Police in Italy have said they detained a 68-year-old man in connection with a bomb attack outside a school last month. One girl was killed and 10 other people injured in the blast.

Italy's ANSA news agency named the 68-year-old suspect as Giovanni Vantaggiato. ANSA said he was a petrol station owner from Copertino, a small village near the southern city of Lecce.

The man was arrested on Wednesday in connection with a May 19 bomb blast outside a school in Brindisi that killed a 16-year-old girl and wounded 10 other people. Investigators had initially said that a local mafia group might have been responsible for the attack in the port city.

European interior ministers have agreed that countries should be allowed to close their borders when they deem it necessary. That puts them at odds with Brussels, which wants to have the final say in such decisions.

European Union interior ministers have reached an agreement that would allow countries in the border-free Schengen zone to re-introduce border controls in emergencies that are deemed to threaten a country's security.

A key change that the agreement reached at a meeting in Luxembourg on Thursday would bring is that for the first time, an influx of immigrants would be defined as just such an emergency.

The interior ministers also agreed that member states themselves should still be the ones to make such decisions.

"We need more Europe; we need more cooperation," said German Chancellor Angela Merkel. She is now calling for a joint budget policy and expanded political union for Europe.

For German chancellor Angela Merkel, the most volatile issue at the moment is the eurozone crisis and the European economy. The German head of government has every reason to worry: Europe has never been so close to the brink of ruin as now. Economic activity has collapsed in most EU countries, with early signs of an end to economic growth in Germany as well.

BRUSSELS - Cypriots officials have more than doubled in number in the EU capital, are working Sundays, sleeping little and whittling down their to-do list to euro crisis essentials as the country prepares to take over the day-to-day running of the EU.

BRUSSELS - The European Commission has said EU freedom of information rules should be tightened up because corporate lawyers and NGOs abuse the system.

Its spokesman, Antony Gravili, told EUobserver on Wednesday (6 June) that most requests to see internal EU documents come from "lawyers for big corporations" and "nutty NGOs" instead of concerned EU citizens.

BRUSSELS - The European Network Against Racism (Enar), an NGO based in Brussels, has condemned a Flemish nationalist for offering a reward of €250 to anybody who reports Burqa-wearing women to the Belgian police.

Filip Dewinter, from Belgium's right wing Vlaams Belang party, announced the initiative on Tuesday (5 June) after police arrested a 24-year old Burqa-clad woman in Brussels for refusing to remove her veil.

Belgium, like France, banned the full face veil last year, with offenders facing up to €150 in fines.

On Saturday, June 2, three people wearing the Jewish skullcap were attacked by a group of assailants with a hammer and iron bar in the southeastern French city of Villeurbanne.

The new assault has revived fears in France's Jewish community that anti-Semitism is on the rise in the wake of a grisly shooting that claimed the lives of four French Jews, including three children, in the southwestern city of Toulouse in March. That attack, carried out by radical Islamist Mohammed Merah, sent shockwaves through France, which is home to Western Europe's largest Jewish community, about 500,000 people.

After Saturday's incident, the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions, France's most prominent Jewish association, released a statement noting the attack "was not an altercation between gangs, but a clear act of anti-Jewish violence". The statement read the incident was "far from being an isolated act" and "part of the shocking surge of anti-Semitic violence that has followed the deadly attack at the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse".

REUTERS - The spokesman of Greece's far-right Golden Dawn party slapped one female leftist politician in the face and threw a glass of water at another during a live TV debate on Thursday, causing a political uproar and an order for his arrest.

Other political parties condemned Ilias Kasidiaris for the assault on the two women during a morning talk show on private television station Antenna ahead of the June 17 parliamentary election.

Kasidiaris, whose party entered parliament for the first time on May 6, was locked in a room at the TV studio but broke down a door and escaped, the TV host said.

A public prosecutor ordered police to track him down and arrest him on charges of causing serious bodily harm, a court official said.

AFP - France's new Socialist government rolled back an emblematic reform of Nicolas Sarkozy's administration on Wednesday with a decree lowering the retirement age from 62 to 60 for some workers, a minister said.

The decree, reducing the age limit for people who begin their careers at the age of 18, was agreed on at a cabinet meeting, Social Affairs Minister Marisol Touraine told reporters as she left the meeting.

It will be finalised before the end of the month before being published in France's official gazette.

Next year around 110,000 people are expected to benefit from the measure at an estimated cost of 1.1 billion euros ($1.4 billion), an amount expected to rise to 3.0 billion euros a year by 2017, she said.

The government is to boycott the Euro 2012 football championship which begins on Friday in protest at the "selective justice" being meted out to the jailed Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko.

In a move that is likely to infuriate Kiev, but will delight human rights campaigners, the Foreign Office confirmed that no ministers would attend England's three group-stage matches. England plays its first game against France on Monday in the eastern city of Donetsk. There will be no official British presence at England's two other qualifying games, against Sweden on 15 June in Kiev, and against the hosts Ukraine in Donetsk on 19 June.

Mario Monti reacts angrily to a front page editorial by Francesco Giavazzi and Alberto Alesina, who had called his reforms misguided and on the brink of failure; Italy's premier acknowledges that his government had lost support; Monti reiterates that he will stick to the current course of austerity, as pressure mounts for early elections this autumn; Merkel says she is in favour of full political union in Europe, with a transfer of power to the centre; she also came out in support of a two-speed Europe, with the eurozone moving at a faster pace than the non-eurozone EU; German coalition agrees on a stock market tax to cajole the SPD into supporting the fiscal pact; Les Echos sees Merkel's designs for political union as a counter attack to push back Francois Hollande's growth agenda; Germany's economics ministry has issued an eight-page paper, attacking Hollande's proposals for growth; a German opinion poll shows the SPD and the Greens ahead, but not enough to form a government; a poll in Bild says that 49% of Germans want a return to the D-Mark; the Spanish government has appointed Luis Maria Linde as new central bank governor; Lucas Papademos warns that a Greek exit would produce 30-50% inflation, and lead to an additional 20% fall in real GDP; Jin Liquin and Keyu Jin offer some really bad advice to eurozone policy makers; Gabor Steingart, meanwhile, says we are not witnessing the failure of Europe, but the failure of the idea that one country can live at the expense of another.

Even today the ECB does not seem to recognize this problem. As a result, its strategy has been to wait and see. Thus, last year it waited until the sovereign debt crisis had sufficiently damaged the banking system and risked leading to an implosion. Close to the precipice, it decided to act and to provide massive amounts of liquidity to banks that were a multiple of what would have been necessary had the ECB acted earlier. Today as the Eurozone is hanging over the precipice again, the ECB again is sitting on the sidelines and waits for worse to come.

...

The European Commission has shown an equal capacity of mismanaging the crisis. Pushed by the creditor nations and the panicky financial markets, it is forcing Eurozone countries to accelerate austerity measures in the midst of a recession.  As a result, the debt to GDP ratios increase as the denominator in this ratio is shrinking faster than the numerator. Countries end up with a higher debt burden, which triggers more panic reactions in the markets.

Again there is a failure to understand what is going on. The excess debt accumulation in the South is matched by an excess accumulation of claims in the North. The correct response would be to force the deficit countries to reduce and the surplus countries to increase spending. The European Commission's strategy, however, forces all the adjustment on the deficit countries without imposing a symmetric and opposite adjustment on the surplus countries. As a result, the Eurozone is forced into a deflationary straitjacket.  

Germany's attempt to balance the benefits of the single currency and the advantages of preserving the Euro-Zone against its traditional preference for fiscal and monetary conservatism has failed, leaving the nation with severe financial problems which will curtail future growth.

German citizens will have to pay twice for the Euro. In the early 2000s, they paid through internal devaluation - reductions in real wages, unemployment and labour market reforms. Now, they will have to pay for the bailouts. Once the artificial boom ends, voters will discover they were betrayed by Germany's pro-European political elite. There will be an electoral revolt and, as in the rest of Europe, a strong challenge from radical political forces with unpredictable consequences.

...

As Friedrich Nietzsche knew: "...hope is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs man's torments." Germany may not, as widely assumed, offer a safe haven in the European debt crisis.

"The government of Spain has realised the seriousness of their problem," a senior German official said.

He added that an agreement had to be reached before a Greek general election on June 17 which could lead to Athens leaving the euro zone if parties opposed to the terms of an EU/IMF bailout win.

There was no immediate official comment from the Spanish government. The EU and German sources spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel hosted British Prime Minister David Cameron on Thursday in Berlin, where the two leaders discussed ideas about how lead Europe out of the eurozone crisis.

Their talks were part of a conference at Chancellor Merkel's office in which Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg also took part. Ninety-three students were on hand as well.

The two leaders agreed that the EU's fiscal pact alone would not be able to stand alone as the only solution for the debt crisis threatening the eurozone.

Spain has passed a crucial test of market confidence, selling more government bonds than originally planned. But rising costs for borrowing are adding to the debt-laden country's fiscal woes.

Spain successfully raised 2.07 billion euros ($2.6 billion) from three bond auctions, with benchmark 10-year government bonds oversubscribed by more than three times, the Spanish Treasury said Thursday.

However, as demand for the country's sovereign debt was "very high," the interests charged by investors in return for the funding also soared, reaching 6.1 percent for the 10-year treasury bills, up from 5.74 percent in April.

In future, banks are to pay for banks, the EU commission says. In the case of Spain, those suggestions are likely to come too late - the country's problems need to be fixed soon.

For the second time since 2008, it's the banks that are at the heart of the EU's concerns. Back then, many of the financial institutions were propped up with public money to save them from faltering. However, confronted with Greece's possible exit from the single currency zone and financially-strapped Spanish banks, the EU finds itself, once again, on the brink of a new banking crisis.

Leading EU politicians seem to agree that the euro currency cannot be saved with small short-term measures. In time for the upcoming EU summit on June 28, a team around EU Council President Herman van Rompuy is to present far-reaching reform plans to defuse the crisis. Apart from Rompuy, Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, Europgroup chief Jean-Claude Juncker and ECB President Mario Draghi are all working on the proposals. DW spoke about the need for reforms with the President of the EU parliament, Martin Schulz.

BRUSSELS - In what has been called "a definite turning point," China's direct investment in Europe over the last couple of years has multiplied by a factor 10, according to a new study.

EU trade commissioner Karel De Gucht welcomed the news, saying that "we need the money."

"Our dataset shows a profound post-2008 surge," says the new study, presented on Thursday (7 June) in Brussels by consultancy firm Rhodium Group. "From €700 million yearly 2004-2008, to roughly €2.3 billion in 2009 and 2010, to €7.4 billion in 2011."

AFP - The European crisis and the threat that Congress could force a drastic cut in spending pose important risks for the US economy, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress Thursday.

Israel has come a step closer to deporting Africans it sees as illegal migrants. Human rights groups oppose the move.

An Israeli court has paved the way for the deportation of hundreds of South Sudanese deemed to have entered the country illegally, rejecting a petition by human rights groups that had delayed the move.

The Jerusalem District Court ruled on Thursday that the petitioners had not proven that the migrants would face "risk to life or exposure to serious damage" if they were deported. It said the state was therefore not obligated to continue to give de facto asylum to the estimated 1,500 South Sudanese.

The leaders of China and Russia have rejected military intervention to stop the violence between government forces and rebels in Syria. The statement comes a day after reports of a massacre by forces loyal to the regime.

Leaders of a regional grouping of Central Asian states, including China and Russia, on Thursday called for dialogue to put an end to the violence in Syria. Their statement implies that Beijing and Moscow will block any moves toward military intervention within the UN Security Council, where they have the power to veto action.

AP - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says U.N. monitors were shot at trying to get to the scene of the latest Syrian massacre.

The U.N. chief told the General Assembly on Thursday that the unarmed observers were initially denied access to the scene in central Hama and "were shot at with small arms" while trying to get there. He did not mention any casualties.

REUTERS - Israel on Wednesday said it would build 851 new settler homes in the occupied West Bank hours after parliament rejected a bill that proposed legalising all settler apartments on privately owned Palestinian land.

Palestinians fear that the settlements, built on land Israel captured in a 1967 war, will deny them a viable state, and have refused to return to peace talks frozen since 2010 until their expansion is halted.

Housing Minister Ariel Atias issued a statement announcing the building of 551 housing units in various settlements across the West Bank and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier said 300 apartments would be erected in the settlement of Beit El.

AFP - Russia supports Tehran's atomic programme as long as it is "peaceful", President Vladimir Putin told Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Thursday ahead of global talks on Iran's nuclear ambitions.

The Iranian president, meanwhile, called for more cooperation between Iran and Russia as NATO "sets its sights on the east", in a likely reference to a missile defence system currently being deployed by the Western alliance.

One of our Observers in the Democratic Republic of Congo shares a gruesome tale, along with photographs, of a massacre that took place in the night of May 13 in a village in the province of South Kivu, in the country's east. Thirty-two people - including six children - were brutally murdered by a rebel militia during a three-hour killing spree that took place just three kilometres away from a UN peacekeepers' base. Readers are warned that they may find the following very shocking.

Washington state's law allowing gay marriage has been blocked from taking effect as opponents filed more than 200,000 signatures seeking a public vote on the issue.

Preserve Marriage Washington turned in the signatures on Wednesday, a day before the state was to begin allowing same-sex marriages.

"The current definition of marriage works and has worked," said Joseph Backholm, the chair of Preserve Marriage Washington.

Across the world, plants and flowers are increasingly reaching the brink of extinction. We get the chance the hold one of the rarest plants in the world, find out how invasive species are killing precious forests in New Caledonia, and check out a controversial scheme to keep back the encroaching sands of the Sahara desert.

The Green party leader Caroline Lucas, MP for Brighton Pavilion, talks to John Vidal about the evolution of the environmental movement: how Margaret Thatcher helped put the environment on the political map; the effect of the Rio Earth summit of 1992; and the rise of popular radical environmental movements in the UK

Deforestation of the Amazon has fallen to its lowest levels since records began, according to data recently released by Brazil's National Institute for Space Research.

The boost for the environment comes a week after president Dilma Rousseff was criticised for weakening the forest protection measures widely credited for the improvement, and two weeks before Brazil hosts the Rio+20 Earth summit.

Using satellite imagery, the institute said 6,418 sq km of Amazon forest was stripped in the 12 months before 31 July 2011 - the smallest area since annual measurements started in 1988.

Peter Kendall, the president of the National Farmers Union (NFU), has argued this week that the UK needs to consider building "super farms":

The challenge of feeding everybody with the constraints of climate change and weather shocks is so great we'll need a complete rethink.

Kendall believes that the acute shortage of farmland in the UK means that the largescale livestock farms seen in countries such as the US and Saudi Arabia - where one super dairy has a herd of 37,000 cows - should now be approved by planners.

This is about a few experimental versions, so we can see whether it lowers greenhouse gas emissions, see whether it's welfare friendly, see what the impacts are on the environment.

But, as Juliette Jowit's news story points out, "super farms" have their critics:

Concerns about large-scale animal farming fall into four categories: of animal welfare; of super units destroying small farms and rural communities; of farms straining soil and water resources and requiring mass transport of chemicals, generating more greenhouse gas pollution; and of such units being unsightly and emitting foul smells.

US technology firm Apple has attempted to bloc the sale of Samsung's newest Galaxy S3 smartphone in the US on grounds of patent infringement. Unfazed, Samsung says its phone will hit US shelves later this month.

Apple filed its lawsuit in a California court on Tuesday, claiming Samsung's cutting-edge Galaxy S3 model violated patents held by the iPhone maker, media reports said Thursday.

In the filing, Apple wants the court to include Samsung's new smartphone in its existing legal complaint against the Nexus model - the South Korean company's previous smartphone made in collaboration with Google.

German police have stepped up the pressure on biker gangs with a large-scale raid in the capital, Berlin, and other regions. The gangs are suspected of involvement in violence, drug dealing and other criminal activities.

A police spokesman said seven people had been arrested Thursday morning in the operation, during which some 1,000 police officers searched more than 70 apartments and buildings used by the gangs. Drug-sniffing dogs were used in the raids.

The raids were part of an investigation into the organized drug trade and gang criminality. Other German states have also seen police raids on biker groups in the past few days.

In his ubiquitous black suit paired with an always crisp, always pristine white shirt unbuttoned to reveal an alarming swathe of chest, France's most flamboyant public intellectual scampers up sand dunes in the Libyan desert, ushers uninitiated Libyan seniors through the gilded corridors of the French presidential palace and unabashedly attempts to conduct the forces of history.

In a documentary titled, "Le Serment de Tobrouk" - or "The Oath of Tobruk" - released in France Wednesday, French philosopher-writer Bernard-Henri Levy is the narrator, director, star of a documentary about his role in the 2011 Libyan intervention.

The Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony has kidnapped nearly 600 children in the past three years, forcing boys to take "magical potions" and turning girls into sex slaves, the UN has found.

Some of the under-age recruits were used as fighters, human shields or spies for Kony's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), according to a report presented to the UN security council.

Kony has evaded capture for nearly three decades, kidnapping thousands of children to fill the ranks of the LRA and terrorising local populations. He achieved global notoriety earlier this year when a US-based charity, Invisible Children, launched the Kony 2012 viral video campaign.

(Reuters) - As more U.S. newspapers cut back on print to reduce costs and focus on their websites, a troubling trend has emerged: online advertising sales are stalling.

In the first quarter, digital advertising revenue at U.S. newspapers rose just 1 percent from a year ago, the fifth consecutive quarter that growth has declined, according to the Newspaper Association of America, a trade organisation.

A flood of excess advertising space, the rise of electronic advertising exchanges that sell ads at cut-rate prices, and the weak U.S. economy are all contributing to the slowdown, publishing executives and observers say.

Microsemi Corp. has denied that there is a "backdoor" in its ProASIC3 FPGAs that would allow users or hackers to circumvent security features. However, the company has also disclosed that a next-generation of programmable devices with enhanced protection will be announced soon.

Microsemi (Aliso Viejo, Calif.) has published a statement following assertions made by academics in Cambridge, England, that they had extracted security keys from ProASIC FPGAs using their own Pipeline Emission Analysis (PEA) technique. The researchers' claim is sensitive because the ProASIC range of FPGAs is considered to be secure and is reportedly used widely in military systems as well as in flight control, industrial and automotive applications.

Discussed here and here. Microsemi (Aliso Viejo, Southern Cal.) acquired the FPGA maker Actel (from Mountain View, Silicon Valley) in late 2010.
How their FPGA became a "Chinese chip" in the press is still a mystery to me.


Europeans think a hundred miles is a long way. Americans think a hundred years is a long time.

Author of the dystopian classic "Fahrenheit 451," sci-fi and fantasy novelist Ray Bradbury has passed away in his home. Bradbury's books critiqued censorship, anti-intellectualism and totalitarianism.

Legendary science fiction author Ray Bradbury, whose novels critiqued censorship and predicted a digital surveillance state, has died at the age of 91 in his Los Angeles home, publisher HarperCollins said on Wednesday.

A recipient of an honorary National Book Award medal for lifetime achievement in 2000 and the National Medal of the Arts in 2004, Bradbury wrote some 500 works and helped define science fiction, becoming one of the few authors from the genre to be accepted among mainstream literary circles.