Labour leader Ed Miliband has said his party's leadership lost touch both with its own members and the public.

In a speech to the national policy forum, Mr Miliband proposed reforms aimed at making the party less insular and its decision-making more open.

He said the Labour Party "can only win if we change" and that power would not "come automatically".

Mr Miliband also defended plans to scrap elections for the shadow cabinet, despite backbench opposition.

EU leaders have urged all Greek politicians to support new spending cuts and tax hikes, saying there is no alternative if debt-laden Athens is to qualify for a second massive bail-out.

The second rescue is being negotiated in Brussels. It is expected to be about 120bn euros (£107bn; $171bn).

"There will be a new programme for Greece, on which the Greek parliament will have to vote next week," said Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Officials are investigating a possible link between seeds sold by a UK firm and an E. coli outbreak in France.

News agency AFP said 10 people have been affected by E. coli in Bordeaux.

It is thought a number of them had eaten rocket and mustard vegetable sprouts, believed to have been grown from seeds sold by Thompson and Morgan.

The Ipswich-based company told the BBC it had no evidence of a link. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) said no E. coli cases had been reported in the UK.

Spain is to remove a controversial temporary speed limit on motorways introduced to cut fuel consumption because of rising oil prices.

The limit was cut to 110km/h (68mph) in March drawing protests from motorists including the Formula 1 driver Fernando Alonso.

The government says petrol prices have now fallen and, from 1 July, motorists can again drive at 120km/h (75mph).

Oil prices spiked after uprisings in Libya and elsewhere in the Arab world.

An Israeli couple has been given suspended jail sentences for the theft of historic artifacts from the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz, Poland's PAP news agency quoted a prosecutor as saying on Saturday.

"They have voluntarily accepted a two-year suspended jail sentence and agreed to pay a mandatory contribution towards the preservation of monuments," Deputy District Prosecutor Mariusz Slomka said, without specifying the amount.

Students will be encouraged to borrow from high-street banks to cover their tuition fees, under proposals considered by the government as a way out of the funding crisis facing higher education.

With more universities than expected charging the maximum of £9,000 a year for tuition, universities minister David Willetts is seeking a way to reduce the liabilities of the government-backed Student Loans Company by turning to the UK's major banks to provide loans at preferable rates.

Universities UK, which represents universities, has been consulted. Its president, Sir Steve Smith, who is vice-chancellor of Exeter University, said the proposal to allow banks to exploit the student market carried huge risks and could create a two-tier education system.

The middle classes should pay the first £35,000 of their old age care and be encouraged to take out insurance to cover that cost, according to a government-commissioned review into the future funding of social care to be published next week.

The proposal will ignite the "death tax" row that led to a war of words between the Tories and the Labour government before the last election.

The recommendations from economist Andrew Dilnot, which have been seen by the cabinet, are already causing a split within the coalition government, with one senior Liberal Democrat claiming the chancellor, George Osborne, wants to "strangle the proposals at birth".

It is understood that the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, is in favour of the proposals but a source said that David Cameron and, in particular, Osborne appeared keen to "park the report in the long grass" because of the potential political pitfalls, and the financial commitments it would involve.

The article tellingly ends with

The high point of the summit was the meeting of EPP leaders

in which 17 Prime Ministers took part and in which all the pressure was for the President of the Greek conservative party, Antonis Samaras, to support the adjustments laid out by the Socialist Yorgos Papandreou, demanded by the international community. Samaras didn't yield. And he contributed to the poor, very poor, results reached at a time of maximum tension for the Euro

PARIS, June 24 (Xinhua) -- Clouds in Paris skies over the 49th Air Show in Le Bourget receded Friday after aerospace industry players bagged streams of orders halfway through the air show that kicked off on Monday.

As prosperous demand, notably from emerging markets, signaled industrial rebound, green flights shaping the industry's future development also left its mark during this year's gala.

BIG HARVEST FOR INDUSTRY PLAYERS

The 49th Paris Air Show, known as the oldest and most reputed air show in the world, will last until Sunday, with most orders settled in the first four days and the next three days opening for the general public.

LONDON, June 25 (Xinhua) -- With a rapid growth in bilateral trade during the first six months of this year, China and Britain are aimed at an ambitious trade target of 100 billion U.S. dollars in 2015.

That target was set by leaders of the two nations during Prime Minister David Cameron's visit in China in November.

China and Britain are important trading partners with Britain being China's third largest market in the EU and China being Britain's largest export destination save the EU and the United States.

We wondered earlier if the CFTC might be investigating the strange decline in oil hours ahead of the International Energy Agency's announcement of its plan to release oil into the market and crush prices.

Turns out we didn't have to wonder for long: They are investigating, Dow Jones Newswires' Jerry DiColo reports:

U.S. commodity regulators are examining whether traders received early word of a decision to coordinate a release of global oil stockpiles ahead of Thursday's announcement by the International Energy Agency, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Officials with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission as well as market participants have said trading was unusual in the oil futures market prior to the IEA's announcement that it would release 60 million barrels of oil, the person said.

The CFTC is reviewing market data to find clues as to whether some traders may have received an advance tip on the IEA's plan, the person said.

A Greek crisis? Well, certainly for the Greek people, but not for hedge fund managers.

The Daily Telegraph reports:

Fund managers gathered in Monaco for the GAIM conference have said that depressed asset prices and rock-bottom debt instruments could be worth the risk.



Robert Marquardt, founder of Signet, a fund of hedge funds, told reporters that the Greek crisis was "certainly a great chance to make money".

It looks as if Osborne's decision to jump the gun and ringfence UK retail banking ahead of formal release of the Independent Commission on Banking may have been a good call. Not because ringfencing retail resolves the issues with UK banking - I stand by my remarks in my previous post - but because it protects high street banking from possible catastrophic losses arising from the European debt crisis.

The thinking seems to be that if the savings and borrowings of ordinary British people are protected, then investment banking - which everyone knows is the rich people's gambling den, isn't it - can be allowed to fail. And there is some merit in this view. Protecting ordinary British people from the consequences of profligate lending and spending by banks and countries alike in the Eurozone is an appropriate action for the UK government to take.

The trouble is, it's wrong. We are no longer in the banking of the 1950s, when ordinary people had their life savings in high street banks and building societies, and the only people with stock market investments were stockbrokers, who were "expert users" so could be expected to know how to manage their risks.  These days few ordinary people keep their life savings in bank and building society accounts. They have them in stock & share ISA accounts, long-term endowment policies linked to life insurance, and above all in personal and company pensions.  Although most of these are covered by FSCS insurance, none of them fall within the retail ringfence.  They are a major source of money for INVESTMENT banking.  Yes, that's right - the investment banking that is left exposed to the Eurozone debt crisis in the expectation that it doesn't matter if it is hit by catastrophic losses. 

The details are thin but they sure don't smell right. The short form is that Sunny Sheu had his house stolen from him by fictive buyers who used forged documents. Judge Golia of Queens engaged in what appears to be highly questionable behavior in failing to reverse the sale. Sheu started investigating the judge, was told by policeman who specifically referred to information he had provided about Golia, and that if he didn't drop it, he'd wind up dead. Sheu disregarded their warning and did wind up dead. The authorities are also refusing to honor requests for information regarding Sheu's death made under New York's Freedom of Information Act. This story has been publicized by Foreclosure Fraud and The Daily Bail and I hope it gets more traction.

First, the background, as reported in Black Star News:

   Sheu's ordeal began over 10 years ago when a bank representative knocked on his door and said he was there to inspect the house for its new owner. The problem was that Sheu had never sold the house. It turns out that someone had forged critical documents and used them to illegally sell the property.

Why should anyone think that Bernie Madoff and Michael Milken are the only figures in US finance about whom allegations of links to organized crime have been made?

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

French engineering giant Alstom has signed a preliminary deal to build a high-speed rail line linking Basra and Baghdad in Iraq.

An Alstom spokesman confirmed to the BBC it had signed a "memorandum of understanding" with Iraqi officials as a first step in the project.

The line would also connect with the cities of Karbala and Najaf.

The company will hold exclusive talks with Iraqi officials for 12 months to try to strike a final agreement.

At least 30 people have been killed in a suicide bomb attack at a hospital in Afghanistan.

Estimates of the casualties, which included patients and medical staff, varied widely as chaos enveloped the facility in Azra district of eastern Logar province, which is just south of capital Kabul. Dozens more were wounded in the attack.

Deen Mohammad Darwish, a spokesman for the Logar provincial government, said as many as 35 people were killed, although Afghanistan's Interior Ministry put the death toll at 20.

"The exact target is still not clear," Interior minister deputy spokesman Najib Nikzad said.

Up to 1,000 Syrians have fled across the border into Lebanon over the past two days in a bid to escape the escalating violence in Syria.

A Lebanese security official said on Saturday that those crossing had entered northern Lebanon near the border town of Wadi Khaled, a day after activists said 20 people were killed in anti-government protests in Syria.

He said six of those coming through the al-Qusair crossing had gunshot wounds and had been taken to hospital.

Al Jazeera's Rula Amin, reporting from the Lebanese capital, Beirut, said the number of Syrians fleeing to Lebanon was increasing but could not be compared to the situation on the Turkey-Syria border, where nearly 12,000 people are sheltering on the Turkish side.

Two loud explosions have been heard in the Libyan capital Tripoli as jets flew over the city, Reuters news agency reported witnesses as saying.

Earlier on Saturday, Libyan state TV reported that at least 15 people were killed in strikes on civilian sites in the eastern city of Brega, a claim promptly denied by NATO.

ATHENS, Greece (Ma'an) -- Organizers of the second Freedom Flotilla say that an administrative complaint has been filed against the US Boat to Gaza, claiming that the vessel is not seaworthy.

This could delay or altogether prevent the "Audacity of Hope" from leaving Athens.

The harbor master received notification of the complaint Thursday afternoon, two days after a group of suspicious persons showed up at the ship and began asking questions of the crew members, at one point offering money for the members to leave the ship unattended.

The complainant is unknown and a Greek lawyer representing the flotilla is working to obtain more details.

On Saturday, June 25, since at least 3PM GMT, the website of the French Embassy in Syria appears to have been hacked: anyone connecting to the French embassy website is automatically redirected to another site (http://th3pro.pro/fr/), where, to the tune of the Syrian national anthem, a message in French and Arabic criticizes the "negative aspects of your participation in the conspiracy against Syria and in protest against the F24 channel for the dissemination of false information on Syria".

In recent weeks, Hezbollah has moved hundreds of missiles from storage sites in Syria to bases in eastern Lebanon, the French newspaper Le Figaro reported on Saturday.

According to the report, Hezbollah moved the missiles due to the concern that the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad will fall and that a new Syrian government will cut off ties with Hezbollah.

Family members of captured IDF soldier Gilad Shalit chained themselves together outside the prime minister's residence on Saturday, marking the fifth anniversary of their son and brother's abduction.

The family members sat chained-up on the curb outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's residence in Jerusalem, while dozens of activists blocked the road that leads to the house.

The operator of the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has still not resumed operations of a system to decontaminate highly radioactive water.

Tokyo Electric Power Company had planned to start decontaminating and recycling the water by July 17th to cool the reactors.

Water is being injected continuously into the reactors and the resulting contaminated water is starting to fill up the storage facilities, raising fears that it will start overflowing around July 5th.

Former dictator Manuel Noriega is packing his bags for Panama more than 20 years after he was taken from his home country, after France's foreign ministry said this week it was preparing an extradition decree.

Noriega has one month to appeal the expected decree, but his French lawyer Yves Leberquier told FRANCE 24 on Friday his client would not contest the extradition. Noriega has said repeatedly that he wishes to return to Panama -where he is wanted on charges of killing a political rival, among other crimes.

Once Panama's chief of police, Noriega clambered to power in the 1980's. His steadfast anti-communism also won him a job as an informant for the CIA. But the US eventually slapped drug trafficking charges on the strongman and in 1989 launched a military invasion into Panama to apprehend him.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann sit atop the standings in the year's first Des Moines Register Iowa Poll on the Republican presidential field.

Romney, the national front-runner and a familiar face in Iowa after his 2008 presidential run, attracts support from 23 percent of likely Republican caucus-goers. Bachmann, who will officially kick off her campaign in Iowa on Monday, nearly matches him, with 22 percent.

"She's up there as a real competitor and a real contender," said Republican pollster Randy Gutermuth, who is unaffiliated with any of the presidential candidates. "This would indicate that she's going to be a real player in Iowa."

Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency has made public on its website documents revealing what happened at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant after the March 11th earthquake and tsunami.

The agency on Friday posted on its website Tokyo Electric Power Company's reports, which were submitted to the agency between March 11th and May 31st. The documents totaled 11,000 pages.

It says the government used these documents as reference material when it compiled a report on the nuclear crisis, which was submitted earlier this month to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

I'm told that the cabinet will meet in mid-July to make a final decision on whether to proceed with a badger cull in the south-west of England. For Caroline Spelman that could mark her third PR nightmare since Christmas.

First there was Forestry Commission sell-off, which David Cameron ruthlessly abandoned after an uprising by the general public.

Second there was the situation with circus animals, which Defra had claimed could not be banned because of the threat of an imminent legal action in Austria - culminating in a humiliating defeat in the Commons for the government on Thursday led by rebel backbencher Mark Pritchard.

Will badgers complete the hat-trick?

An extension has surfaced in the Chrome Web Store that lets you breach the defenses of one of the web's earliest paywall pioneers.

Read WSJ Extension lets you read full articles from the online version of Rupert Murdoch's The Wall Street Journal, giving you free access to some of media's most coveted paid-for content.

Murdoch inherited the paywall from the WSJ's earlier owners, the Bancroft family, in 2007, and he has since erected similar defenses around his existing stable of titles, including The Times of London and the UK's best-selling Sunday read, The News of the World.

Police at Glastonbury have set up an off-site lab to test "legal highs" seized at the festival.

It comes after a rise in unidentified drugs found at large music events across the UK.

The Forensic Early Warning System allows government scientists to analyse and detect traces of potentially harmful and illegal substances.

Police spokesman Paul Bunt said: "Because there are so many new drugs, we know very little about them."

AFP - French Egyptologist Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, known for her books on art and history and for saving the Nubian temples from flooding caused by the Aswan Dam, has died at the age of 97, her editor Telemaque said Friday.            In a career spanning more than half-a-century, Desroches-Noblecourt also helped preserve the mummy of King Ramses II, which was threatened by fungus, and became the first French woman to lead an archaeological dig in 1938.               Born on November 17, 1913 in Paris, she was captivated by Howard Carter's discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamon, and joined the Egyptian Antiquities department at the Louvre.               During World War II she joined the Resistance, and hid the Louvre's Egyptian treasures in free areas of France.

Primary schools in Nigeria are in a dire state as they greatly suffer from a lack of resources and unqualified educators to teach young pupils.

In Lagos State, home to Nigeria's most populous city, Lagos, more than 1,000 primary schools are dilapidated, lacking basic classroom furniture, electricity, and running water.

Part of the problem is that primary education in Lagos State has suffered from decades of under-investment, while the population of those that need to be taught increases

The publication of The Waste Land app, as reported by my Observer colleague John Naughton, marks the end of the beginning. After a decade of panic about the future, it signals a rapprochement between print and digital culture. This new coexistence is supported by the figures. The average UK shopper now spends £4 per month on ebooks. For Random House USA, some 30% of its sales now come from ebooks. After a perfect storm of economic, technological and cultural change from 2000 to 2010, publishers can detect a silver lining.

Look to see this trend accelerating a change in reading habits unprecedented since Caxton. Publishers, literary agents, booksellers and writers are all puzzling over the impact. John B Thompson, author of Merchants of Culture, says: "Truthfully, no one knows what the future holds."

"Goodbye Gutenberg" made a nice headline, but, as ebook sales surge in the US, thoughtful observers have begun to detect a future for the traditional book. David Campbell, publisher of Everyman, says: "The well-produced hardback, a clear and permanent contrast to the ebook, will fare better than cheap paperbacks printed on newsprint."

n the 35th-floor conference room of a Manhattan high-rise, two of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's most trusted advisers held a secret meeting a few weeks ago with a group of super-rich Republican donors.

Over tuna and turkey sandwiches, the advisers explained that New York's Democratic governor was determined to legalize same-sex marriage and would deliver every possible Senate vote from his own party.

The legal team leading the prosecution of former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn has gone on the offensive in enlisting a prominent French lawyer, Thibault de Montbrial, to locate any of Strauss-Kahn's alleged past victims

For the last several weeks, France has stood by watching as one of its most prominent international figures, fallen IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has been processed by the US justice system following his arrest on sexual assault charges. But now, one of France's own will be jumping into the legal fray unfolding on the other side of the Atlantic.

The team of New York lawyers representing the 32-year-old Guinean hotel maid who accused Strauss-Kahn of sexually assaulting her have asked Paris-based lawyer Thibault de Montbrial to help dig up previous victims of the French politician, news reports on Thursday stated.