Predominantly Roman Catholic France has until now had tough curbs on embryonic stem cell research under a 2011 law that only allows it with the explicit approval from the national biomedicine agency.

Under a new law approved this month with majority backing from the governing Socialists and their allies, the agency's approval is no longer essential, although strict regulations must be followed to conduct such research in France.

The Constitutional Council said it had approved the law, rejecting a last-ditch appeal by conservative lawmakers to get it thrown out.

Stem cells are the body's mother cells and can self-renew or multiply while maintaining the ability to transform into any type of cell.

Researchers around the world have been studying stem cells from various sources for more than a decade, hoping to capitalize on their ability to transform into a wide variety of other kinds of cell to treat a range of health conditions.

(Reporting by Emile Picy; writing by Leigh Thomas; Editing by Michael Roddy)

The 28-nation bloc was likely to tread carefully since radical decisions could mean losing leverage over Egypt's new military-backed government and weaken the EU's position as a mediator accepted by all sides.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said the aim was to send "a strong signal to Egypt," but he also called for "realistic expectations."

"Our appeal is with maximum pressure to contribute to their returning to the negotiating table," Westerwelle told German broadcaster ZDF before the meeting in Brussels.

Clashes between Egyptian security forces and supporters of deposed President Mohammed Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood movement have killed some 1,000 people since last week.

"Everything should be revisited," including political and economic ties, said Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius of Lithuania, which currently holds the rotating EU presidency.

While the EU lacks the military muscle and long-standing ties that give the U.S. a special position in dealing with Cairo, it is Egypt's biggest trading partner and a major source of aid, loans and tourists for the country. The EU and its member states last year pledged a combined 5 billion euros ($6.7 billion) in loans and aid for Egypt.

Diplomats from several EU countries cautioned that a decision to halt all aid programs was unlikely since many are directed at helping the poor or propping up civil society groups not directly supporting the government.

Moreover, EU threats to cut some aid may not frighten Egypt's leadership since Saudi Arabia a long-time critic of the Muslim Brotherhood has pledged to plug any shortfall. Saudi Arabia and other wealthy Gulf nations, including Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, have so far promised $12 billion in new aid.

A suspension of EU arms shipments seemed more likely. "I would assume that no one would export arms in this situation," Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said on his way into the meeting.

The EU's Egypt envoy Bernardino Leon said in an interview published Wednesday that even if the support from Arab nations was necessary for Egypt, "help from the West is equally fundamental because it's not only about quantity but also about quality."

"For Egypt's economy to recover, investors must return, and many of them are from Europe or the U.S., they need signals of confidence," Leon was quoted as telling German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung. "Europe has enormous influence."

The EU is Egypt's biggest trading partner with a trade volume of about 24 billion euros in 2011 (then $34.5 billion), compared with $8.2 billion with the United States.

The U.S. so far has canceled joint military exercises and delayed the delivery of four F-16 fighter jets in response to the violence, but it is still weighing whether to suspend some of its annual $1.5 billion in aid to Egypt.

Egypt, the most populous nation in the Arab world, is a longtime U.S. ally and has been the bedrock of Washington's Middle East policy, not least because of its peace treaty with Israel. Egypt also controls the Suez Canal, an important trade route, and has so far granted the U.S. fast passage through the canal to deploy carrier groups to the Persian Gulf.

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Raf Casert in Brussels and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed reporting.

___

Follow Juergen Baetz on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/jbaetz

More from The Week:

 -  - 

Pinker says the mindset of science eliminates errors by open debate, peer review, and double-blind methods, and especially, experimentation. But experiments require repetition and control over all relevant variables. We can experiment on individual behavior, but not with history or macroeconomics.

Isaiah Berlin . In science, it means reliably causal. In history, it means a looser, narrative kind of causation, a useful explanation of the complex web of factors affecting a particular situation. Since Plato many have privileged universal timeless truths. But historys truths are typically particular and time bound, describing changes through time.

Pinkers science needs types and theories. It assumes that phenomena . But Berlin noted that . Nomothetic means fit for law-like generalizations, having reliably repeatable regularities. Idiographic means much the same as the Hebrew word daat:(not via theories or types). ()

Physics is fortunate to enjoy a kind of closedness that human life lacks. . And nothing it studies innovates. History and economics study things that can change how they act and react. So the methods of the inanimate sciences face extra challenges when used on people. Even statistics and probability cant always help. Previously measured distributions can be upset by the spread of behavioral changes, making social systems less predictable.

Jerome Kagan notes that inanimate equilibria. Many economists still use such methods. And macroeconomists try to model events essentially as complex as world wars, using (insanely by Pinkers standards) the language of physics.

The Oxford English Dictionary says science originally just meant knowledge. In the Middle Ages, the seven liberal arts (grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, music, geometry, astronomy) were also called the seven liberal sciences. Shakespeare used science in that sense: .

We risk blinding ourselves with science, in its now narrower highly reliable form. It is dazzling. But it also has limits. Its tools dont fit all situations. Economics, especially the macro kind, has history-like aspects. Its narratives might be woven with data, but not everything that counts can be counted. It must deal with different kinds of change that (to paraphrase Shakespeare) were never dreamt of in our physics. Perhaps this limits economics to moderately reliable maxims.

Illustration by , The New Yorker Cartoonist & author of The Extraordinary Catalog of Peculiar Inventions.

Previously in this series:

(Reuters) - Consumers have a right under a federal law to revoke their consent to being contacted on their cell phones by automated dialing systems, a U.S. appeals court decided on Thursday in a defeat for computer maker Dell Inc.

Reversing a lower court ruling, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia ruled in favor of a Pennsylvania woman, Ashley Gager, who complained that Dell hounded her with more than 40 calls in less than three weeks to collect a delinquent debt after she had sent a letter asking it to stop.

Circuit Judge Jane Roth said Congress intended the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 to protect consumers from unwanted automated calls, a conclusion supported by a 2012 Federal Communications Commission ruling in an unrelated case.

She rejected Dell's argument that because the law did not address whether consumers may revoke consent to be contacted by an autodialing system, such a right to revoke did not exist.

"We find that the TCPA provides consumers with the right to revoke their prior express consent to be contacted on cellular phones by autodialing systems," Roth wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel. "Because the TCPA is a remedial statute, it should be construed to benefit consumers."

Dell, which is based in Round Rock, Texas, and its law firm did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Cary Flitter, a lawyer for Gager, did not immediately respond to a similar request.

According to court papers, Gager had in 2007 filled in her cellphone number in place of her home number on an application for a Dell credit line, which the Honesdale, Pennsylvania resident used to buy thousands of dollars of computer equipment.

After Gager defaulted, Dell began leaving the automated messages, and continued doing so even after receiving a letter in December 2010 from Gager asking it to stop, the papers show.

In May 2012, U.S. District Judge Robert Mariani dismissed Gager's lawsuit, saying that she should have told Dell at the time she gave her cellphone number not to make automated calls.

The 3rd Circuit sent the case back to Mariani's courtroom for further proceedings, and said Dell remains entitled to pursue the unpaid debt.

"Dell will still be able to telephone Gager about her delinquent account," Roth said. "The only limitation imposed by the TCPA is that Dell will not be able to use an automated dialing system to do so."

The case is Gager v. Dell Financial Services LLC, 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 12-2823.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Justin Bieber can breathe easy - at least as far as a hit-and-run allegation against him goes.

The Los Angeles Country District Attorney's office has decided not to pursue a hit-and-run charge against "Boyfriend" singer Bieber, which stemmed from an incident involving a paparazzo outside of a Sunset Blvd. nightclub last month.

The DA's office has declined to pursue the charge due to "nsufficient evidence to prove that Bieber knowingly left the scene of collision in which someone was injured."

The incident occurred at 11:40 p.m. on June 17, as Bieber prepared to leave in his Ferrari.. According to the DA office's report, when security personnel motioned Bieber to pull away from the curb, paparazzo Damon Walter "stepped slightly in front of Bieber's car on the right side to take another picture." As a result, "Bieber's car hit Walter slightly on the leg, briefly pinning him against a car that had been parked in front of Bieber's."

"Officers determined that Walter was at fault in the collision due to being in the roadway and blocking Bieber's vehicle."

The DA's office determined that Bieber probably wasn't aware that he had struck Bieber, echoing a statement that Bieber had made through his attorney.

"The Ferrari's engine is loud. The impact was minor and given the chaotic scene and stress of the situation, it is likely that Bieber did not know he had hit Walter," the DA's office concluded.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Michael Jackson's ex-wife said in a Los Angeles court on Thursday that their daughter Paris is "devastated" over her father's death and "doesn't feel like she has a life."

Debbie Rowe, 54, broke into tears and sobbed loudly while answering questions under cross-examination about 15-year-old Paris and the teenager's recent suicide attempt.

"Her father is dead. I almost lost my daughter," Rowe said in Los Angeles Superior Court, which is hearing a lawsuit brought by Jackson's family against concert promoter AEG Live.

"She tried to kill herself," said Rowe, who grew so emotional that the court adjourned for a break, and she was not called back to testify. "She is devastated. She doesn't have a life. She doesn't feel like she has a life anymore."

Rowe does not have custody over her children, Paris and Prince, who live with their grandmother, Katherine Jackson. Michael Jackson's other child, Prince Michael II, known as Blanket, also lives with Katherine Jackson.

Katherine Jackson and Jackson's children are suing AEG Live over the singer's 2009 death in Los Angeles from an overdose of the surgical anesthetic propofol, alleging that the privately held company negligently hired Conrad Murray as Jackson's personal physician and ignored signs that the singer was in poor health prior to his death.

This is Rowe's second day testifying in the trial in which she was called to the stand by AEG Live.

Rowe, who has rarely spoken publicly about Jackson or her children, was married to the "Thriller" singer from 1996 to 1999 and is the mother of his two eldest children, Paris and 16-year-old Prince.

Paris, who has recently rekindled her relationship with Rowe, was rushed to a Los Angeles hospital in June after a suicide attempt.

Paris' family said at the time that the teenager was "physically fine" and "being a sensitive 15-year-old is difficult no matter who you are ... especially difficult when you lose the person closest to you."

'HE DIDN'T LIKE BEING HIGH'

When asked about her relationship with Prince, Rowe said: "We don't hate each other."

She said she does not see Prince much but speaks almost daily with Paris.

Under cross-examination by Katherine Jackson's attorneys, Rowe reiterated her testimony from Wednesday, saying that Jackson's doctors did not treat the singer with his best interests in mind and took advantage of his fear of pain.

Rowe, who has testified that she began to grow worried about Jackson's prescription drug use in the early 1990s after he underwent several medical procedures, also said that the singer did not like medication that made him slur his speech or feel as if he was not in control.

"He didn't like being high," she said.

Rowe told jurors on Wednesday that Jackson was administered powerful anesthetic drugs because he was having trouble sleeping.

"Michael was at the end of his rope. He didn't know what to do," she said about a time on tour in 1997. "He was more worried about not sleeping than dying because he couldn't perform (without sleep)."

Murray, who was caring for Jackson as the singer rehearsed for his series of 50 comeback "This Is It" concerts, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in 2011 for administering the propofol that killed the star.

AEG Live has argued that Jackson, who was 50 at the time of his death, had prescription drug and addiction problems for years before entering into any agreement with the company.

It also has said that it did not hire or supervise Murray and could not have foreseen that the physician would have posed a danger to the singer.

(Reporting by Brandon Lowrey; Writing by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Piya Sinha-Roy and Eric Beech)

MANILA (Reuters) - At least 17 people were killed but hundreds were rescued after a passenger ferry sank following a collision with a cargo vessel in the central Philippines, a coastguard commander said.

"We don't know if there are still people missing," Rear Admiral Luis Tuason told local radio early on Saturday, citing a discrepancy between the actual numbers killed or rescued and the ferry's manifest, which showed 692 crew and passengers on board.

Tuason, the acting chief of the coast guard, said 690 people were rescued, but coast guard officials on Cebu island, the site of the accident, said only 575 people were brought ashore. They said officials had counted 17 bodies and that two coast guard vessels and a naval ship would continue to search for more survivors overnight.

The figures could not be immediately reconciled.

The 40-year-old ferry, St Thomas of Aquinas, is allowed to carry up to 904 passengers. It sank minutes after colliding with the cargo vessel about a kilometer (a half mile) off Cebu around 9 p.m. (1300 GMT) on Friday.

"It happened fast, we felt that the cargo ship hit us and minutes later we noticed our ship was listing," Aldrin Raman, a passenger, told reporters. "I grabbed a life vest and jumped overboard. I saw many passengers doing the same."

He said fishermen rescued him and several other passengers who had jumped into the sea. Local officials said dozens of fishing boats helped in the rescue.

One of the crew members on the ferry told radio the ship sank within 10 minutes of the collision.

"The collision left a gaping hole in the ferry and water started rushing in, so the captain ordered abandon ship," he said. Most of the passengers were already wearing life jackets before the ship sank, he said.

Another passenger, Jerwin Agudong, told the dzBB radio station that several people were however trapped and could not jump overboard. "It seems some were not able to get out. We saw dead bodies on the side," he said.

Scores, sometimes hundreds, of people die each year in ferry accidents in the Philippines, which has a notoriously poor record for maritime safety. An archipelago of 7,100 islands, ferries are the most common form of transportation.

Overcrowding is common, and many of the vessels are in bad condition. The country is also hit by several typhoons each year.

The Philippines was the site of the world's worst peacetime sea disaster in December 1987. The ferry Dona Paz sank after colliding with the tanker Vector in the Sibuyan Sea, killing 4,375 on the ferry and 11 of the Vector's 13-man crew.

(Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

NASHVILLE (Reuters) - "Cowboy" Jack Clement, who inspired pioneering rock'n'rollers and classic country musicians, sometimes while prancing around the music studio in his bathrobe and playing the ukulele, died on Thursday at his home in Nashville. He was 82.

Clement died after a long bout with liver cancer, just months before he was to have been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, which confirmed his death.

Despite his nickname, which was a holdover from an old radio skit rather than anything to do with horses and six-shooters, Clement actually favored Hawaiian print shirts and was as far removed as possible from actually being a cowboy.

While he was not a star himself, Clement inspired the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash and even U2, during his long career in music.

"He had a role in two really important changes in American culture," said Michael McCall, a writer and editor at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

Clement played a large role in the birth of rock'n'roll when he was hired as a producer and engineer at Sun Records, where he worked with music greats such as Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins and Charlie Rich.

"He was there when Jerry Lee walked in, and who knows what wouldn't have happened if he hadn't been there," said McCall.

It was also at Sun that the young engineer wrote "Ballad of a Teenage Queen" and "Guess Things Happen That Way," two songs that a young rocker from east Arkansas named Johnny Cash turned into No. 1 country and Top Twenty pop hits in 1958.

The friendship between the two men was deep and special.

"Cash liked working with him because they had so much fun," said McCall.

Clement then moved to Nashville, where he continued writing songs and worked as an engineer, producer, recording studio owner, music publisher and as an artist, leaving an indelible mark on the city.

It was in Nashville that Clement was the first to record Charley Pride, a black singer, which helped desegregate country music and began an association that lasted 13 albums.

Clement also had three Nashville studios and a publishing company. Among his genre-busting achievements was producing Jennings' Dreaming My Dreams, one of the most acclaimed albums to be released during the 1970s heyday of the so-called Outlaws on Music Row.

Merle Haggard, Ray Stevens and a host of country luminaries liked to record at Clement's studios.

But he would step out far from country to work with polka bands and gritty singer-songwriters like John Prine and Townes Van Zandt. He even produced tracks for U2's Rattle and Hum, a popular tribute to American music in 1988.

McCall noted that Clement had a knack for spotting "game-changing artists" - in the likes of Lewis, Cash, Pride and Williams - and "bringing them to the public."

While the list of musical achievements spans more than five decades, it could easily have been overshadowed by Clement himself.

"He was a musical mastermind, but he brought this sense of fun and mischief (into the studio)," McCall said. "He danced around in his bathrobe and played the ukulele. He would do anything spontaneously to keep the mood light and fun and to keep his sense of joy about music."

Guitarist Scotty Moore, who worked with Clement at Sun, lamented his friend's passing.

"He was just an all-around fine fellow for me," said Moore from his home outside Nashville. "He was just Jack."

(Editing by Brendan O'Brien and Lisa Shumaker)

As his Cabinet chief, Cartes named a man with U.S. ties, including degrees from major American universities and a top post at Coca-Cola Company in Paraguay. Juan Carlos Lopez Moreira Borgognon studied at Stanford and George Washington universities and also attended the American University in Paraguay.

"I'm not in politics to make a career of it or become wealthier," the 57-year-old Cartes said in his inauguration speech, promising to strengthen Paraguay's international relations and its commitment to human rights. "I'm in politics to serve my people, make the future better for new generations and build up our identity as a free, independent and sovereign people."

Inaugural organizers said Cartes' most important encounter at the swearing-in was not with fellow presidents but with foreign executives he hopes will invest in the infrastructure of this country of 6.2 million, where 39 percent live in poverty.

Wearing a red-white-and-blue presidential sash, the tobacco magnate said he intends "to win every battle in the war we're declaring today against poverty in Paraguay." The country is among the most unequal nations in South America.

Cartes, whose term runs through August 2018, built a family fortune with two dozen companies that dominate industries from banking to tobacco to soft drinks to soccer, making it difficult to make a move as president without generating complaints of conflicts of interest.

He's is a political neophyte who never voted for president before running for office, and often faced accusations that his wealth was fed by money laundering, cigarette smuggling and drug trafficking.

Paraguayan voters overlooked the allegations, focusing on hopes that the businessman from the dominant Colorado Party can help the country benefit more from soy profits that are projected to boost the economy by 10 percent this year.

Cartes won April's election with 46 percent support by promising to create many more jobs. His elected predecessor, the sandal-wearing former bishop Fernando Lugo, was impeached and ousted by Congress last year.

Accusations involving Cartes became widely reported after WikiLeaks published a 2010 U.S. State Department cable that labeled him the head of a drug trafficking and money laundering operation.

He denied this in his only news conference with foreign media during the campaign.

"I wouldn't want to be president if I had ties to drug traffickers," he said. "Go to the courts and check. There's nothing, not a single charge against me."

Smuggling, corruption and tax evasion are endemic in Paraguay, and analysts believe it's difficult for executives not to come into some contact with criminals. The corruption watchdog group Transparency International ranks Paraguay 150th out of 176 countries. The U.S. Congressional Research Service in 2010 called corruption "a major impediment to consolidating democratic institutions" in the nation.

Cartes did spend 60 days in jail in 1986 during a currency fraud investigation. He was accused of making millions of dollars on a central bank loan obtained at a preferential exchange rate and then moving it through his money exchange business before buying farm equipment in the U.S. The case was dropped.

The region's well-documented trade in contraband cigarettes, smuggled over borders and resold without paying taxes, also made his tobacco companies a target of congressional and criminal investigations in Brazil.

His family's total wealth is unknown; Paraguay doesn't enforce transparency laws and Cartes avoided providing detailed answers as he campaigned.

But U.S. officials said they were concerned enough to infiltrate his companies with undercover Drug Enforcement Administration agents to disrupt what they believed was an organized crime operation that banked drug profits made in the Tri-Border Area, or TBA, a smuggling hotbed where Paraguay meets Argentina and Brazil.

"Agents have infiltrated Cartes' money-laundering enterprise, an organization believed to launder large quantities of United States currency generated through illegal means, including the sale of narcotics, from the TBA to the United States," the 2010 U.S. cable said.

Another cable, sent in 2007, reported that Paraguay's anti-drug chief, Hugo Ibarra, had told a U.S. Embassy official that the country's anti-money laundering chief was really working for Cartes and his bank.

Cartes drew more attention once he began selling Palermo cigarettes across the United States in 2008, at prices the company said were 20 percent below the competition.

Phillip Morris, British-American, Reynolds and Imperial tobacco company officials met with agents from the DEA, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Justice and Treasury departments in a Panama City hotel in December 2009 to coordinate an undercover attack on Cartes, code-named "Operation Heart of Stone," the 2010 cable said.

Former CIA agent Frank Holder, whose mission included Paraguay, sees Cartes' political career as an effort to buy a sort of insurance policy against interference in his businesses.

"He had zero involvement in politics until 2008, when he goes into it in a big way," Holder said. "And that's when the Operation Heart of Stone case, which came out in WikiLeaks, starts going full swing."

U.S. Embassy spokesman Christopher Istrati said he can't discuss classified documents or investigations.

But a current law enforcement official in the United States said Cartes has been under scrutiny by U.S. and international law enforcement for years. The law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, was not authorized to speak on the record about the matter.

Cartes insists he sought the presidency to improve Paraguay's economy, and has no criminal ties.

After opponents complained about conflicts of interest, Cartes said he transferred his ownership in all his companies. His sister Sarah Cartes now runs Grupo Cartes.

Lugo's 2008 victory interrupted more than five decades of Colorado Party rule, which included the 35-year reign of dictator Alfredo Stroessner, but he lacked the money and votes to accomplish much.

"Before, you had Lugo who had no support," said Holder, the former CIA agent. "This guy can say, 'You're in, you're out' and make it stick. This guy will have real power in Paraguay."

___

Associated Press writers Pedro Servin in Asuncion, Michael Warren in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Pete Yost in Washington contributed to this report.