Defence witnesses from the far right in Norway have backed Anders Behring Breivik's views on Islam in court on Day 31 of his murder trial.

They said Norway was threatened by Muslim immigration, an argument used by Breivik in an attempt to justify massacring 77 people and injuring 242.

Breivik's defence said the extremists' testimony proved he was not insane because others shared his views.

However, the speakers did not condone Breivik's attacks.

The former deputy prime minister Lord Prescott has written to the home secretary to complain about a security firm that used unpaid jobseekers to steward the Queen's diamond jubilee celebrations in London.

He said he was "deeply concerned" by the revelations, published in the Guardian on Tuesday, that up to 30 unpaid jobseekers on the government's work programme were asked to sleep under London Bridge before the river pageant on Sunday.

He is calling for Theresa May to investigate whether the company has broken the security industry's own employment standards and is urging the government to review the company's contract for the Olympics.

The backgrounds of up to 500,000 people are being scrutinised in an unprecedented security screening designed to stop the Olympic Games being disrupted by criminals or terrorists, the Guardian has learned.

In what is understood to be the biggest vetting process since the second world war, the Home Office has so far refused about 100 applications for Games accreditation, mostly because of concerns about the extent of people's criminal records.

However, some people have been denied accreditation on the advice of MI5, which has to assess whether a person might pose a significant threat to national security.

The pope's butler was formerly questioned by Vatican investigators on Tuesday, 13 days after he was arrested on suspicion of leaking letters addressed to Benedict XVI.

Paolo Gabriele, who has been held under guard at the Vatican since his arrest, has promised to collaborate, suggesting he may name accomplices.

Suspicions that Gabriele is one of many whistleblowers at the Vatican who have been leaking embarrassing documents were strengthened when Italy's La Repubblica published what it said were freshly leaked letters on Sunday.

Azerbaijan's defence ministry says that five of its soldiers have been killed in clashes with Armenian troops along the border separating the two countries, deepening tensions between the two former Soviet nations.

The ministry said in a statement on Tuesday that exchanges of gunfire had been reported over the last two days at numerous points along Azerbaijan's western border.

Armenia said earlier that three of its soldiers died in the clashes.

A total of 22 parties will contest the general elections in Greece on June 17,it was announced Tuesday after the approval of their participation by the country's Supreme Court.

The court did not give the "green light" to seven political parties due to belated submission of incomplete files, according to the official announcement by the court.

In the previous elections of May 6, 32 parties participated, but no one won a clear parliamentary majority.

According to numbers published by the French Ministry of the Interior, a majority of French citizens residing overseas (53%) voted for right-wing candidate former President Nicolas Sarkozy in France's presidential election just one month ago.

But French citizens living abroad looked to be changing it up in the first round of parliamentary elections on June 2 and 3, with Socialist-backed candidates leading in seven out of 11 designated constituencies.

Although France's overseas territories have long been represented in Parliament, this is the first time France is allowing deputies for its expat population to have seats. The initiative was undertaken by former President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose government passed a law in 2008 creating new electoral constituencies for French citizens living abroad.

Sueddeutsche Zeitung has the story that the eurozone is about to reach a deal with Spain: a loan to the Frob rescue fund in exchange for commitments on bank sector reform; the deal would not involve any EFSF equity stakes in Spanish banks, and would raise the Spanish state's total debt levels

Not

The purpose of this compromise is to avoid a fully-fledged programme, which Spain is too proud to accept; the two external auditors appointed to estimate the recapitalisation requirements of the Spanish banking system are expected to report this weekend; earlier yesterday Spain's finance minister said the country no longer had access to the markets as the spreads were now intolerable; Mariano Rajoy for the first time embraced eurobonds and a banking union as a solution to the European crisis; Moody's downgrades several German banks, citing the deterioration of the crisis, and their low loss-absorbing capacity; Austrian banks were also downgraded due to their exposure to central and eastern Europe; Holger Steltzner warns against lending Spain money without control over the countries expenditure; the European Commission is about to propose a bank resolution policy without any degree of cross-country risk sharing; proposal foresees a fund, financed by savers, and a bail-in of shareholders and bondholders; Germany's Bafin rejects a banking union; Handelsblatt calls Draghi's banking union an "attack on German savers"; Martin Wolf gets really gloomy about the world economy - and the eurozone in particular; German coalition edges towards a stock exchange turnover tax;a poll shows that 49% of German want Greece to leave the eurozone, with 39% opposed; the euro crisis, meanwhile, has encouraged the development of a barter economy in Greece.

Kantoos Economics: [A] very famous theorem, Modigliani-Miller, tells us that the structure of how a company finances itself - under lots of idealizing conditions - is irrelevant for how much it is worth. For the Modest Proposal and other suggestions of how to structure European sovereign debt, this means that when the "blue" part of the debt has higher seniority and thus, lower rates, the yields on the "red" debt will be so high that the interest rate cost will be the same in total. In theory, that is, without panic or disintegration or mutualization of debt.

Yanis Varoufakis: I suppose that KE mentioned the Modigliani-Miller theorem (MMT) because of what it may bring to bear on the debate regarding the structure of the Eurozone's aggregate debt, and my claim that re-structuring it (along the lines of Policy 2 of the Modest Proposal), would return the Eurozone to structural robustness. MMT shows that, all other things being equal, and under a set of assumptions that I mention below, a corporation's expected net worth (and thus solvency) is independent of the extent to which its finances are predicated upon debt, equity or any conceivable mixture of debt and equity. In other words, no corporation can be aided back into solvency by altering the mix of debt and equity of its finances.

As KE understands well (and says so in his post), MMT is irrelevant to us (i.e. to a debate on re-structuring the Eurozone's public debt) for two reasons. First, because the assumptions underpinning MMT do not hold. In particular, MMT assumes that bankruptcy is not an issue, that price formation falls Brownian motion (i.e. is fundamentally random) and that all relevant decision makers share the same information set. None of these apply in the case of the Eurozone. Secondly, and much, much more importantly, the Eurozone's member-states are not corporations. This is important for two reasons: (a) Their financing is not based on equity at all but, rather, only on different debt instruments. The Modest Proposal simply argues that ECB-bonds are a better debt instrument than the existing government bonds or the touted severally and jointly guaranteed bonds. (b) The other reason, naturally, is that the member-states' revenues (i.e. tax take) cannot be deemed independent of their expenditures (unlike a corporation's that can be; and are).

The European Central Bank (ECB) has left its key interest rate unchanged at 1%.

Mario Draghi, president of the ECB, will hold a news conference later to explain the [non-] decision.

[Apologies for editorializing]

The European economy is in danger of overheating. We must not lower our guard with respect to the inflation monster.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}

Finance ministers from the developed world have thrown their weight behind moves towards greater "fiscal and financial union" in the eurozone as the best way to tackle the debt crisis threatening to destroy the single currency.

The British chancellor, George Osborne, and other finance ministers from the G7 group of industrialised nations and central bankers discussed the growing pressure on Europe in a telephone conference on Tuesday in what British officials described as a "stocktaking session" ahead of the G20 summit in Mexico on 18-19 June.

David Cameron flies to Berlin later this week for talks, where he will tell the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, that Britain will support greater fiscal governance in the eurozone.

Shares of Qantas Airways have hit a record low after the Australian flagship carrier forecast a drop of more than 90 per cent in full year earnings on the back of steep losses in its international arm.

The embattled carrier's shares plunged as much as 18 per cent to an all-time low of A$1.16 before recovering some ground to be down 15 per cent midway through the trading session on Tuesday.

The stock price has shed 40 per cent in value in the past 11 months.

The European Commission on Wednesday will unveil new proposals designed to stop taxpayers' money being used to bail out failed banks.

They aim to ensure losses are borne by bank shareholders and creditors and minimise costs for taxpayers.

It wants to prevent runs on banks in one country - such as Spain or Greece - pulling down the entire system.

A key goal is to make sure that essential everyday banking functions - such as cash machines - are kept going.

So, if the whole history of capitalism, and not just the experiences of the last few years, shows that the supposed remedies for today's economic crisis are not going to work, what are our political and economic leaders doing? Perhaps they are insane - if we follow Albert Einstein's definition of insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results". But the more likely explanation is that, by pushing these policies against all evidence, our leaders are really telling us that they want to preserve - or even intensify, in areas like welfare policy - the economic system that has served them so well in the past three decades.

For the rest of us, the time has come to choose whether we go along with that agenda or make these leaders change course.

Do we want a society where 50% of young people are kept out of work in order to bring the deficit down from 9% of GDP to 3% in three years? A society in which the rich have to be made richer to work harder (at their supposed jobs of investing and creating wealth) while the poor have to be made poorer in order to work harder? Where a tiny minority (often called the 1% but more like the 0.1% or even 0.01%) control a disproportionate, and increasing, share of everything - not just income and wealth but also political power and influence (through control of the media, thinktanks, and even academia)?

This is a transcript of an interview of Steve Keen by Paul Mason of BBC Newsnight.

MASON: To be clear it is not that they know the existence of banks they just think bank and debts and money are neutral to the working of the system.

KEEN: They think you can model a macro economy without modelling without money or banks.

...

MASON: Just explain to us why this huge sway of professional economists ended up not realising that the important of banking and debt. How did we get there?

KEEN: It starts from a vision that, really come to persuade students, when they don't have enough exposure to money and debt. That money and debt don't matter.

...

... When they arrive as naïve students at the university. They are given this little exercise, to say lets see what your preference are and to work out what your income is and what relatives prices are? Work out what you consume given that information. Now lets double prices and double your income what happens. The answer is nothing. I still buy the same amount. Let's say therefore money is just a veil over barter. We can ignore the role of money in modelling capitalism and on we go. That is only true in a world without credit and a world without debt and a world without banks. We don't live on that planet.

Syria has declared as unwelcome the ambassadors of several Western states, a week after governments around the world expelled its top diplomats.

The US, UK, French and Turkish envoys were among those designated "personae non gratae". Many have already left.

President Bashar al-Assad has blamed outside powers for Syria's divisions.

Meanwhile, the UN has said the Syrian government has agreed to allow aid agencies to enter the four provinces that have seen the most violence.

Nigeria's civil aviation authority has grounded all Dana Air's aeroplanes after one of its aircraft crashed on Sunday in a busy Lagos suburb.

The commercial aircraft was flying from the Nigerian capital, Abuja, to Lagos when it crashed and burst into flames.

All 153 people on board, and an unknown number on the ground, were killed.

Meanwhile, the country's lawmakers have called for the head of the civil aviation authority to step aside while they carry out an investigation.

South Sudan's president has accused government officials of plundering at least $4bn (£2.6bn) from state coffers.

In an extraordinary letter to more than 75 current and former senior government staff, Salva Kiir demands that they return the stolen funds.

Corruption has plagued the government of South Sudan, one of the world's poorest countries, since the 2005 peace deal that ended more than 20 years of civil war with Sudan, paving the way for independence last July.

"We fought for freedom, justice and equality," the president'sKiir's letter reads. "Yet, once we got to power, we forgot what we fought for and began to enrich ourselves at the expense of our people."

A senior Sri Lankan official has said that he has no idea about the whereabouts of a disappeared journalist seven months after saying he believed the man was alive and living abroad.

Human rights activists say that the remarks of former Attorney-General Mohan Peiris betray insensitivity to the plight of missing people.

They say that is especially so at a time when disappearances are ongoing.

Several dozen of such cases have been reported since October.

Libyan authorities have wrested back control of Tripoli International Airport from ex-rebels who occupied the runway, surrounding planes and grounding all flights in response to the disappearance and possible arrest of their commander, officials said.

It took until Monday evening for the authorities to regain control of the airport when transitional government forces stormed it after negotiations with the fighters broke down, Omar al-Khadrawi, deputy interior minister in Libya's transitional government, told journalists.

Flights were not expected to resume for at least 24 hours because of the damage caused to the airport's infrastructure.

People in the US state of Wisconsin are voting on whether or not to recall the state's governor.

Republican Scott Walker angered many voters with hefty budget cuts and could be kicked out two years before the end of his term.

Most opinion polls show Walker with a slight advantage over his Democratic challenger Tom Barrett, a former member of the US congress who was Walker's opponent in the 2010 governor's race.

If Walker surivives, it will give his party a huge boost in the run-up to the presidential elections later in the year.

Thousands of protesters have converged in Cairo's Tahrir Square for the fourth night in a row to protest against Ahmed Shafiq, the presidential candidate widely seen as a representative of Hosni Mubarak's deposed regime.

Crowds marched to the square from several locations in the capital, led by two defeated candidates from the first round of the presidential ballot.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a sharp warning to government ministers on Tuesday, threatening that anyone who votes for a bill to legalize homes on the settlement of Ulpana Hill, which was built on privately-owned Palestinian land, will be fired.

The Prime Minister's Office has begun updating ministers on Tuesday that Netanyahu decided that the government position is to oppose a bill that would authorize settlement construction on privately-owned Palestinian land.

Officials in Netanyahu's office said that the significance of the message was that ministers and deputy ministers could not vote for the bill.

Israel Defense Forces chief Benny Gantz criticized former Israeli officials on Tuesday for recently speaking out publicly on issues regarding Iran.

"There has been much chatter on Iran in the public discourse," Gantz said during a Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee meeting. "Chatter full of exaggerations.  Operationally, it is impossible to know where they're aiming, or where they're planning. Only a very few people know anything, what is possible, and what is impossible. Many people are boasting about their knowledge - but only a few really know anything."

Gantz added that debates over Iran should only be held in the relevant settings. "There are people who used to be in the know, but are no longer," specified Gantz. "The only ones who can decide to stop building a nuclear reactor are the Iranians. Iran has been striving for, and is still striving for a military nuclear reactor. Iran has yet to decide to cross that line - because of strategic considerations."

(Reuters) - In what U.S. officials described as major blow to al Qaeda, the group's second-ranking leader, a militant known as Abu Yahya al-Libi, was killed in a strike by a missile fired from a U.S.-operated drone, an official confirmed on Tuesday.

The official said the Libyan-born Libi, a cleric whose real name was Mohamed Hassan Qaid, was killed in a drone strike early morning Monday, Pakistan time. The drone-launched missile was targeted at a suspected militant hideout in Hesokhel, a village in North Waziristan, a tribal region in Pakistan along its border with Afghanistan.

U.S. officials said that Libi, who had appeared in al Qaeda propaganda videos and once escaped from an a U.S.-operated prison in Afghanistan, was a key figure in what remained of the core al Qaeda network founded by Osama bin Laden, who was killed last year in a U.S. commando raid on his hideout near a Pakistani military academy.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

A solar-powered plane is on its way from Spain to Morocco in a bid to finish the second leg of its pioneering journey.

Pilot Bertrand Piccard is set to land in the Moroccan capital Rabat by Tuesday evening.

The Solar Impulse, the size of a jumbo jet, is powered by 12,000 solar cells turning four electrical motors.

The 2,500km-trip (1,550 miles), begun in Switzerland in May, is described as a rehearsal for a world tour in 2014 .

China has long insisted other countries refrain from meddling in its domestic affairs. Now it appears even its smog is sacrosanct. Foreign embassies that issue air pollution readings are acting illegally and interfering in its internal business, a senior official warned on Tuesday.

China tightened monitoring standards in January, but many Beijing residents remain sceptical about official pollution information in the capital.

The US embassy's hourly tweets of air quality readings from its own equipment have become a cherished alternative reference point for almost 20,000 followers.

A pair of scientists have accused BP of an attack on academic freedom after the oil company successfully subpoenaed thousands of confidential emails related to research on the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.

The accusation from oceanographers Richard Camilli and Christopher Reddy offered a rare glimpse into the behind-the-scenes legal manoeuvring by BP in the billion-dollar legal proceedings arising from the April 2010 blow-out of its well.

It also heightened fears among scientists of an assault on academic freedoms, following the legal campaign against a number of prominent climate scientists.

Garlic wholesalers sell garlics at an agricultural fair in Yazi Township of Rushan City, east China's Shandong Province, June 5, 2012. China's garlic price has spiked since late May. Until June 4, the garlic price hiked more than 30 percent as compared to the price on May 21

Planet Venus is set to move across the face of the Sun as viewed from Earth.

The more than six-and-a-half-hour transit, which starts just after 22:00 GMT (23:00 BST) on Tuesday is a very rare astronomical phenomenon that will not be witnessed again until 2117.

Observers will position themselves in northwest America, the Pacific, and East Asia to catch the whole event.

But some part of the spectacle will be visible across a much broader swathe of Earth's surface, weather permitting.

A new type of flexible ultra-thin glass has been unveiled by the firm that developed Gorilla Glass, currently used to make screens of many mobile devices.

Dubbed Willow Glass, the product can be "wrapped" around a device, said the New York-based developer Corning.

The glass was showcased at the Society for Information Display's Display Week, an industry trade show in Boston.

Besides smartphones, it could also be used for displays that are not flat, the company said.

#iwantajob‬ Spanish participant:I feel cheated. I studied, worked & am unemployed. When I go to job centre, they tell me to cut my CV down.

Looking back to the Silver Jubilee of 1977, the Sex Pistols' hit single God Save the Queen has almost overtaken the official celebratory events in terms of its historical notoriety. But there is no equivalent for this year's Diamond Jubilee - only a half-hearted attempt to get the original single back in the charts.

There were alternative demonstrations organised by Republic and UK Uncut [pictured above], as well as the odd anti-monarchy tea party. But mainstream anti-monarchy sentiment is hard to come by.

Ukraine suffered a worrying illness scare, six days before the Euro 2012 co-hosts play their opening match against Sweden, with 10 players suffering from stomach upsets, the coach, Oleg Blokhin, said after a 2-0 warmup defeat by Turkey.

Tummy bug. Yeah right. Reminds me of entire cycling teams being struck down by fever on the Tour de France. I guess they are banking on UEFA not having the guts to exclude a host nation.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}

Ray Bradbury -- author of The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and many more literary classics -- died this morning in Los Angeles, at the age of 91.

We've got confirmation from the family as well as his biographer, Sam Weller.

His grandson, Danny Karapetian, shared these words with io9 about his grandfather's passing: "If I had to make any statement, it would be how much I love and miss him, and I look forward to hearing everyone's memories about him. He influenced so many artists, writers, teachers, scientists, and it's always really touching and comforting to hear their stories. Your stories. His legacy lives on in his monumental body of books, film, television and theater, but more importantly, in the minds and hearts of anyone who read him, because to read him was to know him. He was the biggest kid I know."