid at the government's doorstep.

Hopefully, more private entities will see fit to focus on concerns like these in the future -- and if we must have new nuclear power plants, we might as well make them Rolls-Royces.

Barack Obama won't be speaking at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin after all, but his upcoming trip to Europe is still a huge deal.

What should the senator be thinking about before he goes? Here are a few diplomatic overtures I'd recommend:

• Acknowledge the importance of U.S.-European relations. Many of your outlined goals for making the United States safer -- e.g. defeating al Qaeda, stabilizing Afghanistan, and preventing Iran from getting the bomb -- are going to require close cooperation with Europe. You don't have a great record of paying attention to the region, having been there once in the past decade (and having never called a single meeting of the Senate Foreign Relation's subcommittee on Europe). Put some meat on your vow to reach out to America's closest allies, but don't get too lovey-dovey. Proclaiming "Je suis un Français" in front of the Arc de Triomphe would probably hurt your chances in November.
• Listen to what Europeans tell you about integration and the thorny issues, like immigration, that go along with it. Your rhetoric on NAFTA show that you've got some learning to do here, and Europeans have been doing the whole "regional integration" thing for decades. But don't be afraid to challenge European mindsets, either -- sadly, many still think a minority candidate could never be elected in their country.
• Stopping in London, Paris, and Berlin is all well and good, but passing up Brussels? The heart of the EU is where the region's major policies -- like those on trade, immigration, and the environment -- are actually molded into shape. Be careful about weighing in on contentious topics like the Lisbon Treaty, but a trip to EU headquarters next time would send the right signal. Plus, you could work in a plea for unity given the ongoing turmoil over the Belgian PM's resignation. Just don't get caught drinking any Stella Artois or you can kiss Missouri goodbye.
• And hey, how about a shoutout to the new EU members? Romania, Poland, the Czech Republic and other eastern European nations have experienced major economic growth in the past several years and have seriously stepped up their trade with the United States since 2000. It's too late to add any more stops to your itinerary, but acknowledging these rising European stars would underline your call for "supporting Europe's strategy of enlargement."