Russian officials failed to give adequate warnings before flash floods that killed at least 171 people in the southern Krasnodar region, the Russian government says.

President Vladimir Putin has demanded a full report by the weekend on the disaster and how it was handled.

A day of mourning is being held for the victims. Record torrential rain has been blamed for the floods.

The town of Krymsk was devastated and the district boss has been sacked.

Seventeen people are still missing after Friday night's disaster. Russian media say 210 people are in hospital, including 48 children.

Emergencies Minister Vladimir Puchkov said there had been warnings but "not all the population was warned in time".

Attempts by Romania's new prime minister, Victor Ponta, to impeach the country's president Traian Băsescu - under way at an extraordinary meeting in the Bucharest parliament this afternoon - are rattling the Commission amidst concerns over democracy.

The EU executive is especially worried about the "sequence of events and the quick way in which they were adopted", jeopardising progress in Romanian rule of law over the past four years, Commission spokesman Olivier Bailly told EurActiv.

European Commission president José Manuel Barroso today called premier Victor Ponta to Brussels next Thursday (12 July) to discuss "concerns" such as "actions that appear to reduce the effective powers of independent institutions like the Constitutional Court".

Ponta neglected a decision of the Constitutional Court which ruled that he could not represent Romania at the last European Summit (28-29 June). He has also issued an urgent decree, approved by the government last Wednesday (4 July), stating that opinions of the Constitutional Court are no longer mandatory for parliamentary decisions. 

This means that the Constitutional Court will no longer have a binding ruling on the president's impeachment.

The new Romanian premier also changed, in one day, chiefs of the chambers of deputies and the senate, together with the ombudsman and Constitutional Court judges.

EU Commissioner for Justice Viviane Reding tweeted that she was seriously concerned about the recent attacks on the independence of the Romanian Constitutional Court.

Politicians and intellectuals from Northern Cyprus, divided from the South since 1974, called on France and Germany to push the island toward reunification, which would open the door to full EU membership benefits and avoid Turkish assimilation.

On Saturday (7 July), journalists met with Northern Cypriot politicians and intellectuals, in an attempt to grasp the challenges Cyprus faces as holder of the rotating EU Presidency [see our Linksdossier].

The Republic of Cyprus has been an EU member since 2004, and the whole island is officially EU territory. The EU acquis is however suspended for the northern part of the island, occupied by Turkey since 1974 (see background).

The island is divided along ethnic lines, since Greek Cypriots from the north have been forced to move south, and vice versa. In spite of imposing buffer zones with barbed wire and warning signs, crossing the border into the North and ethnic Turkish side is straightforward, as a simple identity card is sufficient. 

Living standards in the north appear lower than the south, but not dramatically so. Asked to evaluate their purchasing power, several northern interlocutors put the figure at around 60% of the island's total, where the average salary is around €2000. In Northern Cyprus, the lowest civil servant salary stands at roughly €750. Basic food and housing are cheaper in the north, but imported consumer goods are scarcer and more expensive.

A modern society

Unlike their Turkish counterparts, northern Cypriot women flash a modern Western appearance and eschew the headscarf. Northern Cypriots are proud of their individual national identity, which they describe as more "Cypriot" than "Turkish".

Following hefty criticism from nearly every corner, the German government is backing away from a controversial bill passed last month that would allow local government registration offices to sell citizens' private information to marketing firms and other interested companies.

OAS_RICH('Middle2'); The government now believes that the legislation will be changed via parliamentary procedures, government spokesman Steffen Seibert said on Monday.

His comments come after a storm of protests from data protection rights groups, opposition politicians and even members of Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government. They are not only angered at the bill's plans to allow government offices to sell citizens' personal information to marketing companies, but say the measure was whisked through parliament in an undemocratic and backhanded way.

'More Discussion' Needed

The legislation was approved last month by the German parliament, the Bundestag, and still has to be approved by the Bundesrat, the legislative body that represents the federal states. It allows citizens' information filed with local registration offices to be sold to outside companies, though individuals can stop that by specifically requesting that their information be kept private. People living in Germany are required to inform such government offices of their residential locations and are also required to provide their new addresses when they move.

"Following the Bundestag decision, there needs to be more discussion," Ilse Aigner, the minister of food, agriculture and consumer protection, told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper. Aigner is a member of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party to Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

Aigner criticized a provision in the Bundestag-passed law that allows citizens to tell the registration offices that they don't want their data sold. She is lobbying for a switch in the wording so that selling the information would only be allowed if citizens' specifically request that, which is how the original bill back in November read.

Norway is hours away from the first complete shutdown of its oil industry in more than 25 years as the government holds off on breaking up a fight between striking offshore workers and employers, threatening exports from western Europe's top producer.

The strike by offshore workers over pensions is already in its third week, and a deadline for government intervention ahead of a planned midnight lockout of all offshore staff looms.

"The companies are now ready to close down production on the Norwegian continental shelf if the government doesn't intervene before midnight," Eli Ane Nedreskaar, a spokeswoman for the Norwegian oil industry association (OLF), told Reuters.

Leif Sande, leader of Industri Energi, the biggest of the three unions, said he had not heard from the OLF, nor received any signals of potential government moves.

"Our members are preparing for the lockout and will travel back to land at midnight," Sande said.

Production worries have rattled markets, with Brent crude climbing towards $99 a barrel on Monday.

The Norwegian dispute centres on a demand for early retirement at 62 by offshore workers which has raised eyebrows in a country that already pays the world's highest oil and gas salaries. Offshore workers put in 16 weeks of work a year.

State-controlled Statoil, which dominates the sector, is planning a controlled shutdown of all its production, an operation which will take 1 to 4 days.

Statoil said on Monday it was considering claiming force majeure -- an inability to honour contracts due to circumstances beyond its control -- towards transporters left without shipments.

"We cannot speculate whether the government will intervene or not. We have to take the threat of a lockout seriously," said Bard Glad Pedersen, head of information at Statoil.

The strike over early retirement has already choked off some 13 percent of Norway's oil production and 4 percent of the country's gas output.

A full closure of output in Norway - the world's No. 8 oil exporter - w ould cut off more than 2 million barrels of oil, natural gas liquids (NGL) and condensate per day.

Analysts have been banking on intervention.

"I do not think that we are going to see a lockout. At the same time, I am a bit surprised that the conflict has lasted this long," said Anne Gjoen, an analyst at Handelsbanken. "I will be extremely surprised if there is a lockout."

Norway is keen to retain its image as a reliable supplier of energy, but the Labour-led coalition government has been reluctant to intervene as it faces general elections in a year, and labour unions are important partners.

French President Francois Hollande makes his first official visit to London on Tuesday with splits over City regulation, the Euro crisis and high-income taxation set to dominate talks with David Cameron.

Despite the pair's ideological differences -- the British prime minister did not want to meet with Hollande during his election-campaign visit in February -- it is expected the two men will work together on more consensual issues.

The leaders are scheduled to hold a meeting and a working lunch on Tuesday followed by a joint press conference.

Conservative Cameron and Socialist Hollande held their first bilateral meeting before the G8 summit in Washington in May.

"I did not meet David Cameron before the election, so I am especially pleased to meet him afterwards," said Hollande at the time.

Tuesday's discussions will focus on "a broad spectrum of topics", according to a brief statement released by Cameron's Downing Street office.

GDP rank Country       CAB/GDP previous status
-------------------------------------------------
 8	 Poland 	-4.31%	 -2.41% under IMF
17	 Romania	-4.17%	 -5.13% under IMF
16	 Czech Republic -2.95%	 -1.21%
 3	 UK		-1.92%	 -2.23%
23	 Lithuania	-1.71%	 +1.86%
24	 Latvia 	-1.20%	 +5.49% under IMF
--------------------------------------------
12 (8)	 Greece 	-9.67%	-10.84% under EFSF
25(15)	 Cyprus 	-8.47%	 -7.92% under EFSF
14(10)	 Portugal	-6.42%	 -9.98% under EFSF
 5 (4)	 Spain		-3.71%	 -5.23% under troika
27(16)	 Malta		-3.21%	 -5.39% under attack
 4 (3)	 Italy		-3.19%	 -2.86% under Troika
 2	 France 	-2.23%	 -1.79% under attack
22(14)	 Slovenia	-1.08%	 -0.73% under attack
13 (9)	 Finland	-0.66%	 +1.43%
 9 (6)	 Belgium	-0.12%	 +0.5%	under attack
--------------------------------------------
15(11)	 Ireland	+0.08%	 -2.73% under EFSF
19(12)	 Slovakia	+0.14%	 -1.36% under attack
10 (7)	 Austria	+1.19%	 +2.31% under attack
26(17)	 Estonia	+3.17%	 +4.21%
 1	 Germany	+5.74%	 +6.06%
20(13)	 Luxembourg	+6.88%	 +6.91%
 6 (5)	 Netherlands	+7.49%	 +5.72%
--------------------------------------------
21	 Bulgaria	+1.94%	 -3%
18	 Hungary	+1.61%	 +0.51% under IMF
11	 Denmark	+6.16%	 +3.42%
 7	 Sweden 	+6.74%	 +5.95%

The eurogroup was utterly confused yesterday as to what kind of money the ESM plans to inject into the Spanish banking system; Jean-Claude Juncker and Olli Rehn deny that the Spanish government will have to guarantee a direct ESM equity injection; but other officials are talking about a first-loss tranche for the Spanish government (meaning the link between sovereign and banks will not be broken); Wolfgang Schauble says a common supervisory system will take a long time, and will be very complex; Spanish 10-year yields rose to over 7.1%, as investors conclude that there is no such thing as an agreement on direct ESM cash for Spanish banks; Eurogroup decides the outlines of the ESM loan to Spain; first tranche of €30bn to be disbursed this month; Troika will come every three months and assume full power over banking supervision; Spanish government must set up a bad bank; Eurogroup confirms 3% deficit target for 2014, and raises 2012 target to 6.4%; It forces Spain to increase tax, most likely VAT; An official document warns that even the looser targets may be hard to reach, and are subject to big risks; Klaus Regling is confirmed as head of the ESM, Yves Mersch at the ECB, and Juncker at the eurogroup; La Stampa says Italy has only a few weeks left to avoid a catastrophic crisis; Corriere says Mario Monti scored another victory at the eurogroup yesterday, as they reconfirmed the bond purchasing plan; Italian yields, however, still rose on the day; Italian president Giorgio Napolitano says a reform of the electoral law can no longer be postponed; A group of International economists expressed outrage at Hans-Werner Sinn's appeal against banking union; Politicians put pressure on constitutional court ahead of today's ESM hearing; France borrows short term at negative interest rates for the first time; Francois Hollande wants to lower labour cost in France; Mario Draghi hints that further rate cuts are possible; A Greek think tank, meanwhile, forecasts 6.9% contraction this year.

On Tuesday morning, Juncker announced that he'd been re-elected for another two years, but left no doubt that he doesn't intend to stick it out for the entire term. "It is not my intention to fulfill this mandate in all its length," he said. "I will step down by the end of this year or by the beginning of next year."

...

But it's still not clear what will happen after Juncker goes. The new French government has rejected the man who had been favorite to succeed him, the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble. As to whether he will end up with the job anyway, Schäuble commented after the meeting merely, "We'll leave that up to the bosses."

Meanwhile, the French finance minister, Pierre Moscovici, was full of praise for the decisions taken at the recent EU summit. That was no surprise, since the southern European countries, with the support of the new French president, Francois Hollande, had won significant concessions against the resistance of the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. The most important of these was the decision to allow eurozone members who are in financial trouble - as well as banks - easier access to money from the rescue funds. Moscovici wants to see the change implemented promptly.

Berlin and Paris fought long over the presidency of the Eurogroup, and now they have signed off on a surprising compromise: According to Spiegel's information Finance Minister Schäuble should take the job first, and then his French colleague Moscovici. Thus would the succession of Luxemburg's Juncker be cleared.

There was patent gloating about the German defeat everywhere, only thinly disguised behind strained expressions of solidarity. The full extent of the political damage that Germany's bailout policy for the eurozone, with its austerity, mass unemployment, and economic depression, has caused in southern Europe remains to be seen.

...

But Germany's defeat, however widely celebrated, holds much cause for concern. First, not everything that Germany is arguing is wrong: the urgent need for medium-term fiscal consolidation and structural reforms to increase the crisis countries' competitiveness will not go away. Equally important, however, is the reduction of economic imbalances and European policy coordination to enable growth.

...

Indeed, if the result of the recent summit means that France and Germany will henceforth each forge alliances against the other, while hiding behind verbal expressions of solidarity, we might just as well forget about Europe. Without a functioning Franco-German axis, the European project cannot succeed.

<facepalm>

FT Deutschland: Deutscher Aufruf   Starökonomen (09.07.2012)

Derweil scheinen die ersten der rund 200 Unterzeichner des Aufrufs um Ifo-Chef Sinn einen Rückzieher zu machen. Bis Montagnachmittag unterzeichneten mindestens neun von diesen Wirtschaftswissenschaftlern auch den später vom Berliner Ökonomen Frank Heinemann initiierten Aufruf - der eine europäische Bankenunion als unverzichtbar für eine dauerhafte Lösung der Krise ansieht. Er zählt nun binnen drei Tagen ebenfalls über 100 Anhänger. Die auf den Widerspruch angesprochenen Volkswirte argumentierten auf Nachfrage der FTD vor allem inhaltlich und beteuerten, dass eine Bankenunion in der aktuellen Lage durchaus sinnvoll sein könnte - sofern sie "gut gemacht" sei. Manche beteuerten, die beiden Dokumente ergänzten sich.

Meanwhile, it seems the first among the 200 signatories of the call by Ifo chief Sinn are backtracking. By Monday afternoon, at least nine of these economists had also signed the later appeal initiated by Berlin economist Frank Heinemann - calling a European Banking Union essential for a lasting solution to the crisis. He now counts well over 100 followers within three days. At the request of FTD the contradictory Economists mentioned argued particularly on content and asserted that a bank Union in the current situation could well be useful - if it is "done well". Some protested that the two documents complement each other.

A provision in the legislative proposal now being discussed by EU governments that would allow national bank resolution funds to borrow from central banks "could not be applied" in the euro area because "we could not fund such funds," Constancio said.

"We also think in more general terms that it goes against the spirit of the treaty, with respect to the independence of central banks from the financing tasks of the government," he said.

The ECB Vice President also said that he believed there needed to be "financial backstops at the national level in place in order to avoid any doubts by the citizens on the capacity of deposit guarantee schemes to fulfill their commitments."

Euro-zone finance ministers meeting here Monday were set to give Spain an extra year to bring its budget deficit back in line with the bloc's rules and agree on the terms of a big bailout for the country's banks.

The expected concession for Spain is designed to avoid provoking a further downward plunge of the already sickly Spanish economy. On Monday, annual yields on 10-year Spanish government bonds crept above the 7% mark, a level deemed unsustainable.

It also came as European officials wrangled over an agreement at last month's euro-zone summit that would allow the euro-zone bailout fund to directly boost the capital of struggling banks in the region. In dispute is whether governments of beneficiary banks would have to make good on any losses suffered by the fund on its investment in the banks.

A large majority of the 17 euro-zone countries was in favor of giving Madrid until 2014 instead of 2013 to cut its government deficit to below 3% of gross domestic product, people familiar with the matter said. These people added that they expected that resistance to be overcome by the time the ministers' meeting ends Tuesday.

"There are proposals on the table that I think are of a nature to get consensus," French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici said as he arrived for the meeting.

The tweaking of the budget targets would allow Spain to run a deficit of as much as 6.3% of gross domestic product this year, instead of 5.3%, without risking financial penalties, according to a draft statement obtained by The Wall Street Journal. The 2013 deficit target would be 4.5% of GDP and the 2014 goal would be 2.8%.

Eurozone leaders are meeting in Brussels to try to build on a "breakthrough" summit 10 days ago that agreed to ease the pressure on highly indebted states by injecting rescue funds directly into troubled banks.

But the meeting has been plagued by divisions over how to interpret the summit accord and how the decisions should be implemented.

The Spanish banking rescue was the main issue confronting ministers on Monday, but there were mixed signals over who would be liable for the mooted direct recapitalisation of the country's financial sector.

The summit resolved to break the invidious link between failing banks and weak sovereigns by agreeing to use eurozone bailout funds to recapitalise banks directly, not via governments, to avoid pushing up debt levels. But since the summit, eurozone creditor governments have backtracked on the pledges over how the accord will be implemented.

While the Germans and other north Europeans insist that direct bank injections can be contemplated only once a new regime of banking supervision is in place (likely to take a year), senior Eurogroup officials signalled that even in the event of bailout funds going straight to banks, the host country would still be burdened. If the main bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism, took equity in troubled banks, the host government would need to underwrite the risk and be liable if the bank went bust, the officials said.

"The ESM is able to take an equity share in a bank, but only against full sovereign guarantees. It remains the risk of the sovereign. There's some degree of mystification going on here," said a senior official.

That was contradicted by the European commission, which stressed there would be no liability for the host state if its banks were rescued.

At their meeting on Monday, the 17 eurozone finance ministers will be trying to find a way of replacing a eurozone president who is tired of the job - not the best situation in the middle of a crisis.

Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the Eurogroup, actually wanted to throw in the towel at the end of June.

Last November, the prime minister of tiny Luxembourg announced his plans to quit, saying the job was too stressful. After almost eight years as head of the 17-member eurozone, Juncker had had enough. "I work four hours a day for the Eurogroup. I'd rather have that time for myself," said Juncker following the most recent EU summit last week.

Juncker, who took office in 1995, is the longest serving prime minister in the European Union. Twenty years ago, he helped co-found the common euro currency. The oft grumpy-looking Juncker has the ability to mediate between the Eurogroup's large and small, rich and poor countries.

In recent years, Juncker has allowed himself to be convinced by several other eurozone leaders to extend his term as head of the Eurogroup. Last week, lacking any suitable candidate to replace him, they again asked the reluctant Luxembourger to stay on for another year. Juncker relented, but only agreed to another six months.

His condition: that Luxembourg's central bank chief, Yves Mersch, fill the current vacancy on the executive board of the European Central Bank. His request was denied, partly due to resistance from Spain, the country to previously occupy the position. Juncker has said he refuses to continue without a firm commitment for his friend Mersch.

German Deputy Finance Minister Steffen Kampeter said he doesn't expect the nation's Constitutional Court to stand in the way of Europe's permanent bailout fund and that it can come into effect in coming days.

"I'm expecting it within the next week," Kampeter said in an interview with Maryam Nemazee on Bloomberg Television's "The Pulse" in London today, when asked about Germany clearing the way for the rescue fund. "I don't expect anything on the baseline to change. Not doing anything is a much riskier threat" for Germany and Europe.

France joined a handful of euro-zone countries Monday in selling short-term debt at negative interest rates as investors seek alternatives to expensive German and Dutch debt.

Earlier in the day, Germany's six-month borrowing costs again turned negative at an auction, after the European Central Bank slashed its key policy and deposit rates to unprecedented levels last week.

Also see comments in yesterday's OT.

The number of wealthy French people planning a move to London has climbed following François Hollande's victory in the country's presidential elections, according to London-based property agents, lawyers and wealth managers.

Knight Frank, the property agent, said sales of prime property to French buyers had risen 40 per cent in the three months to the end of June 2012 compared with the same period in 2011. Average prices paid by these buyers had risen from £1.1m to £3.9m.

Liam Bailey, Knight Frank's head of residential research, said the firm had seen a "noticeable uptick" in French buyers in the past six weeks. "They are buying in the traditional west and south-west postcodes, around Kensington, Notting Hill and Fulham, with some purchasers moving outside London and into the home counties."

The French government last week announced a series of tax rises for the wealthy, including a 75 per cent top rate, a higher annual wealth tax rate for those with net worth of more than €1.3m and a rise in charges for non-residents with French property.

In April the two major US stock exchanges, Nasdaq and NYSE Arca, filed papers with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), requesting permission for exchange-traded fund sponsors to pay market makers for "going the extra mile" and ensuring that funds trade with adequate liquidity.

Under rules dating back four decades, such incentives are not allowed. In 1975, the National Association of Securities Dealers, a self-regulatory organisation, expressly prohibited its members from accepting cash for market-making on the grounds that this would distort the market.

...

On the European side of the Atlantic, however, it's not only permissible for ETF issuers to pay secondary market traders but in fact, it's long been the norm for fund providers to set aside part of their marketing budgets to pay liquidity providers.

...

But as the US market considers whether to follow Europe in allowing the direct incentivisation of ETF traders by fund providers, opinions remain divided on whether the practice supports secondary market liquidity or distorts the true picture of supply and demand.

Der Spiggle

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

Liberals appeared to have the edge on Islamists as a key figure in the revolt that ousted Moamer Gathafi urged national unity on Monday with Libya still days away from the final results of its first free poll in decades.

Mahmud Jibril of the National Forces Alliances, expected to do well based on preliminary unofficial figures from Saturday's election for a national assembly, called for all parties to come together.

"We extend an honest call for a national dialogue to come all together in one coalition, under one banner... to reach a compromise, a consensus on which the constitution can be drafted and the new government can be composed," he said.

"There was no loser and winner at all. Whoever is going to win, Libya is the real winner of those elections," Jibril added.

His remarks came hours after the leader of the rival Justice and Construction Party, Mohammed Sawan, admitted the NFA had an early lead in the vote count for the capital and Libya's second-largest city of Benghazi.

UN leader Ban Ki-moon called for Libya's new leaders to govern in a spirit of "justice and reconciliation" as he hailed the country's first elections since Gathafi's downfall.

Votes are still being tallied with preliminary results expected by Monday night or early on Tuesday, according to electoral commission officials, although observers say the count could take another four or five days.

The commission has not given a date for the final results.

Egypt's constitutional court affirmed Monday that an earlier decision that led to the dismissal of Parliament was final, rejecting a challenge by the new president and moving the country another step closer to a constitutional crisis.

The court's statement was the latest salvo in a duel between President Mohammed Morsi and the military leadership, which has relied on the courts to preserve legislative and executive powers despite a plan to hand authority to an elected government.

The sparring is wearing holes in a delicate political system and threatens to extend a 17-month-long transition that has devastated Egypt's economy, exhausted its citizens and rattled its neighbors.

Saad al-Katatni, speaker of the dissolved Parliament and a leader in the political party of Mr. Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood, said the elected Parliament would convene shortly after noon on Tuesday, in defiance of the high court's earlier warning.

The Brotherhood's secretary-general, Mahmoud Hussein, said the group would call out its formidable numbers to participate in a demonstration on Tuesday in support of the elected legislature, which is dominated by the Islamist group's political party.

Mr. Morsi said Sunday that the Parliament, which was elected in voting that ended in January, would serve until after work is completed on the country's new constitution, a process that could take months. Mr. Morsi said in his decision that new parliamentary elections would be held 60 days after the constitution is drafted.

International envoy Kofi Annan said he agreed with President Bashar al-Assad on Monday on a new "approach" to end Syria's 16-month-old conflict that he would put to the rebels.

Stepping up political efforts to halt the carnage which monitors say has cost more than 17,000 lives, the UN-Arab League envoy was reportedly to travel on to Iran, Syria's close ally.

"We discussed the need to end the violence and ways and means of doing so. We agreed an approach which I will share with the armed opposition," Annan said after meeting Assad in Damascus.

The former UN chief said he had a "constructive" meeting with Assad, on his third such mission for talks on his six-point peace plan for Syria since he was appointed in February.

"I had constructive and candid talks with President Assad," he told reporters at a Damascus hotel, echoing Syrian foreign ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi who termed the meeting "constructive and good".

The meeting came a day after nearly 100 people were reportedly killed in Syria and at a time of apparently uncompromising anger from the opposition.

The opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) slammed Annan's decision to meet Assad, saying thousands have been killed in the country despite an April ceasefire that is a key point of the envoy's plan.

Ahead of his trip to Damascus, Annan admitted his peace blueprint has so far failed to stem the bloodshed in Syria, in remarks published by French newspaper Le Monde.

Bearing the brunt of their frustration is Cheick Modibo Diarra, Mali's interim prime minister who heads a transitional government meant to be restoring the country's territorial integrity and overseeing the return to civilian rule after a March 22 coup.

At a conference in the Burkina Faso capital Ouagadougou on Saturday, six national leaders from the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) said Diarra must create a "unity government" by July 31 that can provide a clear timeline to exit the crisis.

If not, Ecowas would no longer recognise the government of Mali and the country would be suspended from sub-regional groups.

"What the heads of state are doing is accusing Diarra of not respecting the handover agreement" reached on April 6 between Ecowas and the coup leaders for a broader government, a source close to the talks said.

"They've asked Diarra to open the government, but until now it hasn't been done," the source said.

Political parties, civil society and armed factions in the north have refused to recognise the interim government, hampering efforts to negotiate with militant fighters.

Maintaining distance
Diarra himself was absent from the talks and Mali's other leader, interim President Dioncounda Traore has been in Paris since late May for treatment following a serious assault inside the presidential compound in the capital Bamako.

According to an African diplomat, Diarra has a problem of legitimacy with the Malian political class because he "quickly surrounded himself with those close to the former dictator Moussa Traore", in power from 1968 to 1991, and also because of his complex relations with coup leaders.

"In the evening, he is close to them, but in the morning he keeps his distance," the diplomat said.

Diarra, who was a world-renowned astrophysicist before turning to politics, also has his supporters.

An advisor said Diarra's fans appreciated him refusing to be at the beck and call of Ecowas. He's "a proud man, let's not forget that", the advisor said.

The runner-up in Mexico's presidential election has rejected the final results of the contest, saying he has evidence that about 5 million votes were bought by opponents.

Sunday's official tally said leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who led six weeks of protests when he lost the 2006 presidential election, finished second with 31.59 per cent of the vote.

That left him about 3.3 million votes behind winner Enrique Pena Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) with 38.21 per cent.

International election observers said the July 1 vote had been clean but prior to polling day Lopez Obrador had accused Pena Nieto and the PRI of vote buying, raising the prospect of a legal dispute over the outcome that could last for weeks.

"We cannot accept those results ...," said Lopez Obrador, who also said he was a victim of voter fraud in 2006. "We have evidence to support this and when the time is right we are going to prove that around 5 million votes were bought."

The fiery orator, who ran as a candidate of a coalition of leftist parties led by the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), did not specifically point the finger at Pena Nieto on Monday but he has concentrated heavy fire on the PRI in the past week with allegations of vote buying.

Lopez Obrador said he would wait until Thursday to decide his next step but said he is considering asking that the election be annulled.

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez declared himself fully recovered from cancer on Monday, three months before an election in which he is seeking another six-year term.

"Free, free, totally free," he told reporters when asked if he was free of the disease that struck a year ago.

The 57-year-old socialist leader was first diagnosed with cancer in the pelvic region in mid-2011. He wrongly declared himself cured at the end of that year before having a recurrence of the disease in February.

But after repeated cycles of treatment in Cuba and Venezuela, Chavez is once again declaring himself fully fit at a crucial time when his health is the main wild card before the October 7 presidential vote.

Perceptions of Chavez's ability to campaign for the election, and govern afterwards, are crucial among voters in what could be one of Venezuela's tightest elections of recent times.

At a four-hour news conference that offered more evidence of Chavez's increasing energy levels, he promised to begin campaigning on the streets with a series of caravans in provincial Venezuela from Thursday.

President Barack Obama on Monday proposed a one-year extension of the Bush-era tax cuts for families earning less than $250,000 a year, an effort to shift the conversation from the sagging economy toward tax fairness.

Mr. Obama appeared in the East Room, surrounded by people who would benefit from the extension. It is another display of the power of incumbency, which lets a president command attention for his ideas in grand surroundings not available to his challenger.

President Obama is launching a push to extend tax cuts for the middle class, Sara Murray reports on Markets Hub. (Photo: Getty Images)

His campaign will amplify the message with a series of battleground-state events this week, and Mr. Obama will make the same case on a campaign trip to Iowa on Tuesday.

The president has long supported a permanent extension of the tax cuts for families earning less than $250,000 and has called for cuts aiding wealthier families to expire.

But Monday's event marked the first time he specifically called for a one-year extension for the lower-earning group.

"Let's not hold the vast majority of all Americans and our entire economy hostage while we debate the merits of another tax cut for the wealthy," Mr. Obama said.

(Honduras Culture and Politics): The DEA has shot to death another alleged drug runner in Honduras, the second this month. The latest incident happened a week ago.  If you live in Honduras and rely on the Honduran media, you probably didn't know that until now.

(LAHT) -MEXICO CITY - Thousands of people took part in a march in Mexico City to protest against Enrique Peña Nieto, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), who was declared the winner of last week's presidential election.

LAHT: LA PAZ - Two engineers and a police officer kidnapped by Indians in the Bolivian region of Potosi were released Sunday after their abductors reached an agreement with the Bolivian government to nullify the concession granted in the zone to Canadian mining firm South American Silver, a government official said.

(MercoPress) Peruvian police captured 11 Shining Path rebels and freed 10 children thought to be in combat training, President Ollanta Humala said on Friday after a string of military setbacks and a week of anti-mining violence.

Tim's El Salvador Blog: The first half of 2012 closed with 552 fewer homicides than were committed in the first half of 2011 according to the PNC.

Americas Quarterly: Proposed reforms to the education system have resulted in tense stand-offs between students, their teachers and riot police across Guatemala. Just this week at least 40 people were injured after riot police were called in to break up a protest. The crux of Education Minister Cynthia del Aguila's proposed changes is a requirement that those who are studying to become primary school teachers will have to study for two additional years--for a total of five years of training--and complete a university degree. This has split public opinion between those who believe the country's educators should be well-educated and those who are concerned that there will be fewer teachers because of the increased costs that will result from more training..

he best-known feature of China's macroeconomic imbalances is heavy dependence on exports for growth, which is typically attributed to weak domestic demand: as a middle-income country, China lacks the purchasing power to consume the goods that it produces. With nearly unlimited access to advanced-country markets, China can tap into global external demand and raise its GDP growth potential, as it has done for the past two decades.

If this view is right, the solution is straightforward: China can correct its imbalances by increasing its citizens' incomes (by cutting taxes, raising wages, or increasing social spending), so that they can consume more, thereby reducing the economy's dependence on exports. Indeed, nearly all mainstream economists prescribe this approach for China.

But there is another explanation for China's excessive export dependence, one that has more to do with the country's poor political and economic institutions. Specifically, export dependence partly reflects the high degree of difficulty of doing business in China. Official corruption, insecure property rights, stifling regulatory restraints, weak payment discipline, poor logistics and distribution, widespread counterfeiting, and vulnerability to other forms of intellectual-property theft: all of these obstacles increase transaction costs and make it difficult for entrepreneurs to thrive in domestic markets.

By contrast, if China's private firms sell to Western multinationals, such as Wal-Mart, Target, or Home Depot, they do not have to worry about getting paid. They can avoid all of the headaches that they would have encountered at home, because well-established economic institutions and business practices in their export markets protect their interests and greatly reduce transaction costs.

Puny wage increases that have been chewed up by inflation have left hundreds of thousands of Bay Area workers worse off than they were 10 years ago.

But top wage earners have seen their paychecks soar by 26 percent over the same period when adjusted for inflation. That's widened the gap between those on the top and bottom of the workforce.

A decade ago, the average wages of those in the lowest income categories were 66 percent below the average pay of the workers perched on the highest rungs of the income ladder. But 10 years later, the divide has reached 73 percent.

"This speaks directly to the issue of income inequality that gets the 99 percent Occupy people so upset," said Jon Haveman, chief economist of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute.

Following up on reported similar threats to Tanzania, Rep.  Howard Berman (D - CA), the former House Committee on Foreign Affairs chairman has threatened the tiny island nation of Tuvalu with sanctions over their reflagging service, which is reportedly be using by some Iranian oil tankers.

Reflagging the ships wouldn't stop them from being under the assorted embargoes on Iranian oil, but it might conceivably make it easier for them to buy insurance, which according to Berman is "sanctionable activity" from a US perspective.

[...]

Tuvalu's embassy could not be reached for comment on the threat, primarily because Tuvalu has no embassy.

A few families have owned thousands of cabs since the Great Depression, or shortly thereafter. Each taxi must have a medallion affixed to its hood. There are fewer than 14,000 medallions, and the price for each has increased to $1 million from $275,000 in 2002.

A vastly profitable corporation, Medallion Financial, owned by the grandson of one of those original cab owners, provides financing for the medallions. It borrows at less than 1 percent and lends at 6 percent.

If a poor schlemiel falls behind? The city plays repo man and takes back the medallion.

It is a can't-miss business plan.

Years ago, drivers didn't have to rent their cabs, and they didn't pay for gas. They split their daily proceeds with garage owners. Slow nights hurt both.

Now drivers are "independent contractors," which is a winsome way of saying owners transferred risk onto their backs.

If it is a slow night in August, and a driver limps home after 12 hours with $30, too bad.

Just make that lease payment.

"It's sharecropping economics, and it only works for the plantation owner," said Edward Rogoff, a professor at Baruch College, and himself a former cabby.

After the EU gets done liberating the Greek taxi market, perhaps it should move onto New York?

Something tells me, however, that what the EU actually has planned for Greek taxis will look more like what NY looks like now.

Europe's plan to consolidate a patchwork of national air traffic control systems to reduce flight delays and boost environmental performance appears grounded for now, hampered by national governments' inaction and fear of losing sovereignty.

Aviation officials have voiced frustration at the slow progress in integrating national air traffic control zones into regional blocks - an objective that was initially meant to be completed by the end of 2012.

They are now accusing governments - including Germany and France - of failing to live up to their obligations under the EU's Single European Sky (SES) initiative.

'Getting nowhere' with governments

With Europe's aviation industry saddled with slow growth and high fuel costs, airlines have become more vocal, urging the European Commission and EU leaders to stick to their December 2012 deadline to create nine `functional airspace blocks', or FABs, that were proposed with much fanfare in 2004.

"With the member states, we are getting nowhere," lamented Regula Dettling-Ott, Lufthansa's vice president for European Affairs. Speaking at a meeting of transatlantic airlines and regulators last month, she complained that "the biggest single CO2 reduction project Europe has is not moving."

Her boss, Lufthansa chief executive Christoph Franz, told the Association of European Airlines in a 24 May speech that he was "furious that the largest EU member states are simply not delivering" on their commitments.

Ecology groups like Transport and Environment have endorsed efforts to end the partition of air traffic control along national lines, seeing it as a way to counter the growing rate of aviation emissions.

Billions of euros at stake

There are more than environmental concerns at stake - the EU and airlines expect to invest upwards of €30 billion in modernising air traffic control.

Tom Dettweiler makes his living miles down. He helped find the Titanic. After that, his teams located a lost submarine heavy with gold. In all, he has cast light on dozens of vanished ships.

Mr. Dettweiler has now turned from recovering lost treasures to prospecting for natural ones that litter the seabed: craggy deposits rich in gold and silver, copper and cobalt, lead and zinc. A new understanding of marine geology has led to the discovery of hundreds of these unexpected ore bodies, known as massive sulfides because of their sulfurous nature.

These finds are fueling a gold rush as nations, companies and entrepreneurs race to stake claims to the sulfide-rich areas, which dot the volcanic springs of the frigid seabed. The prospectors -- motivated by dwindling resources on land as well as record prices for gold and other metals -- are busy hauling up samples and assessing deposits valued at trillions of dollars.

"We've had extreme success," Mr. Dettweiler said in a recent interview about the deepwater efforts of his company, Odyssey Marine Exploration of Tampa, Fla.

Skeptics once likened mining the deep to looking for riches on the moon. No more. Progress in marine geology, predictions of metal shortages in the decades ahead and improving access to the abyss are combining to make it real.

Environmentalists have expressed growing alarm, saying too little research has been done on the risks of seabed mining. The industry has responded with studies, reassurance and upbeat conferences.

The technological advances center on new robots, sensors and other equipment, some of it derived from the offshore oil and gas industry. Ships lower exploratory gear on long tethers and send down sharp drills that gnaw into the rocky seabed. All of this underwater machinery is making it more and more feasible to find, map and recover seabed riches.

Industrial powers -- including government-supported groups in China, Japan and South Korea -- are hunting for sulfides in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans. And private companies like Odyssey have made hundreds of deep assessments and claims in the volcanic zones around Pacific island nations: Fiji, Tonga, Vanuatu, New Zealand, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea.

The International Seabed Authority, a sleepy United Nations body located in Jamaica that presides over mineral rights on the high seas, an area its officials like to characterize as 51 percent of the earth's surface. has found itself besieged with sulfide queries.

The discovery of a bacterium that could substitute arsenic for phosphorus to survive is refuted by new research.

Six elements are considered essential for life - oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulphur - so the announcement in 2010 implied one of biology's golden rules had been broken.

The findings provoked an immediate backlash and now two new scientific papers suggest the bacterium needs phosphorus to grow after all.

The studies appear in Science journal.

One of the papers is authored by Tobias Erb from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and collagues; the other comes from a team led by Marshall Reaves of Princeton University in New Jersey.

In December 2010, the same journal published a paper claiming to show that the GFAJ-1 micro-organism, found in the arsenic-rich sediments of California's Mono Lake, could incorporate arsenic into its DNA when phosphorus was unavailable.

The team, led by Felisa Wolfe-Simon - then based at the US Geological Survey (USGS) - had acknowledged very low levels of phosphate (a phosphorus-containing molecule) within their study samples.

But they concluded that this contamination was insufficient to permit GFAJ-1 to grow.

Once the scientists captured the precise movement waves on the Sun's surface, they were able to calculate its unseen plasma motions. This procedure is not unlike measuring the strength and direction of an ocean's current by monitoring the time it takes a swimmer to move across the water--currents moving against the swimmer will result in slower times while those going in the same direction will produce faster times, with stronger and weaker currents enhancing or diminishing the impact on the swimmer.

What they found significantly departed from existing theory--specifically, the speed of the Sun's plasma motions were approximately 100 times slower than scientists had previously projected.

"Our current theoretical understanding of magnetic field generation in the Sun relies on these motions being of a certain magnitude," explained Shravan Hanasoge, an associate research scholar in geosciences at Princeton University and a visiting scholar at NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. "These convective motions are currently believed to prop up large-scale circulations in the outer third of the Sun that generate magnetic fields."

"However, our results suggest that convective motions in the Sun are nearly 100 times smaller than these current theoretical expectations," continued Hanasoge, also a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Plank Institute in Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany. "If these motions are indeed that slow in the Sun, then the most widely accepted theory concerning the generation of solar magnetic field is broken, leaving us with no compelling theory to explain its generation of magnetic fields and the need to overhaul our understanding of the physics of the Sun's interior."

Reverse the tape back to mid-March and all the talk was of looming droughts and hosepipe bans following two consecutive dry winters. It's no surprise that the wags are now calling it the "wettest drought ever".

But what does this rapid turnabout prove, if anything? Does it show that the talk in spring of hosepipe bans and drought orders was laughably premature? Or, conversely, that large parts of eastern England have mercifully dodged the proverbial bullet more through good fortune than sensible management of the fresh water supplies provided by our seemingly increasingly erratic weather patterns? Where, for example, would those drought-affected areas be today if the rains hadn't arrived with the persistence and relentless force that they did?

I remain sceptical that the powers that be - and the private companies that now manage our water supplies - will use the "teachable moment" provided by 2012's water roller-coaster (or should that be log flume?) to truly get a grip on our nation's water infrastructure and, more importantly, future-proof it against the climate we are predicted to experience in the decades ahead.

However, I am at least pleased that many of the water companies are stressing today that - despite lifting their restrictions on water use - things are still not back to "normal". This is what Veolia Water Central's spokesman said:

While most welcome, this recovery in the aquifers does not remove the underlying problems caused by the drought and we are continuing to plan for the possibility of a third dry winter.

Given the volume of rain that has fallen, it seems fair to assume that all the rivers, reservoirs and aquifers have now fully recovered. But the data from the Environment Agency, which monitors water levels throughout England and Wales, still paints a varied picture across the regions.

For the best insight, read the Environment Agency's "weekly water situation reports". The contrast between the latest report (pdf) and the one published in mid-March (pdf) illustrates just how much rain has fallen.

Among the rolling volcanic hills in western Uganda lies Queen Elizabeth National Park, famed for its natural beauty and wildlife. The park's varied fauna has spawned a productive safari industry. However, more recently, the animals have been destroying, rather than supporting, local people's livelihoods.

"Elephants from the park have raided my fields for beans, maize and matooke," says Mohamood Mwapiri, a farmer in Kibodi, a village on the edge of the park. "When they come to eat they also destroy everything. At its worst, the effect was close to famine. We had nothing to eat and nothing to sell - they ate or destroyed all we had."

The Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) has identified this region as a priority hotspot for friction between humans and animals, especially between farmers and elephants that come to feed on the high concentrations of nutritious foods they can find on local cultivated farmland.

Stopping the elephants is no easy task. Innocent Kahwa used to work for the UWA trying to prevent crop raiding by elephants. "We tried digging deep, steep-sided trenches around crops," he says. "But elephants are intelligent. They just used dirt to fill in the trenches and crossed over." In the absence of effective prevention mechanisms, farmers have been watching over their fields at night, attempting to scare off animals by shouting and banging empty jerry cans, or calling in the UWA to fire shots in the air.

"Keeping watch over land all night is simply not practical for farmers who have to work during the day, and if he has a large farm it's hard for him to patrol effectively," says Dr Lucy King, chief operations officer of Save the Elephants. "Fire crackers and fire balls are dangerous and can cause grass fires. Shooting elephants with spears and guns is both illegal and incredibly dangerous, as a wounded elephant can become very aggressive."

King began researching elephant reactions to bees after reading that elephants tended to avoid acacia trees that were hosting beehives. "I saw just how much elephants were running away from disturbed bee sounds," she explains. This, she says, inspired the idea of a beehive fence deterrent system. The system uses trip wires to link beehives together, forming a protective fence around land that is raided. When elephants trip the wire, the bees are disturbed and emerge from their hives, scaring the elephants away.

When Kahwa left the UWA he became the community liaison officer for Volcanoes Safaris Partnership Trust (VSPT), which is helping to launch the beehive fence initiative in Kibodi and the surrounding area. "We installed five demonstration hives in January to form a small fence at one of the spots where elephants cross into the village from the park, and will put up five more soon," he says. "We are training local farmers to set up and manage their own hives to protect their land."

Over a month old, but hadn't seen it before on ET.

By 2050, more than 6 billion humans are expected to live in cities, according to the United Nations. Ports, which constitute more than half the world's largest cities, will face unique challenges as their populations swell.

More than 130 port cities around the world are at increasing risk from severe storm-surge flooding, damage from high storm winds, rising and warming global seas and local land subsidence. Poorly planned development often puts more people in vulnerable areas, too, increasing risk. About $3 trillion of assets are at risk today, a tally on track to reach $35 trillion by 2070, according to an ongoing study by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development.

Here are the 20 port cities most vulnerable to climate extremes, ranked by assets at risk.

Apple's withdrawal from 'green' certification program surprises purchasers - SiliconValley.com

After establishing itself as an environmental leader among consumer electronics companies, Apple's (AAPL) abrupt withdrawal from a prominent "green" product registry has set off a furor in the blogosphere and could modestly cut into the company's computer sales.

Apple's decision may be tied to the design of the new MacBook Pros, which have batteries glued into the case and can't be disassembled for recycling -- a violation of the green certification standards of EPEAT, a nonprofit product rating group backed by many manufacturers and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

"I've had some conversations, and Apple has said that their design direction is not compatible with EPEAT standards," the group's CEO, Robert Frisbee, said in an interview Monday. "It's kind of odd since they've helped design" the standards.

Greenpeace spokesman Casey Harrell said Apple "has pitted design against the environment -- and chosen design. They're making a big bet that people don't care, but recycling is a big issue."

Two young Britons and an American have been gored during the famous San Fermin bull-run in the northern Spanish city of Pamplona as foreigners once more became the favoured target of the festival's fighting bulls.

The two unnamed Britons, aged 20 and 29, were both gored in the leg after one bull turned back on the runners and attacked a mass of people cowering against the barriers marking the course.

Television pictures showed the 550kg bull, called Fugado, lowering his horns and ploughing into a group of runners wearing the traditional white and red San Fermin colours towards the end of the 850-metre run.

A 38-year-old American from Philadelphia was also gored, making this the most dangerous San Fermin bull-run since a 27-year-old Spaniard was killed in 2009. On that occasion the bull also turned on its tracks and gored Daniel Jimeno through the neck and lung. The previous fatality was an American student, Matthew Tassio, who was killed in 1995. Fifteen people have died at the Pamplona event over the past century.

The runs attract more than 2,000 people every morning of the nine-day fiesta. Many are young foreigners, drawn to an event made famous by Ernest Hemingway in his 1926 book The Sun Also Rises.

Local authorities warn that foreigners are more likely to injure themselves by drinking too much or indulging in other notoriously dangerous San Fermin rituals -- such as drunken jumps off local monuments into the arms of people waiting below.

A ban on New Zealand ships berthing in the big American base at Pearl Harbour has turned into a boon for Kiwi sailors and the nightclubs in downtown Honolulu.

The frigate HMNZS Te Kaha and tanker HMNZS Endeavour are taking part in Rimpac, the world's biggest military operation, but while old enemies Japan and Russia are allowed into Pearl Harbour, the New Zealand ships have been sent to Aloha Tower - deep in the commercial heart of Honolulu.

They are happily close to Hooters and a place called Bikini Cantina. The exile to Honolulu is in return for New Zealand's ban on nuclear warships.

The Honolulu Star-Advertiser in a story this weekend, and reprinted in the forces paper Stars and Stripes, notes that Nikol DeWoody, a bartender for Bikini Cantina received nine marriage proposals - all from New Zealand navy sailors, all on the same night.

"When they first came (to the bar), I looked up and there were like 100 of them," DeWoody said. "It got busy. And they are nice dudes," she told the newspaper.

DeWoody called the New Zealand sailors "very respectful."

Bikini Cantina customer Marc Anthony said the Kiwis are better off at Aloha Tower.

Hundreds of people including sex workers protested in Paris on Saturday
against plans to make soliciting prostitution illegal, criticising a minister's
drive to eradicate the practice of paying for sex as counter-productive.

France's minister for women's rights, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, caused a stir in late June by saying she would seek to make prostitution disappear by punishing those who pay for sex, rather than the prostitutes themselves.

The Socialist politician was backed by prominent feminists and allies in government, but her remarks unleashed a hail of criticism from sex workers' unions, which argued that punishing clients would drive business underground, thereby endangering prostitutes.

At Place Pigalle in the heart of Paris' red-light district, dozens of sex workers chanted pro-prostitution slogans through loudspeakers and waved signs that read "Penalised clients = murdered prostitutes" and "Sex work is work too".

In France, with an estimated 18,000 to 20,000 prostitutes according to a 2012 report, prostitution is not illegal, although laws exist against pimping, human trafficking and soliciting sex in public.

It's nothing if not depressing. I drop a coin on the floor and bend down to pick it up. The bending is laborious and with it comes the risk of toppling over. My head is heavy and moving it causes dizziness. And there's still that coin to pick up - a five-cent piece, which, with my clumsy hands whose fingers are not very flexible and lacking a proper sense of touch - seems to defy my attempts to grab it, five, six times. Those around me joke: "Hurry up, grandma, we haven't got all day."

"Welcome to old age," says Rahel Eckardt, a senior physician at Berlin's Evangelical Geriatrics Centre (EGZB) who has just helped me climb into an industrial-style futuristic boiler suit which should give the wearer the sense of what it's like to be old.

Consisting of ear-protectors that stifle hearing, a yellow visor that blurs eyesight and makes it hard to distinguish colours, knee and elbow pads which stiffen the joints, a Kevlar-jacket-style vest which presses uncomfortably against my chest, and padded gloves, the Age Man Suit, which weighs around 10kg, has been custom-made to simulate the physical consequences of old age. I have not felt so encumbered since being nine-and-a-half months pregnant, or so claustrophobic since climbing into the cramped hiding place an Iraqi dissident had built beneath his kitchen.

A walk up the stairs leaves one breathless and tired, trying to remove tablets from a blister pack is a fumbling disaster, and the heaviness coupled with the stifled hearing and vision is distinctly disorienting.

This is exactly what Eckardt wants her students of medicine to experience.

Aurélien Villette, french photographer, invites us to discover beautiful pictures of exploration around the forgotten architecture. Visually impressive, the photographs from several series are revealed later in the article under the artist name Adonis.

And much more to marvel at.

This report in Brazilian newspaper Fohla De S. Paulo shows the lengths young Europeans are going to to get a Visa -- marriage, temporary apartment moves, a few thousand dollars payment to a bride.

It's not easy but its the best option for many of those who want to get a permanent visa for Brazil, and it seems like a lot of people want to work in Brazil, where unemployment rates sit currently at 5.8%.

"I'm a bit afraid, but I know three Germans in Rio and an American in São Paulo who did the same," 31-year-old Spanish student tells Fohla De S.Paulo. "I could look for a job in Germany, where I was before I lost my job. But Europe is getting worse and worse, while the situation here is just the opposite."

Happy anniversary, Roswell, N.M. It was 65 years ago today that the Roswell Daily Record blasted an infamous headline claiming local military officials had captured a flying saucer on a nearby ranch. And now, a former CIA agent says it really happened.

"It was not a damn weather balloon -- it was what it was billed when people first reported it," said Chase Brandon, a 35-year CIA veteran. "It was a craft that clearly did not come from this planet, it crashed and I don't doubt for a second that the use of the word 'remains' and 'cadavers' was exactly what people were talking about."

the main leader in the Dutch revolt against Spain, is assassinated in his home in Delft, Holland

This time, the usage of Holland is correct.

So you know.