Another European treaty. Another Irish referendum. Once again the main political parties, somewhat battle weary, join forces to argue Yes. Sinn Fein and Declan Ganley, the maverick federalist, campaign for a No.

Most voters evince no or little knowledge about what the referendum is officially about ‑ the Treaty on Stability, Co-ordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union, or fiscal compact treaty for short. Come polling day, 31 May, many may not vote.

The significance of the Irish referendum seems also to have escaped Ireland's EU partners.

Pierre Moscovici, France's new minister of finance, speaks blithely about changing the treaty. The German Bundestag has postponed its own ratification of the treaty from 25 May until after the Greek elections on 17 June. For the moment, the SDP and Greens are happy to play domestic electoral politics with ratification by depriving Chancellor Angela Merkel of the two-thirds majority she needs.

These second thoughts about the treaty in Paris and Berlin are distinctly unhelpful to the Irish Yes cause. Such cavalier treatment of the Irish voter is rightly resented in Ireland.

The rest of Europe should have learnt by now that Ireland's verdict is very important. The opinion polls give the Yes side a lead but, as always in referendums, the gap narrows. What is really at stake?

Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, has told an inquiry into media ethics how he decided to court Rupert Murdoch's support rather than risk the wrath of the powerful press tycoon's newspaper empire during his decade in office.

Monday's session of the Leveson inquiry, which was set up following the phone-hacking scandal at Murdoch's News of the World newspaper, was briefly interrupted by a protester who heckled Blair, calling him a "war criminal" for his role in the Iraq conflict.

Al Jazeera's Barnaby Phillips reported from London, that Blair remained "calm and composed" throughout his testimony, even during the interruption.

Blair, who is godfather to one of Murdoch's children, said he was not willing to risk offending the major media groups during his time in office.

He said the close relationship between politicians and the media was inevitable but that it became unhealthy when media groups tried to use their newspapers as instruments of political power.

"If you're a political leader and you've got very powerful media groups and you fall out with one of those groups, the consequences is such that you... are effectively blocked from getting across your message," he told the inquiry under oath.

Two Italian national team footballers have been placed under investigation in a widening match-fixing scandal, just days before the European football championships.

The crisis now facing the Italian national team - known as the Azzurri - recalls the Calciopoli match-influencing investigation in 2006, which broke just as players were preparing for the World Cup, which Italy went on to win.

On Monday defender Domenico Criscito was pulled from the national squad after police officers swooped on the Italian team's training camp at dawn to search his room. Later fellow defender Leonardo Bonucci was also placed under investigation in an ongoing inquiry, which has already resulted in teams being docked points and players suspended.

Police also arrested 17 people across Italy including 11 players, among them Stefano Mauri, the captain of leading Serie A side Lazio, while Antonio Conte, the manager of champions Juventus, was placed under investigation.

Mauri is suspected of being one of a group of players who took €600,000 (£480,000) in bribes last season to fix the result of a match between Lazio and Lecce.

Tens of thousands thronged the streets of Georgia's capital yesterday to show their opposition to President Mikhail Saakashvili in the largest anti-government demonstration in three years.

The protest was seen as a test of public support for the opposition ahead of a parliamentary election in October.

It also was a political coming-out party for the organiser, Bidzina Ivanishvili, a billionaire businessman who is Georgia's richest man and leading philanthropist. He made his entry into politics in October, announcing that he was forming a political party with the aim of winning the parliamentary vote and becoming Prime Minister.

Mr Saakashvili's second and final presidential term ends in January, and his plans are unclear. He has not excluded becoming Prime Minister, a position that will gain extra powers under a 2010 constitutional reform that his opponents said was designed to allow Mr Saakashvili to remain a political force after leaving the presidency. But this would bring unwelcome comparisons to the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, who spent the past four years as Prime Minister to accommodate a constitutional ban on two consecutive presidential terms.

Organisers estimated yesterday's turnout at 110,000, while police put it at more than 30,000. As the participants marched from three directions to join the rally on Freedom Square, they carried Georgian flags but also the flags of the EU and Nato, indicating that support remains high for the goals set under Mr Saakashvili for Georgia one day to join both organisations.

On June 3-4, the European Union's top dogs will head to St Petersburg to meet with Russia's leaders. 

The latest of the twice yearly EU-Russia summits is particularly important. It comes with the fragile Syrian ceasefire seeming close to breakdown. It's two weeks ahead of the third round of international negotiations with Iran on its nuclear program which Moscow will host from June 17.

Above all, it is the first chance for the West to engage with Vladimir Putin since he returned to the presidency in May.

Having declined an invitation to Chicago to attend last week's summits of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Group of Eight, Mr. Putin has kept himself to himself since returning to the Kremlin. As many in Brussels expected, Mr. Putin's gaze has mainly been inwards following large-scale protests over the flawed December parliamentary elections.

In EU circles, the summit is seen as "a first opportunity to see what we can expect from Putin as president," says one senior European diplomat.

Mr. Putin is "inheriting a rich agenda" left by ex-President (and now Prime Minister) Dmitry Medvedev, as ties warmed in the last year of his term, the person said.

There's a pending `Partnership for Modernization' -an EU-Russia framework that seeks to deepen trade, economic and energy ties while engaging Moscow on political issues, including human rights and the treatment of civil society.

With characteristic passion, Greeks have protested loudly, in street demonstration after street demonstration, against the economic mess their country is in and the brutal austerity measures imposed in an attempt to balance the nation's books.

But the social situation has only worsened, the demonstrators - still incensed - feel ignored and many Greeks are now unrolling a quiet revolution.

Tucked away in a side-street of Marousi, a hilly, green suburb of northern Athens, you come across the local garden initiative.

Marousi's mayor has transformed the land from a derelict dumping ground into small allotments for 40 families battered by the current economic climate.

The sound of raking and digging fills the air.

What, at first glance, may simply look like a healthy hobby is actually a lifeline for people in this community.

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

When the Spanish Prime Minister declared that the Spanish state would save Bankia while at the same time admitting that Spain could not raise the cash to do it, two were the plausible explanations of how this feat was to be achieved.

• One was that Spain would officially become the fourth Eurozone member-state to have fallen out of the markets, securing a bailout from the rest of Europe.
  
• The second explanation was that Spain would become the fourth Eurozone member-state to have fallen out of the markets, securing a bailout from the rest of Europe, without admitting that this is the case; unofficially.

Guess which of the two options Europe opted for: The second one naturally! Indeed, why come clean when the option of subterfuge is available?

So, this is what they did: Europe allows Spain to issue fresh public debt that it passes on to Spanish banks (instead of money) in exchange for shares. Then, the banks will post this new public debt to the ECB as collateral in exchange for the cash that will keep the Spanish banks' ATMs going. The end result will be, of course, that Spanish debt will increase and the banks will remain in a zombified state.

Mariano Rajoy goes on television and denies, once again, that the Spanish banking sector needs a bailout; his statement unsurprisingly failed to calm nervous markets, as 10-year yields and spreads reach a new record; Rajoy denies that there was a link between Bankia and the current state of the financial markets; Spanish analysts say that the situation either requires direct support from the ECB, or an application to the EFSF; New Democracy takes a poll lead, once again; Lagarde's comments provoke fury in Athens; Syriza accuses opponents of scare mongering:Greek banks receive €18bn transfer; Greek government spots unused bailout funds to make up for tax revenue fall; an anti-euro party will run in Germany for the 2013 elections; 79% of Germans are against eurobonds; one of them is Jens Weidmann; the German government is proposing a six-point growth plan, based on its own model, of course; the SPD's party base is getting impatient with its leadership, Jean-Marc Ayrault launches the social dialogue with the trade union; Wolfgang Proissl calls on the World Bank to engage in nation building in Greece; Wolfgang Munchau is marginally more optimistic as the European Council has for the first time ever began to discussion crisis resolution policies; Mohamed El-Erian, meanwhile, warns that the Greek bank jog may be about to turn into a eurozone-wide bank run, and requires urgent policy action.

Spain cannot afford to let a single bank or regional government collapse as that would bring the entire country to its knees, the prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, warned on Monday.

In a rare and unexpected appearance before the press, Rajoy failed to calm markets which had reacted nervously to Spain's biggest-ever bailout, the €23.5bn rescue of Bankia announced on Friday.

"We are not going to let any region or financial entity fall, because otherwise the country would fall," he said.

The cost of Bankia's bailout has spiralled over the past three weeks and a revision of its 2011 accounts over that period has seen losses at parent company BFA multiplied by 100. On Monday night the company was set to report the biggest loss in Spain's banking history - of somewhere above €3.5bn (£2.8bn). It had originally declared just €30m in losses.

Nervousness that other Spanish banks may be hiding similar-sized holes saw Spain's borrowing costs soar once more, with investors demanding 6.5% interest on future 10-year debt. That took the rate dangerously close to the unsustainable levels at which other eurozone countries such as Portugal had to request a bailout.

Bankia, meanwhile, plummeted in value, losing 13% on the Madrid stock market. It has now lost two-thirds of its value since shares were floated last July.

It's not often that world markets react to pre-election political surveys in countries the size of Greece. But on Monday, investor relief appears to be widespread at reports that support for pro-austerity parties in Greece is rising ahead of general elections scheduled for June 17.

According to the polls, an increase of support for the center-right party New Democracy could give it enough seats in parliament to team up with the Socialist PASOK party, both of which support pursuing the austerity policies handed down by the European Union and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in exchange for massive bailout aid. The anti-austerity party Syriza is likely to come in second. The new elections became necessary after results from the vote on May 6 made the formation of a governing coalition impossible.

Despite the temporary market respite -- following last week's freefall on fears of a disorderly Greek exit from the euro zone -- tempers remain on edge in Greece. And over the weekend, much of the ire of the country's political elite was focused on IMF head Christine Lagarde.

In an interview published Friday in the British daily Guardian, Lagarde blasted Greeks for not paying their taxes. "As far as Athens is concerned," she said, "I also think about all those people who are trying to escape tax all the time. All these people in Greece who are trying to escape tax." Just to make sure her message was getting through, she added: "I think they should also help themselves collectively ... by all paying their tax."

Elsewhere in the interview, she said that she thinks more about children in the African country of Niger than she does about Greeks. "I think they need even more help than the people of Athens," she said.

Reaction from Greece has been prompt and furious. "The last thing we need is sympathy from Ms. Lagarde," said Alexis Tsipras, head of the leftist Syriza party. He added that the great majority of Greeks pay their taxes.

Giannis Michelakis, spokesman for the conservative New Democracy, said: "I don't understand what she meant. It is as if one is blaming the patient after giving him the wrong medicine." Evangelos Venizelos, head of the Socialist PASOK party called on Lagarde to reconsider exactly what her message was and to withdraw her comments.

Policymakers and firms across Europe are making preparations to cope with a break-up of the single currency, with the president of the Swiss central bank yesterday becoming the latest senior figure to admit to contingency plans for a "collapse" of the eurozone.

"We must be prepared just in case the currency union collapses, although I don't expect that to happen," said Swiss National Bank boss Thomas Jordan. He added that his objective would be to prevent funds flooding into the safe haven of the Swiss franc, which could damage his country's export sector.

Switzerland has already taken an economic hit from appreciation of the Swiss franc over the past year. Last September, the SNB put a cap on the currency's value against the euro to protect exports.

Sterling has also appreciated considerably since the beginning of the year as market fears over the future of the single currency have increased. Bank of England Governor, Sir Mervyn King, said this month that the Bank was preparing contingency plans to cope with a potential major economic shock to the UK economy emanating from the eurozone.

Last week, the European Commission said that it has asked member states to make plans to deal with a potential Greek exit, ahead of a second round of Greek elections on 17 June.

It is not just eurozone officials who are making emergency preparations. The chief executive of Lloyd's of London, Richard Ward, yesterday said the insurance market was also developing contingency plans. "I don't think that if Greece exited the euro it would lead to the collapse of the eurozone, but what we need to do is prepare for that eventuality," Mr Ward told The Sunday Telegraph. "We would switch to multi-currency settlement if the Greeks abandoned the euro and started using the drachma again."

Two decades ago, George Soros rose to fame and fortune on his now-historic trade in which he took on the Bank of England and shrewdly wagered on a devaluation of the British pound.

But it's unlikely the current European monetary crisis and worries about Greece's potential exit from the euro zone will give rise to an investing legend like Soros, who made $1 billion in 1992 by betting on a decline in the price of the pound.

Instead, there are a multitude of strategies to play Europe's troubles, and many different participants, hedge fund managers say.

"There is not room for one player to have such impact," said John Brynjolfsson, whose California-based Armored Wolf hedge fund has been betting against the euro for quite some time. "Financial markets are so much bigger today."

A spokesman for Soros, who last year converted his Soros Fund Management to a family office and stopped managing money for outside investors, could not be reached for comment.

The euro zone crisis has gone on for so long it is difficult for investors to pinpoint an entry and exit point for a trading strategy. Positions and hedges require constant adjustment, making it difficult to come up with a single big-winning trade.

"It's unlikely in Europe, because the way Europe works is incremental crisis, incremental recovery," London-based Robert Marquardt, founder of fund of hedge funds firm Signet, said.

http://baselinescenario.com/2012/05/28/the-end-of-the-euro-a-survivors-guide/

Seems an extremely negative perspective on the ongoing existence of the Euro. Being ignorant about economics, I would be curious to hear what the foks here think of this article The guy is supposedly a professor at MIT, but is this credible? I mean...the end of the EURO? May be worth an article to debate it...

"Once in awhile we get shown the light, in the strangest of places, if we look at it right" - Hunter/Garcia

Even more interesting, spreads have begun to move in the opposite direction to Spanish and Italian spreads.

Markets are really scared of communists (or think Hollande is a more credible austerian than Sarkozy - but either way, why would you want a rightwing government in France?)

Wind power

Kofi Annan, the UN-Arab League envoy to Syria, has called on the country's government to take bold steps to prove its commitment to restoring peace during a visit to Damascus.

Annan arrived in the Syrian capital on Monday for talks with high-level officials as world leaders said his peace plan was the only way to solve the country's conflict.

The former UN chief called on "every individual with a gun" in Syria to lay down arms, saying he was horrified by a weekend massacre in Houla that killed about 110 people, including 49 children.

"I urge the [Syrian] government to take bold steps to signal that it is serious in its intention to resolve this crisis peacefully, and for everyone involved to help create the right context for a credible political process," Annan said.

"I am personally shocked and horrified by the tragic incident in Houla two days ago, which took so many innocent lives, children, women and men."

He was to meet Walid al-Muallem, Syria's foreign minister, on Monday before holding talks with President Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday, a Syrian official source said.

A senior commander in Iran's Revolutionary Guards has admitted that Iranian forces are operating in Syria in support of Bashar al-Assad's regime.

Ismail Gha'ani, the deputy head of Iran's Quds force, the arm of the Revolutionary Guards tasked with overseas operations, said in an interview with the semi-official Isna news agency: "If the Islamic republic was not present in Syria, the massacre of people would have happened on a much larger scale."

Isna published the interview at the weekend but subsequently removed it from its website.

It quoted Gha'ani as saying: "Before our presence in Syria, too many people were killed by the opposition but with the physical and non-physical presence of the Islamic republic, big massacres in Syria were prevented."

The west has accused Iran of providing military and technical support to Assad to quell protests since the start of the uprising in Syria. Iranian officials in return played down the accusations by saying the country only supported Syria morally.

Likud MK Miri Regev, who came under fire last week after calling African migrants "a cancer" in Israeli society, apologized for the first time for her comments on Sunday, opting, however, to leave the migrants out of her apology.

Regev's controversial comments came during a violent rally staged by residents of Tel Aviv's south - where many African migrants live - to protest rising crime rates in the area. In the rally, the Likud MK said "the Sudanese are a cancer in our body."

She was later criticized for inflaming the protesters, with angry demonstrators later going on to attack African passers-by and journalists, breaking into and looting shops associated with the African migrant community and shattering car windshields.

At the time, Regev condemned "any violence from any side, but I understand the rage and hurt of the residents, of the families that live there. They tell us: 'Help us. We are being humiliated, look how we live, we are afraid to leave the house.'"

However, speaking to Israeli media outlets over the weekend and on Sunday, Regev chose to apologize for calling the Sudanese a cancer, opting however, to direct her apology to Holocaust survivors and cancer patients.

A massive explosion that rocked a building on Moi Avenue in Nairobi wounding dozens of people was likely caused by an electrical fault, according to Police Commissioner Mathew Iteere.

Visiting the scene, Iteere played down fears it had been a bomb attack by Somalia's Al-Qaeda linked Al Shabaab insurgents.

"We have been to scene of the incident and at this time we can be able to say that it was not a grenade or bomb blast. Form the preliminary investigations we do think it was electrical fault," he said of the massive blast which took place at around 1.15pm local time.

People on the streets and in buildings around the Central Business District all heard the massive blast, believing it was caused by a bomb or other explosive device.

Most were not convinced by the explanation by the police chief who added: "We have also been to the hospital and seen the victim and what we are getting is that the injuries were some sort of burns."

But Internal Security Assistant Minister Orwa Ojode said it was too early to ascertain the cause of the blast.

Nepal sank into political turmoil Monday after lawmakers failed to agree on a new constitution, leaving the country with no legal government. The premier called new elections, but critics said he lacked the power to do so.

Security forces went on high alert and riot police patrolled the streets after several political parties called for rallies to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai and protest his unilateral decision to call elections for November. Only a few peaceful protests were reported.

"The country has plunged into a serious crisis," said Ram Sharan Mahat, a senior leader of the country's second-largest party, the Nepali Congress, who said that six months would not be enough time to prepare for new polling.

"This government has no legitimate grounds to continue," he said.

The squabbling political parties in Nepal's Constituent Assembly had failed to agree on a new blueprint for the Himalayan nation by their own deadline of midnight Sunday, despite repeated extensions of the due date over the past four years.

A key sticking point was whether the country's states should be drawn to give regional power bases to ethnic minorities.

Writing the new constitution was supposed to cap an interim period aimed at solidifying details of Nepal's democracy after the country turned the page on centuries of royal rule and resolved a decadelong Maoist insurgency by bringing the former combatants into the political mainstream.

But perhaps most noteworthy of all, from our insular Israeli perspective, was the invitation to, and participation of, Crown Prince Alexander and Crown Princess Katherine of Yugoslavia.

Alexander's career surely gives the term 'pretender' new import, in that he pretends both that the monarchy still exists and that the country itself still exists. (In fact, he is a popular figure in Belgrade where there is considerable support for a return of royalism, at least to Serbia.)

My point - again, from a trivial, Zionist angle, is that Yugoslavia, at any rate, is at peace. Permanent, eternal peace. Which was a factor, I presume, in the decision to invite their royal highnesses Alexander and Katherine to the British jamboree.

I say this because every time I've asked a British official why the Queen has boycotted the State of Israel for the entire six decades of her reign I get a muttered line about "when there's permanent peace..."

[...]

(When Mrs. Thatcher visited as prime minister, I had the chutzpa to ask her when the Queen would come. Her inimitable reply: "But I'm here...")

European governments are backsliding on commitments to make fishing sustainable, campaigners are warning.

Talks on Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) reform are seeing important changes in moves to eliminate discards, reduce fishing fleets and rebuild fish stocks.

The original aim of repopulating stocks by 2015 is facing a five-year delay.

About three-quarters of European stocks are overfished, and studies show fishermen would have a more prosperous future by curbing catches now.

The main battle line pits more conservation-minded northern countries such as Germany and Sweden against southern states keener to protect fishermen's' short-term interests, including Spain, Portugal and France.

"The question is very basic - do EU fisheries ministers have the courage to end overfishing or not?" said Markus Knigge, advisor to the Pew Environment Group.

The original CFP reform proposal put forward by European Fisheries Commissioner Maria Damanaki last year contained three key elements:

• restore all fish stocks to maximum sustainable yield (MSY) by 2015
• reduce and regulate the size of the EU's fishing fleet through an internal trading mechanism
• eliminate the wasteful practice of discarding fish that are outside a boat's quota.

Like many young Dominicans, Federico left for the US when he finished school to look for work, ending up in a Spanish store in New York. After 20 years working seven days a week he grew tired of the long hours and yearned for his homeland and the tropical climate of the Caribbean.

He had heard about the booming banana trade with the export market growing fast, a cheap and plentiful workforce, and land and water in abundance. It seemed like an ideal opportunity, with money to be made for entrepreneurs willing to set up a plantation. Today he is half way towards his dream, 35 hectares of indigenous forest have been cleared with half already planted with banana trees. The other half will be up and running later this year, together with a new building to wash and pack the harvested bananas.

Not far away Jan Luis Moneta is still waiting for his dream: a work visa. He migrated from Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the world, when he was 14 years old. After 30 years working on banana plantations he is still classed as an illegal worker. With his daily wage he cannot afford to live in anything more than a corrugated iron hut, with no water, toilet facilities or electricity.

Jan Luis is just one of many thousands of 'invisible' Haitian migrants working in the banana sector, where they make up an estimated 90 per cent of the total workforce [the government says the figure is 66 per cent]. Union activists told the Ecologist that 90-95 per cent of them are working in the country illegally.

Although their stories are wildly different, both Federico and Jan Luis have together helped fuel the Dominican Republic's banana boom. The country is the UK's biggest supplier in value terms, with more than half of all their bananas exported to our shores. The majority of these are Fairtrade and/or organic sold in Asda, the Co-op, M&S, Sainsburys and Waitrose. Despite the economic downturn, overall Fairtrade sales in the UK grew by 12 per cent in 2011.

The institute conducting a trial of GM wheat in Hertfordshire says its website was taken down by a cyber attack on Sunday.

The attack occurred on the day anti-GM protesters gathered at Rothamsted Research institute to "decontaminate" the field of modified wheat.

But they were stopped from entering the site of the wheat trial by police.

In a tweet, Rothamsted said that "cyber bullying will prevent us informing the public".

A spokesman for the institute in Harpenden said: "We believe this was a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack but it is unclear who was responsible."

He said the website was down from Sunday afternoon until Monday morning.

On Sunday, the group Take the Flour Back said it failed to gain access because the crop in Harpenden, created to deter aphids - a wheat pest - was "hidden behind a fortress".

An order banning protesters from entering the site had been issued on Friday.

"In the past, kids, grannies, and everyone in between has decontaminated GM trial sites together," Take the Flour Back's Kate Bell said.

German solar power plants produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity - equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity - through the midday hours of Friday and Saturday, the head of a renewable energy think tank has said.

Germany's government decided to abandon nuclear power after the Fukushima nuclear disaster last year, closing eight plants immediately and shutting down the remaining nine by 2022. They will be replaced by renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and bio-mass.

Norbert Allnoch, director of the Institute of the Renewable Energy Industry in Muenster, said the 22 gigawatts of solar power fed into the national grid on Saturday met nearly 50% of the nation's midday electricity needs.

"Never before anywhere has a country produced as much photovoltaic electricity," Allnoch told Reuters. "Germany came close to the 20 gigawatt mark a few times in recent weeks. But this was the first time we made it over."

The record-breaking amount of solar power shows one of the world's leading industrial nations was able to meet a third of its electricity needs on a work day, Friday, and nearly half on Saturday when factories and offices were closed.

The prediction, one season ahead, of summer heat waves in Europe remains a challenge. A new study led by a French-Swiss team shows that summer heat in Europe rarely develops after rainy winter and spring seasons over Southern Europe. Conversely dry seasons are either followed by hot or cold summers. The predictability of summer heat is therefore asymmetric. Climate projections indicate a drying of Southern Europe. The study suggests that this asymmetry should create a favorable situation for the development of more summer heat waves with however a modified seasonal predictability from winter and spring rainfall.

Along the past decade, Europe witnessed a series of exceptional summer heat waves with important impacts on society (eg. the 2003 and 2010 heat waves). These extreme cases are often considered as prototypes of summers of future warmer climate. Our ability to anticipate such events one or several months in advance remains poor. A study lead by the Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement (LSCE) and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich), published in Nature Climate Change, examines whether preceding seasons rainfall allow to predict the frequency of forthcoming summer hot days [1] and physical causes of such a predictability.

From the analysis of precipitation and temperature observations from 200 European meteorological stations over more than 60 years, this study generalizes a result obtained over a region of Southeastern Europe [2]: rainy winters and springs inhibit the development of hot summer days in the following summer season, while dry or normal rainfalls allow either a large or a weak number of hot temperature days. Precipitation events driving this predictability property for Western/Central Europe are exclusively those located over Southern Europe in preceding months. The study shows that this asymmetric predictability results from a difference in the sensitivity of hot days frequency to atmospheric circulation: after dry months, a strong solar energy, associated with anticyclonic conditions, is transferred to the atmosphere through heat fluxes, amplifying drought and heat with a positive feedback. After rainy months, solar energy is largely used for evapo-transpiration instead, limiting the amplification of heat. Even after very dry winter and spring seasons, early summer heavy precipitations can annihilate the potential to develop extreme temperatures, which may have been the case during the 2011 summer, which followed an exceptional spring drought.

It took some 10 million years for Earth to recover from the greatest mass extinction of all time, latest research has revealed.

Life was nearly wiped out 250 million years ago, with only 10 per cent of plants and animals surviving. It is currently much debated how life recovered from this cataclysm, whether quickly or slowly.

Recent evidence for a rapid bounce-back is evaluated in a new review article by Dr Zhong-Qiang Chen, from the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan, and Professor Michael Benton from the University of Bristol. They find that recovery from the crisis lasted some 10 million years, as explained May 27 in Nature Geoscience.

There were apparently two reasons for the delay, the sheer intensity of the crisis, and continuing grim conditions on Earth after the first wave of extinction.

The end-Permian crisis, by far the most dramatic biological crisis to affect life on Earth, was triggered by a number of physical environmental shocks -- global warming, acid rain, ocean acidification and ocean anoxia. These were enough to kill off 90 per cent of living things on land and in the sea.

Dr Chen said: "It is hard to imagine how so much of life could have been killed, but there is no doubt from some of the fantastic rock sections in China and elsewhere round the world that this was the biggest crisis ever faced by life."

Current research shows that the grim conditions continued in bursts for some five to six million years after the initial crisis, with repeated carbon and oxygen crises, warming and other ill effects.

Some groups of animals on the sea and land did recover quickly and began to rebuild their ecosystems, but they suffered further setbacks. Life had not really recovered in these early phases because permanent ecosystems were not established.

Three years ago the European Union made a commitment that did not seem overly ambitious: to have a tenth of European transport energy come from renewable sources by 2020. Part of the plan was to have an ever-growing fleet of electric vehicles that could use some electricity from wind and solar power.

Europe argued that it was introducing biofuels sustainably. Under current legislation, crops converted to biofuels for European engines must reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least thirty-five percent compared to conventional diesel or petrol engines, and they must not be cultivated on land that was formerly virgin forest or in any other valuable ecosystem - if they did, they would never pass the acceptance thresholds. Over the next few years the requirements for emissions savings should be significantly tightened up.

...

European rapeseed, however, was once pressed into edible oils, which covered European consumption and even made its way into the kitchens of China and India; today, however, rapeseed oil is ending up in diesel engines, and Europe is importing vegetable oils to replace it. These replacement oils are made from (among other things) palm oils, which are grown on immense plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia - often on land opened up by clearing virgin rainforests and by draining wetlands.

Once these indirect emissions are factored in, it turns out that biofuel from rapeseed, enforced by quotas and supported by tax breaks, harms the climate more than conventional oil.

A team of researchers from Cambridge University say they have found evidence that a Chinese-manufactured chip used by US armed forces contains a secret access point that could leave it vulnerable to third party tampering.

The researchers tested an unspecified US military chip -- used in weapons, nuclear power plants to public transport - and found that a previously unknown `backdoor' access point had been added, making systems and hardware open to attack, the team says.

Cambridge University researcher, Sergei Skorobogatov, explains:

We scanned the silicon chip in an affordable time and found a previously unknown backdoor inserted by the manufacturer. This backdoor has a key, which we were able to extract. If you use this key you can disable the chip or reprogram it at will, even if locked by the user with their own key.

This particular chip is prevalent in many systems from weapons, nuclear power plants to public transport. In other words, this backdoor access could be turned into an advanced Stuxnet weapon to attack potentially millions of systems. The scale and range of possible attacks has huge implications for National Security and public infrastructure.

While the initial research is a concern, a number of question marks remain over the findings before further conclusions can be drawn.

A complex targeted cyber-attack that collected private data from countries such as Israel and Iran has been uncovered, researchers have said.

Russian security firm Kaspersky Labs told the BBC they believed the malware, known as Flame, had been operating since August 2010.

The company said it believed the attack was state-sponsored, but could not be sure of its exact origins.

They described Flame as "one of the most complex threats ever discovered".

Research into the attack was carried out in conjunction with the UN's International Telecommunication Union.

They had been investigating another malware threat, known as Wiper, which was reportedly deleting data on machines in western Asia.

In the past, targeted malware - such as Stuxnet - has targeted nuclear infrastructure in Iran.

Others like Duqu have sought to infiltrate networks in order to steal data.

African women learning how to use a female condom at the hair salon; women in Bangladesh training to become midwives; young Vietnamese people learn how to prevent HIV; these are just some of the scenes that you can see at the photo exhibition `Unite for Body Rights'.

In many parts of the world, sex education, reliable information about contraception, tolerance towards homosexuals or transsexuals, and safe pregnancies are still far from the norm.

However, the exhibition in The Hague shows that, in many places in the world, sex education and sexual rights are - fortunately - headed in the right direction. The photos come from the Dutch development organizations that make up the Alliance for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights.

Reaching out
The alliance focuses on sex education for young people, good obstetric care for pregnant women and mothers, the reduction of sexual violence and oppression, the treatment and reduction of HIV / AIDS and the acceptance of homosexuality and other sexual preferences.

The alliance works with more than fifty organizations in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Malawi, Uganda, Pakistan and Tanzania, where they reach an estimated 2.5 million people.

One of Spain's leading underground artists is due to appear in court today facing up to a year in prison over a film short he made in 1978 on "how to cook Jesus Christ".

Javier Krahe has been taken to court by a Catholic legal association, the Centro Juridico Tomas Moro, for "offending religious feelings" - a little-known offence. The Catholic association says the law has never before been applied in Spanish legal history.

Banned under Spain's strict censorship laws in 1978, Krahe's 54-second film was finally broadcast on television in 2004 as the backdrop to an interview with the artist.

The film uses culinary language and images to show viewers how to "remove the nails and separate him from the crucifix, which we leave to one side" before the white ebony figure of Christ is shown being lightly smothered in butter, placed on a bed of aromatic herbs in a glass tray, and popped into an oven. Another culinary "guideline" recommends using a proportion of "one gaunt Christ" for each two potential diners.

"After three days inside, he comes out of the cooker by himself!" is the film's punchline as the oven door opens unassisted and the tray with the "cooked Christ" slides magically forwards.

Two previous attempts to prosecute Krahe over the film ended up being dropped, but this time the artist has finally been bailed for €192,000 (£153,000), and statements from witnesses in the case are due to be heard this morning in Madrid's Regional Court.

Austrian director Michael Haneke has picked up the Cannes film festival's top prize for the second time.

Love (Amour) was named winner of the Palme d'Or, three years after Haneke previously won for The White Ribbon.

Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen won the best actor prize for The Hunt, while the actress prize was shared between Cristina Flutur and Cosmina Stratan for Romanian movie Beyond the Hills.

British director Ken Loach collected the Jury Prize for The Angels' Share.

The winners were revealed by the head of the jury, Italian director Nanni Moretti, on the final night of the 12-day film festival.

Haneke's film focused on an elderly couple whose relationship is tested when the wife suffers a series of strokes.

The central roles were played by French actors Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva, who joined Haneke on stage to collect the Palme d'Or.

"This film is an illustration of the promise we made to each other, if either one of us finds ourselves in the situation that is described in the film," said Haneke.

Yes.

The Afsluitdijk was officially completed on the 28th of May, 1932. I had been looking at historic events on the wrong date.

However, curious readers will already have found that, even while the dumping of rocks was done, it wouldn't be officially opened until 1933.

So I guess have some leeway. A bit.

But well. Curious people want to know. There you go.