BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A bill for mandatory logging of emails, phone calls and other electronic communications to combat terrorism and fraud will limit data storage to a year at most, the     European Commission said on Wednesday.
Viviane Reding, Commissioner for Information Society and Media, said a similar proposal put forward by four member states in 2004 wanted data to be stored for three to four years, which she said would impose a costly burden on phone and internet companies.
France, Ireland, the UK and Sweden made their proposal in April last year in the aftermath of the Madrid train bombings, which killed 191 people. The seizure of phone records was credited with helping police make quick arrests.

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Posted: June 2, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com
The Israelis are reeling from the body blow delivered them by President Bush following his meeting with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. In one pronouncement, Bush totally scuttled all the hard-fought, blood-bought gains Israel has made in the three wars forced upon her.

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Photos Show Global Devastation
By Jeremy Lovell, Reuters
LONDON (June 4) - The devastating impact of mankind on the planet is dramatically illustrated in pictures published Saturday showing explosive urban sprawl, major deforestation and the sucking dry of inland seas over less than three decades.
Mexico City mushrooms from a modest urban center in 1973 to a massive blot on the landscape in 2000, while Beijing shows a similar surge between 1978 and 2000 in satellite pictures published by the United Nations in a new environmental atlas.
Delhi sprawls explosively between 1977 and 1999, while from 1973 to 2000 the tiny desert town of Las Vegas turns into a monster conurbation of 1 million people -- placing massive strain on scarce water supplies.
"If there is one message from this atlas, it is that we are all part of this. We can all make a difference," U.N. expert Kaveh Zahedi told reporters at the launch of the "One Planet Many People" atlas on the eve of World Environment Day.

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By Noah Barkin
BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and French President Jacques Chirac want other European Union countries to press on with ratifying the bloc's constitution, despite its rejection by French and Dutch voters.
The two leaders met in Berlin on Saturday to discuss their position ahead of an EU summit this month following the rejection of the constitution in separate referendums in France and Netherlands over the past week.

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