British Prime Minister David Cameron has said that politicians are too close to members of the media. Speaking at an inquiry into media practices, he also denied making any deals with Murdoch's media empire.

British Prime Minister David Cameron used his testimony at the Leveson Inquiry in London on Thursday to reject the suggestion that his Conservative Party had made secret deals with Rupert Murdoch's media empire.

"The idea of overt deals is nonsense," the prime minister said, after being asked whether his government went easy on Murdoch's News Corp. in exchange for positive media coverage.

Germany has banned one Islamist Salafist group and launched an investigation into two others on suspicion of endangering the public peace. Police raided dozens of premises as part of the investigation.

German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said on Thursday that the government has banned one Islamist Salafist group and launched investigations against two others.

Friedrich told reporters in Berlin on Thursday that the Millatu Ibrahim group, based in Solingen in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia had been banned for opposing Germany's constitutional order and endangering the public peace. He said investigations had been launched into two other groups. One of them recently drew attention by distributing free copies of the Koran in numerous German cities.

France's parliamentary elections on June 17 are widely expected to hand the left its first majority in the lower-house National Assembly in a decade. The Socialist Party could even pull off an absolute majority, giving recently elected Socialist president François Hollande a strong mandate to usher in reforms.

The Socialist Party won the first round of the legislative poll on June 10. Their lead, however, was razor-thin and most of the parliament's seats - 541 of the 577 total - are still up for grabs.

AFP - Spain's "indignant" activists filed a criminal complaint Thursday against the former management of Bankia, whose partial nationalisation helped push Madrid to seek a massive EU bailout.

The lawsuit targets former Bankia president Rodrigo Rato, who also headed the International Monetary Fund between 2004 and 2007, and other members of the bank's board who oversaw its stock market listing in July 2011.

French President François Hollande's honeymoon cruise with the press ran aground on Thursday as newspapers pounced on the controversy pitting his companion Valérie Trierweiler against Hollande's own Socialist Party.

The powers of the President of the Republic are partly regal and partly undefined. In fact they are monarchical and discretionary. Since the war, each President has interpreted his powers in his own way. The harsh debate that always comes into being if there is an issue of ungovernability or institutional crisis would like to give more powers to the role. One hypothesis would lead us directly into a potential dictatorship. Berlusconi elected by the people or the sober PDminusL photocopy of him, D'Alema, who was at one time the candidate preferred by the bibliophile Dell'Utri, would be a national disaster, even worse than "il Mascellone". If the prudent Napolitano has declared war on Libya, our ally, in contravention of article 11 that says: "Italy rejects war as an instrument of aggression against the freedom of other peoples and as a means for the settlement of international disputes ...", by night he has appointed a professor as a lifelong senator and placed him as President of the Council without going past free elections, he has influenced the drafting of State laws (prerogative of Parliament) during his term of office, he has signed (without sending them back to Parliament), laws like the "Lodo Alfano" which is clearly unconstitutional, while speaking in public, he has discriminated against (without naming it) a democratic political movement: il MoVimento 5 Stelle {5 Star MoVement}. If he has been able to do all this, imagine a President with a low propensity for democracy. These observations are not an attack on Napolitano, whom I believe operates, from his point of view, in good faith, but against the current powers of the office of the President of the Republic that must be limited. A small example is given by the life senators. The President can elect five of them and given the minimum difference in the Senate between the Majority and the Opposition, he can distort the will of the electorate.

[...]

One of the leaders of the two parties that could win says that the Greek government would request a total change of the program. What response would a unilateral move from Greece create?
Who will be elected in Greece is a democratic decision that we all have to accept. But also the newly elected Greek government is bound by existing agreements. If it unilaterally opted out of the programme, it would mean that in my view the basis for more financial help will no longer be given. Greece would have taken its decision but would also have to bear the consequences. We will all be affected, but my assessment is that Greece will be worse off than everybody else.

[...]

And what about project bonds?
To do what?

For infrastructure, for example.
For infrastructure? I am not convinced that Spain and other countries suffer from alack of infrastructure. What I am missing is an adequate analysis. If there is an impediment to investment, for instance in Greece, there is rather too much red tape and an inefficient tax system. I don`t believe in further stimulus programmes to cushion the adjustment process.

[...]

But you don't have only one country in recession, but many countries and actually the whole euro area. So how can we look for growth in the long run?
But look at Portugal's forecast, for instance. It is forecast to have a positive growth rate without any further stimulus.

[...]

Regarding Portugal, it seems to have the image of the good student in the bailouts program, but it's also a hostage to what happens in Greece and Spain. What message would you leave to the Portuguese government?
The key message from Portugal and Ireland is that adjustment programmes work.

German lawmakers have agreed to ratify the eurozone's fiscal compact later this month. German Chancellor Angela Merkel once again defended her policy of putting budget consolidation before growth.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's ruling coalition of Christian and Free Democrats on Thursday struck a deal with opposition parties to ratify the euro area's fiscal compact on tighter spending rules on June 29. The agreement also includes ratification of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the new and permanent bailout scheme for member countries in fiscal crisis.

Finnish mobile phone producer Nokia says it is planning to axe up to 10,000 jobs by the end of next year. The company says the layoffs are urgently needed to ensure long-term profitability.

Nokia of Finland - one of the world's biggest mobile phone makers - said on Thursday it will have to reduce its global workforce by around 10,000 by the end of 2013. Company bosses said in Helsinki that the measure was part of a massive cost-saving scheme.

"These reductions are a difficult consequence of the intended actions we believe we must take to ensure Nokia's long-term competitive strength, Chief Executive Stephen Elop said in a statement.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has called on the EU parliament to give up its national sovereinty posture in the face of the eurozone debt crisis, and tackle the problems together.

The European commission president is watching the clock. The EU is at a "decisive moment" of crisis management, he said. High unemployment is a "social emergency" requiring both immediate steps and long-term measures, he said. 

Addressing the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Barroso spoke out strongly in favor of a fiscal and banking union among the countries using the common euro currency. But many governments are opposed to both. A fiscal union would mean that member states could no longer absorb new debt independently. Their sovereignty, therefore, would be highly constrained, a fact which has met with stiff resistance from the affected national parliaments.

The euro crisis is will be a central topic at the G20 summit in Mexico. The EU will have to defend its rescue management strategies and fight to keep its position in the club of the world's most powerful and influential.

The euro debt crisis is likely to dominate the talks of the 20 most important industrial and emerging nations that are coming together on June 18 and 19 in Mexico. Expectations are high. Players on the global financial markets will be watching particularly closely, to see if the G20 comes up with sustainable answers to the crisis.

In an opinion piece for DW's Transatlantic Voices column, Joseph Quinlan warns that the eurozone crisis is increasingly spilling over onto the United States - with serious implications for the economy.

AFP - Italy and France said there was "not enough progress" on the eurozone debt crisis on Thursday, as fresh market tensions increased pressure on EU leaders to find a way to end the two-year crisis.

"The progress made, including in the governance of the eurozone, is not sufficient and we need to strengthen the weak parts of the system," Mario Monti said during a visit by French President Francois Hollande to Rome.

International financial watchers are waiting with baited breath for a crucial Greek election which may see Athens exit the eurozone and could have a knock-on effect on struggling Spain and Italy.

AFP - French police have smashed a vast cash-counterfeiting ring that printed over nine million euros ($11 million) and is described as the biggest ever in France, a police source said Thursday.

Police raided the money-printing factory in Seine-et-Marne east of Paris on Tuesday and Wednesday, which had been producing more than 350,000 counterfeit 20- and 50-euro notes, the source said.

France's Central Bureau for Fighting Counterfeiting (OCRFM) has been working on the case since the counterfeit notes first appeared in circulation in 2007.

The main conclusion is based on the Stolper-Samuelson Theorem: Because the United States is labor scarce in a global perspective, an expansion of trade will reduce the real wages of labor. As we have seen, this theoretical prediction has been borne out as real wages remain below their peak levelfor the 39th year running.

In this post, I analyze what I consider to be the other main element of globalization, the expansion of the mobility of capital. Just as transportation innovation and cost declines made trade easier, they also make it easier for owners of capital to locate it in a broader range of places than 30 or 40 years ago. Similarly, the decline in communication costs make it easier for owners of capital to coordinate production on a global scale as well as offering additional ways of moving financial capital (think tax havens).

Note that I have said nothing about actual movements of capital. Simply the ability to move capital strengthens capital owners in their negotiations with business and labor, because it makes the threat of moving credible and thereby gives companies greater bargaining power. Kate Bronfenbrenner showed clearly that after the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993, companies more frequently resorted to threats in their bargaining with workers, even to the point of violating the National Labor Relations Act by threatening to move during union organizing drives. In this blog, I have previously discussed the case of Boeing's establishment of a Dreamliner plant in South Carolina and admitting it was due to workers in Washington state exercising their right to strike, a form of retaliation that was a prima facie violation of the Act.

Remember, trade can expand for two main reasons. First technological innovations can reduce the cost of transportation, making it first possible, then cheaper, to send goods long distances. For example, political scientist Ronald Rogowski, in his great book Commerce and Coalitions shows how the introduction of the steamboat made it possible to export North American wheat to Western Europe, displacing wheat from Eastern Europe. Second, policy changes like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or the trade agreements embodying the World Trade Organization (WTO) reduce or eliminate costly barriers to trade and lead to its expansion.

The grain example helps show why trade creates winners and losers. The Midwest U.S. and Canadian Prairie provinces are a gigantic breadbasket made possible by low population density, which implies abundant land and scarce labor. Expanding trade gave these farmers new markets and higher incomes. In much more densely populated Europe, the reverse is true: labor is abundant and land is scarce. As a result, expanding trade in grains meant more import competition and lower income for European farmers..

Fast forward to today and we can ask what U.S. factor endowments are currently. As a rich country internationally, the United States is necessarily a capital abundant country. As a comparatively low population density country, it is land abundant but labor scarce. The answer is to our initial question is then quite clear: expanding trade is harmful to U.S. workers because imports of labor-intensive products and services from abroad create competition for American workers, reducing their real wages. As I have discussed before, U.S. real wages have remained below their peak for 39 straight years, just as the Stolper-Samuelson Theorem would predict.

The Egyptian high court has ruled parliament's composition illegal, paving the way for the body's dissolution. It also overturned a political exclusion law, clearing Mubarak's ex-premier to continue his presidential bid.

Egypt's Supreme Constitutional Court on Thursday ordered the country's Islamist-dominated parliament to be dissolved, after ruling that one-third of the seats in the legislative body were invalid due to violations of electoral law.

Washington's claim that Russia is delivering attack helicopters to Syria has been denied by its ambassador to Moscow. Amnesty International in a report has accused the Syrian government of "crimes against humanity."

Syrian Ambassador Riad Haddad, quoted by the news agency Reuters in Moscow, said that "Russia is not delivering any helicopters to Syria."

On Tuesday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had said that Washington was concerned about "latest information" that attack helicopters were "on the way from Russia to Syria, which will escalate the conflict quite dramatically."

Myanmar's leading opposition figure has thanked the international community for supporting political reforms in her country. Aung San Suu Kyi also used a speech in Geneva to call for foreign investment in Myanmar.

Myanmar's leading opposition politician was welcomed to a conference of the International Labor Organization in Geneva with a standing ovation on Thursday.

The event was the first in a busy schedule for Aung San Suu Kyi, who had arrived in Geneva late on Wednesday for her first trip to Europe in 24 years.

Germany's foreign minister and his counterparts from 30 nations are in Kabul to discuss Afghanistan's future. Apart from security, top of the agenda are good governance, economic prospects, health and education.

Once again, the topic is Afghanistan's future after the withdrawal of international troops in 2014. Thursday's conference is one of the many stepping stones on the path to Afghan autonomy.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, who hosted the Bonn Conference about the same theme last November, knows that the path will be long and hard.

"Nothing is easy in Afghanistan," he said in a speech to parliament in December. "And nothing is yet as it should be. I fear it will remain difficult."

With US President Barack Obama's approval ratings riding a roller coaster of peaks and troughs over the past few years, at least one thing has remained constant: the popularity of First Lady Michelle Obama.

Recent polls show that roughly 70% of Americans view the smiley, athletic-looking first lady favourably - the same number as when she moved into the White House in 2008.

Barack Obama's campaign has been looking to capitalise on affection for his wife, wielding her as a not-so-secret weapon in the president's tough re-election battle against Republican Mitt Romney. They've sent her to schmooze with donors at fancy fundraisers, rev up the crowds at rallies in key swing states, deliver pep talks to discouraged volunteers, and crack jokes on talk shows. The first lady even led a work-out session on hit reality TV series "The Biggest Loser", and will soon appear as a judge on a widely watched cooking programme.

AFP - Financier and cricket mogul Allen Stanford was sentenced to 110 years in jail for a $7 billion Ponzi scheme Thursday, closing the book on the flamboyant ex-tycoon's stunning fall from grace.

The verdict will bring some satisfaction -- but likely little financial relief -- to 30,000 investors from more than 100 countries who were bilked by bogus investments with Stanford International Bank.

AFP - Tunisia on Thursday banned protests planned by hardline Islamists demanding a more religious state following the worst unrest since the 2011 uprising that gave birth to the Arab Spring.

The north African country has been rocked by three days of violence that left one dead and dozens wounded after ultra-conservative Salafists took issue with works at an art exhibition they deemed offensive to Islam.

The Australian government has announced the creation of the world's largest network of marine reserves to restrict fishing and oil and gas exploration. You can toggle the different levels of the zoning with our map below

Following my revelation that George Osborne's Treasury is seeking to slash the subsidies for onshore wind power - the cheapest form of renewable energy - the House of commons select committee on energy and climate change is to investigate.

Conservative MP Tim Yeo, chair of the committee, said: "Government policy on wind power should be based on sound economics and engineering, not political pressure from a small vocal minority - whether that be green campaigners or anti-wind protestors." Others have identified the key vocal minority more precisely: the backbench Conservative MPs who demanded David Cameron slash the subsidies for onshore turbines. (I wrote about the politics of this previously.)

The government's announcement this week giving industry the green light to bring the green deal energy-efficiency market into operation is a game-changer. To frame the debate about the green deal entirely around loft insulation, as this Guardian report does, simply misses the point.

The green deal will open up the energy-efficiency market. Rather than a market where you get what you are given from a limited number of big players, it will unlock unprecedented choice for consumers and it will empower small- and medium-sized businesses - the engine of our economy - to enter and to innovate.

Parts of the UK are braced for more flooding as another unseasonable Atlantic storm brought pounding rain and strong winds.

Overnight up to 60mm of rain - the average for the whole of a typical June - was expected to make life miserable in some parts of the country. Winds of up to 50mph were expected to batter the south-west of England.

The Environment Agency took the precaution of visiting 150 camping and caravan sites in south-west England to make sure owners had warned visitors of the storm. It also mobilised teams to check on flood defences, clear any river blockages and monitor river levels.

Government indifference and poor regulation have fuelled lawlessness in India's troubled mining industry and threaten serious harm to mining-affected communities, according to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report.

The report: Out of control - mining, regulatory failure and human rights in India focuses on iron mining in Goa and Karnataka to illustrate a broader pattern of failed regulation, alleged corruption and harm to local communities.

In Karnataka, BS Yeddyurappa resigned as chief minister last year after being indicted by an anti-corruption panel in an illegal mining scandal that allegedly cost the exchequer more than £1.8bn between 2006 and 2010. The southern Indian state, where illegal mining is rife, produces about 45m tonnes of iron ore a year and exports more than half of it to China.

Recently, researchers tested trees genetically modified to remove ionic mercury from contaminated soil, then convert that to volatile elemental mercury, which is released to the atmosphere. The researchers seem to believe that the atmospheric mercury will be relatively harmless. The field tests were undertaken in Danbury Connecticut and supported by the United States Environment Protection Agency (EPA) and other interested parties [1]. Danbury is the home of mercury-polluted sites originating from hat- making. Mercury caused mercury poisoning in workers, who get the "Danbury shakes". The mercury "remediation" project will, however, simply move the pollution to the atmosphere, from which it will be redeposited over the cities of the Northeast and the lakes and waterways of northern USA and Canada. Once deposited in the waterways and streets of cities, elemental mercury will be converted by microbes into organic mercury that will cause nerve damage and birth defects in humans and animals alike.

Last year, I pointed out the dangers of this form of remediation for the cities and waters of the United States and Canada [2]. But my comments were completely ignored by the EPA bureaucrats and the biotechnology industry.

Worldwide, human activities resulting in emission of mercury is estimated to be some 1900 tonnes, about three quarters from burning fossil fuels, particularly coal. Waste disposal sites, cement manufacture and waste incinerators made up the bulk of the remainder. Asian countries contribute over half of the emission while Europe and North America contribute less than a quarter. Gaseous elemental mercury makes up over half of the emitted mercury, while divalent mercury and particulate mercury make up the rest [3]. The emitted mercury tends to be deposited from the atmosphere in snow and rainfall, posing serious threat to humans and animals because elemental mercury is converted to ionic and organic mercury after ending up in the Arctic, in Canada and Northeastern American cities [2,4]. If phytoremediation of mercury-polluted sites were undertaken on a large scale in North America, the global emission of mercury could double in less than a decade.

brilliant... iatrogenic industrialisation.

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

As a complement to standard radioprotection measures, apple-pectin preparations have been given especially in Ukraine to reduce the Cs-137 uptake in children. Pectin acts by binding to the radionuclide in the gut to block its absorption. The question was raised as to whether pectin might also be useful in clearing it from tissues. Caesium is chemically similar to potassium, and therefore has a wide distribution in tissues and cells, and is also excreted in urine.

Researchers at BELRAD carried out a randomised, double-blind placebo-controlled trial to test the efficacy of dry, milled apple-extract containing 15-16 % pectin on 64 children from contaminated villages of the Gomel regions.  The average Cs137 load in the group of children was about 30 Bq/kg body weight. The trial was conducted during a one-month stay in the sanatorium Silver Spring where only uncontaminated food was given to the children.

The results showed that Cs-137 counts in children given pectin-powder were reduced by an average of 62%, whereas the average reduction in those children given only placebo powder was only 13.9 %. The difference was significant at less than 1 % level.  The reduction was medically significant, as no child in the placebo group reached values below 20 Bq/kg body weight, which is considered by Bandazhevsky as potentially associated with specific pathological tissue damages.

Biotech giant Syngenta has been criminally charged with denying knowledge that its genetically modified (GM) Bt corn kills livestock during a civil court case that ended in 2007 [1].

Syngenta's Bt 176 corn variety expresses an insecticidal Bt toxin (Cry1Ab) derived from the bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) and a gene conferring resistance to glufosinate herbicides. EU cultivation of Bt 176 was discontinued in 2007. Similar varieties however, including Bt 11 sweet corn are currently cultivated for human and animal consumption in the EU.

The charges follow a long struggle for justice by a German farmer whose dairy cattle suffered mysterious illnesses and deaths after eating Bt 176. They were grown on his farm as part of authorised field tests during 1997 to 2002. By 2000, his cows were fed exclusively on Bt 176, and soon illnesses started to emerge. He was paid 40 000 euros by Syngenta as partial compensation for 5 dead cows, decreased milk yields, and vet costs (see [2] Cows ate GM Maize and Died, SiS 21). During a civil lawsuit brought against the company by the farmer however, Syngenta refused to admit that its GM corn was the cause, claiming no knowledge of harm. The case was dismissed and Gloeckner remained thousands of euros in debt.  

Gloeckner continued to lose cows and many more had to be put down due to serious illnesses, compelling him to stop using GM feed from 2002. He approached the Robert Koch Institute and Syngenta to conduct a full investigation. However, only one cow was ever analysed and the data are still unavailable to the public. Unsurprisingly, no causal relationship between the GM feed and deaths was determined; and there is still no explanation for the deaths.

Britain's top court has rejected Julian Assange's bid to have his case reopened. The founder of WikiLeaks is due to be extradited to Sweden, where he has been accused of rape.

The British Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that Assange's application for his case to be revisited was "without merit."

The founder of an illicit movie website has been given a four-and-a-half-year jail sentence in Germany. Prosecutors had said the "parasitic business" breached copyrights of the mainstream cinema and television industry.

The regional court in Leipzig handed down a suspended plea-bargain sentence to the founder of kino.to, Dirk B., with conditions for his supervision outside of prison.

The 39-year-old former floor layer confessed to 1.1 million copyright breaches. Prosecutors had condensed these into three test cases. They had originally sought 11 years jail.

AFP - Neanderthals may have been cave-painting artists, according to research published Thursday that details a new method of analyzing cave paintings in Spain and shows they are the oldest known to man.

The tests on 50 paintings in 11 caves in northern Spain, described in the US journal Science, hint at a previously unknown talent that may have been held by Neanderthals in Europe more than 40,000 years ago.

It's the dawn of a new internet era - and the .com may be its first casualty. The US-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) on Wednesday published 1,930 requests it has received for new domain suffixes.

Today, there are only 22 domain suffixes including .com, .net and .org (in addition to geographic suffixes), but there could be as many as 1,000 by the end of a process being carried out by ICANN.

New addresses ending in .paris, .hotel, .shop, or .eco could indeed soon end the longstanding monopoly of .com, .org, and .net.

"Out of 215 million existing Web sites, 100 million are .coms," said Stéphane Van Gelder, CEO of French domain name management company Indom and the president of GNSO, the group that sets the standards that must be met by new extensions.

A graphic photograph of a young Chinese woman lying beside the body of her aborted seven-month-old foetus has roused fury over forced abortions in the country.

National and provincial authorities say they are investigating claims that family planning officials in Zengjia town, in the north-western Shaanxi province, coerced Feng Jianmei into the termination.

While forced abortions and sterilisations are illegal in China, experts have blamed recurrent abuses on the pressure on officials to meet the strict birth control targets. Chen Guangcheng, the blind legal activist who fled to the US embassy after years of imprisonment and house arrest, fell foul of authorities in the eastern Shandong province for his work in supporting victims.

keep to the Fen Causeway