Four men have been arrested in Germany on suspicion of illegally supplying Iran with parts needed to build a nuclear reactor.

The suspects were held following searches of homes and business in Hamburg, Oldenburg and Weimar.

They are accused of using front companies in Turkey and Azerbaijan to supply the parts in deals worth millions of euros.

Germany has an embargo on nuclear-related trade with Iran.

A political row has erupted in Italy after a memorial was opened to fascist commander Field Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, a convicted war criminal.

Graziani was honoured with a mausoleum and memorial park, built at taxpayers' expense, in a village south of Rome.

He was notorious as Benito Mussolini's military commander in colonial wars in Ethiopia and Libya where he carried out massacres and used chemical weapons.

Italy's main leftist party has protested against the commemoration.

Last week, and not for the first time, Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo found himself in the Spanish headlines. Dubbed "Robin Hood" by El Pais, Sánchez Gordillo, the mayor of a small town in rural Andalusia, led farm labourers into supermarkets to expropriate basic living supplies: they filled trolleys with pasta, sugar, chickpeas and milk, left without paying, and distributed the loot to local food banks. His reasoning was blunt: "The crisis has a face and a name. There are many families who can't afford to eat."

It's hard to overstate how close to the brink Spain is at the moment. Unemployment is at 25% nationally (higher than Greece), 34% in Andalusia and 53% for 16-to-24-year-olds; miners in Asturias are firing homemade rocket launchers at riot police; repossessions and the collapse of the construction industry have left 800,000 empty homes, and, last May, the 8 million-strong indignados protest movement, a forerunner of Occupy, announced its total lack of faith in parliamentary democracy to solve any of these problems. And this is just the phoney war: last month, the prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, announced spending cuts of ¤65bn (£51bn) over the next two years.

Three activists protesting in support of jailed feminist punk band Pussy Riot were detained on Wednesday as tensions in the Russian capital heat up ahead of a verdict in a trial that is being seen as a key test of Vladimir Putin's crackdown on dissent.

Wearing the bright balaclavas made famous by Pussy Riot, 18 men and women gathered on the steps of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour carrying a sign with the biblical quote "blessed are the merciful".

Guards at the cathedral broke up the peaceful protest, ripping off activists' masks, twisting their arms behind their backs and kicking at least one photographer in the face as he tried to take a picture.

Cooler temperatures and favourable winds are helping firefighters tackle an 11-day-old fire raging on the Canary Island of La Gomera, Spanish authorities said on Wednesday.

The forest fire is among the worst to have affected Spain so far in 2012. This year wildfires have caused triple the damage of the previous year, and critics say cutbacks are hampering efforts to deal with the blazes.

The Canary Islands regional government said on Wednesday that the fire on the island, which lies off the north African coast, was still out of control. But firefighters were making better progress because of a sudden drop in temperatures and a change in wind direction.

Italian police find a huge, flourishing cannabis farm in an abandoned metro tunnel built beneath Rome during the fascist era of Benito Mussolini. Video footage released by the police shows rows of marijuana plants stretching along the 4,000 square metre tunnel, stacks of bags filled with cannabis, weighing and processing equipment and artificial lights

G4S's failure to provide enough Olympic security guards has taught ministers that private firms are unsuited to providing many public services, the Defence Secretary has admitted.

In an interview with The Independent, Philip Hammond said the G4S saga had caused him to rethink his scepticism towards the public sector - and made him appreciate there were some things that only state organisations like the Army could be relied upon to do.

Mr Hammond's frank admission of the limits of the private sector, from a minister currently overseeing the largest overhaul of Britain's armed forces in a generation, will be welcomed by senior military commanders. Some have privately expressed concerns Mr Hammond is intent on pushing through a programme of creeping privatisation as cuts force troops to rely increasingly on commercial contractors.

Hello all - it's @TobyMasonBBC here with some summer political reading, and a chance for a look in detail at the fortunes of the four main parties in Wales. What's the current state of play, what might the next year or so hold for them - and how might their strategies unfold?

First up, let's examine the Welsh Conservatives. It would not be an understatement to say that the party in Wales is close to a state of civil war. Tensions between Cardiff and Westminster, whose origins date back years, are coming to a head. What was a fracture has become a fissure and is approaching a chasm.

Gay rights groups in France have reacted angrily to the Catholic Church after it issued a call to prayer to protect the sacriment of marriage from same-sex couples.

The controversial "Prayer for France" has been sent out to churches across the country to be read out on August 15 to mark the feast of the Assumption.

The prayer's subject matter is designed to mobilise Catholics against François Hollande's Socialist Party government, which recently affirmed plans to open up marriage and adoption to gay couples.

In a thinly veiled reference to the proposed gay marriage bill, Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois asked churchgoers to pray for "newly elected officials" to put their "sense of common good over the pressure to meet special demands".

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy announced on Tuesday that his government is going to extend a 400-euro monthly subsidy that is currently being handed out to 200,000 of Spain's more than five million unemployed people, and was due to end this week. The public aid program, known as the Plan Prepara, was introduced by the preceding Socialist government.

...

It was another turn-around for Rajoy, who last month said that Plan Prepara would be eliminated as part of a set of budget-cutting measures. Participants in Plan Prepara are among the neediest in terms of state support, given that to qualify for the scheme they must have already exhausted their regular unemployment benefit, and have annual income of less than 75 percent of the minimum wage (7,696 euros). In exchange, recipients join a program aimed at getting them into the job market.

...

It wasn't immediately clear on Tuesday exactly how long the unemployed will be able to draw from the fund, but reports suggested that the scheme would run for at least six more months. The details of the measure, which Rajoy announced after meeting with King Juan Carlos in Palma de Mallorca, will be approved by the Cabinet next week retroactively from Thursday, the day that the money budgeted for the plan would have run out.

The government has threatened to enter the Ecuadorian embassy in London and arrest WikiLeaders founder Julian Assange, who is seeking political asylum there.

The dramatic development came two months after Mr Assange suddenly walked into the embassy in a bid to avoid being extradited to Sweden where he faces allegations of sexual assault.

Ecuador's minister for foreign affairs, Ricardo Patino, released details of a letter he said was delivered through a British embassy official in Quito, and said that the Ecuadorian government would announce on Thursday whether it would give Mr Assange asylum.

The letter said: "You need to be aware that there is a legal base in the UK, the Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act 1987, that would allow us to take actions in order to arrest Mr Assange in the current premises of the Embassy.

(BUDAPEST, Hungary) -- As a rising star in Hungary's far-right Jobbik Party, Csanad Szegedi was notorious for his incendiary comments on Jews: He accused them of "buying up" the country, railed about the "Jewishness" of the political elite and claimed Jews were desecrating national symbols.

Then came a revelation that knocked him off his perch as ultra-nationalist standard-bearer: Szegedi himself is a Jew.

You read it here first. Nitpick: Szegedi was more notorious for his anti-Gipsy comments and for entering the European Parliament in paramilitary uniform. While he was undoubtedly an anti-Semite, too, the above attributions seem to be misattributions of stuff done by his comrades.

At the root of the drama is an audio tape of a 2010 meeting between Szegedi and a convicted felon. Szegedi acknowledges that the meeting took place but contends the tape was altered in unspecified ways; Jobbik considers it real.

In the recording, the felon is heard confronting Szegedi with evidence of his Jewish roots. Szegedi sounds surprised, then offers money and favors in exchange for keeping quiet.

This tape, and the offers to the criminal (an arms dealer) to keep shut, are te actual news that brought the "anti-Semite learns he is Jewish" story to the international media's attention. But they are behind the news: Szegedi was now forced to vacate all his posts and rest his party membership.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

A study by PwC puts the non-performing credits of European banks at €1.05 trillion, nearly double the volume of 2008; volumes increased strongly in Greece, Spain and Italy, but remained unchanged in Germany and the UK; German politicians have been calling for new voting weights in the ECB; the SPD's budget spokesman has put Germany's total exposure to all eurozone crisis policies at around €1 trillion, more than three times the government's official estimate; Borsenzeitung and other German newspapers have reacted with extreme hostility to the Greek proposal to extend the austerity timetable; according to Bloomberg, Spain is about to receive an emergency tranche of its programme, after the ECB imposed restrictions on bank borrowing; Mariano Rajoy announced another policy U-turn, this time on the extension of long-term unemployment benefit; Spanish firefighters are  blaming budget cuts for the inadequate response to the wild fires; Breakingviews says the Spanish request to exempt retail investors from being wiped out might lead to an avalanche of claims by other investors groups in the eurozone; the head of the Dutch Socialists, meanwhile, says the Netherlands should not pursue austerity next year.

... Some day the nations of Europe may be ready to merge their national identities and create a new European Union - the United States of Europe. If and when they do, a European Government will take over all the functions which the Federal government now provides in the U.S., or in Canada or Australia. This will involve the creation  of a "full economic and monetary union". But it is a dangerous error to believe that monetary and economic union can precede a political union or that it will act (in the words of the Werner report) "as a leaven for the evolvement of a political union which in the long run it will in any case be unable to do without". For if the creation of a monetary union and Community control over national budgets generates pressures which lead to a breakdown of the whole system it will prevent the development of a political union, not promote it.

[italics in original]

That was written in 1971! ...

Sir Richard Branson says it is "extremely disappointing" that Virgin Rail has lost the West Coast Mainline franchise to rival FirstGroup.

He suggested FirstGroup, the UK's largest rail operator, had paid too much and said it was unlikely Virgin would bid for other rail franchises.

But ministers said the deal would bring "big improvements" for passengers.

And FirstGroup chief executive Tim O'Toole said it was a good deal for the company and the public.

Australia's highest court has upheld tough new anti-tobacco marketing laws, dismissing a legal challenge from global cigarette companies in a major test case between tobacco giants and anti-smoking campaigners.

Leading global tobacco manufacturers, including British American Tobacco, Britain's Imperial Tobacco, Philip Morris and Japan Tobacco, had challenged the law, claiming the rules were unconstitutional because they effectively extinguished their intellectual property rights.

In a brief statement on Wednesday, the High Court said a majority of its seven judges believed the laws did not breach Australia's constitution. A full judgment will be released later today.

Total foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury securities rose to a new high in June, indicating strong international demand for U.S. government debt amid the simmering eurozone debt crisis, the U.S. Treasury Department reported Wednesday.

In June, overall foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury securities reached 5.2923 trillion U.S. dollars, up from the revised 5.2581 trillion dollars in May. It was the sixth consecutive monthly increase.

Tanzania has said a shipping agent based in Dubai had reflagged 36 Iranian oil tankers with the Tanzanian flag without the country's knowledge and approval.

Tanzania said it was now in the process of de-registering the vessels after an investigation into the origin of the ships concluded they were originally from Iran.

Tanzania launched an investigation last month over accusations that it had reflagged oil tankers from Iran and asked the United States and European Union to help it verify the origin of the tankers flying the east African country's flag.

A report with the investigation's findings was discussed in the House of Representatives of Zanzibar, a semi-autonomous part of Tanzania late on Friday, and the minutes of that debate were seen by Reuters late on Saturday.

On 14 February 2010, 20 prominent economists wrote to the Sunday Times in support of George Osborne's deficit reduction strategy. They said: "... in order to be credible, the government's goal should be to eliminate the structural current budget deficit over the course of a Parliament, and there is a compelling case, all else equal, for the first measures beginning to take effect in the 2010/11 fiscal year." The Chancellor hailed their letter as a "really significant moment in the economic debate".

Two and a half years later, the UK is mired in a double-dip recession and Osborne is set to borrow £11.8bn more than Labour planned. For this week's issue of the New Statesman (out tomorrow), we asked the 20 whether they regretted signing the letter and what they would do to stimulate growth. Of those who replied, only one, Albert Marcet of Barcelona Graduate School of Economics, was willing to repeat his endorsement of Osborne. Nine urged the Chancellor to abandon his opposition to fiscal stimulus and to promote growth through tax cuts and higher infrastructure spending, while others merely said "no comment" or were "on holiday".

Could gaining control of the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran (CBI) be one of the main reasons that Iran is being targeted by Western and Israeli powers? As tensions are building up for an unthinkable war with Iran, it is worth exploring Iran's banking system compared to its U.S., British and Israeli counterparts.

Some researchers are pointing out that Iran is one of only three countries left in the world whose central bank is not under Rothschild control. Before 9-11 there were reportedly seven: Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Cuba, North Korea and Iran. By 2003, however, Afghanistan and Iraq were swallowed up by the Rothschild octopus, and by 2011 Sudan and Libya were also gone. In Libya, a Rothschild bank was established in Benghazi while the country was still at war.

Islam forbids the charging of usury, the practice of charging excessive, unreasonably high, and often illegal interestrates on loans, and that is a major problem for the Rothschild banking system. Until a few hundred years ago usury was also forbidden in the Christian world and was even punishable by death. It was considered exploitation and enslavement.

Israel's outgoing home front defence minister says an attack on Iran would likely trigger a month-long conflict that would leave 500 Israelis dead.

Matan Vilnai told the Maariv newspaper that the fighting would be "on several fronts", with hundreds of missiles fired at Israeli towns and cities.

Israel was prepared, he said, though strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities had to be co-ordinated with the US.

Meanwhile, a US blogger has published what he says are Israel's attack plans.

Syrian fighter jets have conducted two devastating bombing runs on the rebel-held town of Azaz, flattening a string of houses and killing at least 20 people including children, activists said.

Hundreds of other residents fled across the border to Turkey after the attack on Wednesday, news agencies and witnesses said. 

"Bashar did this. God help us, these animals will kill us all," said one man, hoisting a bloodied arm that had been piled up on the pavement outside the hospital in Azaz after the bombardment.

A report issued by a team of United Nations human rights investigators said that Syrian government forces and allied militias have committed war crimes, including murder and torture, in what they say appears to be state-directed policy.

The investigators said in a report released on Wednesday that they had received "consistent evidence that mid- and high-ranking members of government forces were directly involved in illegal acts".

"Defectors stated that commanders ordered their subordinates to shoot civilians and 'hors de combat' fighters, and to torture and mistreat detainees. Orders were often enforced at gunpoint and anyone hesitating to comply risked arrest or summary execution," the report sai

China has demanded that Japan free 14 Chinese activists held after their protest landing on an island claimed by Tokyo.

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Fu Ying "demanded that Japan ensure the safety of 14 Chinese nationals and immediately and unconditionally release them", the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on its website on Wednesday.

Japan, earlier on Wednesday, arrested the activists from the "Action Committee for Defending the Diaoyu Islands" group that sailed from Hong Kong, saying that they intented to plant a Chinese flag on an archipelago they know as Diaoyu, but which Japan calls Senkaku.

Thousands of miners in South Africa, under the watchful eye of a scores of police units, have protested over poor work conditions and wages in the latest in a series of strikes to hit the mining industry.

Protests continued on Tuesday at the Lonmin platinum mine near Marikana, a town about 70km northwest of Johannesburg, with at least 10 people having been killed since demonstrations began on Friday.

Seven workers and two police officers were killed in the ensuing violence. Another body was discovered on Tuesday,

The unrest began last week when about 3,000 workers launched what managers called an illegal strike that became entangled with a feud between rival unions.

Almost a third of the homes in Wales will be powered by green energy, a company behind a major new wind farm project pledged yesterday.

The Siemens offshore substation, which is the latest milestone for the Welsh offshore wind farm, Gwynt y Mor, arrived by sea from Belfast.

China's plan to rapidly expand large coal mines and power plants in its arid northern and western provinces threatens to drain precious water supply and could trigger a severe water crisis, a report by environmental activists Greenpeace said on Tuesday.

China intends to boost coal production in provinces including Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Shaanxi and Ningxia, with output in those areas expected to reach 2.2bn tonnes, or 56% of the country's forecast production of 3.9bn tonnes, by 2015.

As part of the country's major overhaul of its power generation strategy, Beijing also plans to build 16 large coal-fired power stations in those provinces by 2015. Total installed capacity for the plants is expected to exceed 600GW.

The US Air Force has said an attempt to fly its hypersonic jet Waverider at Mach 6 (3,600mph; 5795km/h) failed.

The unmanned aircraft had been designed to fly at six times the speed of sound after being dropped from a B-52 bomber.

But officials said that a faulty control fin prevented it from starting its supersonic-combustion ramjet engine, and the craft was lost.

It marks the second time in a row that the Air Force has been unable to test the technology as planned

One of Ireland's most influential journalists, Vincent Browne, argues that Denis O'Brien is not a fit person to control Independent News & Media (INM).

In an Irish Times article today, he accuses O'Brien - the largest shareholder in INM - of interfering in editorial affairs.

He also cites the findings of the Moriarty tribunal, which concluded that a consortium formed by O'Brien to secure a mobile phone licence in the 1990s had succeeded because of payments made by O'Brien to the then communications minister in "clandestine circumstances." O'Brien has strenuously denied this finding.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation has launched a review of anti-corruption controls in several of its publishing arms, including News International in London.

Murdoch told News Corp staff in a memo on Wednesday that the company recently launched the probe as a "forward-looking review" to improve compliance with bribery laws.

The media tycoon told staff that the anti-corruption review was "not based on any suspicion of wrongdoing by any particular business unit or its personnel".

Mark Thompson, outgoing director general of the BBC, has been named the new president and chief executive of the New York Times.

The 55-year-old replaces Janet Robinson, 62, who unexpectedly announced her retirement last December.

In a statement Arthur Sulzberger Jr, chairman of the Times Company and the newspaper's publisher, called Thompson as "a gifted and experienced executive with strong credentials whose leadership at the BBC helped it to extend its trusted brand identity into new digital products and services."

Thompson, who has been director general of the BBC since 2004 said in March that he intended to depart the public broadcaster after the London Olympics. The Guardian revealed in June that he was in talks to join the New York Times.

German data protection officials today accused Facebook of "illegally compiling a vast photo database of users without their consent" and demanded that the social network destroy its archive of files based on facial recognition technology, the New York Times reported.

Facebook says that it uses face recognition software to match users' photos to others and suggest friends to tag in those photos. A user can prevent friends from seeing tag suggestions when they upload photos that look like that user. But this requires opting out through Facebook privacy settings, which Germany notes is a violation of European law.

"The social networking company's decision to use analytic software to compile photographic archives of human faces, based on photos uploaded by Facebook's users, has been controversial in Europe, where data protection laws require users to give their explicit consent to the practice," the Times wrote. "Instead of using such an opt-in system, Facebook assumes users will want to use facial recognition and requires them to opt out instead."

What kind of message is a video game publisher like EA sending when it encourages its players to buy weapons?

The race to create a perfect, all-encompassing brand identity that infiltrates every aspect of gamers' lives has become of increasing importance to game publishers. It has also thrown some of the gaming industry's ethical boundaries into question.

In a bid to extend the reach of its Medal of Honor: Warfighter brand, EA chose to test these boundaries by updating the official Warfighter site to include links to the sites of the real-world weapons and weapon accessories manufacturers that are helping turn the game into the "most authentic shooter" yet.

It's been over four months since Angel Vadillo began camping out in an old van in front of Spain's Ministry Industry on April 10. For the last two of those months, he hasn't eaten. His van is spare, decorated only with a picture of his one-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter. Aside from that, he only has a thin mattress, a full book shelf, a laptop and a mobile phone, both of which he charges with solar power.

Indeed, it is solar power that kicked off Vadillo's unusual protest in the first place. In January, Spanish Industry Minister José Manuel Soria cut all subsidies for new projects relating to renewable energies.

Vadillo is the mayor of Alburquerque, a municipality with a population of 5,500 in Extremadura in the west of Spain. For the last two decades, Alburquerque has staked its future on solar energy, and five new facilities with a capacity of 250 megawatts had been planned prior to the subsidy cuts. Now, those plans have been shelved: "That means that we will lose some 850 jobs," says Vadillo. It is estimated that the measure will cost a total of 10,000 jobs across the country.

American science fiction author Harry Harrison, who also created the Stainless Steel Rat comic space opera series, has died aged 87.

His 1966 dystopian novel Make Room! Make Room! also inspired 1973 film Soylent Green starring Charlton Heston.

Harrison died in the early hours of Wednesday, 15 August.

"His passing leaves a huge gap in the universe, but thankfully he didn't leave us empty-handed," said friend and fellow author Michael Carroll.

"Dozens of novels and over a hundred short stories are as fine a legacy as we could hope for," continued Caroll, who also runs Harrison's website.

I was out early riding around the park this morning, and of course, it's summer still, so you see other cyclists training. Most are wearing either their own cycling or triathlon club jerseys, or plain, no-name "unattached" jerseys. But you'll always see some folk in team replica kit. Usually, they'll be this year's or last year's pro team designs; though occasionally, you'll see a real throwback, with faded colours, to the 1990s or early 2000s. And then, these days, you'll probably see some hipster in a retro woolen jersey.

But the guy who caught my eye today and got me thinking was wearing a relatively obscure team replica jersey - the bright yellow of an early iteration of Tinkoff Credit Systems.

Now, Tinkoff doesn't, for me, have great associations (see below). So, given the connotations, who would voluntarily wear a replica jersey of that team, I wondered.

Reader TT asks a good question: given your (self-appointed) role as the Spectator's unofficial darts correspondent, why haven't you written anything on the death of Sid Waddell? What can I say? Grief moves one in mysterious ways.

Few people can claim to have created a sport, yet that was Waddell's achievement and only nit-pickers and other churls would mock the fact that the sport Waddell created was darts. Before Sid there was nothing and the darts universe is his creation. As he might almost have put it, "God took six days to create his world, Phil Taylor needed just three hours to build his. And Taylor never rests on the Sabbath."