PARIS: Alongside vast fields of barley and wheat and windswept coastlines, a new feature is increasingly becoming a part of the Eastern European landscape: wind turbines.

While Germany, Spain and Denmark are still by far the biggest wind-producing countries on the Continent, Eastern Europe is fast becoming a new frontier in wind power development as Europe tries to find environmentally friendly ways to satisfy growing energy demand and to meet ambitious targets for renewable energy.

When the European Union committed in March to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by the year 2020, it also agreed that a fifth of its energy would come from renewable sources like wind and solar power. According to the European Wind Energy Association, wind - which now satisfies about 3 percent of total European energy consumption - is likely to cover as much as 16 percent by 2020. The European Commission reports that the amount of electricity produced from wind has grown by an average of 26 percent a year since 2001.

But markets in the major wind-producing countries, while still expanding, are nearing capacity. “These markets are starting to get tapped out, and its increasingly difficult to get in,” said Catalina Robledo, an analyst specializing in European wind energy for Emerging Energy Research, a consulting company based in Barcelona and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Turning to their neighbors may be the answer. “Some of these developers are looking to move to Eastern Europe where there are still possibilities for market entry,” Robledo said. “Theres definitely an interest in whats happening there.”

Emerging Energy Research projects a 13-fold growth in Eastern European wind power capacity by 2015, to 7,552 megawatts from 569 megawatts in 2006, with most of the increase in Poland, Turkey, the Czech Republic and Hungary.

Some of the largest players in the global wind market, including Iberdrola of Spain; Acciona of Spain; EuroTrust of Denmark; and Good Energies, based in London, are getting a foothold in the region, often in partnership with local firms. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which was established after the fall of Communism to help rebuild the economies of central and Eastern European countries, is also investing in wind projects throughout the area.

“A year ago I would have told you that outside of the old European Union, theres not much worth looking at in terms of development,” said Michael Rand, a principal banker in the European Banks power and energy utilities unit. “In the last 12 months, the market has really taken off.”

While wind capacity in Eastern Europe is still far less than in Western Europe - Spain alone has 11,600 megawatts - the region has nevertheless taken a giant leap forward. In Poland, considered the most attractive of the Eastern markets because of state support, good wind conditions and the availability of land, the European Commission says the coastal area has potential similar to that of Denmark and the interior of the country similar to that of Germany.

Power companies are taking notice. Good Energies, for example, announced last month a \175 million, or $234 million, 120-megawatt wind farm, enough to supply power to 72,000 homes, in Poland, to be installed by late 2008. The managing director, Andrew Lee, said that the company considered Poland a “core market” and expected to expand to 500 megawatts by 2010.

Opportunities still exist in Western Europe, Lee said, “but they tend to be smaller and a lot of the best sites have been taken.” He added that the company preferred “being in new countries and new areas where opportunities are expanding rather than trying to fight in a mature market.”

There are clear advantages to harnessing wind power in a bid to solve the global warming crisis, Arthurous Zervos, the president of the European Wind Energy Association, said. First, it is cheaper than other forms of renewable energy: an average of about 6.5 euro cents per kilowatt hour, compared with about 10 cents for biomass and more than 30 cents for photovoltaic solar power, according to the European Commission. Wind farms are quick to install, taking only a few months to build after permits have been granted, versus years for traditional power plants. And technology has advanced considerably in the past few years, so that individual turbines can now produce 3.5 megawatts of power each, translating into more energy potential in smaller wind farms.

The result is the prevention of 80 million tons of carbon from being emitted into the air per year, according to the European Wind Energy Association. By 2010, the amount saved will rise to 140 million tons a year.

Against all the odds, and seeing off competition from favourites to win Ian McEwan and Lloyd Jones, rank outsider Anne Enright, 45, has been awarded the Man Booker prize for what the judges called a “powerful, uncomfortable and even at times angry book”, The Gathering.

For that, some might read depressing and harrowing. She herself told Radio 4’s Today: “When people pick up a book they may want something happy that will cheer them up. In that case they shouldn’t really pick up my book. It’s the intellectual equivalent of a Hollywood weepie”.

An emotional Enright, speaking at the ceremony at the Guildhall, London, last night, thanked the “love of my life” Martin Murphy, artistic director of the Pavilion Theatre, Dъn Laoghaire. She also thanked novelist Colm Tуibнn, “who always said my ship would come in”. She dropped into Gaelic to say she was delighted to accept the prize “on behalf of the Irish team”.

Asked what she would do with the 52,500 prize money, she said “I bought a dress yesterday, and I am really glad I can afford it today.” She felt mature enough to take the prize in her stride: “I’m no spring chicken; and this won’t stop me squawking.”

Howard Davies, chair of the judges, described The Gathering as “an unflinching look at a grieving family in tough and striking language”. He added: “It’s accessible. It’s somewhat bitter - but it’s perfectly accessible. People will be pretty excited by it when they read it.”

Mr Davies called the judging process “tight”. They were “a congenial group of people” but not necessarily one from whom consensus easily flowed. Accordingly, as befitted the director of the London School of Economics, he devised what he called an ingenious selection of voting schemes: a weighted system, a simple ranking system and single transferable vote. Each voting system confirmed Enright as, on balance, the winner.

The Gathering is narrated by Veronica as she prepares for the funeral of Liam, one of her many larger-than-life, unruly siblings. The novel casts back down the generations as Veronica, apparently leading successful life as a well-off wife and mother, attempts to make sense of her clan’s turbulent history.

Last night Enright said: “All families are the same - I just multiply them by three for effect. There’s always a drunk, always someone who has been interfered with as a child, always someone who’s a colossal success.”

A Dubliner, and the second Irish writer in three years to win after John Banville in 2005, Enright studied philosophy at Trinity College before working for broadcaster RTE as a producer. These were stressful years and Enright struggled with depression: “I heartily recommend having a breakdown young. Because then you make your decisions and get on with it.”

She left her job and began to write; first a well-received collection of stories called The Portable Virgin, then three novels and a work of non-fiction, Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood, published in 2004.

Ian McEwan may not have won the prize but can take comfort from his healthy sales. On Chesil Beach is far outselling all other short-listed books put together (not to mention the surge of sales for Atonement in the wake of Joe Wright’s film). Sales figures of the other books, by contrast, exemplify the tough climate for literary fiction in the marketplace; Enright’s book has so far shifted just 3,253 copies.

The latest figures from Nielsen BookScan show that the McEwan has sold a total of 120,362; Nicola Barker’s Darkmans, 11,097; Lloyd Jones’s Master Pip, 5,170; Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist 4,425, and Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People 2,589.

Just after the long list was announced, in mid-August, the figures were even leaner. The McEwan (published in April) had sold 99,660 copies, Hamid (March) 1,519, Jones 880, Enright (May) 834, Barker (May) 499, and Sinha (March) a mere 231.

This year’s judges, chaired by Davies, are poet Wendy Cope, Giles Foden, biographer and critic Ruth Scurr, and actor Imogen Stubbs.

(06-14) 07:33 PDT New York (AP) —

NEW YORK (AP) Д Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the nation’s largest investment bank, on Thursday reported second-quarter results edged slightly higher, with profits squeezed by a slowdown in its mortgage business.

Profit after paying preferred dividends rose to $2.29 billion, or $4.93 per share, from $2.29 billion, or $4.78 per share, a year earlier.

Despite a strong performance in its investment banking and asset management businesses, revenue slipped to $10.18 billion from $10.24 billion a year earlier.

Results topped Wall Street projections for earnings of $4.79 per share on revenue of $10.16 billion, according to analysts polled by Thomson Financial.

Shares fell $6.50, nearly 3 percent, to $227.12 in early trading Thursday as investors were rattled by yet another quarter of weakness in Goldman’s mortgage business. Goldman, along with other U.S. investment banks, buy mortgages and then repackage them as securities Д a business that has been hurt by a slide in the subprime market.

Goldman’s revenue from fixed-income, currencies and commodities Д which is the investment bank’s biggest business Д dropped 24 percent to $3.37 billion. There was weakness in both interest-rate sensitive credit products, and a mortgage business hurt by “continued weakness in the subprime sector.”

Investment banking revenue climbed 13 percent to $1.72 billion. Goldman consistently ranks among the world’s biggest advisers on takeovers.

Record levels for stocks, with both the Dow Jones industrials and Standard & Poor’s 500 index, pushed equity trading revenue 6 percent to $2.5 billion.

Asset management and securities services, which includes the firm’s prime brokerage business, rose 13 percent to $1.81 billion.