If (low-cost, high-speed rail) is a success I can imagine for cross-border lines the next years there will be opportunities to go to Brussels and Amsterdam, and perhaps from and to London and to Spain.

CNN: Can Europe get its high-speed rail network together?

However during the final session, MEPs broadly rejected this, preferring enhanced co-operation, along the lines of the Schengen agreement on border controls.

BBC: Special committee on Energy

The European Commission insisted this week that Italy's reluctance to expand cross-border trading and to build new international transmission lines was partly to blame for the latest blackout.

ECONOMIST: Why do the lights keep going out?

What makes Mr Blair prone to accidents in Scotland is that politics north of the border divides not just on the usual left-right lines, but also over the constitutional issue, between those who want to keep Britain together and those who do not.

ECONOMIST: Scottish politics

Outside of oil and gas, Hunt owns stakes in power plants in the Northeast, transmission lines in Texas, including a 150 megawatt cross-border line with Mexico built in 2007.

FORBES: 'Dallas' Actor Hawks Solar Power, But Billionaire Who Inspired J.R. Ewing Is Focused On Natural Gas

The French aim is to cut off their lines of supply, helped by Algeria's reinforcement of its border security.

CNN: Mali: The long, troubled desert road ahead

This would be a logical next step: border bureaucracy and endemic crime make it horribly difficult for any Russian firm to maintain fast and reliable supply lines of components from abroad.

ECONOMIST: Russian computers