Clashes have broken out between rival Russian and Polish football fans in the Polish capital Warsaw ahead of a Euro 2012 tie between the two teams.

A march by thousands of Russian fans to mark their national day had to be halted and some missiles were thrown.

Police say 56 arrests were made and that seven people were injured in the violence.

Tensions are running high, given the centuries of rivalry between the two countries.

Downing Street has defended plans to change the status of civil ceremonies to allow gay and lesbian couples in England and Wales to get married.

It said it was confident safeguards to stop religious organisations being forced to take part in services would not be overturned by European courts.

The Church of England has said the move would "alter the intrinsic nature of marriage as the union of a man and a woman".

Ministers plan to pass the law by 2015.

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Russiaon Tuesday in the first major demonstrations against the government since Vladamir Putin was sworn in as president on 7 May.

Despite thunderstorms and the absence of key opposition figures, the "March of Millions" went ahead in the capital - a day after searches conducted by armed police in the homes of opposition activists and their families. Leading activists, including blogger Aleksei Navalny, socialite Ksenia Sobchak, and liberal organiser Ilya Yashin, were prevented from attending because they had been summoned for questioning by Russia's Investigative Committee in connection with the violence at the last rally on 6 May.

But Yashin, speaking to the Guardian after he was released on Tuesday evening, indicated that the move may have succeeded only in raising the profile of the rally. "The investigators did all they could to increase the amount of people that came today," he said.

François Hollande's partner, Valérie Trierweiler, has sparked a political storm and embarrassed the Socialist party by tweeting her support for a dissident candidate standing against Hollande's ex-partner, Ségolène Royal, in the parliamentary elections.

The saga threatens to damage Hollande, who has been careful to style himself as a down-to-earth "president normal" but now faces charges from the right that animosity between his present and past girlfriends has turned his leadership of France into a celebrity soap opera worthy of the worst excesses of Nicolas Sarkozy's highly public love life.

Trierweiler's unexpected tweet comes at a critical time for the Socialists. Royal, who is the mother of Hollande's four children and was his long-term partner before he moved in with Trierweiler in 2007, is facing a difficult fight for a parliamentary seat in La Rochelle.

As the volunteers unpack their shopping bags of rice, milk and cooking oil, Goman Badder retreats to the room he lives in with his wife and their one-year-old son. For the 28-year-old Syrian Kurd, the deliveries are a mixed blessing: he is relieved that his family will not go hungry, but humiliated that it has come to this. He had hoped for better things for his son, asleep on the neatly made bed.

"When I left Syria, I felt I didn't want him to be like me," he says. "But I never thought for him it would be like this: people bringing him Pampers and milk. If I'd known it would be like this I would never have brought him to this world."

His friend Salah Muhamed, a Kurdish teacher who fled the "hell" of Syria six months ago, did not mince his words. "In Syria, we will be killed by guns," he says. "Here, we will be killed by the economy."

Earning loud applause at an election campaign rally in Athens, Golden Dawn MP Ilias Panagiotaros said: "If Chrysi Avgi [Golden Dawn] gets into parliament [as polls predict], it will carry out raids on hospitals and kindergartens and it will throw immigrants and their children out on the street so that Greeks can take their place."

Medical supplies and beds at some hospitals are running desperately short. The governor of the state-run Nikea hospital, Theodoros Roupas, called on doctors to stop non-essential surgical interventions because of a critical shortage of gloves, syringes and gauze. The order was revoked when Roupas found emergency supplies later in the day.

"The situation is really critical and getting worse every day," said Dr Panaghiotis Papanikolaou, a neurosurgeon at the hospital. "There is not enough medical staff to cope and huge shortages of supplies. There's no money to even service scanners and surgical microscopes ... we're talking about a major healthcare crisis - not in the making, it is happening now."

Lib Dem MPs are to abstain in a Commons vote on Wednesday calling for an investigation into whether Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has broken the ministerial code of conduct.

Labour want his handling of News Corp's BSkyB bid referred to David Cameron's adviser on ministerial interests.

The BBC's Nick Robinson said Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg had told a meeting of his MPs and peers not to "support the Tories on this one" and "to stay away".

Mr Cameron has fully backed Mr Hunt.

Spanish 10-year yields rise to over 6.8%, as the country is nearing a full ESM programme; German yields were also rising sharply; Spanish and Italian yields are approaching a level at which the two countries will no longer be able to refinance themselves; in the midst of the fire in the bond markets, European policymakers offered their usual cacophony; Merkel reiterates her opposition to eurobonds; France is not keen on a political union; Britain's chancellor George Osborne ruminates whether Germany needs to see a Greek exit as a wake-up call to act; El Pais says markets have lost confidence in Europe's political leadership; the FTD reports that the EU is willing, after all, to renegotiate the Greek programme; a troika report is expected to conclude that Greece failed to meet the conditionality; IMF is likely to withdraw from the Greek programme in the case of a renegotiation; Francois Hollande will today meet the leadership of the SPD to work out a strategy for the change of the fiscal pact; the German chancellor's office is nervous about the meeting, and has asked Hollande not to stage a joint press conference; the European Commission says a financial transactions tax might be agreed using the procedure of enhanced cooperation; Deutsche Bank's Anshu Jain says he supports Angela Merkel's policy; the Bundesbank rejects the ECB's proposals for a banking union; Martin Wolf, meanwhile, says the minimum necessary infrastructure for a monetary union is an insurance union and an adjustment union.

European finance officials have discussed limiting the size of withdrawals from cash machines, imposing border checks and introducing eurozone capital controls as a worst-case scenario should Athens decide to leave the euro.

[...]

The discussions have taken place in conference calls over the past six weeks, as concerns have grown that a radical-left coalition, Syriza, may win the second election, increasing the risk that Greece could renege on its EU/IMF bailout and therefore move closer to abandoning the currency.

[...]

Switzerland said last month it was considering introducing capital controls if the euro falls apart.

Sinn argues that Germany has done enough:

Should the euro fail, Germany would lose over $1.35 trillion, more than 40 percent of its G.D.P. Has the United States ever incurred a similar risk for helping other countries?

Most of this $1.35 trillion potential loss figure comes from the possible loss of the Bundesbank's Target2 credit, something which I have argued can be dealt without any new taxes on German citizens.

But, forgetting that for a moment, it appears that Sinn views "Has the United States ever incurred a similar risk for helping other countries?" as a rhetorical question to which the answer is "No".  In fact, I suspect the vast majority of US citizens are perfectly aware that the answer is "Yes".

One example that the good professor has probably heard of: World War 2. Once the United States entered World War 2, defense spending rose from 1.64% of GDP in 1940 to 37.19% in 1945.  The US debt ratio went from below 40% of GDP in 1941 to over 120% of GDP in 1946. And this doesn't put a price on the tragedy of 400,000 deaths of US troops.

Spain's borrowing costs have risen to the highest rate since the launch of the euro in 1999.

The benchmark 10-year bond yield hit 6.81%, as optimism about the weekend's Spanish bank bailout continued to evaporate.

Italy's 10-year bond yield rose to 6.28%, a rate not seen since January, as concerns about its finances rose.

The interest rates are seen as unsustainable in the long run for two countries weighed down by huge debts.

George Osborne has floated the possibility that Greece might need to be sacrificed to save the euro after a fresh day of jitters on the world's financial markets saw Spain's long-term borrowing costs hit their highest level since the launch of the single currency.

In a highly unusual step, the chancellor suggested that Greece may have to leave the eurozone so Germany could convince voters that it was worth pouring more money into the troubled currency. Speaking at a summit of chief executives organised by the Times newspaper, Osborne said: "I ultimately don't know whether Greece needs to leave the euro in order for the eurozone to do the things necessary to make their currency survive.

"I just don't know whether the German government requires Greek exit to explain to their public why they need to do certain things like a banking union, eurobonds and things in common with that.

The crisis in Syria has deepened as the US revealed publicly that Russia was sending attack helicopters that could be used by President Bashar al-Assad to help crush the rebellion against his regime.

On the day that a senior UN official declared that Syria is in a state of civil war, Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, warned in Washington that the Russian aircraft would "escalate the conflict quite dramatically." The US and other western countries have been trying desperately to get Moscow to put pressure on Assad as violence has surged recently.

Fears of a further sharp deterioration were fuelled by the statement from Herve Ladsous, head of the UN's Department of Peacekeeping Operationsa senior UN official that Syria was effectively already in a state of civil war after 15 months of violence and an estimated 15,000 dead.

US diplomats raised concerns that the frontrunner in Mexico's presidential election, Enrique Peña Nieto, was paying for favourable TV coverage as far back as 2009, according to state department cables released by WikiLeaks.

Allegations that coverage by the country's main television network was biased in favour of Peña Nieto have triggered a wave of student demonstrations in the runup to the election on 1 July. The claims are supported by documents seen by the Guardian, which also implicate other politicians in buying news and entertainment coverage.

One cable, written shortly after US embassy officials were taken on a tour of Mexico State when Peña Nieto was governor, says: "It is widely accepted, for example, that the television monopoly Televisa backs the governor and provides him with an extraordinary amount of airtime and other kinds of coverage." The document, which dates from September 2009, was titled: "A look at Mexico State, Potemkin village style"

The government of the Falkland Islands has announced plans for a referendum next year on the political future of British-owned South Atlantic archipelago claimed by Argentina.

Speaking on Tuesday, Gavin Short, the chairman of the islands' legislature, said he hoped the referendum would "convey a strong message to the outside world,'' about Falklanders' desire to retain ties to London.

The announcement comes shortly before the 30th anniversary of the end of the brief 1982 war when British forces reclaimed the islands following an Argentine invasion.

The Yemeni army has driven fighters associated with al-Qaeda from the key southern city of Zinjibar, a hard-fought objective that they had contested for a year.

Fighters calling themselves Ansar al-Sharia, or Supporters of Islamic Law, had occupied parts of Abyan province as well as Zinjibar, its capital, since the spring of 2011. The fighters, who are thought to be tied to al-Qaeda's branch in Yemen, declared the area an Islamic emirate.

But on Tuesday, the government pushed the fighters out of both Zinjibar and Jaar, a nearby town, during a fight that inflicted casualties on both sides.

A delegation from the International Criminal Court on Tuesday visited their colleagues being held in Libya over allegations they had smuggled documents to Muammar Gaddafi's detained son.

The delegation had earlier been prevented from entering Zintan by a local militia which closed roads into the town because of tribal clashes in the area.

Australian lawyer Melinda Taylor and Lebanese-born interpreter Helene Assaf were detained last week while visiting Saif al-Islam Gaddafi in Zintan on allegations they had smuggled documents to him from his supporters. Two male colleagues were with them.

The United States is withdrawing its team of negotiators from Pakistan without securing a long-sought deal with Islamabad to allow trucks to again supply NATO troops in neighboring Afghanistan, the Pentagon has said.

"The decision was reached to bring the team home for a short period of time," George Little, Pentagon spokesman, told reporters on Monday.

The team of negotiators had been in Pakistan for about six weeks, he said, as US officials had believed they were close to a deal with Islamabad to lift the blockade on NATO convoys.

A report by Human Rights Watch has raised concerns about the treatment of migrant construction workers in the Gulf state of Qatar.

The report, released on Tuesday, called on Qatar and world football governing body FIFA to commit to an overhaul of labour laws to ensure that stadiums and facilities for the 2022 World Cup "will not be built on the backs of abused and exploited workers".

Qatar, one of the world's richest nations - which in 2010 won the right to host the tournament - would be the first Middle Eastern country to stage the cup.

Egypt's ousted President Hosni Mubarak was in a stable condition on Tuesday, a prison official said, after sources reported a day before that the jailed 84-year-old's health had deteriorated and that he had received treatment to restart his heart.

Speculation about Mubarak's health has swirled since he was jailed for life on June 2 for failing to halt the killing of protesters who toppled him. Hundreds were killed in the 18-day uprising that ended his 30-year rule on Feb. 11, 2011.

Mubarak's lawyer told Reuters on Monday that Mubarak's status was "very critical" and that he should be moved to a better equipped facility outside of the prison.

Critics say his illness is being exaggerated to win public sympathy and to prepare for any move out of jail to another medical facility.

A semiofficial Iranian news agency is reporting that the country has begun to design its first nuclear submarine.

The Tuesday report by Fars quotes the deputy navy chief in charge of technical affairs, Admiral Abbas Zamini, as saying Iran has begun "initial stages" of designing the nuclear-powered craft.

Adm. Zamini says Iran has developed "peaceful nuclear technology" and has both the capability and the right to build a submarine.

An Israeli scientist who has reached across political and
ethnic boundaries to help dozens of countries in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and South America improve agriculture with new irrigation methods will
receive the World Food Prize, the prize's foundation announced on Tuesday.

Daniel Hillel, who is credited with developing drip irrigation methods that
conserve water while allowing food to be grown in some of the world's driest
climates, was named the winner of this year's $250,000 prize during a ceremony in Washington. He will officially receive the prize in October during the
annual World Food Prize Symposium in Iowa.

Vice Premier Hui Liangyu on Tuesday pledged to boost agricultural cooperation with the European Union as he met with EU Agriculture Commissioner Dacian Ciolos.

Hui commended current China-EU relations during their meeting, saying the two sides have maintained high-level visits, carried out fruitful dialogues at all levels and kept coordination on major international and regional issues in recent years.

"China attaches great importance to developing relations with the EU and hopes the two sides will make full use of their respective advantages, strengthen dialogue and communication and further expand cooperation in agriculture, economy and trade," Hui said

The UK's environment secretary has hit back at criticism that David Cameron is not attending next week's Rio+20 sustainable development summit, saying the government takes sustainability seriously and there is "no lack of commitment" from the UK.

Rio+20 opens next week and will be the largest summit the UN has ever organised. It comes two decades after the original Rio Earth Summit, with 190 countries meeting to discuss plans to grow the "green economy" of industries such as renewable energy, as well as potential "sustainable development goals".

On Tuesday, the chair of an influential committee of MPs, Joan Walley, attacked the government for Cameron's decision not to go, saying he was "sending out a powerful signal that the UK government does not see sustainability as a priority."

The prime minister must step in urgently to rescue the UK's nuclear power programme, or risk it failing, a senior Tory has warned after French nuclear company EDF gave a downbeat report on the prospects for a new fleet of reactors in the UK.

Chairman of the influential energy and climate change committee and former Tory cabinet minister Tim Yeo said that Cameron must speak to his French counterpart, Francois Hollande, in order to decide what conditions are necessary for the state-owned French utility to fulfil its planned investment.

"This is something that can only be done by the heads of government of Britain and France," he told the Guardian. "There may need to be special arrangements for nuclear [separate from the regulation and subsidy of other forms of power]. Given the size of this investment - billions and billions, with a return on investment coming well into the 2020s - this has to involve the heads of government."

America's love of driving is iconic. The open road is a central manifestation of America the free. During the 20th century, the total movement of cars and trucks on our national roads and highways grew as fast as our economy, or faster. Movement - measured by total vehicle miles travelled (VMT) - was considered an unqualified blessing. In the 1960s each American drove about 5,000 miles a year in a car, van, or truck. By 2000 that number was 10,000 miles. Which means we are twice as well off - right?

Wrong. In the early years of the 21st century, something very interesting happened. Individual vehicle travel in America lost its glamour - and its connection to economic growth. In 2003 when VMT was 2.9 trillion miles, US gross domestic product was just under $11tr. In 2011 GDP passed $15tr while total vehicle travel was still about 2.9 trillion miles. In 2011 alone GDP went up 1.5% while VMT went down 1.5%. VMT per capita is receding as well, with each American now travelling less than 9,500 miles annually.

America is not alone. The UK has experienced similar trends, with a 13% drop in annual trips by cars and vans since 1996, and a 4% reduction in annual distance travelled over the same time period. The ratio of vehicle miles travelled to GDP in the core EU 15 states has dropped by more than 10% since 2000.

The biggest challenge in getting to the next level of supercomputer performance - Exascale - is the massive amounts of electricity these systems will consume. On a smaller scale, energy consumption also inhibits HPC installations. The problem isn't just getting enough plugs from your walls to the grid; it's also the cost of electricity when you're guzzling it in such massive quantities.

Regardless of where you live or the deal you've cut with your local utility, megawatts of power cost mega-dough. Here in the hydropower-rich Pacific Northwest, commercial customers pay around 10 cents per kilowatt hour, and industrial users pay about 6.5 cents for the same juice (although that's an `interruptible' rate - which is probably a deal-breaker for HPC installations). At a dime per KWh ($100 per MWh), the annual cost per megawatt comes in at $876,000.

The average energy consumption of the top 10 systems on the Top500 list is 4.8 megawatts, meaning an average bill of around $4.2 million. The K computer, at the top of the list, consumes 12.6 megawatts, which would cost more than $11m per year if it was relocated somewhere near my house.

Google is back under investigation after gathering personal data while cameras on its cars took pictures for its UK Street View service.

The Information Commissioner's Office previously dropped a probe into the affair after being told limited data had been "mistakenly collected".

However, it said it had since become aware of reports that a Google engineer had deliberately written software to obtain a wider range of material.

They came in their Athenian finery, filing patiently into the low-lit auditorium and waiting to hear a message of hope. Its deliverer: a man who until recently was unknown to them but who is now regarded as something of a hero; a saviour of the Greek people in the face of foreign meddling and arrogance; a man who has come to their rescue in troubled times to fight for Hellenic pride.

No, restrain yourselves; it wasn't Syriza's Alexis Tsipras. The man they had come to see was one Stephen Fry, and the issue at stake was the future of the Parthenon marbles, currently held by the British Museum.

Monday night's debate at Cadogan Hall in London, organised by Intelligence Squared and entitled Send Them Back: the Parthenon marbles should be returned to Athens, was also screened live at the Acropolis Museum in Greece before a rapt audience who vigorously applauded Fry's declaration that the it would be "an act of the supremest class" for Britain to return the sculptures which have resided in London for nearly 200 years.

Apple on Monday previewed the upcoming version of its mobile operating system iOS 6, with notable features including new Siri support for more languages and new Maps app with Apple-designed cartography.

According to the company, the new Maps app has turn-by-turn navigation guiding with spoken directions and photo-realistic interactive 3D views called Flyover. Real-traffic information will keep users updated on how long it will take to get to their destination and offers alternate time-saving route if traffic conditions change significantly.

The intelligent personal assistant Siri will also be available for the new iPad and support more languages such as Mandarin, Cantonese, Spanish, Italian and Korean, Apple announced.

EU businesses that provide applications to consumers through the Google Apps platform may require additional mechanisms to the new contract terms offered by Google - in order to legitimately transfer personal data collected from app users overseas, an expert has said.

Google has announced that it will offer "model contract clauses" to app providers as a means for those businesses to lawfully transfer personal data outside of the European Economic Area (EEA). Out-Law.com asked Google to provide a copy of the model contract clauses it intends to offer, but a spokesman for the company said the information was not available yet.

However, data protection law specialist Kathryn Wynn of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, has said that if it is Google's intention to store the data collected by app providers in the cloud, then complex contractual arrangements may have to exist to make that activity legitimate.

A direct link exists between the infamous uranium enrichment sabotage worm Stuxnet and the newly uncovered Flame mega-malware, researchers have claimed.

Russian virus protection outfit Kaspersky Lab said in a blog post yesterday that although two separate teams worked on Stuxnet and Flame, the viruses' programmers "cooperated at least once during the early stages of development".

The smoking gun, in the lab's opinion, is a component in an early build of Stuxnet that appears in Flame as a plugin.

A hitchhiker researching a book on "The Kindness of America" is currently recovering in hospital after a gun-toting truck driver game him a small donation of some searing hot lead.

Ray Dolin, was hitching on Highway 2 in Montana on Saturday as part of a project to produce a memoir on the great things about the open road in the big country.

Dolin was sitting on his backpack, just west of of the town of Glasgow early Saturday evening when a pickup truck slowed down.

A councillor who is vying to be Cambridgeshire's first police commissioner has been charged with criminal damage.

Shona Johnstone is accused of smashing a wing mirror off a car while cycling in her home village of Over.

The 50-year-old attended Cambridge Magistrates' Court today (June 12) but didn't enter the courtroom and a not guilty plea to the charge of criminal damage was entered on her behalf by her solicitor.

A trial date of August 28 was set.

Indeed, Stevenson was possibly denied a fourth gold medal by Cuba's decision not to participate in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

What makes the Cuban unique is that, during what is now viewed as a golden age in the heavyweight division, he resolutely turned down countless offers to turn professional (including a reputed $5 million offer from promoter Don King), thus refusing what would have been hugely lucrative paydays against the world professional champions Muhammad Ali and George Foreman.

Renowned for his gentlemanly conduct and sportsmanship both inside the ring and out, Stevenson - who once famously helped a stricken opponent back to his corner having knocked him flat in the opening round - elected to remain true to his president and the Cuban people.