Greece's right-wing New Democracy party has a narrow lead over its left-wing rivals after parliamentary elections, official projections suggest.

Socialists took control of France's parliament for the first time in ten years on Sunday in elections marked by high voter abstention.

The Socialist Party (PS) won 291 seats in the lower-house National Assembly, compared to 212 seats for the centre-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), giving President François Hollande's party an absolute majority, exit polls showed.

The parliamentary election confirmed France's leftward swing, with the Ipsos polling agency suggesting the Greens had claimed 20 seats and the communist-allied Left Front a further 13.

(Reuters) - France wants the European Union to agree before the end of 2012 on growth-boosting measures worth 120 billion euros (96.5 billion pounds), the weekly Journal du Dimanche said on Sunday, citing a proposal circulated by France ahead of an end-June summit.

The newspaper also reported that France has accepted Germany's rejection of its call to issue mutualised debt in the euro bloc and now agreed that so-called euro bonds were a project to be looked at over a 10-year time frame.

The 120 billion euros are to come from a combination of short-term growth instruments such as project bonds, reallocated EU structural funds and fresh investment capital from the European Investment Bank.

Financial desperation combined with diplomatic inexperience could end up costing the euro zone dearly. France, Italy and Spain seem to think that presenting Germany with the same demands, over and over again, will soften Angela Merkel to the point that she will accept reforms like euro bonds, a banking union or a direct recapitalisation of the region's banks by the European Stability Mechanism, the euro zone's bailout fund. But the more the gang of three insists, the more Germany is digging in its heels. On some of the issues it can even rely on the support of the European Central Bank. Ganging up on Germany is not only inefficient: it could backfire if it makes it impossible for euro leaders to come up with some common vision at their summit at the end of the month.

The euro zone used to be simple. It only took Germany and France to agree on the main issues. Then the two of them went to work on the others to clinch the ultimate deals and compromises. The situation has changed. Since the bailouts began, the split between the north and the south has widened. France has a foot in both camps. It is the second-largest contributor to the bailouts, but also has a fragile economy which might have to rely on German benevolence at some point in time.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's government signaled a willingness to loosen Greece's austerity requirements as long as the next government stands by its obligations under a European Union-led bailout program.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said negotiators might consider giving Greece more time to rein in its finances as exit polls in Athens showed pro-bailout New Democracy with a narrow lead and in a position to form a majority coalition.

"I can imagine we could do something in terms of the time frame, because the standstill that has taken place over the past few weeks has done damage," Westerwelle told broadcaster ZDF in Berlin today. "But one thing must be clear: the treaties must be valid in substance. They can't be canceled or renegotiated."

ANDRÉS VILLENA: The eurozone seems to be preparing to strengthen itself internally, but without counting with the Republic of Greece. The new left party represents the best synthesis between Europeanism, political solvency and criticism of the imbalances that have led us to this situation. From this force one hopes for the best negotiation with the creditor countries for remaining within, based on the condition of a proper restructuring of the debt and the possibilities of getting out of the snare that the troika has imposed on the Greek State.

JUAN DOMINGO SÁNCHEZ ESTOP: Rarely have I been angry at not being able to participate in elections. I know that, when these contribute toward the representation of the people, they silence the multitude by giving a voice to power. I do not accept elections that prevent me from deciding. Today, however, in Greece, for the first time in too many years, an election can constitute a decision, since one of the rising political forces, Syriza, represents something that power can never tolerate: the social movement that has made the reigning social order democratically unrepresentable and morally unpresentable.

Syriza occupies the vacuum of representation left by power, showing how the neoliberal looting of Greece, Europe and the world is incompatible with democracy, and it opens, as in Latin America, a space for the protagonism of the multitudes, of the everyday citizens. We are therefore witnessing a milestone in the difficult "conquest of democracy". For this reason, our Greek comrades smile and power puts on a face like a funeral.

New Democracy got 29.7% of the vote, with Syriza at 26.9% and Pasok at 12.3%; an ND - Pasok coalition would have 162 seats in the 300 strong parliament; Pasok has yet to decide on whether it wants to join a coalition government, tolerate a minority ND government, or seek a broader coalition; Antonis Samaras has called for a "a national salvation government"; Alexis Tsipras conceded defeat and said he will go into opposition; declines to be part of any broad-based government; analysts are sceptical that any new government can last long; EU politicians reacted with cautious relief; in France, the Socialists gained an absolute majority in the second-round of the parliamentary elections; all cabinet ministers were elected, thus avoiding a reshuffle of cabinet posts; Guillaume Tebard says Francois Hollande is already preparing for his next big elections - in Germany 2013; Hollande is putting together a €120bn stimulus programme; Der Spiegel reports that van Rompuy and his group are likely to propose eurobills at the summit; Wolfgang Proissl endorses a bank supervisory role of ECB, but says this must go hand in hand with a political union; Deutsche Bank has calculated huge negative elasticities of austerity on growth; Denmark is considering negative interest rates to stem an inflow of fund; Wolfgang Munchau, meanwhile, says Italy and Spain won't be able to maintain their euro membership unless the June 28/29 summits decides on a banking union and lays out a path for joint and several liability.

China on Saturday urged eurozone countries to work together to resolve the debt crisis or all face being pulled down amid "severe economic storms", ahead of key elections in Greece and a G20 summit.

The official Xinhua news agency likened the currency bloc to a "gigantic ship," and said that its 17 members needed to act as if they were in the "same boat."

"No one can escape unscathed when the ship capsizes among severe economic storms. Countries aboard the ship should extend a helping hand to each other," it said in a commentary.

China is a major holder of European debt and Europe is its biggest export market, so Beijing has looked on with concern at the deepening eurozone crisis. China's slowing growth is in part due to Europe's debt woes.

(Reuters) - Some large economies show significantly lower growth when natural assets such as forests and water are factored into growth indicators, an index showed on Sunday, a few days before an international sustainability summit starts in Rio de Janeiro.

The Inclusive Wealth Index was unveiled by the United Nations University's International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (UNU-IHDP) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

Scientists and environment groups have been pressuring governments to include the value of their countries' natural resources - and use or loss of them - into future measurements of economic activity to show their true future growth prospects.

The idea of an expanded indicator known as GDP+ to include GDP and natural capital will be on the agenda of the Rio+20 summit from June 20 to June 22, when environment ministers and heads of state from around 200 countries will try to define sustainable development goals.

The U.K. and France, two of Europe's largest economies after Germany, each boosted their holdings of U.S. Treasuries by more than 26 percent in April amid the fiscal crisis in the euro region, while total international demand for U.S. financial assets slowed.

The U.K.'s portfolio of Treasuries rose 26.5 percent to $154.2 billion, while France's holdings increased 29.4 percent to $59.4 billion, the Treasury Department said today in Washington. China remained the largest international buyer of Treasuries, as its holdings ro

As scorekeeper in a card game, you keep track of how many points everyone has.
You award points to players with winning hands.
You subtract points from players with losing hands.

So as the scorekeeper, let me ask you:

How many points do you have?

Can the scorekeeper run out of points?

Activists have said Syrian troops have intensified their shelling of rebel-held neighbourhoods in the central city of Homs as living conditions there deteriorate further.

The neighbourhoods of Jouret al-Shayyah, the Old Ciy, al-Khalidiyeh and al-Hamidiyeh have been under intense shelling and ground attacks for a week.

Activist Abu Bilal in the Old City said on Sunday that the regime's siege of several parts of Homs was "suffocating".

"They are shelling us all the time. There's very little food and water, and we're running out of medication," Bilal said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) and the Local Co-ordination Committees (LCC), an opposition activist network, said the shelling killed at least one person on Sunday.

The SOHR urged the UN to intervene and evacuate more than 1,000 Homs families, including women and children. It says their lives are in danger.

(Reuters) - Egyptians were electing a president freely for the first time on Sunday, making a daunting choice between a former general of the old guard and an Islamist who says he is running for God.

Many were perplexed and fearful of the future and signs were that, as in last month's first round, millions would not vote.

The contest, pitting Hosni Mubarak's last prime minister Ahmed Shafik against Mohamed Morsy of the Muslim Brotherhood, the veteran Islamist movement, is supposed to seal a democratic transition that began with Mubarak's overthrow 16 months ago.

But concern over a backlash among the disappointed losers saw the Interior Ministry put forces on alert across the country for the end of two days of voting at 10 p.m. (2000 GMT).

"We have to vote because these elections are historic," said Amr Omar, voting in Cairo, who called himself an activist of the youth revolution. Reluctantly putting aside misgivings about the Brotherhood's religious agenda, he said: "I will vote for Morsy.

Mahmoud al-Sarsak, on hunger strike in an Israeli jail for 92 days, agreed to start eating on Monday in a deal that will see him released on July 10, his lawyer said.

Mohammad Jaberein said al-Sarsak signed the agreement during his visit to the prisoner on Monday. Israeli prison authorities asked al-Sarsak to eat something in their presence to ratify the deal, after which he took a piece of chocolate from the lawyer, Jaberein said.

It was 1972, and to anyone who was paying attention, it was obvious that we humans were making a real mess of things. Tropical forests were falling at an alarming rate. Whale populations were in a death spiral. Our cities were choked with smog, our rivers had turned into fire traps, and we were getting the first inklings that all of our industrial activity might actually be warming the globe.

To right the course, representatives from 114 countries met in Stockholm, Sweden, at the U.N. Conference on the Human Environment -- the first major global effort to clean up our collective act -- and an era of environmental diplomacy was born.

Four decades later, what do we have to show for it?

First, the bad news:

Fails

The oceans have warmed in the past 50 years, but not by natural events alone. New research by a team of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists and international collaborators shows that the observed ocean warming over the last 50 years is consistent with climate models only if the models include the impacts of observed increases in greenhouse gas during the 20th century.

Though the new research is not the first study to identify a human influence on observed ocean warming, it is the first to provide an in-depth examination of how observational and modeling uncertainties impact the conclusion that humans are primarily responsible.

"We have taken a closer look at factors that influence these results," said Peter Gleckler, an LLNL climate scientist and lead author of the new study that appears in the June 10 edition of the journal, Nature Climate Change.

"The bottom line is that this study substantially strengthens the conclusion that most of the observed global ocean warming over the past 50 years is attributable to human activities."

The loss of the planet's biological diversity is increasingly threatening Mother Nature's ability to provide humans with goods and services like food, water, fodder, fertile soils, and protection from pests and disease, according to a sweeping review of 20 years of research by an international team of ecologists, including biologists from the University of British Columbia and McGill.

The 17 researchers present their findings in the journal Nature in a scientific consensus statement that summarizes evidence that has emerged from more than 1,000 ecological studies conducted since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

"We've reached a point where efforts to preserve species and biological diversity might no longer be an act of altruism," says Diane Srivastava, Professor with the Department of Zoology and the Biodiversity Research Centre at University of British Columbia and author on the paper." This research review dramatically underscores the importance of strengthening--not weakening or curtailing--environmental assessment processes in order to stem the tide of the loss of species and diversity that so many humans benefit from and depend on.

Brazil on Saturday took the helm of talks to forge a global deal on preserving the environment and rooting out poverty ahead of a gathering of world leaders starting in just four days.

Five months of negotiations on a vast document, due to be endorsed at the three-day summit climaxing the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, have failed to break the deadlock on several issues.

The task of coaxing out a deal fell to Brazil, as host of the "Rio+20" talks, which marks the 20th anniversary of the summit that yielded landmark agreements on climate change, desertification and biodiversity.

To speed things up, the host country came up with a consolidated text expected to be made public later Saturday.

JEREMOABO, Brazil, Jun 16 2012 (IPS) - Many grow lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, beets and other vegetables. But cilantro is ever-present in the gardens that are helping rural families weather the lengthy drought that is once again wracking Brazil's impoverished Northeast.

Cilantro is the favourite "because of the flavour it adds to beans, meat, pasta - everything," said Silvia Santana Santos, a beneficiary of the Projeto Gente de Valor (PGV), a project that has helped families create "productive backyards" in 34 municipalities in the state of Bahia, where poverty is aggravated by water scarcity.

The taste for cilantro has drawn families to get involved in initiatives that are enabling people to deal better with the semi-arid climate in the state and improving living conditions in the 282 poorest rural communities in Bahia, as identified by the Regional Action and Development Agency (CAR), the government body that is carrying out the project.

The PGV's three main goals are to install small-scale water tanks for harvesting and storage of rainwater, boost production, and provide training. The total investment is 60 million dollars, half of which is financed by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the other half by the Bahia state government.

Climate change might eventually cause millions of deaths and all kinds of natural disasters. But don't tell that to a climate-change sceptic if you want them to do anything about it.

Instead, focus on how mitigation efforts can help people become more warm and caring towards others or how it can promote economic and technological development. That's the advice psychologists give after confirming the strategy in an experiment.

"I got the idea from mediation. When people have disputes there's not much point convincing one party that they're wrong," says study leader Paul Bain, a psychologist at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.

Bain and colleagues first took 155 climate-change sceptics and asked them how their country - Australia - would be different in 2050 if action were taken now to mitigate climate change, and how likely they would be to engage in pro-environmental activity.

"When girls are first abducted, it is the same as for boy soldiers," Akallo told IPS. "They are beaten and mistreated, they are trained to become child soldiers, given AK-47s, and forced to kill.

"Most of the children are sent to the forefront, with the leaders behind them. Your bullets are finished? You shoot your friend in order to get more bullets. At the same time the leaders used children as shields, so that the children get shot and they survive."

What makes a girl child soldier different is the sexual abuse that they are forced to endure, says Akallo. "Most girls were sexually abused, including me. I was lucky I did not return home with a child, or get infected with HIV or any other disease.

"Many of these girls had to give birth while in captivity, some of them had to go fighting with children on their backs, and some gave birth on the battlefield," she said.

But the plight of the female child soldier is largely hidden from view, masked by the leaders of armed groups who refer to girl combatants as "wives" or "sisters".

A diet high in cholesterol may help people with a fatal genetic disease which damages the brain, according to early studies in mice.

Patients with Pelizaeus-Merzbacher disease struggle to produce a fatty sheath around their nerves, which is essential for function.

A study, published in Nature Medicine, showed that a high-cholesterol diet could increase production.

The authors said the mice "improved dramatically".

Pelizaeus-Merzbacher disease (PMD) is one of many leukodystrophies in which patients struggle to produce the myelin sheath. It protects nerve fibres and helps messages pass along the nerves.

Want to stay away from germs during your next hotel stay? Then don't turn on the TV or lights -- new research shows that TV remotes and light switches are among the most contaminated items in hotel rooms.

Researchers from the University of Houston took bacteria samples from several items in hotel rooms in three regions of the United States. While the toilet and the sink were expected to have high levels of bacteria, researchers also found more surprising items with high contamination levels, such as the remote and the switch on the bedside lamp.

Hotel rooms "don't have to have it ready for surgery," said study researcher Jay Neal, a microbiologist at the University of Houston, but there certainly is room for improvement in their cleanliness.

Artificial intelligence could help us better understand the effects of psychedelic drugs, by analysing narrative reports written by people who are using them.

Scientists barely understand how existing psychedelic drugs work to alter perception and intensify emotions, let alone keep pace with new ones flooding the market - often sold as "bath salts" or "herbal incense".

Enter artificial intelligence. Matthew Baggott of the University of Chicago and colleagues used machine-learning algorithms - a type of artificial intelligence that can learn about a given subject by analysing massive amounts of data - to examine 1000 reports uploaded to the website Erowid by people who had taken mind-altering drugs.

They found that the frequency with which certain words appeared could identify the drug taken with 51 per cent accuracy on average - compared with 10 per cent by chance. MDMA (ecstasy) usage was identified with an accuracy of 87 per cent.

Polish police prevented a mass brawl between Russian and Polish hooligans by pre-emptively detaining more than 70 Russians, Russian presidential adviser Mikhail Fedotov said Sunday.

Police arrested 72 Russians on Saturday, allegedly forcing Polish hooligans to abandon plans for a fight they had arranged with the Russians, Fedotov said.

"There was some communication between representatives of Polish football-related hooligans and Russian football-related hooligans," Fedotov said after meeting Polish interior minister Jacek Cichocki.

"The Polish hooligans were obliged to refuse this meeting with the words that we have no one left to go to battle against."

Rodney King, the African American at the centre of the Los Angeles riots 20 years ago, has been found dead aged 47.

His fiancee found his body at the bottom of a swimming pool, but there was no sign of foul play.

King was a victim of police brutality in 1991, but the officers involved were acquitted the following year.

The verdict triggered clashes between rioters and police which left more than 50 dead, thousands injured and thousands of properties destroyed.

Rialto Police Captain Randy Deanda said on Sunday King was found "unresponsive" at the bottom of his pool and was pronounced dead at 06:11 (13:11 GMT).

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