Free Republic

DUBLIN -- In a stainless-steel cabinet between two gurneys, Josh Moonman stores bottles of a pink fluid, labeled with skulls and crossbones, that is used for embalming bodies. "If I were to open one of those lids now and let you smell it, it would knock you back," says Mr. Moonman, an embalmer for Ireland's Fanagan Group of mortuaries. Because the fluid contains formaldehyde, which is poisonous, European Union regulators are considering banning the chemical as a potential threat to human health and the environment. Among the worries, environmentalists say: decaying bodies leaching toxic chemicals into the ground. But a...

Euro scum!

LONDON It is hard to overstate the sense of shock across much of Europe at the popular mandate that Americans have given George W. Bush, even if the result itself was no great surprise. One Norwegian designer working in London's Notting Hill shared with me her immediate sense of alarm, "It's going to be like World War III, isn't it? Everyone says so." As the president's victory was confirmed, those on the left-of-center in Europe, who have supplied the loudest opposition to the Iraq war, competed to pronounce on the disaster. Hubert Vedrine, France's former Socialist foreign minister, said the...

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Relations between the United States and Europe have sunk to their lowest ebb since President George W. Bush took office, with sharp differences over a new U.N. war crimes court, the Middle East and trade. In European eyes, transatlantic tensions have worsened because "unilateralist" hawks have gained ascendancy in the U.S. administration, seeking to tear up the international rule-book and sidelining moderates more in tune with European views. In many American eyes, the Europeans appear wimpish in the "war against terrorism", seek to tie Washington's hands and are complacent about threats from so-called "rogue states" suspected of...