Greece's president and religious leaders have sworn in the country's new prime minister. The leader of the conservative party, Antonis Samaras, will lead a coalition government in the troubled country.

The leader of the New Democracy party in Greece was sworn in as prime minister at the presidential palace in Athens on Wednesday. Antonis Samaras spoke briefly to President Karolos Papoulias and Orthodox priests before signing a document confirming that he would lead parliament in Athens.

"With God's help we will do everything we can to take the country out of the crisis," Samaras told reporters shortly after the ceremony.

The center-right New Democracy party will rule in coalition with the Socialist PASOK group and the smaller Democratic Left party.

An armed man who took four people hostage in a bank in the French city of Toulouse has been arrested by French police. The individual claimed to have links to al Qaeda.

A gunman, who kept four people hostage in a bank in the southern French city of Toulouse for several hours, was seized by police on Wednesday after they launched an assault to end the stand-off, according to police sources. The arrest is believed to have resulted in the armed man being injured.

The man's capture came shortly after he freed a second female hostage in exchange for food and water. A first hostage had been freed an hour earlier, according to French television station BFM.

BFM said the man claimed to be a member of al Qaeda, although police have yet to comment on the man's potential links to the terrorist network.

The war of words between doctors and ministers over Thursday's industrial action across the NHS escalated with Andrew Lansley claiming the plans "were pointless" and unfair on patients.

In a bullish speech to NHS leaders, the health secretary portrayed doctors as greedy, unrealistic and out of touch.

"The strike is pointless. It will achieve nothing. All the BMA is doing is creating uncertainty, discomfort and difficulty for patients, most of whom could only dream of getting a pensions like theirs", Lansley told the annual conference of the NHS Confederation, which represents NHS managers.

In a bid to increase the pressure on GPs and hospital doctors ahead of the "go-slow" industrial action in which some will be involved on Friday - the first industrial action by doctors since 1975 - Lansley also claimed for the first time that doctors only contributed 20% of the total cost of their pensions.

Police in Britain have said WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is subject to arrest for breaching his bail conditions. He remains holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in the hopes of receiving political asylum.

London's police force, Scotland Yard, said on Wednesday that Julian Assange would be arrested if he stepped outside the Ecuadorian embassy, where he is currently seeking refuge.

Police said he had breached the terms of his bail agreement, which dictate that he remain at his designated bail address between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. Assange "is now subject to arrest under the Bail Act for breach of these conditions," a spokeswoman for Scotland Yard said.

Britain's Foreign Office admitted, however, that Assange remained "beyond the reach of police" while he remained inside the embassy.

Zu harte Sparpolitik habe die Nazis in den 1930er Jahren an die Macht gebracht: Österreichs Notenbankchef Ewald Nowotny hat vor einer zu strikten Sparpolitik im Kampf gegen die Eurokrise gewarnt. Weil Nowotny im EZB-Rat sitzt, ist seine Kritik besonders brisant.

Prime Minister David Cameron has said the tax arrangements of comedian Jimmy Carr are "morally wrong".

He made the comment to ITV News after reports that Carr was understood to be a member of a legal but aggressive tax avoidance scheme.

According to the Times, Carr told an audience on Tuesday: "I pay what I have to and not a penny more."

HM Revenue and Customs has said it is taking "firm action to protect the Exchequer from unacceptable tax loss".

The Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood has said spending cuts could continue for up to 10 years, according to sources at a well-known think-tank.

The top civil servant is reported to have made the comments at an event at the Institute for Government mostly attended by civil servants.

He was discussing the coalition's civil service reform plan.

The government has already announced the austerity programme would continue beyond the next election.

But the suggestion of a 10 year timescale had not been talked about openly, says BBC political correspondent Iain Watson.

Former Italian premier says leaving the eurozone is no blasphemy; says three outcomes possible: Merkel allows ECB to grant unconditional backstop, Germany leaves, Italy leaves; he says Merkel's policy has thrown Italy into a recessionary spiral; he claimed a number of German experts supported the idea that Germany quits the eurozone; the FT writes that a failure of this Friday's summit might seal Monti's fate, and trigger early elections as Monti is losing political support; Monti's record in office is also being questioned by an increasing number of Italian economists; Germany opposes Monti's plan for bond purchases; insists that any bond purchases would be tantamount to a full programme with a memorandum and control mechanisms; Anatole Kaletsky says that Germany is once again a menace, and Europeans should stand up to them; says Angela Merkel's concept of a political union was hegemonial; Wolfgang Munchau says German is in the grip of a mass hysteria similar to what happened in the run-up to 1933; Ewald Nowotny, the Austrian central bank president, also invokes the rise of Nazism, which arose out of excessive austerity; French PM Jean-Marc Ayrault says true debt mutualisation requires a political union; Antonis Samaras is sworn in as Greek prime minister after the agreement on a three-party coalition between New Democracy, Pasok, and the Democratic Left; Vassilis Rapanos becomes finance minister; new government comprises of 15 ministers and 20 deputies, down from a total of 49; Thomas Wieser, head of the euro working group, says Greek programme is totally off track: Greece needs either more money or needs to implements the agreed measures immediately; the Irish Independent, meanwhile, draws a parallel between the current situation and Scotland's Darien crisis 1699-1701, in which Scotland lost a fortune through speculation in Panama, and which was ultimately result through the political union with England.

The G20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico, has ended with a declaration against protectionism and for growth. The leaders of the world's 20 largest economies focused their attention on the crisis gripping the eurozone.

International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Christine Largarde was relieved about the promises made at the G20 summit. IMF resources are set to be beefed up by some $456 billion (360 billion euros). The money is not explicitly earmarked for bailing out ailing eurozone countries, but it can be put to that use. Lagarde said she left Los Cabos with a sense that the G20 nations had moved closer together.

In their closing statement, the eurozone countries promised to take whatever measures necessary to maintain the stability and integrity of the region and to keep financial markets functioning.

US President Barack Obama also applauded the European effort. He said there was no doubt that all countries in Europe understood that growth strategies would have to go together with consolidation plans. The US would have to adopt similar measures, Obama said.

The Federal Reserve will expand its program to replace short-term bonds with longer-term debt by $267 billion through the end of the year in a bid to reduce unemployment and protect the expansion.

The continuation of Operation Twist "should put downward pressure on longer-term interest rates and help to make broader financial conditions more accommodative," the Federal Open Market Committee said today in a statement at the conclusion of a two-day meeting in Washington.

The Fed said it is "prepared to take further action as appropriate to promote a stronger economic recovery and sustain improvement in labor market conditions in a context of price stability."

Policy makers led by Chairman Ben S. Bernanke are taking steps to shore up the world's largest economy as faltering growth leaves it vulnerable to fallout from the European debt crisis and looming fiscal tightening in the U.S. Payrolls expanded at the slowest pace in a year in May, and the jobless rate has been stuck above 8 percent since February 2009.

Oil fell after the Energy Department said U.S. crude supplies rose to the highest level in 22 years and the Federal Reserve said it will expand its Operation Twist stimulus program by $267 billion through the end of the year.

Futures dropped as much as 3.5 percent after the report showed supplies increased 2.86 million barrels to 387.3 million last week, the highest level since July 1990. Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg forecast a decline. The Fed announcement came as the original Operation Twist was set to expire this month.

"We are down because inventories were plentiful even before today's report," said Todd Horwitz, chief strategist at Adam Mesh Trading Group in Chicago. "We will probably take out $80 in the next couple weeks."

Crude oil for July delivery fell $1.74, or 2.1 percent, to $82.29 a barrel at 1:10 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Oil traded at $83.02 before release of the inventory report and $81.86 before the Fed announcement. The July contract expires today. The more actively traded August contract dropped $1.75, or 2.1 percent, to $82.60.

The U.S. economy may be on the cusp of a pickup in productivity that will make it more difficult for Federal Reserve policy makers to reduce unemployment.

After cooling throughout last year, worker output per hour will probably rise at around 1.5 percent, in line with its long- run trend, according to economists like Ellen Zentner and Robert Gordon. That means the lower-than-forecast payroll gains in May and April may be closer to the norm than the exception for the rest of the year as companies redouble efforts to improve efficiency.

Payrolls will grow between 80,000 and 120,000 per month, less than this year's 165,000 average, even as the economy expands by about the same 2 percent, estimates Zentner, a senior economist at Nomura Securities International Inc. Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke earlier this year aired his concern that hiring will subside without faster economic growth.

"As the rate of productivity normalizes, businesses won't need to hire as many workers," said New York-based Zentner. "The level of job growth we've been getting over the past few months is probably pretty normal."

Customers of NatWest have reported problems with their bank accounts, with balances not being updated and online services unavailable.

...

The bank did not say how many people had been affected across the group, but Ulster Bank, which along with NatWest is also part of the RBS group, said 100,000 of its customers had been affected by "a major technical issue".

...

Customers have also reported problems accessing their online accounts for the past 24 hours.

...

However, people expecting payments from individuals or businesses which banked with NatWest could encounter problems.

Last week, Royal Bank of Scotland and NatWest launched a mobile banking app to enable people to withdraw money from cash machines using their smartphone.

A Palestinian fighter has been killed as Israeli air raids on Gaza enter their third day, bringing the death toll to nine.

The latest attack took place on Wednesday in the southern town of Rafah. The victim is believed to be a member of Islamic Jihad.

The fighter died and a comrade was wounded in the attack on their motorcycle in the city located near Gaza's frontier with the Egyptian Sinai, medical officials said.

Israel said the man targeted had been involved in a raid on Monday from adjacent Sinai territory into Israel, which killed an Israeli.

Israeli fighter jets also carried out three raids against the Gaza Strip early on Wednesday, Palestinian security officials said.

The raids targeted a training centre for the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas at Rafah in the south of the Strip, a "workshop" in Gaza City, and Hamas naval police installations in the north.

A suicide bomber on a motorbike has attacked a convoy of NATO troops in the eastern Afghan city of Khost, killing 17 people, hospital officials say, in this month's second attack on foreign forces there.

At least another 36 people were wounded in Wednesday's blast, including women and children, officials at the main hospital in the city, near the Pakistan border, said.

Police and witnesses at the scene reported US casualties.

Pentagon officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said as many as three US troops were killed in the suicide bombing in eastern Afghanistan. The officials also said that the Afghans killed were a mix of civilians and security forces.

Murders in El Salvador have dropped from about 14 a day in March to five, as a truce between the country's powerful street gangs passed 100 days.

Police said that overall this year killings had fallen nearly 24%, while murders in May were down by more than 50% on the same period last year.

The gangs, Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18, agreed a halt to hostilities, in a deal brokered by the Catholic Church.

El Salvador's street gangs have a reputation for ruthless violence.

Announcing the latest crime figures, Justice and Public Security Minister David Munguia Payes said that the truce between the gangs "has had an important effect on the drop in violence".

The Obama administration told a U.S. House panel that the president is asserting executive privilege and refusing to turn over documents sought by lawmakers related to a U.S. law enforcement gun operation.

The Justice Department described President Barack Obama's position in a letter today to Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican, who is chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The panel is scheduled to vote today over whether Attorney General Eric Holder should be held in contempt of Congress for failing to provide documents sought by Issa's panel.

Issa, as the committee meeting began, said Obama's move was an "untimely assertion" that "falls short of any reason to delay today's proceedings." Issa said the committee was proceeding with the contempt vote because Obama hadn't invoked executive privilege in a formal communication with the House.

The committee action would be the latest escalation in a standoff that began last year between Republican lawmakers and the Obama administration over Fast and Furious, a law enforcement operation that allowed illegal gun purchases in the U.S. an an effort to link the weapons to Mexican drug cartels. [Great moments in rocket science - ed.] Guns in the program ended up "lost" and will turn up at crime scenes on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border for years, Holder told lawmakers last year.

The United States and Israel jointly developed a sophisticated computer virus nicknamed Flame that collected intelligence in preparation for cyber-sabotage aimed at slowing Iran's ability to develop a nuclear weapon, according to Western officials with knowledge of the effort.

The massive piece of malware secretly mapped and monitored Iran's computer networks, sending back a steady stream of intelligence to prepare for a cyber­warfare campaign, according to the officials.

The effort, involving the National Security Agency, the CIA and Israel's military, has included the use of destructive software such as the Stuxnet virus to cause malfunctions in Iran's nuclear-enrichment equipment.

The emerging details about Flame provide new clues to what is thought to be the first sustained campaign of cyber-sabotage against an adversary of the United States.

A plurality of Americans now say they are better off than they were when President Barack Obama was inaugurated, providing a surprising lift to Obama's re- election campaign despite troublesome economic news.

Forty-five percent of those surveyed in a Bloomberg National Poll say they are better off than at the beginning of 2009 compared with 36 percent who say they are worse off. In March, poll respondents split almost evenly on that question after having been decidedly negative since the aftermath of the worst recession in seven decades.

"I'm just tired of the doom and gloom," says Jim Seeley, 52, a mortgage banker in Traverse City, Michigan, and a poll respondent, in a follow-up interview. "I think it's looking better. People just need to stay positive."

The poll, conducted June 15-18, contains more unlikely cheer for the president, with larger numbers of respondents saying their household income is higher than a year ago. While 44 percent say they are treading water, the better off outnumbered the worse off by 28 percent to 22 percent.

The result of Egypt's presidential election has been delayed, state television has said.

It had been scheduled to be announced on Thursday, but the Supreme Elections Commission (SPEC) says it needs more time to look into complaints presented by the candidates.

The two candidates, Mohammed Mursi and Ahmed Shafiq, both say they won.

There have been some 400 election complaints and no new date has been set for the announcement of the result.

He's also anti-Zionist, and against the police investigating sex abuse cases in the Jewish community. This is going to be fun.

Wait, there's a catch.

Prior to our airing an investigation and interview tonight, @Newyorkgop official @yossigestetner has resigned.

BANGKOK (AP) -- The eulogies called Chut Wutty one of the few remaining activists in Cambodia brave enough to fight massive illegal deforestation by the powerful. The environmental watchdog was shot by a military policeman in April as he probed logging operations in one of the country's last great forests.

Nisio Gomes was the chief of a Brazilian tribe struggling to protect its land from ranchers. Masked men gunned him down in November; his body, quickly dragged into a pickup, has not been seen since.

Around the world, sticking up for the environment can be deadly, and it appears to be getting deadlier.

People who track killings of environmental activists say the numbers have risen dramatically in the last three years. Improved reporting may be one reason, they caution, but they also believe the rising death toll is a consequence of intensifying battles over dwindling supplies of natural resources, particularly in Latin America and Asia.

Killings have occurred in at least 34 countries, from Brazil to Egypt, and in both developing and developed nations, according to an Associated Press review of data and interviews.

AST ST LOUIS, Ill - On a clear spring day, the four-year-olds laughed as they ran out on the playground at the start of morning recess. Within minutes, one boy stopped, a terrified look on his face. Brenda Crisp and her staff immediately realized what was happening: Asthma attack.

"He escalated from zero symptoms to a severe attack in no time at all," said Crisp, director of the Uni-Pres Kindercottage daycare center. "It came out of the clear blue."

An ambulance rushed the boy to the hospital, where it took him two days to recover. Two years later, he still suffers unexpected asthma attacks and must take his nebulizer, a device that delivers a dose of corticosteroids and oxygen, wherever he goes.

This wasn't the first -- or the last -- near-deadly attack Crisp and her staff have witnessed at the daycare center. When it comes to asthma, the children of their community are at high risk.

Nearly all are African American and living in poverty. Incinerators, metal producers, power plants, chemical manufacturers and other industries ring the city. Exhaust from cars and trucks on nearby highways blankets the area, as well.

It has been nearly two weeks since a tongue of lightning touched down in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies, sparking the biggest wildfire in Larimer County history and the most destructive -- with almost 200 buildings damaged to date -- in the state's memory.

The High Park fire comes as a kind of second death for this stretch of the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest, where mountain pine beetles have held at epidemic levels for almost half a decade. Vast stretches of rust-red canopy, dry and primed for fire, are a testament to an infestation that has affected some 70 percent of the trees in the region.

Thanks to the beetles, there has been no shortage of ready fuel and the fire has spread quickly, whipped by sporadic winds from the southeast.

Since the blaze was set on June 9, fire crews have been working ceaselessly, and have reined in the fire at its eastern and northern edges. But converging forces are working against them.

[...]

Without rain, forest managers say, the blaze could continue throughout the summer.

About 230,000 litres of heavy crude oil spilled from a pumping station on an Enbridge Inc. pipeline onto farmland, Alberta's oil and gas regulator, the Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB), said Tuesday.

 

The regulator said 1,450 barrels of oil spilled from a pumping station on Enbridge's Athabasca pipeline, 24 kilometres from Elk Point, Alta., a small town roughly 200 kilometres northeast of Edmonton. That pipeline, briefly shut down but then restarted Tuesday, connects the oil sands with Hardisty, Canada's most important crude oil hub. The spill comes while crews are still working to clean up two other large leaks in Alberta, nearly 800,000 litres of oil from a Pace Oil & Gas Ltd. well about 200 kilometres from the Northwest Territories border, and 160,000 to 480,000 litres from a Plains Midstream Canada pipeline that ruptured beneath the Red Deer River.

 

Environmental groups are now seizing on the confluence of accidents, which includes another massive spill from a Plains pipe last year, to call for an expansive look at pipeline safety in Alberta.

Drinking a low or moderate level of alcohol in early pregnancy is not linked to developmental problems in five-year-olds, researchers say.

The Danish research, published in the BJOG journal, suggested one to eight drinks a week was not linked to harm.

In Denmark a standard drink has 12g of alcohol, compared with the UK's 7.9g.

UK pregnant women are advised not to drink, but experts say those who do should have no more than one or two units, once or twice a week.

Divorced Catholics who remarry are committing adultery, according to Roman Catholic law, and can't receive communion or sacraments. A group of priests in Freiburg are fighting to change these rules.

"I have not taken a vow to follow the canon law but I have a mission to work with people. That is what spiritual guidance is all about."

These words come from the Freiburg priest Konrad Irslinger, who has had enough. Together with 13 other priests and deacons from the Archdiocese of Freiburg, he is openly criticizing the Catholic Church's position on remarried couples.

The Church views marriage as an indissoluble sacrament. Remarried Catholics are excluded from the sacraments because, according to church law, they have committed adultery with their partner and are living in sin.

One of the biggest debuts in the science world could happen in a matter of weeks: The Higgs boson may finally, really have been discovered.

Ever since tantalizing hints of the Higgs turned up in December at the Large Hadron Collider, scientists there have been busily analyzing the results of their energetic particle collisions to further refine their search.

"The bottom line though is now clear: There's something there which looks like a Higgs is supposed to look," wrote mathematician Peter Woit on his blog, Not Even Wrong. According to Woit, there are rumors of new data that would be the most compelling evidence yet for the long-sought Higgs.

The possible news has a number of physics bloggers speculating that LHC scientists will announce the discovery of the Higgs during the International Conference on High Energy Physics, which takes place in Melbourne, Australia, July 4 to 11.

WASHINGTON -- In 2009, Cambodian Prom Vannak Anan dove into a dark sea and away from a life of beatings, unpaid labor and imprisonment on a fishing boat. The lights of a port, four miles distant, guided him. The desire to be free kept him swimming.

Anan had been a new father and husband in 2005 when a "job agent" offered him a path to a better life, then moved him far from home. Instead of a job, he was sold as a laborer to a Thai boat owner. For years, he endured physical and emotional pain, hoping for a chance to escape.

So around midnight in 2009, as the crew slept on a rare night when they anchored near enough to see the shore, he swam for freedom.

Instead of mercy, the Malaysian police he'd hoped would help sold him to a palm oil plantation. It took him another year - much of it in jail - to finally find help, freedom and a way back to his family.

A former government adviser on drugs has told MPs that alcohol consumption would fall by as much as 25% if Dutch-style cannabis "coffee shops" were introduced in Britain.

Prof David Nutt also told the Commons home affairs committee that he stood by his claim that horse-riding was more dangerous than taking ecstasy, despite the fact that the comparison triggered his sacking as chairman of the advisory committee on the misuse of drugs (ACMD).

Nutt told MPs the cost of policing cannabis use was only £500m a year, mainly for issuing possession warning notices, compared with the £6bn a year bill for policing the use of alcohol, including dealing with people who were drunk and disorderly.

His call for the decriminalisation of the use of all drugs was backed by a second former government drug adviser, Prof Lesley King, who told MPs that most people who took ecstasy did so without harming themselves or inflicting wider harms on society.

The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman

A German banker has told a Munich courtroom that he took a $44-million payment from Formula One commercial supremo Bernie Ecclestone when brokering the sale of the commercial rights to the sport.

Former BayernLB banker Gerhard Gribkowsky broke his silence in a long-running court case against him on Wednesday, saying that he received $44 million (34.6 million euros) from Formula One string-puller Bernie Ecclestone.

When asked by judge Peter Noll whether the accusations against him were accurate, Gribkowsky described them as "essentially true."

The regional court in Munich also announced on Wednesday that Gribkowsky would probably face a jail term of around eight or nine years for the crime, irrespective of his apparent, partial late confession.

The introduction of goalline technology appears all but inevitable after the Fifa president, Sepp Blatter, said it is "a necessity" in the wake of Ukraine being denied an equaliser in the 1-0 defeat to England. Blatter, who hopes to convince the game's rule-makers - the International Football Association Board - to give technology the green light, posted on Twitter: "After last night's match #GLT is no longer an alternative but a necessity."

Until now, Michel Platini, the Uefa president, has been adamant that decisions must be made by officials that now number five. Uefa admitted that a goal should have been awarded but Pierluigi Collina, its chief refereeing officer, said that although the Hungarian referee, Viktor Kassai and his team of assistants would play no further part in the tournament, no blame was being attributed to the officials.

"We made a mistake," Collina, said. "I wish we hadn't made the mistake but we did. Referees are human beings and human beings make mistakes."

It's funny how it happens. Two years ago England "score" a clear goal against Germany that isn't counted and there is no need for goal line technology. Now, when england benefit from such an injustice, something must be done.

Jes' sayin'

keep to the Fen Causeway