A new report says that joining the eurozone has proved to be a "damaging step" for Ireland now facing further economic decline.

The study is published just a few days before Irish citizens will have a chance to vote on the eurozone fiscal discipline pact.

The Irish go to the polls on 31 May to give their verdict on the controversial deal thrashed out by EU leaders.

Called "Ireland and the euro - A journey without a map", the study argues that the decision to join the EU currency union has proved to be "damaging for the Irish economy and development of the country".

It goes on to warn that "without taking necessary action the future of Ireland is likely to be one of unrelieved economic decline marked by plunging living standards, mass unemployment and emigration".

The study was published in Brussels by a right-leaning think tank, "New Direction - The Foundation for European Reform."

The EU has been accused of not allowing a wine to be called wine because it is made from grapes sourced outside the EU.

According to EU law, an English wine produced in Kent by Chapel Down & Wines of Argentina cannot be classified as a wine.

This is despite it being made of Malbec grapes air-freighted to the UK from Argentina.

As a result, the wine owner has been told he must call it a "fruit derived alcoholic beverage from produce sourced outside the EU".

...The ruling has been attacked by UKIP leader Nigel Farage who hosted a "non-wine" tasting event in parliament to highlight the issue.

Farage said, "This must be one of the most ridiculous EU stories of the year. It is up there with bendy bananas."

...Further comment from UKIP member Roger Helmer who said, "It is about time the EU backed off and left the English language to the English."

Oh, it's an English language problem?

Downing Street has played down suggestions of a rift between David Cameron and Francois Hollande ahead of their first face-to-face meeting.

Downing Street said the talks are "not awkward" despite Mr Cameron's backing for Mr Hollande's opponent in the recent French presidential election.

The prime minister had earlier praised the newly elected Socialist president's deficit reduction plans.

He was speaking ahead of the G8 summit in the United States.

The leaders of the G8 group of the world's most powerful economies say they want debt-stricken Greece to remain in the eurozone.

In their summit communique, G8 leaders also committed themselves to promoting growth alongside fiscal responsibility.

However, the leaders acknowledged "the right measures are not the same for each of us".

Greece's possible exit from the eurozone was high on the agenda, following inconclusive elections there.

A bomb exploded in front of a girls' school in southern Italy, killing a 16-year-old girl and wounding seven others with suspicion quickly falling on the local Mafia.

The explosion, near the entrance of a school named after the wife of murdered anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone, occurred as girls were arriving for the start of the school day, which in Italy includes Saturdays.

Authorities said at least two gas canisters appeared to have been placed in or near rubbish containers at the school on Saturday, which local media said was located near the main court in Brindisi, a port city on the "heel" of the Italian peninsula.

"This is a tragedy," Mimmo Consales, the mayor of Brindisi, told SkyTG24 television.

There was no claim of responsibility and no indication of who had planted the bomb, but initial suspicions were directed at the local mafia, known as the United Sacred Crown.

Consales noted that the incident occurred just a few days before the 20th anniversary of the murder of Falcone and his wife, Francesca Morvillo, by a bomb in Sicily on May 23, 1992.

An anti-Mafia march had been planned in Brindisi later in the day.

(Reuters) - Troubles at Finland's Nokia Oyj (NOK1V.HE) aren't just bad news for the company, its staff and shareholders. They're also a warning sign for the small Nordic country's welfare model.

Just as Nokia's sure touch with well-designed, consumer-friendly products seems to have deserted it, fears are growing that Finland, whose reputation for innovation rested largely on the handset maker's success, may be losing its competitive edge.

While Finland remains one of the few triple-A rated countries in the euro zone, its reputation as an egalitarian society with a stellar education system belies worries about a decline in once-mighty export manufacturers and a rapidly ageing population.

For the 5.4 million Finns, the message is stark: prepare for tougher times, later retirement or lower pensions. And for government, the need is to encourage business growth beyond traditional mainstays like forestry while balancing social commitments with economic realities.

On Tuesday Finland reported a second straight monthly current account deficit. For 2011 as a whole, it posted a deficit of 1.3 billion euros ($1.7 billion) due to slower export growth.

(Who are the candidates for the neuro again?)

"Germany #3″ in effect placed the right bet: by locking in chronic devaluers to a currency union (thereby precluding the traditional expedient of currency devaluation to regain export competitiveness), Berlin in effect entrenched Germany's mercantilist model and consolidated the country's dominance as the trade superpower of Europe. The benefits are self-evident, given the contrasting data between Germany and the PIIGS.

...

More to the point [regarding the Hartz reforms], Germany benefited from "first mover advantage": they initiated these reforms in the context of a growing global economy. Demanding such wage repression in the context of a global recession makes such "reform" virtually impossible, to say nothing of the fallacy of composition problems, when all other countries seek to deflate their wages in order to gain the elusive export competitiveness.

...

The German response so far? "Oops. This guy is blackmailing us. What shall we do?" Because Germany as a creditor nation faces huge losses if the entire banking system starts to come under pressure, to say nothing of the end of their vaunted "wirtschaftwunder" as the entire eurozone implodes. Greece, by contrast, has already experienced 5 years of unremitting economic austerity. The country has been virtually reduced to the state of a barter economy. What has it got to lose at this juncture by refusing to roll over to the Troika?

Rome, May 20 (AFP) Panicked people rushed into the streets when a powerful earthquake shook northern Italy early today, killing three people and injuring at least 50, emergency services said. The 5.9-magnitude quake struck around 0730 IST and was felt throughout the northeast of the peninsula, from the Emilia-Romagna region to Venice, with its epicentre at Finale Emilia, 36 kilometres north of Bologna. It took place at a depth of 10 kilometres and lasted around 20 seconds, followed by several aftershocks. Earlier a 4.1-magnitude quake shook the Lombardy region around Milan, Italy's financial and business capital, and was felt in the historic cities of Modena, Mantua, Ferrara and Rovigo. Rescue services said the three fatalities were workers on night shifts.

Un ex ufficiale dell'aeronautica, con un passato vicino ai Servizi, famigliari che vendono bombole di gas e buone conoscenze di ingegneria elettronica. E' una delle piste seguite ieri dagli investigatori, che lo hanno interrogato a lungo, seguendo l'ipotesi del gesto isolato per l'attacco alla scuola. E assieme all'uomo - secondo quanto riferisce Brindisireport.it, il sito che per ieri ha diffuso le prime immagini dell'attentato - ci sarebbe anche una seconda persona interrogata.

an ex airforce officer, with a past connection to secret service, family members in the gas cylinder business and good knowledge of electronics, was lengthily interrogated. there are supposedly incriminating pix.

trib ex translate never worked for me, sorry.

It's a fine line between homage, parody, and consumer opportunism. Jess Walter

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In my frequent visits to the United States these days, I am asked most insistently two questions about Europe: "What will happen in 1992?" and "Can a united European market work?" Many Americans are either skeptical about the future of Europe or nervous about it. Some predict that when put to the test a united Europe will quickly splinter under national and local political pressures. Others fear that Europeans will drop their internal trade barriers only to erect a higher new external wall, creating a kind of "Fortress Europe."

I have reason to believe that neither of these doomsday scenarios will come to pass. My hope is not mere irrational optimism, but is rooted firmly in the history of the last forty years. Who would have believed that the very same nations that twice in this century nearly destroyed each other would be as closely united as they are now? If we are able to travel a similar distance in the next forty years, a truly united Europe is well within our grasp.

The summit of the G8 group of major world economies is under way at Camp David, near Washington, with Europe's debt crisis expected to dominate.

US President Barack Obama said all the G8 nations were "absolutely committed" to the goals of growth, stability and fiscal consolidation.

Germany, which backs austerity, is under pressure from the US and France for stimulus measures, analysts say.

Greece's possible exit from the eurozone is high on the agenda.

The summit at the Camp David presidential retreat, in Maryland is being attended by leaders of the US, Germany, the UK, France, Italy, Japan, Canada and Russia.

UNITED NATIONS, May 18, 2012 (IPS) - Hundreds of nurses and protestors from other professions gathered on Friday in Chicago to call on world leaders to adopt a Robin Hood Tax on Wall Street transactions as a way to raise hundreds of billions of dollars every year to help heal the U.S. and world economies.

The march is part of the Robin Hood Tax global week of action taking place from May 18 to May 22 in the wake of the G8 Summit at Camp David, which began this Friday. Activists around the world are lobbying for this global financial transactions tax, supported by a range of United Nations (U.N.) human rights experts, including Olivier De Schutter, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the right to food, .

In the United States, unions, think tanks and groups that focus on the environment, international health, consumer protection and financial reform lobby for "Wall Street to give back to Main Street", as a website in support of the Robin Hood Tax says. The idea of a financial transaction tax has existed since the 1930s, when leading economist John Maynard Keynes was a popular driver of the tax.

"After the bank bailout, the government now needs a lot of money to deal with a huge budget deficit and to help meet the USA's commitments on aid and climate finance," the website adds.

May 18 (Reuters) - Lead Facebook Inc underwriter Morgan Stanley took a bet earlier this week when it increased the size of the social networking firm's $16 billion initial public offering and it boosted the price.

Thanks to massive hype surrounding Facebook's historic public offering, the wager looked safe. But a rocky first day of trading has raised questions about whether it paid off.

After a delayed start to trading, Facebook's shares spent much of the day struggling to stay above the $38 IPO price - and ended with just a 23-cent gain.

As a result, Morgan Stanley may have spent billions of dollars to support the stock price by buying shares in the market. Some market participants said that the underwriters had to absorb mountains of stock to defend the $38 level and keep the market from dipping below it.

Treasuries posted the longest streak of gains in more than 13 years, pushing 10-year yields close to a record low, as investors sought the safety of U.S. government securities while Europe's debt crisis worsens.

U.S. debt rallied as Greece failed to form a government after elections May 6 gave no political party control of the legislature and as Moody's Investors Service cut the credit ratings of 16 Spanish banks, citing economic weakness and the government's mounting budget strain. The U.S. auctioned $13 billion of 10-year inflation-protected notes at a record negative yield and will sell $99 billion in notes next week.

Bunagana, DR Congo - Conflict has returned to the troubled North Kivu province in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In the area around Bunagana, on the border with Uganda, thousands of people have abandoned their homes in fear of attack by army mutineers, who, since late April, have been engaged in running battles with government troops in the surrounding hills.

"We heard fighting between the rebels and the government troops," said Kajambere Seberera, pausing to speak after reaching Ugandan soil. He and his family are carrying huge bundles of their belongings on the 20km trek from their village to Kisoro, the nearest Ugandan town. "We have come to Uganda for help. We must stay here, we are risking death if we remain in our village."

That does not mean that the conditions facing refugees in Kisoro are especially comfortable or safe. While the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has established a camp for Congolese displaced by the fighting, many people in Bunagana prefer to cross the border at night to seek somewhere to sleep, returning in the day to collect water, to work or to tend fields. While some have family in Kisoro or can afford cheap hotels, many are left to sleep outside, exposed to the regular rainstorms and bracingly cold nights in this high, hilly region.

"It's horrible - thousands of people have fled and they sleep outside on the other side [of the border]," said a man in Bunagana who preferred to remain anonymous. "There's no food or drinking water for them. Women and children are sleeping exposed to the cold. It's really terrible."

A car bomb has exploded in the eastern Syrian city of Deir az-Zor, killing nine people and wounding 100 others, according to state-run media.

The blast reportedly struck a parking lot for a military intelligence complex on Saturday.

State TV showed footage of damaged buildings, smoldering cars, and trucks turned upside down by the blast.

"A car bomb has exploded in the Ghazi Ayyash neighbourhood of Deir az-Zor", Ikhbariya TV said, describing the blast as "a terrorist attack".

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based opposition group, also confirmed the explosion, saying it was followed by heavy gunfire.

It was the latest of a wave of deadly blasts that apparently targeted security agencies across the country in the past months.

WASHINGTON, May 18, 2012 (IPS) - Opposition to Iran's possible acquisition of nuclear weapons is widespread, although support for taking military action to prevent it appears to have fallen in several key countries over the past two years, according to a new poll of public opinion in 21 countries released here Friday by the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project.

The poll, some of whose questions were sharply criticised as biased by several experts, was released just five days before Iran meets with the so-called P5+1 nations - the U.S., Britain, France, China, Russia, and Germany - in Baghdad to discuss the future of its nuclear programme.

Hopes that the Baghdad meeting could produce agreement on a number of confidence-building measures, including a possible freeze by Iran of its enrichment of uranium to 20 percent, have risen since the two sides met in Istanbul last month.

The announcement in Vienna Friday that the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Yukiya Amano will travel to Tehran Sunday - apparently to sort out the terms for a visit by his inspectors to a military base suspected of housing a nuclear-related testing facility - has fuelled those hopes.

The poll, which was conducted between mid-March and mid-April, was part of Pew's annual series on global attitudes that has run over the last 12 years.

DAKAR, May 18, 2012 (IPS) - U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson says Malian soldiers who overthrew the government on Mar. 22 have neither the right to remain in power nor the strength to deal with humanitarian and security challenges facing the West African country.

"Twenty-one years of democratic governance was swept aside by a few mutinous soldiers who seemed more concerned with their own welfare than that of the people or the nation they were supposed to be serving," Carson said. "Their action has imperiled Mali's territorial integrity, allowed rebels to take over half of the country, set back the country's economic development and reduced the government's capacity to respond to drought conditions in the north."

Coup leader Captain Amadou Sanogo and his National Committee for the Reinstatement of Democracy and the Restoration of the State must return to the barracks and allow the transition back to constitutional rule to unfold, Carson said during an Africa-wide teleconference on May 16.

A newly published collection of more than 20 studies by leading university scientists and government fishery researchers in Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, California, Russia and Japan provides mounting evidence that salmon raised in man-made hatcheries can harm wild salmon through competition for food and habitat.

"The genetic effects of mixing hatchery fish with wild populations have been well-documented," says journal editor David Noakes from Oregon State University. "But until now the ecological effects were largely hypothetical. Now we know the problems are real and warrant more attention from fisheries managers."

The research volume, published in the May issue of Environmental Biology of Fishes, brings together 23 peer-reviewed, independent studies carried out across the entire range of Pacific salmon, including some of the first studies describing the impact of hatcheries on wild salmon populations in Japan and Russia.

The studies provide new evidence that fast-growing hatchery fish compete with wild fish for food and habitat in the ocean as well as in the rivers where they return to spawn. The research also raises questions about whether the ocean can supply enough food to support future increases in hatchery fish while still sustaining the productivity of wild salmon.

In the northeastern nook of Senegal, one of the most stable and developed nations in the drought-hit Sahel region, carcasses of cattle lie in the sun, the fields have withered and food depleted.

As scanty rains wreaked havoc across the belt, hitting drought-weary Chad, Niger, Mali and other countries, this west African hub is struggling to provide food to its people and entire villages are going hungry.

"The shepherds and people have told us they feel as if they have been left to their own devices," said famed Senegalese singer Baaba Maal, who last week toured the Matam region from where he originates.

In Wodobere, a town of about 6,000 people skirting Mauritania, Maal -- an ambassador for British charity Oxfam -- called for urgent aid to avert famine as he toured the region, listening to the concerns of villagers and giving concerts.

Crops have failed across eight countries after late and erratic rains in 2011, and aid agencies have raised the spectre of a food crisis bigger than the one which left millions starving in 2010.

I'm doing something very odd this week: speaking at the annual conference of Croplife America, the main trade group for the US agrichemical industry. Croplife members include Monsanto, Dow, Bayer, and Syngenta, all massive multinational companies I write about regularly and witheringly. I am astonished that Croplife wants to hear what I have to say--what I think of the group's member companies and their products is a matter of public record--and am curious to hear what they have to say to me.

As I prepared for the conference, a few interesting news items on the industry crossed my desk.

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* As I've written before, Bayer's neonicotinoid pesticides, which now coat upwards of 90 percent of US corn seeds and seeds of increasing portions of other major crops like soy, have emerged as a likely trigger for colony collapse disorder. Watch this NBC News report from last week linking bee kills in Minnesota to Bayer's highly profitable product.

Meanwhile, the Columbus Dispatch reports similar bee die-offs in Ohio farm country, with beekeepers there, too, pointing the finger at Bayer.

* One of my biggest complaints about the agrichemical industry it its market dominance. As I say above, more than 90 percent of corn seeds planted today are treated with Bayer's pesticide. What if a farmer wants to opt out, to plant seeds free of neonicotinoids? Good luck.

Tom Levitt speaks to one of China's most respected investigative journalists Liu Jianqiang on the rise of environmental activism in China

Tom Levitt: Why did you start reporting on environmental issues?

Liu Jianqiang: I used to do a lot of investigative reporting on corruption, but I found it frustrating because it's very hard to make a difference, it didn't change anything. I reported official corruption, maybe the official was fired, but it didn't change anything because you'd just find another. But when I started to report on environmental issues it was another story because I thought, `I can change something'.

When I published an article about the Three Gorges Dam, many people read the article and realised the company had lied. The company was angry because they found what I discovered was so important to the public.

WASHINGTON, May 18, 2012 (IPS) - On the eve of the Group of Eight (G8) summit near Washington, President Barack Obama on Friday unveiled a major new initiative aimed at shoring up food security and combating global hunger.

Speaking at an event here, the president said that the new programme, focused on Africa, aims to lift 50 million people out of poverty within 10 years.

But aid agencies and watchdog groups worry that the new programme, which includes a significant new role for the private sector, could prove diversionary for donors, resulting in a return to relatively low, unfocused levels of agriculture-focused aid.

Following discussion between the G8 and some African leaders at Camp David over the weekend, the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition will constitute the next phase of a groundbreaking programme begun during the 2009 G8 summit in L'Aquila, Italy.

At that time, motivated in particular by the 2007-08 global crisis in food prices, G8 leaders committed more than 22 billion dollars over three years towards food security.

This was a dramatic turnaround from a decades-long trend of falling agriculture-related aid. According to ActionAid USA, a rights group based in Washington, by 2000 international contributions to agriculture had dropped by 50 percent from the 1980s.

The Government has rejected shale gas technology as a solution to Britain's energy crisis, conceding it will do little to cut bills or keep the lights on.

Supporters of the fracking technology - which blasts water, sand and chemicals at extreme pressures to release gas trapped deep in rock - argue it could be the single greatest factor in transforming Britain's energy market, reducing our reliance on foreign imports and dramatically reducing costs.

But The Independent on Sunday has learned that industry experts made clear at a meeting attended by senior ministers, including David Cameron and Ed Davey, the Lib Dem energy secretary, that the UK's reserves were smaller than first thought and could be uneconomical to extract.

Although it is easy to assume that the life blood being sucked out by the vampires is money, it is actually hope. In his novel Empire "V" ("V" stands for "vampire") Viktor Pelevin describes an entire vampiric ecosystem: the imperial vampires feed not on money but on a metaphysical substance called bablos. Bablos is generated when people, multitudes of them, work for money in pursuit of their hopes and dreams. Bablos is harvested when these hopes and dreams are then shattered. The vampires' bag of tricks includes abstract disciplines such as Discourse and Glamor, which they use to optimize the metaphysical expropriation of the products of human greed and envy. Bablos is administered as part of a special ritual, during which bushels of worn-out currency are burned in a fireplace, but this is only done to symbolize that the money has served its purpose as a vehicle for harvesting hope via greed.

Anthropologists working in southern France have determined that a 1.5 metric ton block of engraved limestone constitutes the earliest evidence of wall art. Their research, reported in the most recent edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows the piece to be approximately 37,000 years old and offers rich evidence of the role art played in the daily lives of Early Aurignacian humans.

The research team, comprised of more than a dozen scientists from American and European universities and research institutions, has been excavating at the site of the discovery-Abri Castanet-for the past 15 years. Abri Castanet and its sister site Abri Blanchard have long been recognized as being among the oldest sites in Eurasia bearing artifacts of human symbolism.

Hundreds of personal ornaments have been discovered, including pierced animal teeth, pierced shells, ivory and soapstone beads, engravings, and paintings on limestone slabs.

"Early Aurignacian humans functioned, more or less, like humans today," explained New York University anthropology professor Randall White, one of the study's co-authors. "They had relatively complex social identities communicated through personal ornamentation, and they practiced sculpture and graphic arts."

Response efforts to outbreaks of Ebola hemorrhagic fever in Africa can benefit from a standardized sampling strategy that focuses on the carcasses of gorillas, chimpanzees and other species known to succumb to the virus, according to a consortium of wildlife health experts.

In a recently published study of 14 previous human Ebola outbreaks and the responses of wildlife teams collecting animal samples, the authors of the new study conclude that most efforts to collect samples from live animals (i.e. rodents, bats, primates, birds) failed to isolate Ebola virus or antibodies. However, they found that collecting samples from animal carcasses during outbreaks was a more effective method for Ebola detection.

The early detection of Ebola in animal populations near a human outbreak is crucial for learning more about this virus, which can strike human populations with a mortality rate of more than 80 percent.

US baby boomers have been advised by health officials for the first time to get tested for the liver-destroying virus hepatitis C.

Those born between 1945-1965 are most likely to be infected but it is thought only a quarter of this generation has been tested for the virus.

The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) believes its campaign could save more than 120,000 lives.

The CDC estimates some 17,000 hepatitis C infections currently occur each year.

Just because Warren Buffett blew $142 million in cash on 63 daily and weekly Media General newspaper titles yesterday doesn't mean that newspapers are back. All it means is that an old cow that's still a milker has been moved to a neighboring farm's pasture, where it will be squeezed until it can give no more and will then be ground into pet food.

Buffett has long loved newspapers, having made about a half a billion dollars on the Washington Post Co. after his company, Berkshire Hathaway Inc, started investing in it in 1973. In 1977, he bought the Buffalo Evening News for $32.5 million, and after it vanquished the city's other daily, it became one of the country's most profitable newspapers, as measured by return on assets.

But Buffett isn't romantic about newspapers. He buys when he sees value that others don't. For instance, in a lecture he gave at Notre Dame in 1991 (pdf), Buffett explained why he bought Washington Post Co. stock.

In '74 you could have bought the Washington Post when the whole company was valued at $80 million ... If you asked any one of thousands of investment analysts or media specialists about how much those properties were worth, they would have said, if they added them up, they would have come up with $400, $500, $600 million.

The senior Scotland Yard officer leading the investigation into allegations that the Murdoch media empire carried out widespread phone and computer hacking is to stand down from her job after the Olympics.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers assumed control of the Metropolitan Police inquiry into the phone-hacking scandal in January 2011, after evidence emerged in its first investigation that the scandal went well beyond the "rogue" News of the World reporter convicted in 2007. At the time, police faced widespread allegations of cronyism, corruption and high-level bungling.

Akers launched a fresh investigation which is widely regarded as having repaired much of the damage while withstanding political pressure to curtail its scope. Critics have complained that the total cost of the investigations could reach £40m and tie up 200 officers at a time when routine police work is being cut back. Since the inquiries began, there have been more than 50 arrests, with more expected.