Police in southern Finland have arrested an 18-year-old man following a shooting spree that left two teenagers dead and seven others wounded.

The gunman opened fire on people from a low rooftop in central Hyvinkaa in the early hours of Saturday morning killing a woman and man, both 18-years-old, said Markku Tuominen, an officer in charge of the investigation.

A police officer was also injured after arriving at the scene of the crime following alerts to police.

The suspect, who was wearing camouflage clothing, was detained following the attack without resisting arrest, Tuominen said.

"The man was found with two weapons, including a hunting rifle,'' he said, adding that police knew of no possible motive pending an investigation.

German writer Nobel laureate Günter Grass, who published a controversial poem last month about Israel, has come out with another one - this time about the trouble in Greece.

The newest poem, "Europe's Shame" was published in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the same paper that published "What must be said", the poem about Israel.

In Grass' latest work, the author sympathises with the Greek people and their struggles to deal with ever tighter budgets and social service cuts.

"A country without rights that has to tighten its belt further and further" because that is what those with power are demanding, Grass said in the poem.

The EU has referred Argentina to the World Trade Organisation over what it says are unacceptable import restrictions.

European trade commissioner Karel De Gucht announced the move on Friday, as a trade row escalates between Brussels and Buenos Aires after Argentina nationalised the Spanish stake in the YPF energy company, which was owned largely by Spain's Repsol.

He told reporters that Argentina has "tightened the screws" on already restrictive measures, requiring foreign companies to adhere to a "complex and bureaucratic registration process" on all products.

The import curbs affected European exports across a wide range of products, including cars, household appliances, laptops and mobile phones, said De Gucht.

European airline chiefs have warned that Europe's economic recovery could be jeopardised if regulators do not create the conditions that airlines need to stimulate growth for other industries.

Commission vice-president for transport Siim Kallas met with the 34 CEOs in Brussels, where just hours earlier European leaders held an informal summit to discuss prospects for EU growth.

Speaking in Brussels on Thursday, Association of European Airlines chairman Bernard Gustin, said, "Europe's political leaders need to get serious about the growth agenda and provide fertile soil for its key industries to develop."

Gustin, who is also the CEO of Brussels Airlines, the Belgian national carrier, added, "For the airline sector, this means a global solution on emissions trading, a single European sky which actually delivers and an end to economically-illiterate regulation."

Baroness Warsi did not tell House of Lords authorities that she was receiving rental income from a London property she had bought and rented out.

She made an apology today over the breach of parliamentary guidelines, blaming "an oversight, for which I take full responsibility," but claimed that she had paid tax on the income.

The disclosure is the latest in a series of crises to hit Mr Cameron in the last few weeks. It comes as the political future of Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary, is called into question once again.

Members of Russia's ruling United Russia party on Saturday elected Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev as its leader at a party congress.

In late-April, President Vladimir Putin announced that he is stepping down from the helm of United Russia in favor of Medvedev. The move marked the latest in a string of attempts by Putin to distance himself from a political party that is rapidly loosing support.

Putin presided over the United Russia from 2008-2012. He has headed the party since he became prime minister in 2008.

Medvedev became a member of United Russia on May 22.

The president of troubled Spanish bank, Bankia, says he is confident of receiving 19 billion euros ($23.8bn) from the government in the largest bank bailout in the country's history.

Jose Ignacio Goirigolzarri said on Saturday that the bank would emerge as a solid financial entity that would not need further recapitalisation.

Goirigolzarri outlined the bank's restructuring and recapitalisation plans, which foresee beginning the injection of state funds in late June, and said one of his priorities was to "strengthen corporate governance".

At the press conference in Madrid, Goirigolzarri stressed that after the recapitalisation, Bankia would be "solid, efficient and profitable".

He said the main reason the bank sought state help was the loss in market value of its real estate assets.

In a statement issued on Saturday, the partially nationalised bank said a new management team had been tasked with shaping a new strategic plan to transform the bank into a solid financial institution.

Not long ago, there was a popular joke. What's the difference between Ireland and Iceland? One letter and six months.

Whether the joke was funny is debatable but it certainly isn't now. The causes of the two countries' economic woes were remarkably similar. Both had deregulated their financial services and let the banks run amok. In Ireland, major banks were able to loan up to three times the national income. Iceland's banking industry acquired assets worth 10 times the country's gross domestic product.

Yet the way Reykjavik and Dublin have dealt with their crises differed radically. Iceland allowed its banks collapse and default on their loans. Its former prime minister and some titans of finance are now on trial. Ireland's government, on the other hand, decided to guarantee the bank's deposits with the money of its taxpayers. Nobody has been held to account for the reckless behaviour of the super-rich.

Iceland is now faring better than Ireland. This is due in no small part to how Iceland is not part of the European Union and still retains its own currency. Ireland does whatever its slavemasters in Brussels and Frankfurt tell it to do.

I wrote the book on Europe and the gold standard. Literally. In Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, published in 1992, I argued that the deflationary engine that was the gold standard was a key cause of the 1930s depression, and that abandoning it opened the door to recovery.

Yet I am reluctant to believe that things will turn out the same way this time. Four differences lead me to believe that maybe - just maybe - the euro will survive.

First, mounting an appropriate monetary response is easier when you have a single central bank. Under the gold standard, it still would have been possible for central banks to reflate their depressed economies had they moved together. Unfortunately, getting central banks to move together is easier said than done. Central bankers speak different languages. They view economic prospects through different lenses.

By contrast, were the ECB to adopt decisive measures, it could reflate the entire eurozone and obviate the need for countries to act unilaterally. But, while the ECB has the capacity, the question remains whether it is has the will.

For nearly 20 minutes on the morning of Facebook Inc's trading debut last Friday, the line Nasdaq had opened up to keep traders informed about the social media company's $16 billion IPO had been mute. Well after the stock was supposed to have opened at 11 a.m. New York time, no one from Nasdaq was talking - and there was still no sign of trading.

Finally, at 11:28 a.m., an unidentified person announced that the shares would open in about 2 minutes. Nasdaq also said orders and cancellations were still being processed, according to several sources listening to the call.

Those crucial 20 minutes created confusion that turned into chaos over the next few hours as market makers - the brokers who quote bid and offer prices - struggled to figure out what was happening. They were rebuffed in their attempts to get Nasdaq to halt trading and sort out a growing number of problems.

A lack of communication and, some say, misinformation from Nasdaq may have been central to the failed debut of Facebook's shares.

Lunch with the FT: Paul Krugman | Martin Wolf - FT.com

The conversation turns to the Japanese crisis of the 1990s. In retrospect, I suggest, the Japanese seem to have managed the aftermath of their crisis quite well.

He agrees. "What we thought was that Japan was a cautionary tale. It has turned into Japan as almost a role model. They never had as big a slump as we have had. They managed to have growing per capita income through most of what we call their `lost decade'. My running joke is that the group of us who were worried about Japan a dozen years ago ought to go to Tokyo and apologise to the emperor. We've done worse than they ever did. When people ask: might we become Japan? I say: I wish we could become Japan."

At this point we order: salade niçoise for Krugman; foie gras terrine for me; and a bottle of sparkling water. This is definitely not going to be up to the gourmet standards of some lunches with the FT.

japan's suicide and crime rate rises in the 90's may turn out to be mild in comparison with those in parts of europe and the u.s. post 2008.

Point n'est besoin d'espérer pour entreprendre, ni de réussir pour persévérer. - Charles le Téméraire

The UN mission chief in Syria has condemned the "brutal tragedy" in Houla, where he said 92 bodies, including those of more than 32 children, had been counted.

The statement came as the Free Syrian Army said it could no longer commit to the ceasefire brokered by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan unless there is an immediate solution to regime violence.

"We announce that unless the UN Security Council takes urgent steps for the protection of civilians, Annan's plan is going to go to hell," a statement by the FSA said on Saturday, a day after activists said a "massacre" had taken place in Houla.

General Robert Mood, head of the UN monitoring mission, on Saturday condemned "in the strongest possible terms the brutal tragedy" in the town in the central province of Homs.

"This morning UN military and civilian observers went to Houla and counted more than 32 children and over 60 adults killed," he said in a statement.

Leftist candidate Hamdeen Sabahi will appeal for Egypt's presidential election to be suspended over alleged voting irregularities and a pending case over one of the frontrunner's right to stand, Sabahi's lawyer has said.

Sabahi's pledge to pursue a suspension came on Saturday as the two apparent winners of the first round reached out to rival candidates ahead of a June runoff that appears set to polarise the country.

Final votes were still being counted, but unofficial results suggested that the top two frontrunners out of 12 candidates were the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi and Ahmed Shafiq, a former prime minister under Hosni Mubarak.

International monitors have described the initial voting process as "encouraging".

On Friday night, the Brotherhood said it was seeking to create a coalition of forces to challenge Shafiq, reaching out to Morsi's former rivals, including Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, who left the organisation to run for president.

Guinea-Bissau's former chief of the armed forces, who fled the country in the wake of last month's coup in the West African country, has been arrested in Senegal, a police source has said.

The source said Jose Zamora Induta, who had voiced fears for his life after another senior military official was assassinated in March, was arrested on Thursday in the Casamance region, which borders Guinea-Bissau.

Induta was arrested along with three people, the source said on condition of anonymity. It was not clear who carried out the arrest and whether Induta would be extradited.

The news came days after Guinea-Bissau's military junta said it would hand power back to civilian leaders, six weeks after it toppled the government and derailed elections.

The announcement followed a deal between the self-styled Military Command and the regional bloc called the Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS) that put in place transitional president Manuel Sherifo Nhamadjo, installed a 600-strong ECOWAS force, and promised new elections in 12 months.

The United States said Thursday that China's human rights record was getting worse as authorities step up efforts to stifle dissent, even though Beijing let a top activist leave for New York.

"In China, the human rights situation deteriorated, particularly the freedoms of expression, assembly and association," the State Department said in its annual human rights report for 2011.

"The government stepped up efforts to silence political activists and resorted to extralegal measures," it said

(Reuters) - Israeli gunboats and an Egyptian clampdown on fuel smuggling into the Gaza Strip are strangling the Palestinian enclave's little fishing fleet, slowly turning a generation of fishermen into fishmongers.

Since 2009, they have been unable to sail out beyond three miles because of Israel's strictly enforced blockade. This year they can hardly afford to go out at all because diesel has nearly tripled in price.

There are about 3,700 full-time fishermen in the Gaza Strip ready to serve a market of 1.7 million Palestinians. They used to export to Israel. Now Gaza imports about 80 percent of its needs from the Egyptians and the Israelis.

The amount of radioactive materials released in the first days of the Fukushima nuclear disaster was almost two and a half times the initial estimate by Japanese safety regulators, the operator of the crippled plant said in a report released on Thursday.

The operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, said the meltdowns it believes took place at three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant released about 900,000 terabecquerels of radioactive substances into the air during March 2011.

The three directors who oversee risk at JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) include a museum head who sat on American International Group Inc.'s governance committee in 2008, the grandson of a billionaire and the chief executive officer of a company that makes flight controls and work boots.

What the risk committee of the biggest U.S. lender lacks, and what the five next largest competitors have, are directors who worked at a bank or as financial risk managers. The only member with any Wall Street experience, James Crown, hasn't been employed in the industry for more than 25 years.

YEOSU, South Korea, May 26, 2012 (IPS) - As thousands gear up for the 2012 Earth Summit, Rio+20, scheduled to kick off in Brazil on Jun. 20, questions on the viability and adequacy of a `green economy' abound.

Experts, activists and policy makers are divided on what is needed to solve the deadlock on carbon emissions agreements and tackle global warming. Some believe a complete paradigm shift, away from the neoliberal freemarket ideology, is necessary to turn the massive tide of climate change, while others believe a market-based approach to the crisis still has merit.

Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), believes a healthy mix of both frameworks will be the key to success.

JUBA, May 26, 2012 (IPS) - South Sudan is losing its forests. And with no unified policy to deal with the situation the government is at odds, with one ministry saying that the loss of forests is a necessity for farming and another warning of the dire environmental consequences if this continues unchecked.

Several decades of war, during which the country's environment was neglected, coupled with post- independence challenges and tension with Sudan, have resulted in environmental degradation here. And it is largely caused by rampant deforestation.

Isaac Woja, an agriculturalist and natural resources management expert, said the rate of deforestation was of concern.

"The rate at which people are cutting trees is worrying. If this trend continues future generations are going to suffer. South Sudan may become a desert like what you see in the north," he told IPS.

Less than six months after the world agreed to craft a new global climate pact by 2015, talks stumbled at a crucial preparatory meeting Friday as rich and poorer countries butted heads.

With the mood still strained by the fractious 2009 Copenhagen climate summit, negotiations in Bonn showed developed and developing nations split on apportioning responsibility for tackling global warming.

Fast-growing countries like China and India insisted the West, which has been polluting more for longer, must shoulder more of the mitigation burden.

Amid fresh delays and procedural wrangling, UN climate chief Christiana Figueres warned the target of pegging global warming to a manageable 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) seemed to be slipping ever further away.

In just a few weeks, world leaders are converging on Rio for a landmark "Earth Summit" to talk about sustainability issues -- but it's time for them to stop talking and start doing. And we know where they can begin.

This year our governments will hand nearly hundreds of billions of dollars in government subsidies to the coal, gas, and oil industries. Instead, they should cut them off.

Cutting fossil fuel subsidies could actually take a giant step towards solving the climate crisis: Phasing out these subsidies would prevent gigatonnes of carbon emissions and help make clean energy cheaper than fossil fuels.

And here's the thing: This demand is completely reasonable -- so reasonable that the leaders of the big countries have already agreed to it.

"We can have a civil discussion. But I really don't like being labeled a terrorist," she said, referencing a billboard posted by Heartland equating people who believe in global warming to the Unibomber. "That's all I wanted to say."

"Well, I appreciate you telling me that," said Lakely, who was taking a break from managing Heartland's conference to watch the 60 or so people protesting the event outside the hotel.

The woman, who was wearing a badge for a different conference, got into her taxi and drove away. There was a brief moment of awkward silence between me and Lakely.

The exchange perfectly encapsulated the public relations disaster the Heartland Institute has created for itself over the last few weeks. The downfall started with an offensive billboard campaign on May 3rd and ended with 11 companies pulling support for the organization -- stripping 35% of corporate funds overnight and leaving its financial future uncertain.

The dramatic drop in support was facilitated by the advocacy organization Forecast the Facts, which collected more than 150,000 signatures from people calling on corporate donors to end their relationship with Heartland.

Solar Cheaper Than Oil in Long Run, Al-Nuaimi Says: Video - Bloomberg

March 30 (Bloomberg) -- Sheikh Abdul Aziz Bin Ali Al-Nuaimi, a member of one of the ruling royal families in the United Arab Emirates, talks about his efforts to change the way his country makes and consumes energy, and the outlook for the growth of renewable energy sources. He speaks on Bloomberg Television's "InBusiness with Margaret Brennan." (Source: Bloomberg)

Azerbaijan has made last-minute preparations for a spectacular Eurovision song contest final which pits pensioners against young stars and which it hopes will dispel concerns over the country's poor rights record.

Saturday's Eurovision extravaganza is the biggest event ever hosted by energy-rich Azerbaijan as it seeks to present a glitzy front to the world despite the intolerance of dissent and opposition under the rule of the Aliyev dynasty.

The final round of the song contest, featuring entries from 26 countries, will air live from the Crystal Hall on the city's Caspian Sea bay from midnight local time (1900GMT) to an audience of an estimated 100 million television viewers.

Pope Benedict XVI's butler has been arrested and charged with illegal possession of secret documents following embarrassing leaks that exposed alleged intrigue and corruption in the Vatican, a spokesman has said.

Federico Lombardi said in a statement on Saturday that Paolo Gabriele, a layman who lives inside Vatican City, was arrested on Wednesday.

The Vatican said a wider investigation would take place to see if Gabriele, 46, had any accomplices that helped him leak the documents.

Vatican documents leaked to the press in recent months alleged corruption in Vatican finance and bickering over the Holy See's efforts to show more transparency in its financial operations.

Italian commentators said they doubted that Gabriele could have acted alone and some speculated that he may have been a pawn in a larger, internal power struggle.

"Never has the sense of disorientation in the Catholic Church reached these levels," Church historian Alberto Melloni wrote in Italy's Corriere della Sera newspaper. "But now there is something even more - a sense of systemic disorder."

The UK's Engelbert Humperdinck is to go head-to-head with six Russian grannies as 26 countries compete in the final of the Eurovision Song Contest.

The 76-year-old will be the first to perform in Azerbaijan's Crystal Hall, with his ballad Love Will Set You Free.

The "Buranovo Grannies" are pensioners from a rural church choir and includes the contest's oldest ever participant.

The staging of the competition in Azerbaijan has been criticised because of the country's human rights record.