Campaigning in Greece has ended ahead of a crucial election on Sunday which could determine its future in the eurozone.

At a final rally, the head of the conservative New Democracy Party billed the vote as a choice between keeping the euro and returning to the drachma.

Rival party Syriza says it wants to stay in the euro, but opposes the terms of an international bailout.

Unofficial polls have put the two parties neck and neck.

Striking coal miners have clashed with police in northern Spain, in some of the worst disturbances since the government imposed austerity measures.

The interior ministry said at least seven people had been injured in the clashes outside a mine in Asturias.

Miners fired sky rockets and ball-bearings at riot police who responded with rubber bullets and tear gas.

The miners are protesting at plans to cut government subsidies from 300m euros (£242m; $376m) to 110m euros.

Thousands of miners have been on strike across northern Spain for weeks.

(Reuters) - Whether the euro lives or dies, the chaotic way Europe has tackled the crisis could undermine the region's geopolitical clout for years to come and leave it at a distinct disadvantage in a rapidly changing world.

With an apparently never-ending series of last-minute summits and telephone calls, Europe's leaders and finance ministers have held the bloc together in the face of growing strains between states, a rising political backlash and market alarm.

But with hindsight, outsiders say each measure proved too little, too late. US officials in particular complain European leaders have either failed to grasp the scale of the problem or proved unwilling to countenance the awkward political decisions necessary to fix it.

As a result, they say, what should have been one of the most stable parts of the world has now become one of the most unpredictable.

(Reuters) - Britain's wall of cash built with new offers of cheap funding to banks will limit the threats from the raging euro zone crisis, economists said On Friday, although the economy may need more action to engineer a proper recovery.

The Bank of England and government coordinated scheme announced on Thursday to get credit flowing through the recession-hit economy by lowering banks' funding costs cheered markets and drew praise from most economists.

But Chancellor George Osborne in particular remains under pressure to spend money directly on infrastructure to create jobs as many companies and households lack the confidence to borrow for investment or consumption.

"Such schemes can stop a meltdown in your banking system in times of very severe stress," said Jonathan Portes, head of macro-economic think tank NIESR. "This is time of stress, so it's absolutely right to put them in place now."

Together with the mayors and the councillors of the MoVimento 5 Stelle {5 Star MoVement} the citizens have been elected. By making this decision, the people who voted for them, became jointly responsible for the management of their town. The vote for M5S is an act of participation, and of active citizenship. The lads and lasses in the councils, can do nothing without the help of their electorate. Thus no one can just stand and stare. None must stay asleep. The time for delegating, for abstaining and for not giving a damn, is over. That time has lasted decades and it has delivered us into the economic catastrophe and the indifference relating to public affairs. The MoVimento 5 Stelle is a tool of direct democracy available to the Italians. Transparency and participation are its key words. With the M5S, transparency walks into the Town Halls because there's access to discussions about spending, about the quality of the process of making investments, about the items on the balance sheet. With the M5S, participation walks into the Town Halls. The mayors and the councillors are the connecting point, by means of the Internet, for proposals, for the problems and the requests of the citizens. The M5S is a cultural revolution. It is not a party. "The citizen in power", this is its prime objective. A question that people ask me is "What will you decide in relation to the most important topics that are not in your manifesto if you get a position of power in the Government?" Nothing! Each decision will be the outcome of a referendum. Only the sovereign people can choose whether or not to remain in the Euro, for example, certainly not a group of politicians closed inside a room. They will never give up (but is it in their interests?). Neither will we.

There's a possibility of having PIGS semifinals: Portugal may qualify in second place from group B and beat the Czech Republic. Spain and Italy might qualify from group C and beat the qualifiers from group D. And Greece may beat Germany to the satisfaction of all fans of underdogs and people of good will.

So I'll make that my prediction, just for kicks.

If you are not convinced, try it on someone who has not been entirely debauched by economics. — Piero Sraffa

Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, will reveal the scheme to build a new nuclear deterrent in a move which will cause tensions with the Liberal Democrats.

He will announce a deal ordering nuclear reactors for a new class of submarines to replace the current Vanguard fleet, which carries Britain's Trident nuclear arsenal.

The decision is the most public statement yet that the Government is committed to a full-scale replacement of Trident - something opposed by the Lib Dems, who want a cheaper way of maintaining nuclear weapons.

The Lib Dems had a manifesto commitment against renewing Trident, so this announcement is going to annoy them. But another £1 billion to be wasted on pointless phallic symbols of defence while actual defence forces are being wound down. I think polticians priorities are madness.

keep to the Fen Causeway

apologies for link to Daily Mail

The judge leading the probe into media behaviour threatened to quit after he was publicly criticised by a Cabinet Minister, senior Government sources claimed last night.

Lord Justice Leveson phoned Whitehall's most senior mandarin and demanded that Education Secretary Michael Gove - who claimed the inquiry had created a `chilling atmosphere' towards freedom of speech - should be gagged. In the angry call to Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood, the judge claimed that if Ministers were not silenced, his inquiry, set up to investigate phone-hacking by Rupert Murdoch's newspapers, would be rendered worthless.

He also summoned Mr Gove to give evidence to the inquiry to explain himself. An alarmed Sir Jeremy informed David Cameron of the judge's ultimatum

It should be noted that Michael Gove is a wholly owned subsidiary of News International, a noted slavish apologist for Murdoch's sleazy trawl through the sewers, slime and voicemails of Britain.

keep to the Fen Causeway

On the G20 summit: Los líderes mundiales presionan a Merkel para impedir otra recesión (World leaders press Merkel to prevent another recession)

which comes on the heels of yesterday's chess metaphor: Alemania se enroca frente a Europa

Berlín se niega a transigir con Grecia y con las `soluciones fáciles' a la crisis europea
La falta de impulso político en Bruselas anticipa semanas de tensión

Berlin refuses to compromise on Greece and with 'easy solutions' to the European Crisis
The lack of political thrust in Brussels foreshadows weeks of tension

And then an Op-Ed from former El Pais editor in chief Juan Luis Cebrian: Una libra de carne fresca

Hay que exigir al Banco Central Europeo que garantice la sostenibilidad de la deuda pública española, con compras ilimitadas de la misma

It must be demanded that the ECB guarantee the sustainability of Spanish public debt, with unlimited purchases of it

11h particiaption is only 21.41%, so one of the lowest numbers ever for this kind of election.

Wind power

The International Monetary Fund on Friday advised Spain to raise the value-added tax rates "now" and introduce a further cut in public-sector wages in order to avoid a large overrun in its deficit-reduction targets.

In its Article IV report on the Spanish economy released Friday, the IMFsaid the outlook for Spain is "very difficult." "The economy is in the midst of an unprecedented double-dip recession with unemployment already unacceptably high, public debt increasing rapidly, and segments of the financial sector needing recapitalization," the report said.

The IMF acknowledged the number of major policy actions taken by the government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, but noted that "market confidence remains weak." It said the country needs to come up with an "ambitious policy response" that should focus on fiscal consolidation and a restructuring of the banking sector, without forgetting the need for structural reforms to boost growth.

The multilateral agency described as "very ambitious" the Rajoy administration's commitment to reduce the public deficit from 8.9 percent of GDP in 2011 to 5.3 percent this year and predicted it was "likely" to be missed, with revenues expected to come in below budget, while spending cuts are likely to take time to have an impact.

Close families and flexible labor markets don't go together. That's the conclusion of a fascinating paper by a quartet of transatlantic economists. Their work should be required reading for all European politicians and for the economists and pundits around the world who seek to advise them.

One truth universally acknowledged in Europe today is that the countries of the south need to overhaul their labor markets: Rigid rules on hiring and firing and on the minimum wage are blamed for the high unemployment and subpar economic growth in these states.

Economists are right to point out that inflexible labor markets exact a high economic toll. So why has there been such resistance in countries like Spain and Italy to changes that would create more jobs and stronger growth? One classic answer is the ability of vested interests - workers who do have protected jobs - to defend their own cushy deal at the expense of everyone else. Another is political dysfunction.

Alberto F. Alesina, Yann Algan, Pierre Cahuc and Paola Giuliano - the four authors of "Family Values and the Regulation of Labor" - wondered whether deeper, cultural factors might also be at play.

The current debate about rich and poor -- the 1 percent versus the 99 percent -- is a bit misleading because the evidence usually is data about income, not wealth. Looking at wealth would make the comparison even starker.

There are some nice deals to be had in the income tax code these days, but most wealth accumulates and passes from generation to generation with no tax at all. Warren Buffett (who has selflessly taken on the role of all-purpose tape measure in these matters) is worth $45 billion or so. Do you think that all of that $45 billion, or even most of it, has appeared on any Form 1040 on its way to the cookie jar? Even at the special, low 15 percent rate the U.S. insanely confers on capital gains?

Unlikely. Much of that $45 billion is unrealized capital gains -- increases in the value of Buffett's stock that have never been cashed in, and therefore have never been taxed. I'm not saying that unrealized capital gains should be taxed (although it's a thought). I'm just noting that you only pay income tax when an investment is liquidated, and very wealthy people don't have to liquidate until they actually need to spend the money.

For most of the very rich, this time is never. When you die, any unrealized capital gains disappear for tax purposes. Your heirs, if and when they sell, pay taxes only on any increase in value since they got the money. And there is no estate tax at the moment on estates of $5.12 million or less.

U.K. two-year note yields fell for a second week on speculation the Bank of England will buy more government debt to support the economy.

Ten-year bonds outperformed German bunds, narrowing the spread between the securities to the lowest in more than three months, on concern Greece will be pushed toward an exit from the euro after tomorrow's election. Bank of England Governor Mervyn King presented joint steps with the Treasury to increase the flow of credit to U.K. banks and said the case for more stimulus is "growing." The pound gained against most of its peers.

(Reuters) - Central banks from Tokyo to London checked their ammunition on Friday in preparation for any turmoil from Greece's election, with the European Central Bank hinting at an interest rate cut and Britain set to open its coffers.

Tensions were high about how to manage the euro zone's debt crisis - epitomized by Greece's bankruptcy and need for international aid - and a rare fight broke out between Germany and France, normally the glue that keeps the bloc together.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel criticised France's economic performance, effectively taking a swipe at Socialist President Francois Hollande who has called for more emphasis on economic growth and less on budget austerity.

The UN observer mission to Syria has suspended its activities, saying escalating violence is impeding the monitors' ability to carry out its mandate.

"UN observers will not be conducting patrols and will stay in their locations until further notice," the mission's chief General Major Robert Mood said in a statement on Saturday.

About 300 observers were deployed in Syria, tasked with monitoring a ceasefire and supporting the full implementation of a six-point peace plan drafted by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, which was supposed to lead to talks between the two sides.

However, hundreds of people have been killed since the first observers were deployed in April and the mission has been harshly criticised by the opposition.

Syria's foreign ministry said Mood had informed the government of the decision to temporarily reduce the work of the monitors, Syria's official SANA news agency reported on Saturday.

"The ministry understands the decisions taken by General Robert Mood, particularly those related to preserving the safety of observers," SANA's report said.

With the country's post-revolutionary politics in turmoil, Egyptians are voting in the first day of a presidential runoff which pits the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate against the last prime minister under deposed president Hosni Mubarak.

Turnout was mixed in the morning hours on Saturday, with reports of long lines at some polling stations.

One monitoring group, the Egyptian Alliance for Election Monitoring, said the crowds were larger than those during the first round of voting in May.

Voting hours were extended by one hour, to 9pm local (1900:GMT), the electoral commission announced.

Polls will be open again on Sunday. There was a heavy police and army presence at many polling station, witnesses said.

(Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Nayef, a hawkish interior minister who crushed al Qaeda in the world's top oil exporter, died on Saturday eight months after becoming heir to the throne, paving the way for a more reform-minded successor.

As with previous successions, the selection process is likely to be smooth, with King Abdullah and a family council expected to start work on the appointment of a new crown prince swiftly.

Nayef's most likely successor is the pragmatic Prince Salman, 76, a brother of King Abdullah who was made defense minister in November after more than five decades as Riyadh governor, analysts and diplomats in the kingdom said.

WASHINGTON, Jun 15 2012 (IPS) - The United States is set to far surpass previous records for defence sales this year, according to U.S. officials.

"Despite the global economic strain, demand for U.S. defence products and services is stronger than ever," Andrew J. Shapiro, an assistant secretary in the U.S. State Department, said on Thursday.

He confirmed that the U.S., long the world's largest weapons exporter, has already seen more than 50 billion dollars in government-to-government military sales this fiscal year.

"This represents at least a 20-billion-dollar increase over fiscal year 2011, and we still have more than a quarter of the fiscal year left," Shapiro said, speaking with reporters. The current fiscal year will end in September.

"To put this in context, fiscal year 2011 was a record-setting year at just over 30 billion. This fiscal year will be at least 70 percent greater."

MercoPress: Paraguay sent the Army after at least 18 people were killed and over eighty wounded, many of them seriously, on Friday in armed clashes that erupted when police tried to evict landless peasant farmers squatting a privately-owned farm in Paraguay, officials said.  A few hours later following public opinion outrage and demands from Congress the Minister of Interior Carlos Filizzola and the Chief of Police Paulino Rojas resigned. President Fernando Lugo named former Attorney General Ruben Candia Amarilla to replace Filizzola.

ACAPULCO, Mexico (AP) -- Carlotta was downgraded to a tropical depression on Saturday as the system rapidly weakened after killing two young sisters in its march across southern Mexico.

Colombia Reports: Colombia's Congress approved a bill Thursday which would provide a foundation for future peace talks with Colombia's largest insurgency groups.  The Legal Framework for Peace, which was approved overwhelmingly by a vote of 65 to three, would give soft sentencing to demobilized guerrillas who confessed their crimes, provided the government first reaches a peace deal with guerilla groups to lay down their arms.  The proposed legislation is part of a move by the Santos administration to reform the widely discredited Justice and Peace law of 2005, which aimed to facilitate the demobilization of the paramilitary group, the AUC.

WP, KINGSTON, Jamaica -- The leadership of Jamaica's governing party acknowledged Thursday that it received $1 million from a high-profile swindler who defrauded thousands of people across the Caribbean and the United States, but said it doesn't believe it is obligated to refund a cent. The People's National Party said it spent the $1 million it received from David Smith during the 2007 campaign for national elections, but its investigators found no records of another alleged gift of $2 million.

MercoPress:Chilean Defence Minister Andrés Allamand achieved this week a unanimous vote in the Chamber of Deputies for the proposal to change the funding system for the Armed Forces. The proposal, should it gain approval in the Senate, would put an end to the so-called "copper law," which has been in effect since 1958.

HAVANA - The opposition Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation reported Thursday that at least 423 arbitrary arrests were made for political reasons in May of this year.

Suriname: Last month, the judge overseeing the trial to determine the full extent of Surinamese President Dési Bouterse's involvement in the 1982 December Murders put the proceedings on hold. In light of the National Assembly's retroactive Amnesty Act granting immunity to Bouterse and his political henchmen, whether the Public Prosecutor's office can legally carry on the trial is now uncertain. As Stabroek News of neighboring Guyana reported last Wednesday, the government has pressured the trial's judges to bury the case by threatening their safety.

COHA: The Miskitia killings raise legal, ethical, and policy questions of the greatest import. Legal experts will have to assess whether, even if the agents involved truly believed they were targeting drug traffickers, the lethal force to which they so quickly resorted was in anyway justified in this instance. As Human Rights Watch pointed out (May 17), "It is critical that both Honduran and U.S. authorities ensure that the killings are thoroughly investigated to determine whether the use of lethal force was valid. If evidence demonstrates that security forces violated international standards, they must be held accountable." According to an AP report (June 1, Washington Post), State Department spokesman Mark Toner said: "There's an ongoing government investigation by the government of Honduras into this matter. And I'm also aware that there's a separate DEA investigation." Whether these investigations will be thorough and transparent has yet to be seen. In the meantime, the official Honduran and U.S. line is that the helicopter(s) were in pursuit of drug traffickers, that these helicopter(s) were fired upon first, and that agents then returned fire. (This scenario has not been substantiated by any investigation.) While this version of events is in dispute, there is a consensus on all sides that drug smuggling was indeed occurring in the area surrounding Ahuas and that the passenger boat fired upon was mistaken for one used by drug smugglers.

Nick Maravell has been farming organically and cultivating heirloom seeds on a leased 20-acre plot of land in Potomac, Md., for over three decades.

Nick's Organic Farm is an anomaly in wealthy, suburban Potomac, where McMansions dominate the landscape, and its location has made it possible for Maravell to cultivate heirloom breeds of organic soy and corn seeds native to the Chesapeake Bay region. Corn seed is wind-pollinated, meaning organic varieties are easily contaminated by genetically modified pollen if grown anywhere near conventional farms. But Maravell's farm is isolated, protected by a buffer of suburbia -- an ideally situated piece of land that would be difficult to replace.

All this might explain why, when it became clear that Maravell would lose his lease, the surrounding community didn't take it lightly.

Researchers at the University of California, Davis, report that ancient farmers had a stronger impact on the evolution of maize, or corn, than modern plant breeders have had on the grain - now one of the world's top production crops.

The findings, together with a companion study on maize diversity, will be published June 3 in the online edition of the journal Nature Genetics.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and conducted by scientists from 17 international institutions, including BGI, the world's largest genomics organization. It will serve as the basis for future research in crop evolution.

"These two studies provide a new and more comprehensive understanding of genomic variation in maize, which will be critically important to plant breeders as they work to increase corn yield in the face of global population growth and climate change," said plant geneticist Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra, the lead researcher on the UC Davis-directed study.

Results of a preliminary experiment conducted at the University of Illinois indicate that it may be possible to select pigs that can make efficient use of energy in less expensive feed ingredients, thus reducing diet costs.

Less expensive feed is usually higher in fiber than the corn-soy diets typically used in U.S. swine production, explained Hans H. Stein, professor of animal sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. However, the white breeds that are used in commercial pork production use only about 40 percent of the insoluble fiber.

"If you can increase that number to 50 or 60 or 70 percent, then of course, you would get a much better use of the energy in those ingredients," Stein explained.

A chocolate factory nestled deep in the Amazonian jungle in Brazil's northern state of Para offers a sweet antidote to rainforest deforestation.

In many areas of the Amazon, cocoa and other crop production have historically contributed to deforestation as farmers wear out the soil and cut further into virgin forest to obtain fresh land for cultivation.

But cooperatives like the one at Medicilandia on the Trans-Amazonian highway aim to preserve biodiversity by replanting on deforested areas in the shade of the canopy, returning cocoa production to its sustainable roots.

"For decades, the Trans-Amazonian has been synonymous with crimes against the environment. We gave an image of Amazon destruction that we now want to change with this initiative," said cooperative president Ademir Venturim.

Turns out, processed food is more popular than ever. Check out this chart, part of a package of fascinating ones from NPR's Planet Money team, generated from Bureau of Labor Statistics data, on how we spend our grocery dollars:

Remember Martha Payne, the Scottish 9-year-old whose blog documenting her pathetic school lunches shamed local pols into allowing kids unlimited fruits and vegetables? Well, they decided they weren't going to be pushed around by a little girl anymore, and sent word that she was no longer allowed to take photographs of her food.

What they didn't count on was being pushed around by a little girl and her legions of internet fans, including Jamie Oliver. So now the council is photographing its words, then eating them. Martha's blog, Never Seconds, lives on.

On Thursday, Martha explained on her blog that she was no longer allowed to photograph her lunches, because her blog had been generating too much media coverage:

This morning in maths I got taken out of class by my head teacher and taken to her office. I was told that I could not take any more photos of my school dinners because of a headline in a newspaper today.

I only write my blog not newspapers and I am sad I am no longer allowed to take photos.

Her dad clarified that this was the work of the Argyll and Bute council, not the school.

ScienceDaily (May 25, 2012) -- Recent work in mice suggested that the immune system is involved in removing beta-amyloid, the main Alzheimer's-causing substance in the brain. Researchers have now shown for the first time that this may apply in humans.

Researchers at the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Exeter with colleagues in the National Institute on Aging in the USA and in Italy screened the expression levels of thousands of genes in blood samples from nearly 700 people. The telltale marker of immune system activity against beta-amyloid, a gene called CCR2, emerged as the top marker associated with memory in people.

THE financial crisis of 2007-2008 was a perfect storm of greed and stupidity - and raging hormones may have been at its root. As neuroscientist John Coates argues in The Hour Between Dog and Wolf, hormones such as testosterone affect bankers' behaviour in ways that mean that financial boom and bust is almost unavoidable.

Then it is time for hormonal hangover, as testosterone's cousin, cortisol, fills bankers with anxiety and a sense of imminent danger. After a crisis, Coates suggests, the financial industry becomes a "clinical population" of the psychologically battered, who shun even safe trades.

(h/t to xaxnar)

Ever since I learnt about confirmation bias I've started seeing it everywhere

In 1934, a Belgian information scientist named Paul Otlet described his vision of a global "réseau" (network) of computer terminals that would provide access to millions of interlinked documents, images, audio and video files. Otlet's startlingly prescient vision - fifty years before the invention of the Web - suggests that the underlying causes of today's information explosion may have been coming into view long before the advent of the Internet.

Similar visions of a global information network also appeared in the work of important thinkers like H.G. Wells, Vannevar Bush, and even Mark Twain, who in 1904 described something called a "telectroscope." But Otlet's vision stands out for its remarkable level of detail. The environment he described relied on a highly sophisticated classification scheme, semantic links, and a level of quality control that might seem impossibly far-fetched in today's anything-goes Web world. He even anticipated the notion of social networks, describing how users might one day "participate, applaud, give ovations, sing in the chorus."

How could Otlet have imagined such a system in an age before microchips, personal computers or networking protocols? In the early twentieth century, he seems to have spotted a confluence of economic and technological forces that were accelerating the production of recorded information. The industrialization of the printing press, the rise of institutional "knowledge bureaus," and the emergence of a literate Western citizenry who could suddenly afford to buy cheaply produced books and periodicals, all contributed to an unprecedented outpouring of published knowledge that would continue to accelerate throughout the twentieth century and up to the present day. Otlet saw these trends coming before most of his contemporaries, and started to imagine a radical new solution for managing the data deluge: a networked information environment.