“Breaking ranks with the United States, EU foreign ministers backed the outlines of a new Mideast peace plan Saturday calling for Palestinian elections and the creation of a Palestinian state to be immediately recognized by Israel and admitted to the United Nations,” The AP reports. Creation of a Palestinian state must be the ‘starting point of a negotiating process,’ French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine said as he presented a blueprint

“A European Union proposal to tax goods and services delivered digitally over the Internet would impose new burdens on U.S. sellers, the Bush administration said Friday.” The Washington Post reports that EU finance ministers are expected next week to consider a plan that would require U.S. sellers to register in Europe and charge the value-added tax on digitally delivered products that applies in the consumer’s home country. Deputy Treasury Secretary

According to the official North Korean News Agency (just smacks of objectivity, don’t it?), North Korea has dubbed the U.S. “empire of the devil,” the BBC reports. KCNA also claims that “Bush was using the threat supposedly posed by North Korea as a pretext for a huge increase in defence spending.” Pretext for spending? Naw — those hijacked planes crashing into our buildings did the trick as far as a

‘Cause it sure seems like the spirit of Jeffrey Dahmer is moldering in this guy, Nathaniel Bar-Jonah, whose trial for allegations of sexually molesting young boys begins this week, The Washington Post reports: Prosecutors have agreed not to bring up Bar-Jonah’s convictions for kidnapping and molesting other boys in Massachusetts. They will not mention his two years in prison and 11 years in a mental hospital there after one attack,