ATHENS, May 12, 2012 (IPS) - Kosmas Bitros (29) didn't "believe in politics and in elections as a way of changing society". Still, he showed up at the ballot boxes for the first time last Sunday to cast a vote against austerity in the Greek national elections.

Though he did not identify with one particular party, Bitros believed it was a matter of great urgency to bring down the two-party regime, comprised of PASOK and the New Democracy (ND) party, which has dominated Greek politics for the last 30 years.

He cast his vote for the Coalition of the Radical Left, or Syriza and went out with friends. At night they gathered together to watch the results and for the first time ever Bitros witnessed what he had believed was impossible: Syriza was coming second with 16.7 percent of the vote, just behind the right wing ND, with 18.8 percent.

"The (old regime) was corrupted, they have destroyed the country and they didn't want to give up power," Bitros told IPS.

"When the (economic) crisis came, I realised how defenseless we are, how they are playing with our lives without care."

Although he was hesitant to vote, believing his actions to be of little consequence, he finally understood that politicians "cannot destroy democracy completely. You have to use even the most marginal chance you have to push things where you want to see them, not let go," Bitros added.

MÁLAGA, Spain, May 11, 2012 (IPS) - A filthy vacant lot is now sprouting strawberries, tomatoes and carrots. This small community garden in the centre of the southern Spanish city of Málaga was created by the "Indignados" protest movement, which is celebrating its first anniversary Saturday by taking to the streets across the country.

"This urban vegetable garden is a symbol and a space for freedom," Málaga resident Miguel Ángel, who has been involved in the movement since it emerged a year ago in response to the severe economic crisis in Spain, told IPS.

Organised over the online social networks, the movement spread throughout the country on May 15, 2011 (giving it the name 15M). Demonstrators calling themselves the "indignados" - indignant or angry - occupied the central squares of Spain's major cities to protest an economic model they perceive as socially unjust and political parties they see as subordinate to the economic-powers-that-be.

(Reuters) - Wires hang out of the walls, windows are smashed and the grass grows tall in the gardens of the once-elegant archbishop's residence in Cervena Recice, a 16th-century chateau left to rot after the communists took over in 1948.

Bent on building a society free of religion, the communists seized the chateau, of the diocese of Prague, and thousands of other church properties and threw clergymen into labor camps and prisons or forced them into exile.

When Communist rule ended in 1989, the residence was caught up in a disagreement over who it belonged to, part of a bigger dispute that has tied up about six percent of the Czech Republic's total forests and fields that once belonged to mostly Christian churches.

Now the government plans to return $4 billion of property and pay $3 billion in financial compensation over 30 years - about 3.5 percent of the country's gross domestic product combined - to the churches, about four-fifths of it to the Catholic church.

(Reuters) - David Cameron signed off messages to tabloid editor Rebekah Brooks with an affectionate "LOL", she told an inquiry on Friday, conjuring the embarrassing image of a prime minister-in-waiting fawning over a Rupert Murdoch protegee.

As editor of Britain's most-read newspapers the News of the World and later the Sun, Brooks had the power to make or break careers and was courted for years by top politicians until she quit in disgrace in July 2011 over phone-hacking by reporters.

(Reuters) - The EU's fiscal pact, intended to deter governments from running up more debt, should be supplemented with action to stimulate growth, new European Central Bank policymaker Panicos Demetriades said on Saturday.

"A strong safety net over employment and the living standards of citizens will put a stop to the further depletion of state revenues and, by consequence, a widening of deficits," the newly-appointed governor of the Central Bank of Cyprus told a conference in Nicosia.

"An enrichment of the fiscal compact is required, or it should be combined with a strong framework of measures to stimulate growth," he said.

Newly-elected French President François Hollande received a blow to his hopes of pulling the country out of the economic crisis after figures released by the European Commission show France, and Spain, will miss budget deficit targets for next year.

 

The French public deficit is expected to hit 4.2 per cent in 2013, higher than Hollande's three per cent target, while the economy will grow by 1.3 per cent next year, also below the Socialist leader's projection of 1.7 per cent.

European Union Economic Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said the 17-nation eurozone was currently in a "mild but short-lived recession" and would see a "slow and subdued recovery" at the start of the second half of the year.

The European Commission is launching a fresh inquiry into the restructuring plans of Dutch banking, insurance and financial services company ING, which included the forced sale of WestlandUtrecht Bank, the EU announced on Friday.

The plans remain compatible with the EU's internal market and will therefore be approved once more, the Commission emphasised.

In October 2008, ING received 10 billion euros in emergency aid from the Dutch state under strict EU conditions. These included separating ING's banking and insurance activities, the immediate sale of its ING Direct internet savings bank in the United States and the sale of WestlandUtrecht Bank.

After 2009, however, the Dutch state and ING announced changes to the plan, which the European Commission is now going to investigate in a far-reaching probe. The inquiry will also appeal against a ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union, which in March quashed the Commission's verdict on the aid measures it agreed with ING.

48% of voters with low education vote PVV (hard-right) or SP (former maoist left, difficult to characterize, I would say non-cosmopolitan very-left). 13% of highly educated voters choose PVV/SP.

40% of highly educated voters choose VVD (neo-libs of current prime minister) or D66 (.NL Lib Dems). Only 19% low educated voters choose VVD/D66.

I am guessing that CDA (Christian Democrats) and PvdA (social-democrats) get their votes mostly from the middle classes.

Interesting...

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gPKgrKRl7MjdcelOV3yuv1xesHfA?docId=CNG.e86fdbe7fd 5dea73c249619586b70b18.631

This is a regular, somewhat tongue-in-cheek blog about the higher castes of society, written by someone who apparently grew up in those circles. I recommend looking at the pictures in that post.

Ms Merkel didn't come to Cerea: In the center of Italian furniture manifacturing, it is visible how austerity in the era of globalization is ruining a whole region.

... Cerea was one of those success stories Lega Nord likes to talk about. Industrious people that produce beautiful lasting things in companies that pay attention to quality.

... One can cut a lot of costs when times are bad. But one can not change much about opponents who use industrial waste instead of wood, who use prison labor, who put their earnings in tax havens, and are so cheap that -inspite of La Crisi- a new set of furnishings is affordable every ten years. The business model of Cerea was the production of high-quality furniture with a long life. Higher prices were possible then. In the past. But now austerity is being enacted or enforced.

... austerity -> efficiency -> growth -> more money. Exactly that has been tried early on in Cerea and they lost against global competition very often. I don't know if these pictures can calm any markets. ... But if someone burns himself alive again in Italy, knowledge of Cerea may lead to a better understanding.

Whoever is able to solve the problems of Cerea should be able to solve the problems of Europe. But it doesn't seem like anyone is able to do that.

(Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase & Co lost $15 billion in market value and a notch in its credit ratings on Friday while a chorus of regulators and politicians reacted to its surprise $2 billion trading loss by demanding stiffer oversight for the banking industry.

The loss by one of Wall Street's most respected banks embarrassed chief executive Jamie Dimon, a leader lauded for steering his bank through the fallout from the 2008 financial crisis without reporting a loss.

"We know we were sloppy. We know we were stupid. We know there was bad judgment," Dimon said in an interview with NBC television to be broadcast on "Meet the Press" on Sunday.

Britain's economy may have shrunk more than previously estimated in the first quarter after the statistics office reported a deeper slump in construction.

Building output plunged 4.8 percent in the three months through March, the Office for National Statistics said today. That compares with a 3 percent drop in the first estimate of gross domestic product on April 25, which showed the economy contracted 0.2 percent. The revision on its own would shave 0.1 percentage point off GDP, the statistics office said.

The building data may add to concerns about the economy as the Bank of England grapples with a double-dip recession and inflation remains above its target. Policy makers hadn't seen the revision before they decided yesterday to halt their quantitative-easing program at 325 billion pounds ($524 billion), according to statistics office officials.

Nigerian soldiers have arrested a suspected leading Boko Haram fighter in a raid in the northern state of Kano, a military spokesman and security sources said.

Suleiman Mohammed was arrested on Friday along with his wife and five children, a security source involved in the raid in the Farawa neighbourhood of Kano, the largest city in the north, said.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

Friday's arrest came hours after blasts and gunfire rocked the restive city of Maiduguri, capital of Borno state, where the group, which calls for the adoption of Sharia law, is based.

"We had an operation this morning ... at a Boko Haram hideout [in Kano]. We made some arrests but details will be given later," Lieutenant Iweha Ikedichi, a military spokesman for Kano, told the AFP news agency.

Al Jazeera has obtained secret recordings of Muammar Gaddafi made during the Libyan revolution.

The recordings are mobile phone wire taps of two members of Gaddafi's inner circle, Al-Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi, his prime minister and Tayeb el Safi, one of his most trusted aides.

The audio files contain 12,000 intercepted conversations with Gaddafi himself, his sons, and members of the international community.

(video)

CAIRO, May 8, 2012 (IPS) - More than a year since president Hosni Mubarak was removed from power, the money he allegedly syphoned from Egypt during his 29-year rule remains beyond the reach of authorities attempting to recover it.

Mubarak amassed a fortune by carving up Egypt as if it were his own private estate. The dictator and his family are believed to have accumulated anywhere from 2 billion to 70 billion dollars in illicit wealth, much of it tied up in secret offshore accounts as well as lavish estates in London, Madrid, New York and across Egypt.

Authorities responsible for identifying and recovering these assets have dragged their feet, giving Mubarak's intermediaries more time to move the money to safe havens, says Amir Marghany, a member of the Egyptian Legal Group for Recovering the People's Wealth (ELGRPW), an ad hoc group of lawyers and jurists seeking restitution of Mubarak's ill-gotten gains.

"People are getting frustrated," says Marghany. "The process could take years, and there's no guarantee we'll ever see a penny."

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has returned from Cuba, saying he has successfully completed a course of radiotherapy for cancer.

Mr Chavez hugged ministers on the runway in Caracas and broke into song in front of TV cameras.

"In the last few days we successfully completed the radiation cycle, as planned by the medical team," he said.

Mr Chavez, in power since 1999, has insisted he will run for president again in an election due in October.

A video posted online in the name of Islamist group, al-Nusra Front, says it carried out two bomb attacks in the Syrian capital Damascus on Thursday.

The attacks took place near a military intelligence building during the morning rush hour, killing 55 people.

Opposition activists have accused the regime of orchestrating the explosions.

The al-Nusra Front emerged in January and has said it was behind previous attacks, including one in March on a police HQ and airforce Intelligence.

The video says the bombings were in response to attacks on civilian areas by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

NASA researchers are about to fly off on a campaign that will take them into the heart of thunderstorm country. The Deep Convective Clouds and Chemistry (DC3) field campaign will use an airport in Salina, Kan., as a base to explore the impact of large thunderstorms on the concentration of ozone and other substances in the upper troposphere.

The campaign is being led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, and is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA.

"Thunderstorms provide a mechanism for rapid lifting of air from the surface to higher altitudes in a matter of minutes to hours," said James Crawford of NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., and a member of the mission's scientific steering committee.

"This allows molecules that are short-lived and more abundant near the surface to be transported to the upper troposphere in amounts that could not happen under normal atmospheric conditions," he said.

It's all the rage these days for gigantic agrichemical companies to release creepy videos touting the benefits of dodgy products languishing under the regulatory microscope.

Yesterday, I posted Dow Agrosciences' video on the wonders of its new genetically modified corn product, currently under review by the USDA for deregulation, that would have farmers dousing fields with a cocktail of herbicides.

And today, I point you to this even more elaborate and Orwellian one from Syngenta on its lucrative herbicide atrazine, currently under review by the EPA for its presence in drinking water. The video portrays atrazine as the best thing for water since the advent of the rain cloud. Just in case you miss the video's point, Syngenta has made it easy for you with the title: "Saving the Oasis: Atrazine Saves Soil & Water."

More domestic drilling does not make America less susceptible to global supply disruptions or protect consumers from gasoline price volatility, according to a new analysis from the Congressional Budget Office.

The CBO report reviewed different policies intended to make the country more energy secure, concluding that the only effective tool for shielding businesses and consumers from price spikes is to use less oil.

Because oil is sold on the global market, CBO concludes that increasing domestic oil production would do little to influence rising gas prices in the U.S.

These findings back up historical experience. According to an analysis of 36 years of gasoline prices and domestic oil production conducted by the Associated Press, there is zero statistical correlation between increased drilling and lower prices at the gas pump.

GOTHENBURG, Sweden, May 9, 2012 (ENS) - As the climate warms, plant species that prefer a colder environment are disappearing from the mountain ranges of Southern Europe. Since many of these species have small distribution areas, they are now threatened with extinction, according to two new studies from European researchers.

"These species have migrated upwards, but sooner or later the mountain reaches its summit," said researcher and biologist Ulf Molau at Sweden's University of Gothenburg. "Many alpine plant species are disappearing from mountain ranges in Southern Europe, and for some of them - those that are only found in a single mountain range - the outlook is extremely bleak."

Published in the journals "Nature" and "Science," the studies are part of the broader Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments, or GLORIA. Today, GLORIA is a mega-network covering all the world's mountain regions, but it is GLORIA's original European arm that has reached a stage where researchers have started to observe changes.

UXBRIDGE, Canada, May 10, 2012 (IPS) - Plastic trash is altering the very ecology of the world's oceans. Insects called "sea skaters", a relative of pond water striders, are now laying their eggs on the abundant fingernail-sized pieces of plastic floating in the middle of the North Pacific Ocean instead of relying on a passing seabird feather or bit of driftwood.

With an average of 10 bits of plastic per cubic metre of seawater, there are now plenty of places for sea skaters to lay eggs in a remote region known as the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, 1,500 kilometres west of North America. Not surprisingly, egg densities have soared, a new study has found.

"We're seeing changes in this marine insect that can be directly attributed to the plastic," says Miriam Goldstein, study co-author and graduate student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

This is the first proof that plastics in the open ocean are affecting marine invertebrates (animals without a backbone), which will have consequences for the entire marine food web.

"We simply don't have the data to know what those consequences will be. It is a very remote region of the ocean, hard to get to and expensive to conduct research," Goldstein told IPS.

The North Pacific Gyre is one of five large systems of rotating currents in the world's oceans. It has become better known in recent years as the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch". It has at least 100 times more plastic today than it did in 1972, according to the study published this week in the journal Biology Letters.

Argentina is the world's third largest exporter of soybeans. Every year, the industry spreads over 50 million gallons of agro-toxins--namely glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto's widely-used herbicide Roundup, and endosulfan--through aerial spraying over farmland.

While Monsanto claims there is no risk to humans, a 2008 scientific study found that even at low concentrations, glyphosate causes the death of human embryonic, placental and umbilical cells. Endosulfan is a highly toxic pesticide that has been banned in 80 countries because of its threats to human health and the environment. In May 2011, it was added to the UN list of persistent organic pollutants to be eliminated worldwide.

Motivation

Thirteen years ago, Sofía Gatica gave birth to a daughter. Three days later, the baby's kidneys failed. The working-class mother of three was determined to find out what killed her child. She began talking to her neighbors in Ituzaingó, a working-class neighborhood of 6,000 in central Argentina surrounded by soy fields, and became alarmed at the prevalence of unexplained health problems plaguing her community.

Gatica invited a group of neighbors to her home to discuss their experiences. With only a high school education and no organizing experience, Gatica co-founded the Mothers of Ituzaingó--a group of 16 mothers working together to put a stop to the indiscriminate agrochemical use that was poisoning their community.

Gatica and the group of mothers began going door to door to conduct the first epidemiological study of the area and discovered the serious effects that pesticide spraying was having on the families in Ituzaingó. Residents reported cancer rates that were 41 times the national average (doctors suspect that many other cases go unreported), as well as high rates of neurological and respiratory diseases, birth defects, and infant mortality.

Archaeologists working in Turkey say they've found evidence of a forgotten language dating back more than 2,500 years to the time of the Assyrian Empire.

Researchers from Cambridge University in Britain, working at the probable site of the ancient Assyrian city of Tushan, said the language may have been spoken by deportees originally from the Zagros Mountains, on the border of modern-day Iran and Iraq.

Under a policy widely practiced across the Assyrian Empire, those people may have been forcibly moved from their homeland and resettled in what is now southeast Turkey, the researchers said.

"It was an approach which helped [Assyrians] to consolidate power by breaking the control of the ruling elite in newly-conquered areas," Cambridge researcher John MacGinnis said. "If people were deported to a new location, they were entirely dependent on the Assyrian administration for their well-being."

Government critics are questioning whether a man jailed for criticizing the monarchy died in hospital because he was given inadequate medical attention.

Ampon Tangnoppakul, also known as Ah Kong, died this week in a Bangkok prison hospital where he was being treated for acute stomach pains.

Ampon, 61, was sentenced to 20 years in jail in November after a criminal court found him guilty of lese-majeste -- the controversial Article 112 of the Criminal Code -- and computer crimes, a report in the Bangkok Post said.

Ampon was charged with sending four text messages with offensive content in May last year to the personal secretary of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva criticizing the queen, the Post reported.

Biodiversity hot spots - the world's biologically richest and most threatened locations on Earth - and high biodiversity wilderness areas - biologically rich but less threatened - are some of the most linguistically diverse regions on our planet, according to a team of conservationists.

"Results indicate that these regions (hot spots and high biodiversity wilderness areas) often contain considerable linguistic diversity, accounting for 70 percent of all languages on Earth," the researchers report in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Moreover, the languages involved frequently are unique to particular regions, with many facing extinction."

Currently, biologists estimate yearly losses of species at a rate 1,000 times higher than historic rates. Linguists predict that by the end of the 21st century, 50 to 90 percent of the world's languages will disappear.

(Reuters) - Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose limited role in promoting the No. 1 social network's market debut has drawn criticism, laid out its growth strategy to investors on Friday, saying that transforming its mobile and advertising experience are top priorities in 2012.

Integrating online apps more strongly into Facebook is also a major goal, he told hundreds of investors at an event that capped the first week of Facebook's cross-country "roadshow" to pitch its highly anticipated initial public offering.

Facebook aims to raise about $10.6 billion, dwarfing the coming-out parties of tech companies like Google Inc and valuing it at up to $96 billion - rivaling Amazon.com Inc's.

Zuckerberg, 27, who started Facebook in his Harvard dorm room 8 years ago, said Facebook's key priorities in 2012 were to improve its mobile application, to build stronger ties incorporating its social network with other online apps and to create a "transformative" advertising experience.

Three renaissance Italian paintings and another by French old master Nicolas Poussin were found in a car park in Corsica Friday after a tip-off to magistrates investigating their theft last year from a museum in Ajaccio.

Police find priceless paintings in Corsican carpark - France - RFI

The priceless paintings were:

• Virgin and child by Giovanni Bellini,
• Pentecost by Mariotto di Nardo,
• a work by an anyonymous Umbrian artist
• Midas at the source of the River Pactolus by Nicolas Poussin.

A mysterious caller phoned investigating magistrate Charlotte Dauriac at 8 pm on Friday evening, refusing to give a name and telling her that the artworks could be found in a carpark in the north of the city.

Police found them stacked against a wall, one wrapped in a plastic bag, and took them to be tested for traces of DNA.

Experts say that they would have been difficult to sell illegally because they are so well known.

A Swiss sadist who offered his friend's wife and daughter to cannibals for slaughter, apologized in court to his would-be victims while citing his poor relationship with his mother as the trigger for his actions.

Bassist Donald 'Duck' Dunn, who played with Booker T. & the M.G.'s, has died in Tokyo aged 70.

The M.G.'s were the house band for STAX records and Dunn can be heard on a number of tracks including Otis Redding's 'Respect' and Albert King's 'Born Under A Bad Sign'.

The bassist had been in the Japanese city to play a series of concerts as part of a STAX show, featuring Steve Cropper and Eddie Floyd, and had played two gigs on Saturday night. Cropper posted on his Facebook page that Dunn had died in his sleep this morning (May 13).