Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of News International, has been charged over allegations that she tried to conceal evidence from detectives investigating phone hacking and alleged bribes to public officials.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced that Brooks, one of the most high-profile figures in the newspaper industry, would be charged with three counts of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice in July last year at the height of the police investigation.

Scotland Yard later confirmed she had been charged along with her husband, Charlie Brooks, and four others.

Newly sworn-in French President Francois Hollande has arrived in Berlin for key talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, after his plane was apparently hit by lightning.

The plane was forced to turn back to Paris. Mr Hollande later completed his journey on a second plane.

During his inauguration speech earlier in the day, the Socialist president appealed for "a compromise" over the German-led focus on austerity.

He called for an emphasis on "growth".

Greece is set to go to the polls again after days of coalition talks failed to produce agreement on a new government, says the leader of the Socialist Pasok party, Evangelos Venizelos.

A final round of talks on Tuesday morning broke up without a deal.

In elections on 6 May, a majority of Greek voters backed parties opposed to austerity plans demanded by the EU and IMF in return for two bailouts.

The Greek president will appoint a caretaker government on Wednesday.

A teenager who survived Anders Breivik's Utoeya massacre has told his trial she heard "the worst screaming" as he carried out his attacks.

Marta-Johanne Svendsen, who was shot in the arm, described hiding with others in a building and hearing twigs snap as Breivik tried to get in.

As proceedings continued, a man set himself on fire outside the courthouse.

He tried to enter the Oslo building but was stopped by police and taken to hospital to be treated for burns.

Francois Hollande is sworn in on Tuesday morning in Elysee Palace as the French president, the first Socialist head of state after Francois Mitterand quit power in 1995.

The Constitutional Council declared Hollande the president of the Republic of France at the inauguration ceremony in the presidential palace.

The swearing-in ceremony opened at 10:00 a.m. (0800 GMT) by outgoing President Nicolas Sarkozy greeting in the courtyard the new president and the two leaders headed into private talks where codes to France's nuclear arsenal was handed over to Hollande.

Greece could leave the eurozone in an "orderly exit", the head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, told FRANCE 24 on Tuesday.

In an exclusive interview, Lagarde raised the possibility that the debt-laden nation could quit the eurozone if it failed to meet the terms of a bailout deal negotiated with its EU partners and the IMF.

"If the country's budgetary commitments are not honoured, there needs to be appropriate revisions, which means either supplementary financing and additional time, or mechanisms for an exit, which in this case must be orderly," the IMF chief said.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn is filing a $1 million countersuit against the New York City hotel maid who accused him of sexual assault, saying she seriously damaged his reputation with what he calls a bogus allegation.

The disgraced French politician and former head of the International Monetary Fund said in court papers filed Monday that the Guinean-born Nafissatou Diallo made a "malicious and wanton false accusation" when she said he assaulted her one year ago after she arrived to clean his hotel suite.

The married Strauss-Kahn, 63, says whatever happened was consensual, and he has denied doing anything violent.

The government's central argument for the creation of new generation of secret courts has been "blown out of the water" by the leak of highly sensitive British intelligence in the US, according to former shadow home secretary David Davis.

Ministers are stepping up plans to expand secret hearings into civil courts at the behest of MI5 and MI6, amid concerns that the US authorities will cut off the flow of intelligence if details emerge in open court.

But in a Guardian article, Davis calls on ministers to face down the demands after details were leaked in the US about a British double agent instructed by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula to blow up an aeroplane with a highly sophisticated underpants bomb.

"This argument has been blown out of the water by last week's disclosures, which demonstrate that the American system leaks far more than the British ever could," Davis writes. "This leak happened not in the pursuit of justice but as a casually irresponsible piece of political spin."

Greek parties fail in a last-ditch attempt to form a government; there will be new elections, most like June 17; decision followed an attempt by the Democratic Left to broker a deal, whereby ND and Pasok would renounce the promises they made in a letter to the EU; the Greek election campaign has already started, with centrist leaders trying to portray the poll as a vote for or against the euro; President Karolos Papoulias said he had been informed by the central bank governor that there was a danger of a bank run in Greece; statistics show that Greece have stepped up bank withdrawals since the elections; former Greek PM Costas Simitis says leaving the euro would be a disaster for Greece; the caretaker Greek government has decided to service the current tranches of Greek international law bonds; Cyprus has become the latest country to run into trouble with its banks, and is likely to request official help soon; Francois Hollande was inaugurated as president, takes off to Berlin, and tells Angela Merkel that he really wants to renegotiate the fiscal pact; he says the eurozone will miss its deficit targets without a stronger effort to raise growth; he said all options, including eurobonds, will have to be carefully considered; the German economy grew by 0.5% in Q1, helping the eurozone to achieve an overall rate of zero; but experts warn that the German performance is unlikely to be sustained as the global economy turns down; Hollande names the former German teacher Jean-Marc Ayrault as his prime minister; Michel Sapin and Pierre Moscovici are considered the most likely candidates for the finance ministry; the ECB and Germany are at loggerheads over what to do with the EFSF guarantees to the ECB during the Greek PSI; Spain wants to co-opt the ECB into its bank resolution strategy; five candidates are standing for the EBRD presidency, with the eurozone unable to announce its own candidate; Fitch says another LTRO is needed because banks will not have deleveraged in time to repay the old one; John Kay says economists' notions of credibility was incompatible with democracy; Robert Skidelsky, meanwhile, wonders what Keynes would have done.

In France, a second division team is playing in the cup-final, a team with no money, but how can that be? With all the money that does the rounds in the top French football league, here you have a team with little or no money making it to the Cup Final game, and the reference here is very clear indeed, namely that you don't have to have lots of money to be a powerful force in politics. The MoVimento 5 Stelle is busy demonstrating just that at this moment. So, at this point I would be careful about worrying about the future as many are currently doing, dishonestly saying: "But what will become of them, what will they do, what are they going to propose?" and other such bullshit. Meanwhile, they are genuinely and honestly going about their business of occupying the territory with the aim of clearly revealing the other guys' lousy politics, which is a form of vigilance over the Municipal Councils, Regional Councils and so on, which is the first point, but secondly, they already also have a policy platform in place. All of this with no money, which is the most serious indictment of all against the Caste that has always and only relied on money, our money above all - but not exclusively since they have also colluded with the banks and Foundations and have gotten up to all sorts of things that the Followers of this Blog know all about.
This is the first issue, but a further issue is that of the Internet. I don't know whether or not you know this, but I believe that a few years ago, still in France, there was a soccer team that was being trained via the Internet, without any trainer on site. Now, I don't know whether this example is perhaps a step too far as an analogy for Beppe Grillo who acts as a highlighter, a detonator, a resonance chamber or an attack centre-forward, but maybe it doesn't really matter anyway. What is certain, however, is that the Internet undoubtedly has a major role to play. For some time already the Internet has made certain things possible, even in a country like ours that is somewhat backward in this regard, and not purely by accident either.

NET TV is reporting that the election will be held on June 17 with supreme court judge Panagiotis Pikrammenos heading the caretaker administration .

The crisis-hit eurozone avoided a double-dip recession by the narrowest of margins in the first three months of 2012 as an unexpectedly strong performance by Germany compensated for plunging activity in countries wilting from tough austerity programmes.

Underlining the two-speed nature of the 17-nation single currency area, the 0.5% expansion in Europe's biggest economy helped to compensate for weaker output in Greece, Italy and Spain.

Growth in the eurozone stagnated in the first quarter of 2012 following the 0.3% decline recorded in the final three months of 2011 - just avoiding the two successive quarters of falling output that would have officially signalled a double-dip recession.

At least 26 Italian banks have had their long-term debt and deposit ratings downgraded by credit ratings agency Moody's, citing the country's recession and rising bad debt levels.

Moody's said all the banks affected had a negative outlook and that some had been downgraded at least one notch while others by as many as four notches.

"The ratings for Italian banks are now amongst the lowest within advanced European countries, reflecting these banks' susceptibility to the adverse operating environments in Italy and Europe," Moody's said in a statement on Monday.

The ratings agency cited a return of Italy's economy to recession, government austerity measures that are hurting demand, rising problem loans and restricted access to market funding as among the factors behind its downgrades.

The US justice department opened an investigation into how JP Morgan lost more than $2bn in poorly managed trading at its London office as the bank's embattled boss, Jamie Dimon, saw off attempts by shareholders to strip him of his role as chairman.

The justice department inquiry is at a preliminary stage and as yet there appears to be no evidence of criminal wrongdoing at the bank. The Securities and Exchange Commission has already launched a separate investigation and as political pressure for greater regulation of Wall Street banks begins to mount.

President Barack Obama appeared on the daytime talk show The View on Tuesday to call for Wall Street reform. "JP Morgan is the best, or one of the best managed, banks. You could have a bank that isn't as strong, isn't as profitable making those same bets and we might have had to step in. That's exactly why Wall Street reform's so important," he said

While the long-term decline in bank deposits over the past 3 years has been well documented both on Zero Hedge and elsewhere, it is the most recent, acute post-election phase that has not gotten much coverage. Minutes ago Bloomberg sent out a notice that things in Greece may be on the verge of the final collapse. From Bloomberg: "Anxious Greeks have withdrawn as much as 700 million euros ($893 million) from the nation's banks since the inconclusive May 6 election, President Karolos Papoulias told party leaders yesterday, according to a transcript of the meeting posted on the presidency's website today. Papoulias said he got the information from the head of the Bank of Greece, the central bank, George Provopoulos, according to the transcript." While this was likely a negotiation talking point to facilitate the formation of the government, the reality as we now know is that there has been NO government formed, which now means that the bank run will only get worse. Needless to say, a Greek banking system which is now virtually shut out of any extrenal funding except for the ELA, where it has a few billions euros in access left, will be unable to deal with hundreds of millions in deposit outflows.

This may be the beginning of the end for Greece, just as Buiter and later JPM warned over the weekend.

(Reuters): BRASILIA, May 14 - Brazil on Monday escalated a growing trade fight with Argentina by increasing the bureaucratic obstacles for importing about 10 perishable products including apples, raisins, and potatoes, a senior Brazilian government official told Reuters.

MercoPress: Brazil's Real tumbled to 2 per dollar for the first time in almost three years as Finance Minister Guido Mantega said the exchange rate doesn't worry the government, opening expectations the currency may fall further.

Washington Times: Behind the headlines of warring drug gangs and a soaring murder rate in Mexico, a fast-growing high-tech economy centered on the aerospace industry has sprung up in recent years. In Chihuahua City alone, 36 aerospace plants have opened since 2007 as a growing number of international parts makers use the city as a base for tapping a massive airplane-production market in the United States.

The Programme of the MoVimento 5 Stelle {5 Star MoVement} has other points relating to quoted companies including these:
- Abolition of the system of Chinese boxes in the Stock Exchange
- Abolition of multiple positions by the people on the Board of directors of a quoted company
- Introduction of structures that really represent people with small shareholdings in quoted companies
- Forbid the possibility of mixing up the holding of shares between the banking system, the industrial system and the news media system.
- Bring in the liability of financial institutions in relation to the products they propose with a share in the losses if there happen to be any
- Prevent the purchase of a company mainly using debt (eg. Telecom Italia) - Introduction of a ceiling for the salaries of managers in the companies quoted on the Stock Exchange
- Abolition of stock options
- Abolition of private "de facto" monopolies, especially Telecom Italia, Autostrade, ENI, ENEL, Mediaset, Ferrovie dello Stato
- Forbid the appointment of people with definitive criminal convictions (eg. Scaroni at ENI) as administrators in companies that either have the State as a shareholder or are quoted on the Stock Exchange
One of the problems of our economy is the lack of foreign investment. But who would play the game knowing that the cards are marked and the dealer is a cheat? Monti keep going. Bring in the Programme of the MoVimento 5 Stelle. As ever, advice is free!

EU naval forces have conducted their first raid on pirate bases on the Somali mainland, saying they have destroyed several boats.

The EU forces were transported by helicopter to the bases near the port of Haradhere, a well known pirate lair.

Anti-piracy forces have been reluctant to attack mainland bases, fearing for the crew of captured ships.

Somalia-based pirates have seized vessels across the Indian Ocean and demand huge ransoms for their release.

South African police have fired tear gas after clashes between opposition supporters and trade union activists.

Opposition leader Helen Zille told the BBC that about 1,000 unionists attacked her supporters in central Johannesburg.

The Cosatu trade union federation regretted the violence and said its members were also wounded.

Libyan Islamist commander Abdel Hakim Belhadj has resigned his military post in a bid to enter politics.

Mr Belhadj, a key brigade leader in the 2011 toppling of Col Gaddafi, plans to run in elections next month.

He is a former member of an Islamist insurgent group which sought to overthrow Gaddafi in the 1990s.

Pakistan is considering an invitation from Nato to attend this weekend's Chicago summit on Afghanistan.

Nato said Pakistan had an important role to play in its neighbour's future.

The move comes amid signs that Pakistan may be about to lift a blockade of Nato's ground supply lines to Afghanistan imposed in November.

Violent altercations broke out Tuesday throughout the West Bank and in east Jerusalem as thousands of Palestinians set out to mark "Nakba Day" (the "Day of Catastrophe" mourning Israel's creation and Palestinian displacement) with rallies and demonstrations.

Earlier in the day, Border Police were called to disperse several dozen Palestinians in Bethlehem who hurled stones at Jewish worshippers who gathered for morning prayers at Rachel's Tomb, a heavily-guarded shrine sacred to both Jews and Muslims.

Palestinian police intervened in the melee, although some 200 Palestinians were allowed to hold a demonstration at the site, Army Radio reported.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Monday sharply criticized the Western requests for Iranian cooperation and transparency over its nuclear fuel enrichment program are "too lax."

Speaking with local Army radio, Barak charged that "The demands today (on Iran) ahead of talks are so minimal, that even if Iran accepts all of them, it will still be able to continue and make progress with its nuclear program."

Israel, the United States and other Western countries believe Iran is operating a clandestine military nuclear weaponization program, under the ruse of medical research and power generation.

Israel considers a nuclear armed Iran as an existential threat, particularly in light of repeated statements by its leaders to destroy the Jewish state.

At least 21 civilians were killed when Syrian security forces opened fire on a funeral procession in the central town of Khan Sheikhoun, in Idlib province, during a visit by the monitors, activists say.

A spokesman of the rebel military council gave a higher death toll, saying at least 50 people were killed in Tuesday's attack during which cars belonging to the UN team were hit.

The activists said the observers were not among the wounded, but their vehicles were damaged.

The latest bout of violence in the northern city of Tripoli, which has left nine people dead and several dozen more wounded, began after the authorities arrested Shadi el Mawlawi.

Islamic groups in the north of Lebanon have closed one of the city's main squares in protest against Mawlawi's arrest, who is now facing terrorism charges.

The city is home to a large Alawite minority, which is the sect that Syrian president Bashar al Assad belongs to, as well as a Sunni majority, who support the Syrian opposition.

Britain's ambassador in Beijing, Sebastian Wood, was summoned to the Foreign Ministry to receive a rebuke from China's vice foreign minister Song Tao.

Mr Song said the meeting with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader amounted to serious interference in China's internal affairs.

Mr Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg met the Dalai Lama privately on Monday at St Paul's Cathedral, where he was receiving the £1.1 million Templeton Prize for his work affirming the spiritual dimension of life. He donated the bulk of the prize to Save the Children to support its work in India.

New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, a Republican often mentioned as a potential vice presidential candidate but who repeatedly has denied interest, has criticized fellow Republican Mitt Romney's stance on immigration.

Martinez questioned the likely GOP presidential nominee's "self-deportation" strategy during an interview with Newsweek.

The magazine quotes the governor as asking for the meaning of self-deportation. She also says she doesn't doubt that Hispanics were alienated during the campaign for the GOP nomination.

Colombia Reports: Bogota authorities tightened security measures Tuesday following a bombing that targeted a former minister, leaving five people dead and 39 injured. The head of Bogota's police General Luis Eduardo Martinez attributed the attacks targeting former Interior Minister Fernando Londoño to the FARC. Authorities have confirmed that the conservative politician has been subjected to threats from Colombia's largest guerrilla group in the past due to his outspoken conservative views, his alliance with former President Alvaro Uribe and his current work as a radio host.

Colombia Reports: Colombian authorities captured a twelfth politician accused of signing pacts with paramilitary organization AUC in the early 2000s, local media reported Tuesday. Colombia's Prosecutor General's Office is currently investigating 12 former mayors, councilmen and deputies from the country's central Magdalena valley who signed the "Chivolo" and "Pivijay" pacts with paramilitary organization AUC.

MercoPress: Brazilian police was out in full force to occupy for an indefinite period a group of favelas (shanty towns) surrounding the `marvellous' city of Rio do Janeiro following the killing of the state's most wanted drug lord.

Colombia Reports: Venezuelan opposition candidate Henrique Capriles told Colombian ex-President Alvaro Uribe Monday to not interfere in the country's election race. Uribe has been meeting with Venezuelan opposition leaders since last year and has increasingly opened the attack on sitting President Hugo Chavez with whom the Colombian former head of state had frequent clashes while still in power.

LAHT: SAN SALVADOR - The man who managed the leftist FMLN's successful campaign for the mayoralty of the central Salvadoran town of El Rosario was gunned down by unknown assailants, police said. Juan Pablo Rodriguez was fatally shot Saturday night after leaving the local FMLN office, a policeman speaking on condition of anonymity told Efe.

Investing billions in new nuclear power stations would have forced a credit-rating downgrade on energy giant RWE, the company's chief executive has revealed. The head of another big six energy company, E.ON, blamed the abandonment of its nuclear plans on a lack of "financial firepower".

Tuesday's developments are the latest to demonstrate that the huge cost and decades-long payback times of new nuclear power stations are making them difficult to fund in the current economic crisis. RWE and E.ON cancelled their joint plan to build new reactors in March, while nuclear giant EDF has delayed work at its site at Hinkley and EDF's nuclear partner Centrica says the case for nuclear investment is "unproven".

The oil company Total started pumping heavy mud down its leaking well in the North Sea on Tuesday in an attempt to stop an escape of gas that has lasted nearly eight weeks and could deprive Britain of nearly 6% of its supply this summer.

"The well intervention operation got underway at 8:20am with the pumping of heavy mud into the well from the main support vessel," the oil and gas major said in a statement.

The work, at the Elgin platform, 240 km off the coast of Scotland, is expected to last several days before engineers can determine whether the leak has been stopped, Total said.

The leak is costing the company around £1.8m a day in relief operations and lost net income.

Twenty years on from the Rio Earth summit, the environment of the planet is getting worse not better, according to a report from WWF.

Swelling population, mass migration to cities, increasing energy use and soaring carbon dioxide emissions mean humanity is putting a greater squeeze on the planet's resources then ever before. Particularly hard hit is the diversity of animals and plants, upon which many natural resources such as clean water are based.

"The Rio+20 conference next month is an opportunity for the world to get serious about the need for development to become sustainable. Our report indicates that we haven't yet done that since the last Rio summit," said David Nussbaum, WWF-UK chief executive.

Apparently it says that those industries in Germany that currently pay 12.5 cents a kWh will soon be better off consuming their own production.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}

Pornography filters on mobile phones are "censoring" normal web content, according to the Open Rights Group.

Its report found that 60 websites were incorrectly blocked by mobile filters designed to prevent children viewing adult content.

The affected sites included political commentaries, personal blogs and community websites.

The government is considering whether to apply similar blocks to fixed-line broadband services.

The debate over "what is the best smartphone ever?" took an unexpected twist after Apple's voice-activated assistant Siri appeared to favour the iPhone's rival.

Over the weekend, users of Siri were told the answer was Nokia's Lumia 900.

But Siri now responds to the same question with a jovial: "Wait... there are other phones?"

Nokia has accused Apple of "overriding the software" after the quirk was noticed.

A gathering of sustainability leaders hosted by Sir Richard Branson and Jamie Oliver has been warned that big businesses will be swept aside by emerging social enterprises unless they start changing their business models and contribute more to society.

Boudewijn Poelmann, who founded the hugely successful Dutch Postcode Lottery, which now operates in Sweden and the UK, said that many major businesses would disappear over the next 20 years, to be replaced by emerging social enterprises, unless they took off their blinkers and responded to the environmental and social challenges the world is facing.

"Small companies that are passionate about creating change will take over if big companies do not adapt," he said. "We already see that with energy, with so many small companies producing sustainable clean energy. The big companies are already starting to feel they are losing out."

In February this year, the US government was forced into full damage limitation mode. News that US troops in Afghanistan had sent copies of the Koran to be incinerated, sparked a wave of deadly protests that left 36 people dead and more than 200 injured. Despite an apology from President Barack Obama and assurances that the burning was accidental, the public relations offensive launched to counter the damage done to the military's reputation and stem the violence showed little sign of success.

Now imagine that instead of employing public relations experts to advise on the best strategy, US officials had a device that could advise them what to say, generating a story based on a scientific understanding of the brain's inner workings to soothe tempers and calm the mood of the population. It sounds like something from a science fiction blockbuster, but is in fact the premise behind the Pentagon's growing interest in the neurobiology of political violence, a relatively new field that combines neuroscience with more traditional social science-based approaches to understanding human behaviour.

One programme, started last year by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), even looks at finding ways to generate versions of events that could be used in attempts to persuade people not to support the enemy. Known as Narrative Networks, it seeks to "understand how narratives influence human thoughts and behaviour, then apply those findings to a security context in order to address security challenges such as radicalization, violent social mobilization, insurgency and terrorism, and conflict prevention and resolution," says William Casebeer, the Darpa official leading the work.

case (o') beer?

The power of knowledge is in mortal combat with the knowledge of power. It really is that simple... That's the Edenic apple we are all munching on.

An irreverent man of egalitarian outlook, Turvey took a mathematical approach to problem-solving and applied microeconomic theory to a wide range of issues, in particular the incorporation of capital costs into prices set by nationalised industries and regulated utilities. For example, instead of the electricity industry pricing energy in relation only to the expense of producing the next Kilowatt hour (known as the marginal cost), it should also factor in the eventual expense of building a new power station (known as long-run marginal cost).

His work was of practical as well as academic importance. As a member of the economic section of the Treasury in the early 1960s, Turvey wrote an influential paper on utility pricing which became the foundation of the 1967 White Paper on Nationalised Industries, setting out the Government's policy on tariffs and investment. While in the Treasury he developed the application of cost-benefit analysis to the roads programme, including advocacy of parking charges.

Beryl Goldsmith became Norman Tebbit's Private Secretary in 1985. When he was made a life peer in 1992 she went to work for Michael Trend, the MP for Windsor, although she remained Lord Tebbit's de facto assistant. Yet she was far more than a mere parliamentary factotum. Formidable, outspoken and staunchly Thatcherite, she took on a life of her own, both as an assiduous letter writer to newspapers, an interviewee and as an occasional columnist. By any test of aptitude she could have been a politician herself.

Beryl Goldsmith shared Norman Tebbit's fondness for inserting the boot, and it was, perhaps, not entirely surprising that many of her diatribes were directed at the EU, the BBC and those she viewed as their apologists. Yet in her one-woman crusade against the touchy-feely, the mawkish, the sloppy and the politically correct, she was prepared to go much further than her boss, and had a gift for pungent self-expression which, if anything, exceeded his. "There's a touch of steel about Beryl," observed the Labour MP Austin Mitchell, "and it's not in her corsets."