An unpleasant election campaign turned even nastier and more confusing yesterday. After days of making baseless accusations of his own, President Nicolas Sarkozy claimed that he was the "victim" of a smear plot by the Socialist front-runner, François Hollande.

A left-leaning investigative website published a six-year-old Libyan intelligence document at the weekend which suggested that Colonel Muammar Gaddafi had helped to fund Mr Sarkozy's run for the presidency in 2007. In a frantic day of allegations, denials and denials-of-denials, Mr Sarkozy cried "infamy" and political "manipulation".

He said that story had been inspired by Mr Hollande's campaign as a "diversion". The website, Mediapart, insisted that the 2006 document, authorising a payment of €50m (£40.7m) to Mr Sarkozy's campaign, was genuine and the fruit of months of journalistic investigation. But the former Libyan official to whom the document was addressed, now living in Paris, cast doubt on its authenticity.

The President trails Mr Hollande by eight to 10 points in opinion polls before the second round of the presidential election on 6 May. Mr Sarkozy has teetered on the edge of hysteria in campaign meetings and TV appearances in recent days, implying or even stating that Mr Hollande is the candidate of Islam.

Shokri Ghanem, the man in charge of Libya's highly corrupt oil industry during the last five years of Gaddafi's rule, was found dead yesterday - floating in the river Danube near his home in Vienna. His family have suggested that he fell in the river after suffering a heart attack, though foul play has not yet been ruled out.

Either way, his death will make it more difficult to uncover the whole truth about a series of oil-related scandals in Libya - including the unfolding Ras Lanuf refinery affair which I wrote about here just a few hours before Ghanem died.

Though Libya under Gaddafi was officially a "people's" state, its oil industry provided a wealth of opportunities for individuals and companies to cream off money that rightfully belonged to the people. For five years Ghanem was in charge of that industry, and whether or not he personally benefited from the corruption, he probably had more knowledge than anyone else of what was going on - so much so that on one occasion he expressed fears for the safety of himself and his family.

That knowledge may be one reason why Ghanem did not return to Libya after the fall of Gaddafi, even though he had defected from the regime last May during the uprising.

EU justice commissioner Vivianne Reding is to boycott the Euro2012 football championships in Ukraine for political reasons, amid reports the German Chancellor might do the same.

Reding spokeswoman Mina Andreeva told EUobserver on Monday (30 April) that the commissioner will skip the games despite being personally invited by Michel Platini, the head of the European football association, Uefa.

"She's not going. First of all, her agenda does not permit this. But also she is quite concerned about the situation in Ukraine and in particular by the situation with Yulia Tymoshenko," Andreeva noted, referring to Ukraine's former prime minister, currently on hunger strike in protest over allegedly being beaten up in her jail cell 10 days ago.

Reding's decision comes amid reports by Germany's Der Spiegel magazine that Chancellor Angela Merkel might also stay away.

The leader of the Greek Socialist Pasok party, Evangelos Venizelos, has warned of a rise of the far right in elections in the country on 6 May.

Mr Venizelos told a rally in Patras that voters should not allow neo-Nazis to "goose-step into Parliament with Hitler salutes".

Polls suggest the far-right Golden Dawn could win seats for the first time.

The election will be Greece's first since it sought two EU/IMF bailouts and announced deep spending cuts. 'Extreme phenomenon'

Opinion polls suggest parties opposed to austerity could make big gains. Golden Dawn (Chrysi Avgi in Greek) opposes the EU bailouts that have led to the Greek government's tough economic measures.

Last month Athens secured a second international bailout of 130bn euro ($171bn; £105bn) after reaching a deal with private creditors for a credit swap aimed at reducing its debt burden.

Mr Venizelos described the far-right party as an "extreme phenomenon", and "an offence to our history and to our parliament", Reuters newsagency said.

New Labour party leader Diederick Samsom is under fire for not taking part in this week's high-pressure austerity talks, with both party members and opinion polls showing a drop in support for the PvdA.

Two opinion polls taken after Thursday's agreement between the minority coalition and three smaller parties show support for Labour down compared with earlier this month.

In the latest Maurice de Hond poll, almost all the gains made by Samsom since he took over the party leadership have been wiped out. De Hond gives the PvdA 19 seats, down five on a week ago. An Ipsos Synovate poll on Saturday puts Labour on 25 seats, two down on a week ago.

Old partners

The VVD Liberals - currently the biggest party in parliament with 31 seats - have also lost popularity since agreeing the budget package and are down three and two seats respectively.

Geert Wilders' anti-immigration PVV, which pulled out of its alliance with the government a week ago, is down two seats in the De Hond poll at 17, and remains unchanged in the Synovate snapshot.

By contrast, the three parties which agreed the deal - GroenLinks, D66 and ChristenUnie - all benefit in the polls.

After a vote of no confidence toppled the center-right coalition government in Bucharest, President Basescu has designated Victor Ponta as his new prime minister. He leads the new left-led Social Liberal Union.

The decision fell just hours after the vote of no confidence submitted by the opposition.

Six months before regular parliamentary elections scheduled for November, Prime Minister-designate Victor Ponta lost no time, announcing plans to unveil his government line-up on Tuesday.

"There's no reason to panic," President Traian Basescu said after the collapse of Mihai Razvan Ungureanu's center-right government. "This is all happening in a democratic framework and is under control, as far as the security of our state is concerned." He also said Romania's finance ministry has "substantial reserves that can cope with any event."

Basescu's decision took his supporters by surprise: just last year, the president declared he would never name the head of the Social Democrats Prime Minister.  But Romania's president defended his choice as "completely legitimate" because Ponta is the candidate favored by a new parliamentary majority. 

Bucharest saw spectacular political change within less than ten hours on April 27.  The opposition alliance USL had put relentless pressure on Bucharest: They were highly critical of the government's privatisation plans of state assets and attacked the allocation of public funds to local communities whose mayors are members of the ruling coalition. Two very different parties with very different platforms joined forces last year to form the opposition alliance: the Social Democrats (PSD) and the National-Liberals (PNL).

The International Labour Organisation warned Monday that austerity measures are hurting job markets worldwide and predicted global unemployment of 202 million people in 2012, up six million from last year.

The ILO's World of Work Report 2012 said fiscal austerity and labour market reforms had had "devastating consequences" for employment while mostly failing to cut deficits, and warned that governments risked fueling unrest unless they combined tighter spending with job creation.

"The austerity and regulation strategy was expected to lead to more growth, which is not happening," Raymond Torres, director of the ILO's Institute for International Labour Studies, told journalists in Geneva.

"The strategy of austerity actually has been counterproductive from the point of view of its very objective of supporting confidence and supporting the reduction of budget deficits."

The report said some 50 million jobs had disappeared since the 2008 financial crisis.

It predicted a global unemployment rate of 6.1 percent in 2012 - 202 million people, up three percent from the provisional estimate of 196 million for 2011.

It forecast a rise to 6.2 percent in 2013 as another five million people become unemployed.

The European Commission is preparing a €200 billion "pact for growth" to be presented at the next EU summit in June. 

According to leading Spanish newspaper, El País, the plan aims to raise funds valued at €200 billion for investments in infrastructure, renewable energies and advanced technologies with the involvement of the private sector, in a bid to kick-start economic growth without raising public debt in the 27 member states.

The plan, which takes into consideration ideas of the French Socialist front-runner François Hollande, namely leveraging the European Investment Bank to boost growth and jobs, will be presented after the French elections.

`Updating' Europe 2020

Responding to widening criticism of austerity-led reforms, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso said on Friday (27 April) that the EU already had an agenda for growth, Europe 2020, but added that this agenda could be `updated'.

"It is always possible to complement it, adapt it to more challenging situations. And indeed I see some progress now in the debate," he said.

Barroso referred to his proposal for "project" or "investment" bonds as an example for this possible upgrade, as well as the Commission idea for reinforcement of the capital of the European Investment Bank (EIB), which he said had not been received well at the time.

"Let's be honest, we need investment for growth at European level," he said, adding that he had discussed the issue earlier today with the Prime Minister of Italy Mario Monti.

Sterling climbed to its highest level against the euro in almost two years on Monday as concerns grew in the financial markets about the deepening crisis in the single currency.

A pound at one stage bought more than €1.23 on the foreign exchanges - making foreign holidays cheaper but UK exports to the single-currency zone more expensive.

Fears that "austerity fatigue" is setting in among voters were heightened after figures were released showing that Spain - the country thought to be next in line for a bailout - has slid back into recession.

The pound was also stronger against the US dollar, where last week's weaker-than-expected growth figures for the first three months of 2012 were followed by a closely watched barometer of business in Chicago. Although figures last week showed the UK economy suffering from a double-dip recession, dealers are now anxious that the recovery in the world's biggest economy is losing momentum.

City analysts said the rise in the value of the pound was not a vote of confidence in the UK but rather a vote of no confidence in the eurozone, where growth prospects are deemed to be worse than they are in Britain. Speculation that the Bank of England will be reluctant to expand its £325bn quantitative easing programme has also underpinned the pound over the past month, a period when pressure has mounted on bond markets in Spain and Italy.

Mr Sarkozy has a mountain to climb. Many French voters seem viscerally to dislike him. Neither Ms Le Pen (who, disturbingly, did well) nor Mr Bayrou (who, regrettably, did not) is likely to endorse him, as both will gain from his defeat. So, barring a shock, such as an implosion in next week's televised debate, Mr Hollande can be confident of winning in May, and then of seeing his party triumph in June's legislative election.

This newspaper endorsed Mr Sarkozy in 2007, when he bravely told French voters that they had no alternative but to change. He was unlucky to be hit by the global economic crisis a year later. He has also chalked up some achievements: softening the Socialists' 35-hour week, freeing universities, raising the retirement age. Yet Mr Sarkozy's policies have proved as unpredictable and unreliable as the man himself. The protectionist, anti-immigrant and increasingly anti-European tone he has recently adopted may be meant for National Front voters, but he seems to believe too much of it. For all that, if we had a vote on May 6th, we would give it to Mr Sarkozy--but not on his merits, so much as to keep out Mr Hollande.

Standard & Poor's, the US credit rating agency, downgraded 11 of Spain's largest banks on Monday as the government held talks to segregate problematic property loans into one or more asset management companies to relieve the burden on struggling lenders, according to officials and bankers.

The "bad bank" scheme is the latest attempt by the centre-right government of Mariano Rajoy, prime minister, to avoid an international rescue programme of the sort required by Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

Mr Rajoy's Popular party government has deepened fiscal austerity, reformed Spain's labour market and ordered banks to set aside an extra €54bn of bad loan provisions and capital buffers this year.

Ministers had decided they had no need of an Irish-style bad bank. But economists say the crisis is so dire that weak banks will need further recapitalisation of about €100bn.

However, official data released on Monday showed that the Spanish economy shrank less than forecast in the first quarter of 2012, contracting 0.3 per cent compared with the final quarter of 2011, against the Bank of Spain's 0.4 per cent prediction last week.

Fairytales and nursery rhymes are quite popular among the economists. Economists and economic commentators will couch magical thinking in rational sounding phrases -- but that doesn't stop it from being hokum. Some within the profession attack these juvenile tendencies. Paul Krugman, for example, has often lambasted the idea, fostered by some of his colleagues, that the current crisis is due to a lack of confidence among investors. In a flash of irony he labeled this idea that of the `confidence fairy`.

Of course, Krugman is absolutely right; the idea that a lack of confidence is responsible for the current crisis is a fairytale pure and simple. Our current economic problems are caused by a lack of aggregate demand. Investors are absolutely right to lack confidence at this moment in time because, just like in the 1930s, there is no rational reason to invest more because the population lacks the adequate purchasing power to consume more goods and services. Matias Vernengo over at the excellent Naked Keynesianism blog provides a classic quote from Roosevelt's Fed chairman Marriner Eccles that summarises the situation well:

Confidence itself is not a cause [of economic depression]. It is the effect of things already in motion. What passed as a `lack of confidence' crisis was really nothing more than an investor's recognition of the fact that new plant facilities were not needed at the time.

Pretty straightforward point, but powerful nonetheless. And I think Krugman and other ISLM-Keynesians would broadly agree with it. That is, peculiarly, until they start talking about inflation targeting.

A series of attacks across Syria on Monday has renewed fears among Western officials that the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad is providing a training ground for extremist Islamist groups. Such a development could vastly complicate a United Nations-brokered cease-fire meant to stop the armed conflict from escalating into full-scale civil war.

Two suicide bombings ripped through busy districts in the northern city of Idlib early Monday, killing at least nine people and injuring at least 100, hours after rocket-propelled grenades hit the central bank building in Damascus, the government said.

Including a suicide bombing on Friday that killed at least 10 people, the latest blasts bring to eight the number of suicide attacks reported in Syria since December. Officials and analysts say the trend points to the growing role of al Qaeda and radical Sunni Islamist groups in an uprising that has developed into a bloody armed conflict.

Syrian opposition groups, including the rebel Free Syrian Army, immediately denied any role in the string of attacks on Monday and blamed the government. Dissidents have consistently said they believe Damascus has staged the attacks to prove it is fighting armed terrorists, a blanket term the government has used for its opponents.

Egypt's ultra-conservative Islamist groups have chosen to back Abdul Moneim Aboul Fotouh in the presidential race, rather than the candidate of the powerful Muslim Brotherhood.

The former jihadist group, Gamaat Islamiya, has announced its support after the main Salafi party, Nur made its decision at the weekend.

Experts say it is a serious blow for the Muslim Brotherhood.

The development comes as official campaigning for the presidency begins.

Doctor Aboul Fotouh was expelled from the Brotherhood last year after he announced he would join the contest. At that stage, the mainstream Islamist movement said it did not plan to field a presidential candidate but it later reversed the policy.

It has nominated the head of its political party, Mohammed Mursi. 'Crisis for Brotherhood'

The backing for Dr Aboul Fotouh should bring him many of the votes that took the Salafists, who are highly conservative and draw inspiration from the life of the Prophet Muhammad and the earliest Muslims, into second place behind the Brotherhood in last year's parliamentary elections.

Sudan has declared a state of emergency along its border with South Sudan, in a move that imposes a trade embargo on the South and suspends the constitution, SUNA, the official news agency, said.

It said President Omar al-Bashir issued a resolution on Sunday declaring the emergency in border districts of South Kordofan state, White Nile and Sennar states.

The measure follows a month of border fighting with South Sudan, which seceded last July after a peace deal ended one of Africa's longest civil wars, which killed about two million people between 1983 and 2005.

An emergency has already been in effect for almost a decade in Darfur, along the western border with South Sudan, while a similar status took effect in Blue Nile state last September when an ethnic insurgency began.

Trade across the border has unofficially been banned since South Sudan's independence, but the emergency formalises that prohibition.

Bashir's resolution "gives the right to the president and anyone with his mandate" to establish special courts, in consultation with the chief justice, SUNA said.

States (Ecowas) said on Monday it had imposed sanctions on Guinea-Bissau after talks with the ruling junta aimed at restoring constitutional order after a coup broke down.

Guinea-Bissau has been run by soldiers since the April 12 coup, which derailed presidential elections and set back Western efforts to combat drugs cartels using the tiny country as a transit hub for cocaine bound for Europe.

"These are targeted sanctions against junta leaders and diplomatic, economic and financial sanctions against the country," an Ecowas official said. "They went into effect at midnight, last night."

The official said representatives of the junta sent to Gambia's capital Banjul for talks on Sunday had rejected a demand by the West African bloc that elections be set within 12 months, and that interim president Raimundo Pereira, arrested by soldiers during the coup, be reinstated to oversee the transition.

Pereira was released on Friday along with former Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Junior, the front-runner in the presidential polls before they were pre-empted. Both left the country for Côte d'Ivoire.

Documents found in the house where Osama bin Laden was killed a year ago show a close working relationship between top al-Qaida leaders and Mullah Omar, the overall commander of the Taliban, including frequent discussions of joint operations against Nato forces in Afghanistan, the Afghan government and targets in Pakistan.

The communications show a three-way conversation between Bin Laden, his then deputy Ayman Zawahiri and Omar, who is believed to have been in Pakistan since fleeing Afghanistan after the collapse of his regime in 2001.

They indicate a "very considerable degree of ideological convergence", a Washington-based source familiar with the documents told the Guardian.

The news will undermine hopes of a negotiated peace in Afghanistan, where the key debate among analysts and policymakers is whether the Taliban - seen by many as following an Afghan nationalist agenda - might once again offer a safe haven to al-Qaida or like-minded militants, or whether they can be persuaded to renounce terrorism.

One possibility, experts say, is that although Omar built a strong relationship with Bin Laden and Zawahiri, other senior Taliban commanders see close alliance or co-operation with al-Qaida as deeply problematic.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Monday he was returning to Cuba for another round of radiation treatment in his battle with cancer, which resurfaced earlier this year.

"I will return in the next few hours to Havana," he told television here. "We are in the home stretch of my radiation treatment."

Chavez's cancer, first detected in his pelvic area in June 2011, was found to have recurred in February.

Since surgery to remove the new lesion, he has undergone repeated rounds of treatment in Cuba, and most recently returned from Havana on Thursday.

The 57-year-old Chavez, who insists he will run for a third six-year term in the October 7 election, never has publicly revealed the kind of cancer from which he suffers or its exact location.

The visible face of the international left in Latin America, he is running for re-election against center-left opposition candidate Henrique Capriles, governor of the state of Miranda.

Netanyahu sees unity on Iran crumble

Israeli leaders have spent years calling for international unity to face down the threat posed by Iran's nuclear programme. Now they are seeing this common front crumble in the one place they thought was safe: Israel itself.

Over the past week, Benjamin Netanyahu's government has faced an unprecedented barrage of criticism at home for its stance on Iran, in particular for the implied threat of air strikes. Leading the latest charge was Yuval Diskin, the former director of the Shin Bet internal security service, whose incendiary remarks have dominated the Israeli political debate for days.

Mr Diskin, who left his post amid much praise last year, publicly slammed Mr Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, the defence minister, as "messianic" politicians who could not be trusted, especially on Iran. The two men, he said, were "not the people I would like to be holding the steering wheel" during a crisis.

Mr Diskin also warned that an Israeli strike against Iran, contrary to government assurances, was likely to hasten the development of an Iranian nuclear bomb.

(...)

Speaking in New York on Sunday, Mr Olmert raised a question debated with growing intensity in Israel and abroad: "What has happened," he asked, "that all the leaders of Israel's security services suddenly think in the same way?"

There is strong evidence that the Israeli defence and intelligence establishment is opposed to a strike on Iran, at least for the time being. Mr Dagan, for one, made his position clear last year, when he famously described an Israeli attack on Iran as the "stupidest idea" he had ever encountered.

Australia has listed the koala as a threatened species in parts of the country due to its dwindling population, officials say.

Environment Minister Tony Burke said koalas in Queensland, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory are now considered "vulnerable".

Habitat loss, urban expansion, vehicle strikes, dog attacks and disease have contributed to their dwindling numbers.

But conservationists say the declaration should have been national.

Contrary to popular belief, koalas, which are native to Australia, are marsupials and not bears. They only eat the leaves of the eucalyptus tree and sleep for up to 20 hours a day.

The government of Peru is investigating the deaths of more than 500 pelicans along a 70km (40-mile) stretch of the country's northern coast.

Officials say most appeared to have died on shore over the past few days.

Scientists have also found the carcasses of 54 boobies, several sea lions and a turtle.

They were found in the same region where some 800 dolphins washed ashore earlier this year. The cause of their death is still being investigated.

The Peruvian government said it was "deeply worried".

A preliminary report said that there was no evidence to show the pelicans had died at sea, but rather on the beach where they were found.

BP is planning to start three new oil drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico this year. The launch of the new rigs will bring the number of BP rigs in the Gulf to eight - more than the oil giant had before the devastating Deepwater Horizon disaster three years ago.

Bernard Looney, BP's executive in charge of new wells, said BP is expecting to spend $4bn (£2.5bn) on new developments in the Gulf of Mexico this year and hopes to "invest at least that much every year over the next decade".

"After much soul-searching in the fall of 2010, we concluded it would be wrong to walk away [from the Gulf of Mexico]," Looney said at an offshore oil conference in Houston, Texas, on Monday. "We would have been walking away not only from our past, but from a key component of our future."

He said the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which killed 11 people, had "challenged us to the core", but said the company has been working hard to help prevent "such an accident from ever happening again".

While conceding that BP was in "absolutely no position to preach", he called on the industry to adopt broader safety standards.

Large windfarms can increase local night time temperatures by fanning warmer air onto the ground, new research has revealed. The study used satellite data to show that the building of huge windfarms in west Texas over the last decade has warmed the nights by up to 0.72C.

"Wind power is going to be a part of the solution to the climate change, air pollution and energy security problem," said Liming Zhou, at the University of Albany in New York. "But understanding the impacts of windfarms is critical for developing management strategies to ensure the long-term sustainability of wind power."

West Texas has seen rapid expansion of windfarms, with turbine numbers rising from 111 in 2003 to 2358 in 2011. Zhou's team compared the land surface temperatures at the windfarms with other areas across this period and detected a clear rise at night.

They note, however, that the effect on the air temperature, which is usually given in weather forecasts, will be lower than 0.72C rise because they respond less quickly to changes than land temperatures.

The scientists say the effect is due to the gentle turbulence caused by the wind turbines. After the sun has set, the land cools down more quickly than the air, leaving a cold blanket of air just above the ground. But the turbine wakes mix this cold layer with the warmer air above, raising the temperature. A previous study found a similar effect but was based on data from only two weather stations over just six weeks.

"The result looks pretty solid to me," said Steven Sherwood at the climate change research centre at the University of New South Wales, Australia. "The same strategy is commonly used by fruit growers, who fly helicopters over the orchards rather than erect windmills, to combat early morning frosts."

"Overall, the warming effect reported in our study is local and is small compared to the strong year-to-year changes" that result from natural variation, said Zhou. The study is published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Nowadays, you cannot travel across Romania without meeting farmers newly arrived from western Europe who are re-inventing the country's agriculture. Thanks to their know-how and investment, Romanian agriculture grew by 11% in 2011, and this is only the beginning. Land left to run wild and the sense of abandon that used to be a feature of the Romanian countryside are disappearing fast.

The going rate for arable land in Romania is around 2,000 euros per hectare, an extraordinarily low price for the EU. EU subsidies per hectare amount to 180 euro, which is half of the current rate in Western Europe. However, from 2014, the new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is expected to put Western and Eastern Europe on an equal footing.

As it stands, farmers from other EU states who wish to buy land in Romania are obliged to register companies in the country. However, from 2014, EU residents will be allowed to acquire land directly. And this is the main reason for the current rush to buy in the country before speculation sends prices skyrocketing.

Among the most hurried are Swiss farmers who no longer have the means to pay the tens of the thousands of euros per hectare demanded for land in their home country. Ten years ago, three generations of the Hani family - the father, the mother, two children and two grandchildren - pulled up stakes in the canton of Lucerne to move to Firiteaz, a small village situated in western Romania, where they have now acquired 800 hectares of land.

"In Western Europe, there are no opportunities for young people," complains Christian Hani, age 29. "Here you can build something from nothing. I think it is very important for our generation to create something new."

As some of East Africa's biggest brewers compete for a slice of the region's barley and sorghum, they are finding fewer farmers like Samuel Gitonga, and more like Emmanuel Muteti.

On his farm in the Rift Valley, a region known as Kenya's bread basket, Gitonga has long grown barley to sell to the brewing companies.

Muteti, in contrast, lives in Emali, a parched settlement in Eastern Kenya some 330 km (206 miles) from the coastal town of Mombasa. He recently switched from subsistence farming of maize to a crop newly fancied by beer makers - sorghum.

What distinguishes the two farmers further is that Gitonga is losing the market for his barley because of low rainfall, which experts link to climate change. But for Muteti, sorghum promises a bounty despite erratic weather patterns.

Changing weather patterns are leading farmers around the world to consider shifting crops, particularly to varieties that are particularly resistant to worsening droughts, floods, high temperatures salt intrusion. In Kenya, it's sorghum that's gaining adherents, while barley is losing them.

For hundreds of Rift Valley barley growers like Gitonga, signs that all was not well began in 2007 when brewers issued new guidelines requiring farmers to improve the moisture content in their barley.

According to Gitonga, who also chairs the Barley Growers Association of Kenya, farmers could not guarantee a minimum moisture level of nearly 13 percent in their crop because of a continual shortage of rainfall.

"These were issues beyond our control because of the failing weather," says Gitonga. "We eventually lost out on the contracts."

Muteti, meanwhile, is gaining Gitonga's lost market share.

"The crop is doing well even in this harsh weather," he says, shooting birds away from his sorghum fields. "But the best thing for me is that there is a ready market (from) East African Breweries," the company with the region's largest share of the beer industry.

Indians have become much more unhappy about their lives in the past four years despite one of the world's fastest rates of economic growth, a survey by the Gallup polling organization showed Monday.

The deterioration appears driven partly by the expectation, created by politicians and the media, that India's boom would dramatically improve its citizens' standard of living.

When many Indians realized that the boom was not significantly benefiting them, their sense of well-being and optimism about the future seemed to collapse.

"It is very dangerous to create expectations and not meet them," said Rajesh Srinivasan, Gallup's regional research director for Asia and the Middle East.

The number of Indians who rated their lives poorly enough to be considered "suffering" rose this year to 31 percent, equivalent to 240 million people, a dramatic rise from just 7 percent in 2008, Gallup's surveys showed.

It is also significantly higher than the global average of 13 percent in the Washington-based polling organization's 2011 survey of 150 countries.

One World Trade Center has become New York's tallest building, overtaking the Empire State Building, after a steel column was lifted into place.

The installation of the girder on the 100th floor of the skyscraper makes the structure at the site of the 9/11 attacks 1,271ft (387m) high.

The building, construction of which began in April 2006, will be 1,776ft tall when completed.

The World Trade Center's twin towers were destroyed on 11 September 2001.

The skyscraper, dubbed Freedom Tower, became the tallest building in New York a day before the one-year anniversary of the operation that killed Osama Bin Laden. 'A real milestone'

The rooftop parapet of the building, often referred to as Freedom Tower, will be 1,368ft - exactly the same height as the original One World Trade Center.

But when all 104 floors of the new skyscraper are finished, including the antenna, One World Trade Center will be slightly taller than its predecessor.

Mr Justice Arnold said that the process must begin in the next few weeks. It followed his ruling in February that both the operators and users of The Pirate Bay website infringe the copyright of music companies.

BT, who has also been named in the case, has requested more time to deal with the original complaint lodged by the record industry body, the BPI. The BPI has agreed, but sources expect The Pirate Bay to be inaccessible by BT customers in due course as well.

The Pirate Bay acts as a searchable index of links to allow users to download files from each other. All the most popular files are copyright films, music and software.

The website claims to be the largest website of its kind, with more than four million trackers, and according to record labels generated up to $3m in advertising in October last year. Some 3.7 million Britons are Pirate Bay users, according to ComScore, and Alexa consistently ranks it in the 100 most popular websites in the world.

Because it does not itself host copyright material, the Pirate Bay's defenders have often argued that it works in a similar way to Google, but Mr Justice Arnold found its operators "actively encourage" copyright infringement.

A billionaire in Australia has announced plans to build an "unsinkable" version of the Titanic, 100 years after the original ship sank after hitting an iceberg.

The Titanic II, announced on Monday, is expected to retrace the steps of its predecessor with a maiden voyage from England to North America in late 2016.

"It is going to be designed so it won't sink", Clive Palmer, a mining and tourism tycoon told reporters.

"It will be designed as a modern ship with all the technology to ensure that doesn't happen."

The original Titanic, then the largest ocean liner in the world, collided with an iceberg on April 15, 1912, leaving a 200 foot gash that exposed the luxury liner's engineering shortcomings - among them, watertight bulkheads that did not span to the top of the ship.

The collision led to the deaths of 1,517 of the 2,202 documented crew and passengers on board the 46,000 tonne vessel.

Palmer said his new shipping company, Blue Star Line Pty Limited, had signed a memorandum of understanding with the Chinese state-owned company CSC Jinling Shipyard to build Titanic II.

The original ship was operated by the White Star Line.

Just 20 minutes of playing a violent shooting video game made players more accurate when firing a realistic gun at a mannequin -- and more likely to aim for and hit the head, a new study found.

Players who used a pistol-shaped controller in a shooting video game with human targets had 99 percent more completed head shots to the mannequin than did participants who played other video games, as well as 33 percent more shots that hit other parts of the body.

In addition, the study found that participants who reported habitual playing of violent shooting games also were more accurate than others when shooting at the mannequin, and made more head shots.

It's not surprising that video games can improve shooting accuracy -- the military, police departments and others already use video games for training purposes, said Brad Bushman, co-author of the study and a professor of communication and psychology at Ohio State University.

But this is the first study to show that average players using violent shooting games with realistic human targets can improve firing aim and accuracy.

"For good and bad, video game players are learning lessons that can be applied in the real world," Bushman said.

Bushman conducted the study with Jodi Whitaker, lead author of the study and a graduate student in communication at Ohio State. The study appears online in the journal Communication Research and will be published in a future print edition.

The world's first theme park based on the Angry Birds video game characters attracted international attention on its opening day.

The CEO of Särkänniemi, Miikka Seppälä, is a somewhat astounded by the great interest generated by the Angry Birds park.

"We've only realised now that this is such a big story around the world. About 70 representatives of the international media are coming here."  

Rovio is poised to become a Major Player in the global entertainment business.  

Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere

Boris Johnson today launched his second expletive-strewn tirade of the London mayoral election when he swore on camera about the investigative work of a BBC journalist.

With the campaign to run City Hall entering its final 72 hours, Mr Johnson sought to swat aside questions about his dealings with News International by accusing Tim Donovan, the political editor of BBC London, of talking "fucking bollocks" following a report about the London Mayor's attempts to secure sponsorship from Rupert Murdoch's empire.

The outburst, which was broadcast by the BBC in a lunchtime news bulletin, followed an earlier incident last month in which the Conservative incumbent called his Labour opponent Ken Livingstone a "fucking liar" in a lift following a dispute over their tax arrangements.

Mr Johnson's latest brush with controversy followed a report by Mr Donovan which focused on the Tory candidate's meetings with senior NI figures in 2010 shortly after he had dismissed the News of the World phone hacking scandal in front of the London Assembly as "codswallop".