The main opposition parties have agreed to support Chancellor Angela Merkel's economic measures for stability in the eurozone. The deal aims to cut back public debt but also boost growth and employment.

Following a meeting with Merkel's conservative coalition on Thursday, the opposition Social Democrats and Green party announced they would support plans paving the way for the European Stability Mechanism (ESM).

They said they had reached an agreement to boost growth and create more jobs in the eurozone, as well as curb debt and implement tighter controls.

"This is an important step away from focusing on saving alone," said SPD chairman Sigmar Gabriel.

Athens has a new government coalition. On Thursday, election winner and head of the conservative New Democracy party, Antonis Samaras was sworn in as prime minister. But his government is not exactly stable.

Aside from the conservatives, the new coalition in Athens is made up of the socialist Pasok party of former finance minister Evangelos Venizelos and the moderate leftist party Democratic Left. Together, the three parties have a broad majority of 179 out of 300 seats in the Athens parliament. The two leftist junior coalition partners, however, will not field any of the ministers for the new cabinet.

In an almost passionate statement after his swearing in ceremony, new Prime Minister Samaras appealed to the patriotism of the Greek people.

"I ask the Greek people to show patriotism, to stay united and to give me their trust that with God's help we will do everything we can to take the country out of the crisis," the 61-year-old said. "Tomorrow, I will ask the government to work hard to give tangible hope to the Greek people. I have the majority to form a long-term government of stability and hope."

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) suffered another setback as an EU Parliament committee voted against the deal. While the agreement still has supporters, its detractors seem to be winning the upper hand.

Politicians only recognized how explosive ACTA was when thousands of Europeans took to the streets in protest. Several countries, Germany included, intend to ratify the treaty.

In Germany, Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger pointed out that there were "open questions" to address before enacting the agreement. After Thursday's vote in the EU Parliament's International Trade Committee, in which 19 parliamentarians opposed the agreement and 12 voted in favor, the same is happening in Brussels.

The vote brought ACTA a step closer to an early death as the committee recommended the EU Parliament reject the deal at a vote in July. The EU Commission has also already submitted a request to the European Court of Justice regarding the treaty's compatible with EU law.

Sweden has tightened security at its nuclear plants after explosives were discovered at Ringhals power station in the country's southwest. Police are investigating the possibility of sabotage.

Police said bomb sniffer dogs had detected the explosives during a routine check of Sweden's three atomic power plants on Wednesday. They were found attached to a truck in an industrial area within the Ringhals plant's perimeter, 70 kilometers (45 miles) south of Sweden's second-biggest city, Gothenburg.

Police spokesman Tommy Nyman said they were investigating but had no suspects. He said the driver of the truck had not been aware of the explosives and was not a suspect.

"An outsider has obviously placed [the explosives] on the truck," Nyman said. "We're talking to the truck driver and are trying to map out her movements within the premises throughout the day."

Suggestions by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi that Italy could benefit from leaving the euro have been flatly rejected by the technocrat government that replaced him last November as well as business leaders.

Mr Berlusconi, whose centre-right party is the largest in parliament but has been hammered in local elections and opinion polls, said on Wednesday that if "Berlin keeps insisting on its negative positions . . . then it could happen that individual countries could return to their national currencies or that Germany would leave the euro."

Quitting the euro was "not a fanciful idea" or "blasphemy", Italian media quoted Mr Berlusconi as saying while attending a book presentation. Leaving the euro could lead to a "competitive" devaluation, the billionaire media tycoon said, claiming that some "German financial experts" he had spoken to were in agreement.

Scotland Yard has referred the files of four more journalists arrested on suspicion of phone hacking offences to the Crown Prosecution Service.

The CPS was passed the files for charging advice on Tuesday and is now considering the cases of 11 journalists arrested under the Metropolitan police's Operation Weeting investigation into alleged phone hacking at the News of the World.

Each of the four files referred to prosecutors on Tuesday relates to an individual journalist and is understood to be in connection with alleged voicemail interception, rather than other offences.

A spokesman for the CPS said: "We are not prepared to discuss the identities of those involved or the alleged offences in any greater detail at this stage as a number of related investigations are ongoing.

settore TRASPORTI: SCIOPERO GENERALE SETTORE PUBBLICO E PRIVATO - ADESIONE SETTORE TRASPORTI

modalita: AEREO: 24 ORE; FERROVIARIO: DALLE 21.00 DEL 21/6 ALLE 21.00 DEL 22/6; TPL: 24 ORE CON MODALITA' LOCALI; MARITTIMO: 24 ORE CON DIVERSE MODALITA'

ESCLUSO REGIONE EMILIA ROMAGNA

Joachim Gauck has bowed to pressure from the German Constitutional Court, and announced he will not sign off on the ESM and the fiscal pact for the time being; Court earlier announced that it expects the president to holds off his signature, as it requires more than a few hours to examine the case; Gauck acts under warning that an early signature might have produced a constitutional crisis; Wolfgang Schäuble criticised court for its intention to examine the ESM; ESM and fiscal pact are both now likely to be delayed beyond July 1; the Bundesbank said Monti's plan amounted to monetary financing; there is still confusion about the details about the Monti plan, but one official said it involved the ECB either directly, or indirectly; Monti said he will not request aid under any circumstance because Italy had "done its homework"; independent consultants put the worst case scenario recapitalisation requirement at €51bn to €62bn; there are huge differences of assumptions between the reports, despite the relatively narrow range of the likely recapitalisation requirement; the Spanish government says it has no intention to close down any bank; a more detailed report by a group of auditors is expected for September; yesterday's Spanish bond auction produce the highest yields since 1997; Claudi Perez says eurozone has 10 days to save the euro; ECB governing council decides to further loosen the collateral framework but there were dissenting votes; Cyprus considers to negotiate a bail-out, either from the EU, or Russia; Samaras presents his conservative government with Vassilis Rapanos as finance minister; Finland opposes extension of timeline for Greece; Rutte increasingly irritated by Merkel's call for `political union'; Euro crisis countries are catching up much faster than thought until now, an unpublished study shows; Willem Buiter, meanwhile, says the probability of a collapse of the eurozone has risen dramatically.

Accused of irritating France and Russia, frustrating the United States and falling into a testy exchange with Argentina over the Falklands, David Cameron's G20 summit didn't go well.

As he returns from Mexico, the British prime minister is probably hoping to put the series of apparent diplomatic missteps behind him, but it may not be that easy.

German public opinion is highly concerned that German taxpayers could have to cover a portion of the public debts accumulated by spendthrift southern European countries. They are right, they should not, because we have a monetary, not a fiscal union. This is why the treaty includes a no-bailout clause. This clause, however, was transgressed in May 2010 with the first Greek bailout, and again with the creation of the EFSF to deal with the Irish crisis, and now with the ESM. Germany has championed all these missteps. The consequences are unavoidable.

Consider the emblematic case of Greece. Back then, it would have been easy to invoke the no-bailout clause and let Greece go to the IMF. The Fund would have provided temporary support and let Greece partially default. Back then, the public debt stood at 120% of  GDP (€ 239 billion). A 50% default would have been enough. The costs would have been borne largely by investors, including German banks. Instead, Germany and the other Euro Area countries imposed unrealistic fiscal austerity policies, which deepened and lengthened the recession, against loans. The debt to GDP ratio has massively increased. After having resisted for nearly two years, Germany arranged for a partial Greek default that has brought the Greek debt down to 150% of GDP, higher than before the crisis. Meanwhile, private bondholders have passed much of the debt to official institutions - the IMF and the ECB. The German government now holds its share of this debt, via the ECB and the collective loans. But the debt is still far too large.

The real risk, then, is that a succession of defaults eventually bankrupts all Euro Area countries, including Germany. Debts of currently endangered countries represent about 200% of German GDP. What is to be done then to avoid a total European meltdown? The only possibility is spelled in three letters: ECB. The ECB is the only institution in the world that has deep enough pockets. It can issue a guarantee of all public debts or buy these debts, either through its SMP programme or on the secondary market. Of course, debt monetization is commonly seen as letting the inflation devil in the house. This is not so sure in the current circumstances. Assume that large amounts of debt are replaced by cash. The question is whether this cash will be used to support spending in the Euro Area, which is the way inflation could rise. Large scale spending is unlikely at this juncture. Eventually, when growth returns, the ECB can always drain cash by issuing its own debt instruments. The real inflation danger is that the ECB finances future deficits on an ongoing basis. This must be ruled out, hence the need to adopt, and if possible strengthen, the Fiscal Pact and to firmly re-instate the no-bailout rule. Of course, this all must be done fast, for the bill keeps rising any day that passes. The Leaders should stop wasting their times on small schemes that won't work. It is about time that they design the big picture and jump ahead of markets.

ABORTION IS ILLEGAL in Ireland, except (theoretically) where a woman is going to die as a result of her pregnancy. Even where there is a substantial risk the life of a pregnant woman and she needs an abortion, she must travel overseas to have an abortion.

The very well-funded anti-choice lobby has made sure that any moves towards amending the law, even in the most harrowing of cases for pregnant women, have been met with hysteria about the murder of the innocent unborn. It's no longer enough for them that women are forced to travel - now they are stepping up their sustained attack on women's rights to increase the shame and stigma levelled at women who have had, or want the right to have, abortions.

Over the past few weeks in Dublin, over 100 anti-choice billboards have sprung up, alongside 200 Luas ads, and freestanding advertisements. We are told that there are 100 Dublin Bus ads on the way. Some of the ads display an image of a torn ultrasound scan, others display a photo of a woman's face torn in half, with the slogan "Abortion tears her life apart."

The eurozone is stuck firmly in a sharp economic contraction, with the region's escalating debt crisis hitting Germany with increasing severity, according to a closely watched survey.

Purchasing managers' indices for the 17-country region showed private sector activity shrinking at the same pace as in May, which was the fastest in almost three years. But Germany's economy, which has so far saved the eurozone from recession, suffered a significant deterioration, especially in its manufacturing sector - indicating its exporters were being affected by gloomier global conditions.

"The downturn is gathering pace and spreading across the region," warned Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit, which produces the survey. The latest results suggested companies were "preparing for conditions to worsen in the coming months, with the darker outlook often attributed to uncertainty caused by the region's ongoing economic and political crisis".

One bright spot, however, was an improvement in the French purchasing managers' indices - which suggested some of the gloom about eurozone prospects had been overdone.

Spain's banks would need up to 62 billion euros ($78 billion) in capital to withstand a worst-case economic scenario, according to two consulting firms hired by the government to conduct stress tests on the lenders.

Oliver Wyman Ltd. estimated that the financial system would need between 51 billion euros and 62 billion euros should Spanish gross domestic product shrink by 6.5 percent and house prices fall as much as 60 percent from their peak. Roland Berger Strategy Consultants said banks would require 51.8 billion euros in that scenario.

Spain hired the two firms last month to estimate the capital shortfall at the nation's banks as investors questioned the health of lenders pummeled by a five-year real estate slump. Economy Minister Luis de Guindos has said Spain will use the results of the studies to determine how much money it might need to draw from the 100 billion euros made available by Europe after it requested funding to clean up banks.

Moody's Investors Service has begun notifying some big banks that their credit ratings may get cut as early as this afternoon.

The calls started going on in the last hour or so, according to people briefed on the matter but not authorized to speak on the record. With ratings changes, Moody's typically reaches out to the banks a few hours before it publicly announces anything, giving them a chance to process the information.

Moody's, one of that nation's largest ratings agencies, announced in February that it would asses the credit of 17 global financial companies for potential downgrades, including Goldman Sachs and Bank of America. Morgan Stanley, which was hit hard in the financial crisis, could be the most vulnerable. The agency has warned it could cut the bank's ratings by three notches, leaving it two levels above junk and below some of its rivals.

Moody's did not respond to requests for comment. While Moody's has started notifying the banks for prepare for rating changes this afternoon, the timeline for the agency's actions is unclear.

In simple terms that even a crazy horse could understand, under the current circumstances, what is a speculative attack?  Betting that the Euro sinks... and Zone export goods become cheaper? Betting that the Euro rises, meaning raw materials are cheaper?

Betting that major banks fail?

(I'm too focused elsewhere to understand this, not to mention my simple mind. Help, please.)

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

A high court judge has accused bankers of forcing the collapse of the Farepak Christmas savings club by sucking it dry of millions of pounds of savers' hard-earned cash.

The court heard that HBOS forced Farepak's directors to continue collecting savers' deposits - cash which the bankers derided as "Doris money" - when it was clear that the savings club was going to go bust.

"HBOS knew that those deposits would be paid ... and that the only beneficiary of those deposits would be HBOS," said Mr Justice Peter Smith.

The judge said that HBOS, which is now part of the bailed-out Lloyds Banking Group, did not break the law by taking £4m of savers' deposits when it was clear that Farepak was on the brink of collapse. But he added that the bank's behaviour "might not be regarded in the public's eyes as being acceptable".

The US policy of using drone strikes to carry out targeted killings presents a major challenge to the system of international law that has endured since the second world war, a UN investigator has said.

Christof Heyns, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, fears that Barack Obama's CIA-run programmes in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere will encourage other states to flout long-established international human rights law.

In his strongest critique so far of drone strikes, Heyns suggested that some attacks may constitute war crimes.

Addressing the same meeting, organised by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Pakistan's UN ambassador in Geneva, Zamir Akram, called for international legal action to halt the "totally counterproductive" US drone strikes in his country.

An anti-narcotics court judge in the northern city of Rawalpindi has issued an arrest warrant for the candidate nominated for the prime minister's post by President Asif Ali Zardari.

The judge on Thursday cited Makhdoom Shahabuddin's alleged role in a scandal involving the import of a drug that can be used to make methamphetamine.

Shahabuddin, a member of the ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP), filed his nomination papers on Thursday. Two other PPP leaders, Raja Pervez Ashraf and Qamar Zaman Kaira, also filed their nomination papers as alternative candidates.

Asked about the reported arrest warrant after he filed his papers, Shahabuddin said he was not afraid of "hostile winds".

A Syrian pilot has been granted political asylum after landing his MiG fighter jet in neighbouring Jordan, in the first such defection during a revolt that activists say has left more than 15,000 people dead.

"The council of ministers has decided to grant the pilot, Colonel Hassan Merei al-Hamade, political asylum," Jordanian Information Minister Samih Maaytah told the AFP news agency after a government official said the Russian MiG-21 had made an emergency landing at a base in Mafraq near the border.

Syria's state television said the warplane was flying near the border on Wednesday when contact was lost at 07:34 GMT, with Jordan saying it had crossed the frontier minutes later.

The opposition Syrian National Council said: "The plane took off at high speed and flew at low altitude from a military base between Deraa and Sweida in the south of the country... to avoid detection by radar.

Uruguay is set to introduce legislation allowing the state to sell and distribute marijuana, a first in Latin America.

The measure was one of 15 measures to fight crime presented by President Jose Mujica's administration.

The goal was for "strict state control over the distribution and production" of cannabis, said Defence Minister Eleuterio Fernandez Huidobro.

The government will also urge that marijuana sales be legalised worldwide, Huidobro said, adding the measure could discourage the use of so-called hard drugs.

Marijuana consumption is already legal in Uruguay

MercoPress: The Paraguayan Senate has summoned President Fernando Lugo for Friday midday to commence the political impeachment process which was voted almost unanimously in the Lower House (76 to 1) and will decide on his future.

Tim's El Salvador Blog: Tuesday marked the 100th day of the truce between El Salvador's gangs which has dramatically dropped the homicide rate in the country.   The gangs spoke about the future of the truce yesterday reports the AP...

Colombia Reports: Raul Sossa, President of Sintramienergetica, Colombia's national trade union for mining and energy workers, died in a car accident Thursday, according to local media.

LAHT, BOGOTA - Strife-torn Colombia is the scene of the worst humanitarian tragedy in Latin America with nearly 400,000 refugees and 4 million people internally displaced, according to the U.N.'s refugee agency.

In April of this year, while the 2012 Olympics test events were continuing apace in the pools and stadiums of London, I was with a documentary film crew in Salt Lake City, Utah - driving up, and into, one of the largest open-pit mines in the world. With the mercury rising to record levels in this arid corner of the western US, a trip to the Kennecott Copper Mine was less a visitor's tour than it was a fact-finding mission.

This year's medals, the largest and heaviest in Olympic history, will be made almost entirely from the raw materials extracted and smelted at the Kennecott Copper Mine, owned by Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto. But now this mine is also at the centre of a federal lawsuit in the Utah courts, where Rio Tinto Kennecott stands accused of violating the US Clean Air Act for over five years.

Stretching 3.22km wide and 1.2km deep, the Kennecott mining operation, generating one quarter of all US copper, as well as a portion of its gold, silver and molybdenum, has never been too far from controversy. Its size has much to do with it: producing more copper than any other mine in history, it is said to be the largest man-made hole on the planet. But the vast amount of waste generated as a result of the mine has made it the single largest industrial polluter in the Salt Lake City basin, contributing a hefty amount to the region's total overall pollution.

Now a coalition of environmental, health and advocacy groups have said Rio Tinto are endangering the health of Salt Lake City citizens by flouting emission standards set by the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The coalition alleges that the totality of Rio Tinto's operations in Utah are contributing to making Salt Lake City one of the worst cities in the country for acute air pollution. Rio Tinto maintains it has received permission to expand its operations with all the necessary approvals from the state of Utah.

Over the past several decades, U.S. industries have injected more than 30 trillion gallons of toxic liquid deep into the earth, using broad expanses of the nation's geology as an invisible dumping ground.

No company would be allowed to pour such dangerous chemicals into the rivers or onto the soil. But until recently, scientists and environmental officials have assumed that deep layers of rock beneath the earth would safely entomb the waste for millennia.

There are growing signs they were mistaken.

Records from disparate corners of the United States show that wells drilled to bury this waste deep beneath the ground have repeatedly leaked, sending dangerous chemicals and waste gurgling to the surface or, on occasion, seeping into shallow aquifers that store a significant portion of the nation's drinking water.

Obesity isn't just bad for individual health--or even the larger health care systems--it's also a strain on the planet. A recent report from the British Medical Council looks at the effect of increased global fatness on world food energy demands--and finds that all those extra pounds could require as much food energy as another half billion people. This in turn could cause food prices to rise. The U.S., of course, is responsible for the bulk of the problem.

The researchers used existing data on body mass index (BMI) and height distribution to estimate average adult body mass, with total biomass calculated as the product of average body mass and population size. They then estimated the percentage of the population of major countries that are overweight or obese, as well as their average body mass. What they found is disturbing: in 2005, the global adult human biomass was about 287 million tons, 15 million of which can be traced back to overweight people, and 3.5 million of which are the result of obesity.

Not all of this extra biomass is distributed equally. North America has just 6% of the planet's population, but 34% of its biomass comes from obesity. For some perspective, Asia has 61% of the world's population and just 13% of biomass from obesity.

Five genetic tweaks made a deadly strain of bird flu that can infect humans spread more easily, according to a study that the U.S. government had first sought to censor on concerns it could be used by bioterrorists.

The genetic changes made the H5N1 virus airborne among ferrets, the mammals whose response to flu is most like that of humans, researchers from the Netherlands wrote in the journal Science today. The likelihood of those changes occurring naturally is difficult to estimate but there is "no fundamental hurdle to that happening," said Derek Smith, a University of Cambridge researcher who led a second study.

Government workers cull chickens at the Cheung Sha Wan wholesale market in Hong Kong. Photographer: Paul Hilton/Bloomberg

"We now know that we're living on a fault line," Smith said on a conference call with reporters yesterday. "It's an active fault line, it really could do something, and now what we need to know is, how likely is that?"

The economic and political turmoil in Greece is not just jeopardizing the country's economic future, it is also having a devastating effect on the country's rich cultural past, according to archaeologists in Athens.

Last month, the Association of Greek Archaeologists warned that the economic policies dictated by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund would cause "the destruction of both our country and our cultural heritage". The austerity measures intended to cut government debt have forced the state archaeological service to slash staff numbers by more than 10%, with a further 35-50% reduction possible. Research and excavations are being abandoned. Museums that can no longer afford to pay for security are being plagued by armed robbers. And organized criminals are exploiting the chaos in an explosion of illegal digs and the trafficking of illicitly procured antiquities.

Despina Koutsoumba, president of the archaeologists' association, says that the government no longer funds new research projects -- other than those involving foreign partners to whom they are contractually obliged.

ScienceDaily (June 21, 2012) -- Despite modest gains in lifespan over the past century, the United States still trails many of the world's countries when it comes to life expectancy, and its poorest citizens live approximately five years less than more affluent persons, according to a new study from Rice University and the University Colorado at Boulder.

The study, "Stagnating Life Expectancies and Future Prospects in an Age of Uncertainty," used time-series analysis to evaluate historical data on U.S. mortality from the Human Mortality Database. The study authors reviewed data from 1930 through 2000 to identify trends in mortality over time and forecast life expectancy to the year 2055. Their research will be published in an upcoming issue of Social Science Quarterly.

Although the researchers found that the U.S. can expect very moderate gains in coming years (less than an additional three years through 2055), the U.S. still trails its developed counterparts in life expectancy. For example, the average life expectancy in the U.S. for a person born today is is 78.49, which is significantly lower than people born in Monaco, Macau and Japan, which have the three highest life expectancies (89.68, 84.43 and 83.91 years, respectively). In addition, the most deprived U.S. citizens tend to live five years less than their more affluent countrymen, according to Justin Denney, Rice assistant professor of sociology, who was principal author for the study.

ScienceDaily (June 21, 2012) -- One is a rocky planet 1.5 times the size of Earth. The other is a gaseous world nearly four times Earth's size. Together they form a spectacular system in which two planets orbit closer to each other than any yet discovered.

"We've never known of planets like this," said Yale University astronomer Sarbani Basu, a member of the research team that analyzed the system. "If you were on the smaller planet looking up, the larger planet would seem more than twice the size of Earth's full moon. It would be jaw-dropping."

Basu's research focused on determining the properties of the planets' host star -- work that was essential for discerning the characteristics of the orbiting planets.

A little low-fi post-punk to ease us into our weekend.

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