"The Commission proposes to update the 2003 Directive on the re-use of public sector information by: Making it a general rule that all documents made accessible by public sector bodies can be re-used for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, unless protected by third party copyright; Establishing the principle that public bodies should not be allowed to charge more than costs triggered by the individual request for data (marginal costs); in practice this means most data will be offered for free or virtually for free, unless duly justified. Making it compulsory to provide data in commonly-used, machine-readable formats, to ensure data can be effectively re-used. Introducing regulatory oversight to enforce these principles; Massively expanding the reach of the Directive to include libraries, museums and archives for the first time; the existing 2003 rules will apply to data from such institutions."

"Of 180 claims for probiotic ingredients, the EU's food agency the European Food Safety Authority (Efsa) threw out every one. Ten were rejected outright and a 21-member expert panel could not assess the remaining 170 because the ingredients for which the claims were made could not be identified. ... However Britain's best-selling yogurt drinks, Actimel and Yakult, were excluded from Efsa's findings yesterday because Danone, Actimel's maker, and Yakult, the Japanese firm which introduced probiotic drinks to the UK in 1996, withdrew their claims before they could be scrutinised."

"A decision by David Cameron, the Conservative party leader, to join a new bloc in the European parliament means that it will find itself allied to a Polish party that critics have branded as homophobic, eccentric and nationalistic. "

"It asks: "Honestly, don't the Bavarians annoy us all?" and then proceeds to list all these annoyances, such as the "senseless jabbering," and sense of superiority as well as all those "pointless mountains and boring lakes." The site says that Bavaria never really belonged to Germany and "is better suited to Austria than us." The tract ends with the rallying cry: "Whoever finally wants to kick Bavaria out of the Federal Republic of Germany, simply needs to give their vote to the BP -- in all of Germany."

Mike Godwin (General Counsel of the Wikimedia Foundation) provides an interesting afterword on the recent Internet Watch Foundation's blocking of a Wikipedia article.

"In 2012, Vega will carry ESA’s Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle into space. The vehicle will then return to Earth to test a range of enabling systems and technologies for atmospheric re-entry. The video shows computer-generated animations of the vehicle and its mission."

"Yesterday afternoon the Union flag was replaced with the international symbol of the LGBT community at the British embassy in the Latvian capital." *wondering if it'll fly at Warsaw Pride in 2 days time*

"As reader Thomas Olson noted, "What irks even more about the swill he [Bill Thompson] publishes on the BBC website, is that there is no place for public feedback, so us common folk can call BS on his rant in real time for the world to witness. BBC is sti