Amongst all the other decisions made at the summit, Croatia is now an official EU candidate state. Talks are scheduled to begin next year with an aim of the Croats joining alongside Romania and Bulgaria in 2007.
Author Archives: Nick Barlow
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Over at Crooked Timber, Henry Farrell assesses the candidates for President of the European Commission
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The 2004 European Football Championship has kicked off with a shock in the opening game as the hosts Portugal were beaten 2-1 by Greece. Elsewhere, Spain began the tournament with a 1-0 win against Russia.
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Supermodels, astronauts, porn stars and journalists: BBC News looks at some of the famous (and infamous) candidates standing in the European Parliament elections
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After Porto’s victory in the European Cup last night, their coach Jose Mourinho has announced he is leaving the club to work in England. He hasn’t said which club he’s joining yet, though.
Europe in 2012?
With the Eurovision Song Contest now completed for another year, it’s time for another international contest of intrigue, bargaining and frankly bizarre voting. In other words, the IOC today announced the shortlist of cities to host the 2012 Olympic Games.
Four European cities have made the shortlist: Paris, Madrid, London and Moscow, with New York the only non-European city remaining in the race. Rio de Janeiro, Istanbul, Leipzig and Havana were all excluded from the shortlist.
The GamesBids website has good coverage of the procedure to select the host city, with ongoing assesments and ratings of the candidate cities. As their ratings of the cities show, Rio’s exclusion from the shortlist was quite a shock, as it had been seen as a very strong bid, especially as the Games haven’t been held in Latin America before.
Paris appears to be the favourite at this stage, though Madrid does appear to be gaining strength (the IOC ranked it second of the five shortlisted bids) as time goes by but may be hampered by the fact that the 1992 Olympics were also in Spain. However, Olympic voting is one of the hardest things in the world to predict, and it’d take a braver person than me to predict which city will be chosen when the IOC meets in Singapore next year.
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If you’re finding it a drag to write new posts for your blogs, then Matt’s new keyboard may be able to cut the time it takes
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BBC News has launched its site covering June’s elections – there are local as well as European elections in the UK on June 10
Next year in… Kiev
Well, the 2004 Eurovision Song Contest has ended with yet another country scoring a first ever victory – Ukraine. What seemed like several hours of voting ended with a rather comfortable victory for Ruslana’s Wild Dances in the end or, in simpler terms, the ex-Soviet block voting proved stronger than the Balkan block voting. The question of what may or may not have been the best song is pretty much irrelevant at this point, and I can’t enlighten you at all as to which may or may not have been the best as I didn’t see any of them! Please feel free to argue in the comments as to which song may actually haver been the best…
Update: The full scoreboard can be found on the official site – it’s a javascript pop up from the front page (‘final results’). Ukraine had 280 points, Serbia & Montenegro 263, Greece 252. Seven-time winners Ireland came next-to-last, only receiving 7 points – all from the UK – with Norway last receiving only 3 points, all from Sweden.
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Italian-born Sonia Gandhi seems set to become India’s next Prime Minister after the Congress Party’s surprise victory in the recent elections
Update: She has now turned down the post