n style and probably in substance, France's incoming president could not be more different than the country's outgoing leader.

François Hollande's political rise to the country's top post has been slow and steady, with the French media portraying him as "Monsieur Normal" - an easygoing, everyday man. Contrast that with the glamour-struck Nicolas Sarkozy, who earned the nickname "hyper-president" during his five years in office.

If Hollande's victory has a fabled quality, it surely mirrors Aesop's "The Hare and The Tortoise", with the steady, shelled creature finally outpacing the hyperactive hare.

International audiences are probably more familiar with his former partner, Ségolène Royal, who unsuccessfully ran against Sarkozy in the 2007 presidential poll. For those who knew him during the 2012 campaign trail - and that includes his comrades on the left - Hollande was the butt of snide, if good-natured, monikers, including "Flanby" (a wobbly custard) and "capitaine du pedalo,' or the captain of a pedal boat.

But in the course of his bid for presidency, Hollande emerged as a statesman-like figure, a change that included an image makeover, complete with a 10 kilo weight loss and designer glasses.

In substance, the transformation was apparent during the only televised debate of the 2012 presidential campaign, when the 57-year-old Socialist politician exuded confidence as he sat back and took on a pugnacious, finger-jabbing Sarkozy.

A first round of government talks in Greece ended in stalemate on Monday after the top-seeded conservative party failed to entice parties opposed to the country's EU-IMF bailout deal to join a coalition.

Conservative New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras said his efforts to form a national salvation administration had failed, meaning that the leftist Syriza party would now be tasked with forming a government.

"I did whatever I could to secure a result but it was impossible," Samaras said in a televised address after a day of separate meetings with fellow leaders.

"I informed (head of state President Carolos Papoulias) and returned the mandate," the 60-year-old leader said.

Samaras was rebuffed by the second-place leftist Syriza party and the small Democratic Left group, while the nationalist Independent Greeks and the Communist party refused even to meet with him.

Third-place socialist Pasok, formerly in a coalition with New Democracy, agreed to cooperate but only if the leftists also joined.

Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras will be summoned by Papoulias at 1100 GMT on Tuesday and given three days to form a government.

Serbia held joint parliamentary, presidential and local elections on Sunday (6 May), sending ultranationalist Tomislav Nikolić and incumbent President Boris Tadić to a presidential election run-off on 20 May. BETA, the EurActiv partner agency in Serbia, reports.

The Progressive Party of Nikolić and the coalition led by Tadić's Democratic Party are also neck-and neck in the parliamentary election, held the same day.

According to the first official results of the Presidential poll, Nikolić won 25.47% of votes, while Tadić obtained 23.63%. The Socialist leader Ivica Dačić won 16.61%, the leader of the Democratic Party of Serbia Vojislav Koštunica 7.4%, Zoran Stanković, the current Health minister 7.36%, and Čedomir Jovanović, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party got 4.11% of votes.

Meanwhile, the parliamentary vote marked the surge of the former ultranationalist allies of Slobodan Milošević, who rode on voter anger at the country's economic stagnation. Tadić's Democrats polled 38% in the last election in 2008, but were punished this time for an economic downturn that has driven unemployment to 24%.

The Progressive Party took a pro-European stance only after its founding in 2008, when it decided to split from the nationalist Serbian Radical Party. As a result, it has yet to prove its commitment to European integration and democratic standards. The historic leader of the Radical Party Vojislav Šešelj is currently standing trial for war crimes before the Hague tribunal.

Although overshadowed by elections in Greece and France, Italy's local election results, announced late on Monday evening, are nonetheless fascinating. They represent a massive victory for a comedian-turned-blogger-turned-activist called Beppe Grillo. For years, the round-faced, 63-year-old with thick grey hair has been shaking the cage of traditional politics: staging rallies, organising petitions and pleading for a clean-up of the country's notoriously murky politics. He's been a bit like an Italian Michael Moore - a passionate self-publicist who sees the world in black and white.

Until now, no one really took the comedian seriously. He was a stone in the shoe and nothing more. But his Cinque Stelle political movement has come from nowhere to win, in recent projections, almost 20% of the vote in the city of Parma almost 15% of the vote in Genova, Grillo's home city. The centre right, by contrast, stands to win between just 10% and 20% in those cities.

The other extraordinary story of the elections - in which 28 provincial capitals and almost 1,000 town councils have gone to the polls - occurred in Palermo. There, in the Sicilian capital, the centre-left and centre-right coalitions appear set to gain barely more than 30% of the vote between them. It's as if the Tories and Labour were to get less than one-third of all votes cast. And the clear winner in Palermo is another small party of protest, the Italy of Values party, led by Silvio Berlusconi's nemesis, Antonio Di Pietro. Like Grillo, Di Pietro - a former magistrate who spearheaded investigations into corruption in the 1990s - has long campaigned for an end to corruption in public life.

The head of an Italian nuclear engineering company was kneecapped by a gunman on Monday, evoking fears of a return to Italy's violent "years of lead" in the 1970s as the country sinks deeper into recession.

Roberto Adinolfi, the chief executive of Ansaldo Nucleare, was leaving his home in Genoa when a man wearing a motorcycle helmet shot him in the leg with a Tokarev pistol before escaping with an accomplice on a stolen black moped, which was later found by police.

Adinolfi's right knee was fractured in the attack but was he not in a serious condition.

Shooting victims in the legs was a speciality of the Italian Red Brigades, the terrorist organisation which sought to destabilise the Italian government with a series of kidnappings and murders, culminating in the snatching and killing of the former prime minister Aldo Moro in 1978.

The group also shot at three executives at companies in the Ansaldo group and kidnapped another in the 1970s, raising suspicions that Monday's shooting was designed to send a message.

"It is like they wanted to say: 'Let's start again like 40 years ago'," one source told Italian news agency Ansa, adding that the attack could be a signal to sleeper cells to launch their own operations.

The Greek elections have already changed the politics of the eurozone crisis strategy: the two pro-austerity parties are now saying the Greek debt deal must be renegotiated; Venizelos wants the cuts to be phased in over three years, as opposed to two; Samaras handed back his mandate to form a government, a task that has now passed to Syriza, the left-wing anti-reform party; chances of forming a new government are slim, as a result of which new elections are now considered the most likely outcome; Francois Hollande wants either eurobonds or ECB primary market participation to be explicitly included in the fiscal treaty; the economics spokesman of Italy's PDL has made exactly the same request, criticizing Monti's cosy relationship with Angela Merkel; Hollande wants to open up the Franco-German relationship, and make it less exclusive; Merkel reminds Hollande that agreed pacts have to be honoured; Holger Steltzner says pressure on Merkel to open her wallet will become unbearable; Mariano Rajoy has forced out Rodrigo Rato as head of Bankia ahead of a state capital injection; Spanish PM yields to pressure to restructuring the worst parts of the Spanish banking system; Brussels is currently considering whether to give Spain an extra year to comply with the fiscal target; arrears of Portuguese creditors have been rising strongly this year; Bundesbank criticizes the trend towards risk sharing in the monetary union; Sebastian Dullien and Mark Schieritz, meanwhile, argue that Germany's rising Target 2 balances constitute a significant protection of private sector creditors.

The man tipped to be the next president of the European Commission talks exclusively to PublicServiceEurope.com about his ambitions for a truly federal Europe and a more proactive EU foreign policy as well as the need to question the state of Russian democracy, Chinese human rights, the rise of nationalism and a possible European Freedom of Information Act

Some commentators suggest your early political career was aligned with neoliberalism beliefs before you moved more towards the centre ground. Do you think that the economic crisis we are still in the middle of proves that neoliberalism has failed - and, as communism has also failed, what ideologies are left for Europe to pin its hopes on?

"The financial crisis, not the sovereign debt crisis, clearly indicated that self-regulation of markets wasn't working - as had been the assumption in the years leading up to 2008. Everybody thought that economic growth comes from the markets and that they would self-regulate. That just did not happen. But the crisis does not spell the end of free-market economics. For me, it is just the repetition of what Adam Smith said in the Wealth of Nations; that the free market needs a number of basic rules and regulations. That's not a new idea, only in the years before the financial crisis did we think that these rules could be organised by the markets themselves."

The German government believes reforms and saving costs are the best way out of the debt crisis. But voters in Greece and France have voted against this policy. Experts fear the euro may be turning into a soft currency.

Un "pasticcio" nell'interpretazione delle norme regionali sta falsando, in queste ore, i risultati elettorali delle amministrative. Tutte le percentuali attribuite ai candidati sindaci vanno corrette al ribasso: è quello che fa sapere l'assessorato alle Autonomie locali che ha inviato una nota ai Comuni interessati dal voto. In pratica, gli uffici elettorali hanno assegnato le percentuali sulla base del totale dei voti attribuiti ai candidati sindaci. Invece la base di calcolo dovrebbe essere il totale dei voti validi, ovvero quelli presi dai candidati sindaci ma anche da liste e candidati al consiglio, con l'unica eccezione delle schede nulle. E ciò per effetto del combinato di due leggi regionali  -  la 35 del 1997 e la 6 del 2012  -  che lascia in piedi il vecchio sistema di calcolo, costruito quando il voto per il consigliere si estendeva automaticamente al candidato sindaco.

With a Socialist president in France and a strong popular mandate in Greece for re-negotiating the terms of its bail-out, the German-driven focus on budget discipline in Europe may have to soften.

The euro traded at its lowest in three months on Asian markets Monday morning (7 May), down to $1.29 from $1.3 on Friday. It also fell against the Japanese yen from 104.5 on Friday to 103.4.

An investor note from the National Australia Bank spelled out the worries: "The Hollande win in France is not necessarily a surprise. However it brings home the reality that incumbents following the prescribed austerity measures are going to find it difficult to remain elected."

"What happens to these austerity measures now are what are weighing on (the euro)," the bank said.

It happens like this. The election result in Greece means pro-austerity parties lack the parliamentary support and the moral authority to govern. Demands from Athens for the tough bailout conditions to be softened are turned down flat by the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission.

Political impasse in Greece leads to a second general election being called for next month. Angela Merkel makes it clear the next tranche of cash to keep Greek banks and the Greek state solvent will not be given unless the plan is adhered to in full. The strains on the single currency become intolerable; Greece leaves the euro and defaults, starting the process by which monetary union unravels.

In May 2010, when David Cameron and Nick Clegg were negotiating the terms of their coalition agreement and Greece received its first package of financial support, the idea that Europe was about to be gripped by a crisis that would put monetary union in peril was ridiculed. On Monday, as the euro fell on the foreign exchanges, the Greek stock market plunged and investors piled into the safe haven of German bunds, it no longer seems quite so far-fetched.

The jittery mood in the markets reflects the fear that the turmoil of the past five years - the sub-prime crisis, the near-death experience of the banks, the deepest slump since the Great Depression, the sovereign debt crisis - is about to reach a climax over the coming months with a battle for the euro's very survival.

The European Commission said on Monday it expects the next Greek government to respect the terms of a financial rescue after the rise of anti-bailout parties at weekend elections.

"The Commission hopes and expects that the future government of Greece will respect the engagements that Greece has entered into," commission spokeswoman Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen told a news briefing.

Greek conservative leader Antonis Samaras, whose party came on top of Sunday's elections, said he would seek to "amend" the country's controversial EU-IMF loan agreement in order to boost growth.

But the conservatives and Greece's other mainstream party, the Socialists, fell short of an absolute majority in the 300-seat parliament, making it unclear how a new government will be formed.

"It is up to Greek political forces to work in a spirit of responsibility to form a government with a stable majority," said Ahrenkilde Hansen.

She added that the commission stands ready to continue helping Greece implement the unpopular reforms attached to the bailout package, seen as contributing to electoral gains made by neo-Nazi and far-left parties.

"We think that Greece must remain a member of the euro but everybody has to carry its responsibilities," said the European Commission's economic affairs spokesman, Amadeu Altafaj.

Warning that "solidarity is a two-way street," Altafaj called for the "full and timely" implementation of the bailout programme in order to ensure that the massive Greek debt becomes sustainable.

It was one of those puzzling sentences that central bankers like to leave hanging in the air. The temporary European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), the rescue fund for cash-strapped euro-zone countries, has not been very successful, admitted European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi at a press conference in Barcelona last Thursday. "Its functioning fell short of both expectations and needs," he said.

OAS_RICH('Middle2'); Draghi left it up to the journalists in the audience to interpret what is wrong with the fund and what needs to be changed. Furthermore, the Italian banker failed to mention that his organization has long been exploring ways of expanding the scope of the EFSF, or its permanent successor, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), to give the bailout mechanism more firepower.

Euro Group chief Jean-Claude Juncker had asked Draghi for his advice in the matter two weeks earlier. Originally, the ESM, which will be launched in July 2012, was only intended to help out debt-ridden governments, which would have to meet strict requirements in return. But recently, there have been serious closed-door discussions about direct aid for banks. In Brussels, a working group is also looking at this delicate subject.

Time is running out. With the financial crisis now in its fifth year, the banks' problems remain unresolved, and in some countries they are even jeopardizing the stability of the state -- and the future of the European common currency.

The most concerted global push ever undertaken against international tax evasion has failed to reverse the flow of funds to offshore financial centres, according to banking industry data.

Despite unprecedented action from political leaders, and a blizzard of bilateral co-operation treaties entered into by offshore centres, deposit data from the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) shows bank accounts in tax havens still held $2.7tn (£1.7tn) last year - about the same amount as in 2007.

Niels Johannesen and Gabriel Zucman, academics who were granted access to a rarely seen breakdown of BIS data, concluded: "So far, the G20 tax haven crackdown has ... largely failed ... Treaties have led to a modest relocation of bank deposits between tax havens but have not triggered significant flows of funds out of tax havens."

Their findings are in sharp contrast to the official verdict on the G20 initiative in London in 2009. Last November Angel Gurria, general-secretary of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the body whose job is to oversee the crackdown, told the G20 in Cannes: "The era of bank secrecy is over." Acknowledging work remained to be done in some areas, he nevertheless insisted: "It is now no longer possible to hide assets or income without risking detection."

Presented with Johannesen and Zucman's findings last week, Pascal Saint-Amans, the OECD's head of tax, said: "It's an interesting survey, but perhaps it is published a bit early. Let's see what the impact is in a couple of years."

ECLAC; (3 May 2012) Latin America and the Caribbean received US$153.448 billion from foreign direct investment (FDI) in 2011, which represents 10% of the global total flows according to a report presented May 3 by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in Santiago, Chile. This is about the largest amount of FDI received by the region so far, as stated in the report entitled Foreign Direct Investment in Latin America and the Caribbean 2011.

MercoPress: Trade between Asia and Latin America reached 442 billion dollars in 2011 growing at an annual rate of 20.5% in the last twelve years according to a joint report from the Inter American Development Bank and the Asian Development Bank.

RIO DE JANEIRO, May 7, 2012 (IPS) - The Brazilian government of Dilma Rousseff is taking firm steps towards stronger relations with Africa, such as the creation of a special fund to finance development projects together with multilateral lenders like the World Bank.

Just three weeks before Berlin's shiny new international airport was scheduled to open, officials have called it off, citing problems with fire safety equipment. No new date has been set but the German capital's mayor has said it could be as late as the second half of August.

Syrians are voting in the first parliamentary elections under a new constitution that paved the way for a multiparty system in the country.

Voting began at 7:00am (04:00GMT) across Syria on Monday. It was initially scheduled for September 2011, but was postponed for six months after President Bashar al-Assad announced the launch of a reform process.

Violence rocked the east of the country ahead of Monday's vote, underlining the challenge of holding a credible poll while bloodshed continues, complicating the task of UN observers monitoring a ceasefire declared on April 12.

Security and logistical concerns notwithstanding, the credibility of the vote has also been hit by the refusal of the main opposition forces to participate.

A deadly uprising has raged across the country since mid-March 2011, claiming more than 11,100 lives, mostly civilians, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

How many tracts, books, documentaries, speeches and doctoral theses have been written and produced about Islamophobia? How many denunciations have been made against the Sarkozys and the Le Pens and the Wilders for their anti-immigration (for which, read largely anti-Muslim) policies or - let us go down far darker paths - against the plague of Breivik-style racism?

The problem with all this is that Muslim societies - or shall we whittle this down to Middle Eastern societies? - are allowed to appear squeaky-clean in the face of such trash, and innocent of any racism themselves.

A health warning, therefore, to all Arab readers of this column: you may not like this week's rant from yours truly. Because I fear very much that the video of Alem Dechasa's recent torment in Beirut is all too typical of the treatment meted out to foreign domestic workers across the Arab world (there are 200,000 in Lebanon alone).

Many hundreds of thousands have now seen the footage of 33-year-old Ms Dechasa being abused and humiliated and pushed into a taxi by Ali Mahfouz, the Lebanese agent who brought her to Lebanon as a domestic worker. Ms Dechasa was transported to hospital where she was placed in the psychiatric wing and where, on 14 March, she hanged herself. She was a mother of two and could not stand the thought of being deported back to her native Ethiopia. That may not have been the only reason for her mental agony.

Lebanese women protested in the centre of Beirut, the UN protested, everyone protested. Ali Mahfouz has been formally accused of contributing to her death. But that's it.

The Syrian revolt, the Bahraini revolution, the Arab Awakening, have simply washed Alem Dechasa's tragedy out of the news. How many readers know - for example - that not long before Ms Dechasa's death, a Bengali domestic worker was raped by a policeman guarding her at a courthouse in the south Lebanese town of Nabatieh, after she had been caught fleeing an allegedly abusive employer?

The European Union told Iran on Monday it must suspend uranium enrichment, a few days after the Islamic state ruled out doing just that, as Tehran and the West engaged in diplomatic shadow-boxing ahead of nuclear talks this month.

The United States called on Iran to take "urgent practical steps" to build confidence during negotiations with world powers on Tehran's nuclear program, which Washington and its allies suspect is a bid to develop an atomic bomb capability.

Iran, attending an international conference in Vienna alongside its Western foes, for its part accused the United States of supporting Israel's atomic activities. The Jewish state is widely assumed to hold the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal.

Iran and the six major powers resumed discussions last month in Istanbul after a gap of more than a year - a chance to ease escalating tension and avert the threat of a new Middle East war - and both sides described the atmosphere as positive.

The next meeting between the powers - the United States, France, Britain, China, Russia and Germany - and Iran is to take place on May 23 in the Iraqi capital. Iranian officials say they are "optimistic" about making progress.

But with Iran seeking an end to sanctions and Western states reluctant to prematurely ease the pressure they credit with bringing Tehran to the negotiating table, diplomats are already playing down the chances of a settlement in Baghdad.

Shoppers in Malawi have been scrambling to buy basic goods, fearing huge price rises after the currency was devalued by 33%.

The BBC's Raphael Tenthani in Blantyre says that many shops had run out of staple foods such as sugar, cooking oil and bread by the end of Monday.

The kwacha was devalued as part of moves by the new government to restore donor funding.

The former government had rejected IMF calls to devalue the currency.

Our reporter says that other goods such as rice, maize flour and orange squash were running short in Blantyre's Chichiri shopping centre - the main retail area in Malawi's biggest city.

He has been told that the same panic-buying is also happening in Malawi's main towns.

The scramble comes despite economists saying they did not expect the devaluation to immediately lead to higher prices, as many businesses were expecting the move and were already using the new exchange rate.

The central bank announced that one dollar would now be worth 250 kwacha, up from 168, while the peg to the US currency would be scrapped.

Blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng said he remains hopeful that he can leave China for the U.S. under a recent deal between Washington and Beijing, but he said barriers remain before the two sides can fully defuse their sticky diplomatic situation.

In an interview on Monday, Mr. Chen said both the U.S. and the Chinese central government have shown patience as they move to implement a deal that would allow him to study abroad at New York University. "I'm very thankful for the U.S. government for helping me in this period," he said. "I'm also very thankful to the [Chinese] central government for its calm and restraint during this episode."

But Mr. Chen said he still lacks a passport and has heard little in the way of progress in implementing a deal since the two sides said on Friday that he could study abroad. "Right now, there's no progress," he said, adding "I can't predict what sort of problems I might encounter."

The slow progress helps illustrate the complexity of resolving a case that drew world-wide attention after Mr. Chen eluded the guards surrounding his home in China's eastern Shandong province who have kept him under virtual house arrest for the past 19 months. He eventually sought shelter at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, where he stayed for six days. The incident sparked a series of tense days and negotiations between the U.S. and China ahead of and during bilateral talks that included U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

Mexico's election race has stepped up a gear with the four presidential hopefuls facing one another in their first TV debate ahead of July's poll.

Front-runner Enrique Pena Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) faced sharp attacks from his rivals.

The barbed comments enlivened a rigidly controlled format, correspondents say.

But it is unclear how many voters were watching, with the main TV channels opting to show a dance show and a football match instead.

Mr Pena Nieto began the debate highlighting Mexico's "worst economic performance in 80 years" during the last two administrations of the National Action Party (PAN).

He is hoping to return the PRI, which governed Mexico for much of the 20th Century, to power after a 12-year absence.

Honduras Culture and Politics: And the Winner Is: Miguel Facussé! Winner for what? we're glad you asked: selected by Reporters Without Borders as one of its group of 41 global "Predators" threatening freedom of the press.

NYT: FORWARD OPERATING BASE MOCORON, Honduras -- The United States military has brought lessons from the past decade of conflict to the drug war being fought in the wilderness of Miskito Indian country, constructing this remote base camp with little public notice but with the support of the Honduran government.

[Costa Rican] Presidenta Laura Chinchilla asked her minister of Transport, Francisco Jimenez, to resign his post following complaints of alleged corruption with the construction of the 160km road, the Juan Rafael Mora Porras, near the Nicaraguan border. (...) Eleven out of 23 ministers in Chinchilla's Cabinet have given up their posts in the last two years. Only three of them have taken other jobs in the government.

InSight: Despite its initial success in reducing violence in the capital, a gang truce in Belize's capital city appears to be under strain as violence between groups escalates. Since it came into force in Belize City in September 2011, the government-backed gang truce produced immediate results with only nine homicides committed during its first 100 days, according to the US Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC). This marked a departure from the trend of rising violence in the city, which saw a peak of 129 homicides in 2010.

The Cuban Triangle: BLITZER: If you could speak directly to the top leaders in Cuba, what would you say? [Alan] GROSS: I would say to Raul Castro that I think he's trying to do some very courageous things.

The deal reached between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Kadima chief Shaul Mofaz on Monday broke the record for cynical agreements, one which had held since the August 1939 Molotov-Ribberntrop agreement between Russia and Germany. It allows Netanyahu to change his name to Kombinyamin [Netanyahu's first name combined with the word "Kombina," which in Israel is used to refer to an underhanded deal], and reminds us that the last time Mofaz was anywhere near the concept "reliability" it was as an IDF soldier during the raid to rescue hijacked airline passengers in Entebbe.

[...]

As for Iran, Mofaz has thus far distanced himself from the reckless adventurism attributed to Barak and Netanyahu. However, that was a long time ago, about 24 hours, and in the meantime he lost the "o" and one "p" from "opposition," and has ended up with "position." His relative advantage, as the only Iranian-born Israeli leader, he already used in previous years in speaking with Iranians on Israeli Radio's Farsi station. Then, he warned Tehran of the consequences of an attack on Israel, and promised, among other things, to spare the civilian population when Israel goes on a counter strike; he also supported economic sanctions. But that was during previous, less belligerent cabinets.

My first thought upon seeing the news was that Mofas is a spineless worm, lacking any credibility; the second was that he was probably the worst politician in the history of Israel. Ehud Barak, with five nameless MKs, shook Netanyahu down for four ministries, among them the all-important Ministry of Security (aka Ministry of Defense). Mofaz, with almost six times that number of MKs (and more MKs than Likud has), managed to grab just a puny ministry without portfolio and the meaningless title of senior vice premier.

[...]

Except that in Israeli history, there is a precedent for the head of a large party who joins a national unity government and takes only a ministry without portfolio: Menachem Begin, who entered Levi Eshkol's national unity government in the weeks before the Israeli offensive of the Six Day War. Begin argued he should join the government out of responsibility to the nation. This period in the government helped transform Begin, who was at the time described by the establishment-controlled media as a flesh eating demon - Ben Gurion made a habit of comparing him to Hitler, and would not refer to him by name, only as the "MK sitting next to MK Bader" - and grant him the legitimacy which, a decade later, would be essential to his electoral victory.

Mofaz, who has already served as Minister of Security and Minister of Transportation, is not in need of such legitimacy. He is a part of the establishment, not an outsider looking for a way in. So why is he joining the Netanyahu government on terms so similar to Begin's in 1967?

Perhaps because he is indeed Israel's most inept politician. But we should consider the possibility that, like Begin, he knows (as head of the opposition) that Israel is about to launch a fateful attack, and knows that what looked this morning like the worst act of political opportunism since Shimon Peres lost one time too many and left Labor for Kadima, may appear two weeks from now in a totally different light: as providing the government with aid at its hour of greatest need.

Let's just hope he turns out to be a doofus after all.

Gassy dinosaurs may have spewed so much methane into the air that it could have helped warm the climate tens of millions of years ago, when temperatures were much higher than today, a team of U.K. scientists reported Monday.

The stomach gas released each year by a family of long-necked, plant-eating dinosaurs, which included the world's largest known land animals, may have equaled the total amount of methane produced every year today from all natural, agricultural and industrial sources, the researchers said Monday in the journal Current Biology. Methane, a greenhouse gas, is 23 times as effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.

The new scientific work highlights the importance of wildlife, livestock, and other natural sources of greenhouse-gas emissions in shaping global climate.

An abrupt cooling in Europe together with an increase in humidity and particularly in windiness coincided with a sustained reduction in solar activity 2800 years ago. Scientists from the German Research Centre for Geosciences GFZ in collaboration with Swedish and Dutch colleagues provide evidence for a direct solar-climate linkage on centennial timescales. Using the most modern methodological approach, they analysed sediments from Lake Meerfelder Maar, a maar lake in the Eifel/Germany, to determine annual variations in climate proxies and solar activity.

The study published online this week in Nature Geoscience reports the climatic change that occurred at the beginning of the pre-Roman Iron Age and demonstrates that especially the so-called Grand Minima of solar activity can affect climate conditions in western Europe through changes in regional atmospheric circulation pattern. Around 2800 years ago, one of these Grand Solar Minima, the Homeric Minimum, caused a distinct climatic change in less than a decade in Western Europe.

The exceptional seasonally laminated sediments from the studied maar lake allow a precise dating even of short-term climate changes. The results show for a 200 year long period strongly increased springtime winds during a period of cool and wet climate in Europe. In combination with model studies they suggest a mechanism that can explain the relation between a weak sun and climate change. "The change and strengthening of the tropospheric wind systems likely is related to stratospheric processes which in turn are affected by the ultraviolet radiation" explains Achim Brauer (GFZ), the initiator of the study. "This complex chain of processes thus acts as a positive feedback mechanism that could explain why assumingly too small variations in solar activity have caused regional climate changes."

Onshore wind farms, recently under attack from leading conservationists for damaging the countryside, can bring significant economic benefits locally and nationally, as well as contributing to the fight against climate change, a new study claims.

Onshore wind supported 8,600 jobs and was worth £548m to the UK economy in 2011, says the report, by consultancy BiGGAR Economics. Of this figure 1,100 jobs were created at local authority level, with £84m of investment.

Looking at 18 case studies of wind farms of different sizes drawn from across the UK, the study analyses the contribution of wind farm development, construction, operation and maintenance to the economy at a local, regional and national level. It suggests if onshore wind is deployed at a scale suggested in the Government's Renewable Energy Roadmap, the economy could benefit by £780m by 2020, with around 11,600 jobs being supported.

From its beginnings 20 years ago, Britain's wind industry now has 3,176 large onshore turbines, with 568 turbines in the sea, according to RenewableUK, the wind industry trade body.

The onshore wind farms together can produce about 4.5 gigawatts of electricity, roughly the equivalent of four large conventional power stations, with another 1.5GW coming from offshore turbines. But the growing presence of turbines in the landscape - there are nearly 3,000 more in the planning process - has led to criticism from conservationists, and last week the Campaign to Protect Rural England broke ranks with other environmental groups who have hitherto been united in support for wind energy for the contribution it can make, with other CO2-free energies like solar and tidal power, to cut carbon emissions that cause climate change.

If my RSS reader is any guide, most of the press about shale gas has focused on two issues. First, shale gas is in considerable supply, cheap to produce, and burns far cleaner than other fossil fuels. Second, shale gas does not look so hot environmentally, all in. Fracking can pollute ground water (and potable water is our most scarce resource) and releases enough methane to make shale gas as detrimental as coal. Still, it has been treated as the Great Hope for America's energy woes, a way to turn the US into an exporter, and maybe it will cure cancer too. Obama touted 100 years of shale gas reserves, and manufacturers envision an American revival based on cheap fuel.

The problem is that the good part of this story is largely wrong. Shale gas supplies are overestimated, and it is not as cheap as it has been touted to be. The big reason is that shale gas wells, unlike oil wells, peter out really quickly. The result is that the viability of shale gas as a solution to America's high energy consumption level is only on an interim basis. Shale gas is more likely to be a stopgap, a 25 year solution rather than a 100 one.

As with the housing bubble, analysts and journalists who understand the economics are giving clear warnings, but they don't seem to be getting much of an audience. For instance, Jeff Goodell in Rolling Stone wrote in March:

At the same time, scientists began to conclude that America's reserves of natural gas have been overhyped. In January, the Energy Department cut its estimate of the amount of gas available in the Marcellus Shale by nearly 70 percent, and a group affiliated with the Colorado School of Mines warns that there may be only 23 years' worth of economically recoverable gas left nationwide. Even worse, new studies suggest that because of fugitive emissions of methane from wellheads and pipelines, natural gas may actually be no better than coal when it comes to global warming.

In February, no doubt annoyed by Obama's State of the Union claim of 100 years of shale gas, aeberman of The Oil Drum wrote a detailed post explaining in some detail what the supply side looks like. One key fact: the US is already at the point where it is drilling less productive wells:

Aid groups in the Netherlands are developing fair trade certification for gold which was mined in a fair, safe and environmentally-friendly way.

The Max Havelaar organisation, famed for its fair trade coffee and chocolate, and Solidaridad network group have developed the gold mark which will initially be used by 10 jewelry makers. The organisations hope sustainability will be a major issue in the gold sector within five years.

Some 85% to 90% of gold is currently extracted in large scale mining projects which lead to ground water and river pollution with mercury, the organisations say. Locals are also forced to move homes when a mining company arrives and gold mining is also associated with the destruction of forests.

'If a mine is empty, the local environment is seriously polluted and the original residents get nothing,' Nico Roozen, director of Solidaridad told Nos television.

The Sierra Nevada range in the US grows about half an inch in elevation every 10 years, according to scientists. Researchers at the University of Nevada's geodetic laboratory in Reno and the University of Glasgow in the UK say they have recorded annual elevation increases between 1mm and 2mm for more than 10 years along the entire 400-mile range between Nevada and California. A combination of GPS data and space-based radar has provided them with unprecedented accuracy. "The exciting thing is we can watch the range growing in real time," said Bill Hammond, lead researcher of the multi-year project at the University of Nevada,.

"Using data back to before 2000 we can see it with accuracy better than 1 millimeter per year. Perhaps even more amazing is that these minuscule changes are measured using satellites in space."

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and Nasa, along with the UK's Natural Environment Research Council.

Hammond said the findings would be published in July in the journal Geology and may help resolve an active debate regarding the age of the modern Sierra in California and Nevada.

"If we needed to hang someone tomorrow," Martin Martinez, Trinidad and Tobago's commissioner of prisons, says, grinning wolfishly, "we would grease up the gallows and buy some new rope." Death by hanging is the penalty for anyone convicted of murder in Trinidad and Tobago, although no one has been executed here since 1999.

From his air-conditioned office, minutes from the cemetery in the capital, Port of Spain, Martinez reels off the four witnesses needed: a doctor, a priest, a court official and himself, the prisons commissioner. "It is traumatising to take a man's life," he explains. "It's an emotional issue, as there is such a high murder rate here. The death penalty sends a message, but it may or may not solve the problem."

Prime minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, backed by former Fifa vice-president Jack Warner, who is now her minister for works and transport, is campaigning for enforcement of the death penalty to fight the "the tsunami of crime" that has hit Trinidad and Tobago. In Jamaica, which has one of the world's highest murder rates, there is also a growing clamour for the rope to be used.

The debate is close to boiling point in the English-speaking Caribbean, partly because it plays on one of the few remaining links to Britain colonialism. The fate of those on death row is currently decided more than 4,000 miles away, in Westminster, at the judicial committee of the privy council (JCPC). "We talk about independence, meaning a flag and an anthem," Martinez says, "but we need to sever the umbilical cord with the mother country."

South Korea says it will increase customs inspections targeting capsules containing powdered human flesh.

The Korea Customs Service said it had found almost 17,500 of the capsules being smuggled into the country from China since August 2011.

The powdered flesh, which officials said came from dead babies and foetuses, is reportedly thought by some to cure disease and boost stamina.

But officials said the capsules were full of bacteria and a health risk.

"It was confirmed those capsules contain materials harmful to the human body, such as super bacteria. We need to take tougher measures to protect public health," a customs official was quoted as saying by the Korea Times.

Inspections are to be stepped up on shipments of drugs arriving from north-east China, Yonhap news agency reported.

The Dong-a Ilbo newspaper said that capsules were being dyed or switched into boxes of other drugs in a bid to disguise them.

Some of the capsules were found in travellers' luggage and some in the post, customs officials said.

Allegations that human flesh capsules were being trafficked from north-east China into South Korea emerged last year in a South Korean television documentary.

A chemical found in curry is to be tested for its ability to kill bowel cancer tumours in patients.

Curcumin, which is found in the spice turmeric, has been linked to a range of health benefits.

Studies have already shown that it can beat cancer cells grown in a laboratory and benefits have been suggested in stroke and dementia patients as well.

Now a trial at hospitals in Leicester will investigating giving curcumin alongside chemotherapy drugs.

About 40,000 people are diagnosed with bowel cancer in the UK each year.

If the disease spreads around the body, patients are normally given a combination of three chemotherapy drugs, but about half will not respond.

Forty patients at Leicester Royal Infirmary and Leicester General Hospital will take part in the trial, which will compare the effects of giving curcumin pills seven days before starting standard chemotherapy treatment.

One of the world's most celebrated chefs, Spaniard Ferran Adrià, is to appear in court over allegations that he cheated a former partner out of his proper share in the legendary El Bulli restaurant.

The heirs of Miquel Horta, a former financial backer and shareholder in El Bulli, claim that the chef took advantage of their father's frail mental health to con him into selling his share in the business for a knockdown rate, according to Spain's Cadena SER radio station.

Horta's children say that their father's financing of a new, bigger kitchen at the beachside restaurant outside the north-eastern town of Roses was key to El Bulli's later success.

Horta received 20% of the business in return for putting in the money to rebuild and expand the kitchens in the early 1990s.

In 2005, Adrià and his business partner Juli Soler bought out Horta - who had originally made his money from making eau de cologne. They reportedly paid Horta, who has since died, €1m for the 20% share.

Now Horta's sons, Jofre and Sergi, claim that Adrià and Soler deliberately set an excessively low valuation for a restaurant that had become a brand name with global recognition.

Criminal? Italian mafia interior tastes exposed - in pictures

Italian tax police and soldiers reveal the Naples home of jailed Camorra clan mobster Nicola Schiavone, in the process shedding a rather garish light on the kitsch interior tastes of a modern crime family.

The economy cannot continue to grow indefinitely
Hello everyone, my name is Simone Perotti. I am an author and I write novels and essays. I wrote the book entitled "Adesso basta" (literally "Enough is enough"), as well as another entitled "Ufficio di scollocamento" (literally "The Disemployment Bureau"), a book that I co-wrote with Paolo Ermani. Disemployment is a way to break free of the current system, meaning not only financially and work wise and not simply chucking up your job and changing your way of life, but something far more specific, which involves changing and getting out of the rat race totally, in every sense including psychologically, existentially and philosophically, as well as financially, work wise and socially. It is essentially an attempt to abandon the sinking ship before the captain's belated announcement can actually make life far more difficult for you.
Those Costa Concordia passengers who somehow managed to save themselves did so only by disobeying orders and getting themselves ready to get off the ship and head for safety long before the Captain eventually gave the order to abandon ship. "The Disemployment Bureau" was born of a somewhat thought provoking and paradoxical idea that someone nevertheless began to take very seriously indeed, examined carefully and actually saw through to fruition. There are now disemployment bureaus springing up here in Italy, avenues that help us understand the true nature of the problem that we are facing, namely that the promise is not going to be fulfilled, the promise that we could be part of a system that would deliver jobs for everyone, opportunities for everyone and that would include paid leave, shopping, houses and motorcars for all. There is no way that this promise can be kept because it was based on a very different economic, social and political situation to the one that we are currently seeing and everything has changed since then, so the ship is beginning to creak and groan, to list to one side and is now about to sink completely.
The "Ufficio di scollocamento" was born from the need from below to build up the necessary understanding, followed by the kind of action required in order to change our circumstances.
Soon we will all be disemployed, it is already happening. The system had made a promise that it is now unable to fulfil. Changing the rules midway through the game is deemed to be totally unacceptable at any stage and under any circumstances. Irrespective of whether it is merely a game of football or something far more serious, the rules simply cannot be changed midway through the game. We cannot simply stop the game before full-time just because the score is even, yet this is precisely what is happening at the moment. We knuckled down and got to work and agreed to participate in this society because this society was going to give us all sorts of things in return, such as a pension at a reasonable age, various services and an opportunity for everyone to have a job and to be able to grow professionally. However, that promise was based on the situation at the time, on an economy that was growing at the time, even though it was actually foreseeable that the economy could not continue to grow indefinitely and nor could the supply of third world countries that were ripe for exploitation be guaranteed and, in the meantime, those Countries have since become developing Countries in their own right and are no longer willing to sit back and allow themselves to be exploited.

Giving some sort of meaning to our own lives
That promise, which is now no longer feasible, is tending to exclude an ever increasing number of people from that idyllic plan for communal wellbeing and more and more people will be joining the ranks of the disemployed.
That ill-conceived civilisation, namely that of the north-west section of this planet where the kind of capitalism that demands standardised communal behaviour from which no one can escape is indeed the driving force, has already pretty much reached the end of the line.
The lead time for this change, or rather the time remaining for us to be able plan such a change, is busy running away fast and soon there will not be any time left in which to plan.

(click to embiggen)

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.