Spain has announced a fresh set of public spending cuts and tax increases amounting to €65bn over the next two and a half years as the government of Mariano Rajoy struggles to achieve its budget deficit reduction targets with an economy mired in recession.

As part of the measures, announced on Wednesday by Mr Rajoy in parliament, value added tax will be increased from 18 per cent to 21 per cent, unemployment benefits will be reduced and an attempt will be made to rationalise Spain's sprawling local governments.

"I know that the measures that I have announced are not pleasant but they are necessary," Mr Rajoy said when announcing what is his government's fourth set of austerity measures in the seven months it has held power.

As he spoke, thousands of miners marched through the centre of Madrid in protest at the austerity measures, particularly a 60 per cent cut in coal subsidies which they say will force mines to close. Some had spent weeks walking nearly 300 miles from the north of the country before Wednesday's demonstration in the capital.

Germany's constitutional court will likely take its time before ruling on whether the workings of Europe's new last-resort lending mechanism are compatible with the law. The decision may be delayed until the autumn.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble has urged the court to reach a decision soon on the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), but the president of Germany's Constitutional Court, Andreas Vosskuhle, has said the judges will take their time.

A "very thorough examination" was likely he said on Tuesday. Originally, the decision as to whether the ESM and the proposed fiscal pact on national budgets are contrary to the German constitution was expected by the end of July. 0:00:00|0:00:00 German court debates ESM

Schäuble insisted that any delay would trigger "massive uncertainty on the markets" and "significant economic distortions."

The military is poised to provide up to 3,500 extra troops for security duty at the London Olympics, the Guardian can reveal.

The last-ditch move has been forced on ministers only a fortnight before the Games because the security firm G4S has been unable to guarantee it will be able to supply the 10,000 guards it was contracted to deliver.

The home secretary, Theresa May, has been pressing G4S to provide guarantees it can deliver on its commitments, but patience in Whitehall ran out last weekend and talks began over whether the Ministry of Defence could fill the gap.

"The army will provide an insurance policy," said a Whitehall source. The armed forces are already providing up to 13,500 personnel for the Games - split between the venues and back-up for police. Under the contingency plans, this could reach 16,500 - 7,000 more than are being deployed in Afghanistan.

On the 17th anniversary of Europe's worst massacre since World War II, thousands of people from around Bosnia and the world are gathering in the town of Srebrenica to attend a funeral for 520 newly identified victims.

The remains of the victims, exhumed from several mass graves around Srebrenica and recently identified using DNA analysis, will be laid to rest on Wednesday in the town now synonymous with genocide.

Crowds started gathering in Potocari, near Srebrenica, on Tuesday on the eve of the killing of 8,000 men and boys by Serb forces in July 1995.

The coffins are already at the memorial centre and the burial pits have been dug. A group of marchers reached Srebrenica on Tuesday following three-day march through the hills of eastern Bosnia.

They had been retracing backwards the path some 15,000 Bosnians from Srebrenica took in 1995 in an attempt to escape from Serb forces.

clegg was offered compensation for AV disaster by Cammo and chose the bloody Lords, He could have saved the ‪#NHS‬ pic.twitter.com/x5EGSJ8t

Germany's painful experience with hyperinflation in the 1920s is often cited as the reason Germany will never support aggressive initiatives by the European Central Bank to ease the euro crisis.

But Germans are more concerned about unemployment (70% say it is a major threat) than they are about inflation (56%). Among the European nations the Pew Research Center surveyed, the Germans are the least fearful of rising prices.

Similarly, the German public is split, not opposed, to helping others - 49% favour financial assistance to other distressed European economies, 48% oppose. And public support for such aid has actually risen slightly from 42% in 2010.

Is Merkel speaking for German voters?
The opposition to such action comes not from the German public, but from Merkel's own conservative political base. About half (53%) of German conservatives oppose bailouts, while just 40% of those on the left oppose them.

The Spanish prime minister announces €65bn in new austerity measures until end-2014; El Pais says it is the most Draconian economic package since General Franco's stabilisation plan in 1959; the measures include a 3 point rise in the standard rate of VAT to 21%, and further tax increases; there will be cuts to unemployment benefits, housing benefits, and other social benefits; civil servants wages and holidays will also be cut; a poll suggests a majority of Spaniards oppose the measures, but believe they will end the crisis; austerity protests in Madrid turned violent yesterday; Paul Krugman says this is a lot of pain for what ultimately will be only a small fiscal and competitiveness effect; Xavier Vidal-Folch says Spain's MoU is hardly distinguishable from a normal troika operation; Credit Swiss has a report showing a dramatic capital flight from Spain, with domestic savers starting to take part; Mario Monti gets gloomy about his fight against prejudice; Ignazio Visco says the ECB must do more as the threat of a eurozone breakup remains; the Bank of Italy is now expanding its portfolio to include corporate bonds; Wolfgang Schäuble endorses an idea from a German economic institute to impose a compulsory loan on people earning over €250,000; so does Mark Schieritz; the ratification of the fiscal pact in France poses risks for Francois Hollande; Greece is set to ask the eurogroup for a renegotiation of the target at the forthcoming meeting end of July; Portugal's investors would also welcome a revision of the Portuguese austerity programme; Ireland's Q1 contraction in Ireland is worse than expected; of the 31 banks that failed the EBA capital requirements, 27 banks now do; the euro's status as a global currency, meanwhile, has suffered over the last year, according to an ECB report.

Mario Monti has indicated that Italy may one day need to draw on European funds to save his country's ailing economy. The IMF had equally cautionary comments about Rome's predicament.

Italy's Prime Minister Mario Monti on Tuesday admitted that the prospect of Italy turning to eurozone rescue funds in the future to bring down the nation's borrowing costs could not be ruled out.

"It is very difficult to say that Italy will never need help from one fund or another and caution compels me not to talk about such things," Monti said to reporters following the second day of a eurozone finance ministers' meeting in Brussels.

The 17 finance ministers of the eurozone countries met for their two-day summit in Brussels on Monday to reach an agreement on how best to prop up Spain's struggling banking sector.

he eurozone could lose 4.5 million more jobs in the next four years unless the region shifts away from austerity, the International Labour Organization (ILO) has warned.

That rise would take unemployment in the 17-nation bloc to 22 million.

The ILO said a concerted policy shift away from austerity towards job creation was needed.

"It's not only the eurozone that's in trouble, the entire global economy is at risk of contagion," it said.

The report said that all 17 countries in the eurozone would suffer, both those currently under stress and their healthier counterparts.

The dollar weakened against currencies of commodity-exporting nations amid speculation minutes of June's Federal Open Market Committee meeting will show the central bank is moving closer to adding more stimulus.

The yen erased gains versus the euro and dollar as haven demand ebbed and Bank of Japan policy makers met. The greenback dropped the most versus Australia's dollar, while reaching a two-year high against the euro. The Federal Reserve bought $2.3 trillion of bonds from 2008 to 2011 in two rounds of a tactic called quantitative easing to spur economic growth.

"The market is anticipating the FOMC minutes to see if there are any hints at further easing," Eric Viloria, senior currency strategist at Gain Capital Group LLC in New York, said in a telephone interview. "They downgraded their economic assessment and data has been coming in weaker, raising speculation that there could be more coming from them."

When Bank of America Corp. sent letters to 60,000 struggling homeowners offering to slice an average $150,000 off their loans, the lender got an unusual response from most of them: silence.

Homeowners who fell behind on their payments began receiving the mailings in May, part of the bank's effort to meet terms of the $25 billion industry settlement over foreclosure abuses. More than half haven't responded as "borrower fatigue" causes them to tune out the offers, said Dan Frahm, a spokesman for the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank.

"The number of customers responding is lower than we expected, given the significant assistance available," Frahm said in an interview. "We are working very hard to determine why response rates are lower than expectations."

Bank of America, which pledged almost half of the fines and assistance in the February settlement with state and federal officials, is critical to determining how many U.S. homeowners are helped by the landmark deal. Housing advocates say that relying on the same companies that committed loan servicing abuses to avert foreclosures may result in yet another program that helps fewer people than intended.

HERE

(begins at 33' 40"; (is this the same Doug Henwood who was involved with me in the years of establishing the first regulations for utilities accepting/contracting with Independent Power Producers?)

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

Les banques commerciales déposent moitié moins de cash aux guichets de la ‪#BCE‬ depuis qu'elle a ramené son taux de dépôt à zéro.

If I have 1 more policymaker telling me how this is all the fault of the Anglo-Saxon financial system I may accidently spill hot coffee!

Mitt Romney told the NAACP today that he has the "best interest" of all Americans at heart and outlined why he believes President Obama has failed blacks on issues such as the economy and education.

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. CAPTIONBy Evan Vucci, APBut he drew boos from the crowd in Houston at his first mention of wanting to repeal the national health care law he calls "Obamacare."

"If you want a president who will make things better in the African-American community, you are looking at him," Romney said.

The presumptive GOP presidential nominee was applauded at times in his remarks, which included references to Martin Luther King Jr. and Frederick Douglass. But the polite reception changed when he said was "going to eliminate every non-essential, expensive program that I can find -- and that includes Obamacare."

(Reuters) - Syria's ambassador to Iraq defected on Wednesday in protest at the military crackdown by President Bashar al-Assad's forces against a 16-month uprising, Syrian opposition sources said.

Nawaf al-Fares, who has close ties to Syrian security, would be the first senior diplomat to quit the embattled government. There has been no comment from Damascus or Baghdad.

A veteran of Assad's rule who held senior positions under the late president Hafez al-Assad, Fares is from Deir al-Zor, the eastern city on the road to Iraq which has been the scene of a ferocious military onslaught by Assad forces.

"This is just the beginning of a series of defections on the diplomatic level. We are in touch with several ambassadors," said Mohamed Sermini, a member of the main opposition umbrella group, the Syrian National Council.

Bolivia's president said he would revoke a mining concession from Canada's South American Silver Corporation and give the state control of the site due to violent protests over the company's plans.

The announcement on Wednesday is the second time in less than a month that President Evo Morales has given in to protesters' demands for him to step up a drive to increase state control over natural resources in the poor Andean country.

Violence flared last week at South American Silver's Malku Khota project after protesters held five Bolivian employees hostage to demand the Canadian company leave.

They hailed the president's decision as a definitive solution to the conflict in which one protester was killed and a dozen more injured.

"The company [South American Silver] put brothers, brothers-in-law, cousins and neighbours at odds with one another," Morales said at the presidential palace as he explained the deal between protesters and his government.

A new diplomatic row has flared between Japan and China over a remote chain of islands, after Beijing moved to assert an "indisputable sovereignty" over the uninhabited territories.

Three Chinese patrol boats approached the islands claimed by Japan in the East China Sea on Wednesday morning, prompting Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba to formally complain to his Chinese counterpart during talks in Cambodia.

Gemba "strongly lodged a protest with the Chinese government with respect to the incident which took place this morning," a foreign ministry spokeswoman told the AFP news agency in Phnom Penh.

The crews of the vessels, which have since left the islands' immediate vicinity, initially rebuffed Japanese orders to leave.

"We are conducting official duty in Chinese waters. Do not interfere. Leave China's territorial waters," the crews said, according to the Japanese coastguard.

Last year was among the 15 warmest since record keeping began in the late 19th century, despite a La Nina weather pattern that should have cooled global temperatures, according to an annual climate assessment.

La Nina's failure to cause significantly cooler global temperatures is one of many indications of long-term climate warming, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's State of the Climate report compiled by 378 scientists from 48 nations. La Nina was responsible for droughts in eastern Africa and North America, the scientists reported.

Last year "will be remembered as a year of extreme events, both in the United States and around the world," Deputy NOAA Administrator Kathryn D. Sullivan said in a statement today. "Every weather event that happens now takes place in the context of a changing global environment."

Texas had the hottest summer since data collection began in 1895 and extreme heat may be more common in the future.

Extreme heat in the second half of June helped make the first six months of this year the hottest January to June ever recorded in the lower 48 United States, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said yesterday.

Eighty-six locations set temperature records in June, with another 87 tying existing marks. That helped push the average temperature in the contiguous United States to 71.2 degrees Fahrenheit, 2 degrees above the 20th-century average.

The sizzling heat capped the warmest 12 months since record-keeping began in 1895, NOAA said, inching out the previous record-holder -- June 2011 to May 2012 -- by just 0.05 degree Fahrenheit.

The scorching temperatures, combined with dry conditions in parts of the West, created ideal conditions for the wildfires that have ravaged Colorado, Wyoming and Utah, according to the analysis by NOAA's National Climatic Data Center.

ScienceDaily (July 10, 2012) -- Researchers are working to identify exactly how a changing climate will impact specific elements of weather, such as clouds, rainfall, and lightning. A Tel Aviv University researcher has predicted that for every one degree Celsius of warming, there will be approximately a 10 percent increase in lightning activity.

This could have negative consequences in the form of flash floods, wild fires, or damage to power lines and other infrastructure, says Prof. Colin Price, Head of the Department of Geophysics, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at Tel Aviv University. In an ongoing project to determine the impact of climate change on the world's lightning and thunderstorm patterns, he and his colleagues have run computer climate models and studied real-life examples of climate change, such as the El Nino cycle in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, to determine how changing weather conditions impact storms.

An increase in lightning activity will have particular impact in areas that become warmer and drier as global warming progresses, including the Mediterranean and the Southern United States, according to the 2007 United Nations report on climate change. This research has been reported in the Journal of Geophysical Research and Atmospheric Research, and has been presented at the International Conference on Lightning Protection.

he captain of Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia, which ran aground killing more than 30 people in January, has said he is sorry for the disaster.

In an interview on Italian TV, Francesco Schettino said he thought constantly about the victims. [But hey, this shit could happen to anyone, right? -ed.]

But he insisted others should also share the blame, saying the ship had been under the command of another officer at the time.

Mr Schettino denies charges including manslaughter and causing a shipwreck.

A recent Indian advertisement for Clean and Dry, a vaginal wash which promises women fairer private parts, has led to an outcry among many in the country.

The television ad shows a woman unhappy in the company of her husband, as he seems more interested in the morning paper than her. After a liberal use of the vaginal wash, the woman appears in shorts and beckons the man who swings her in his arms, suggesting happiness.

The tagline of the ad says: "Life for women will now be fresher, cleaner and more importantly fairer and more intimate."

Blogs and tweets have decried the controversial advertisement, as have columnists and physicians. Rupa Subramanya, popular on Twitter, called the 25-second TV commercial, "the ultimate insult" to the Indian woman. Columnist Deepanjana Pal wrote, "While Fair and Lovely tapped in on our inherent racism with its early ad campaigns, the intent of products like whitening deodorants, moisturisers and 'hygiene products' seems more insidious now."

Fair and Lovely is an Indian face cream that promises to make dark-skinned women more white. It has been a huge hit since its launch in the country in 1978. The product-makers said, "Indian women finally found hope in a tube," and claim to have discovered the "skin lightening action of niacinamide" that led to the development of their product.

Two decades ago, researchers began discovering rare gene mutations that cause Alzheimer's disease in all who inherit them. Now, they have found the opposite: a mutation that prevents the devastating brain disorder. The protective mutation also is very rare -- it is not the reason most people do not develop Alzheimer's disease. But what intrigues researchers is how it protects the brain. It does the reverse of what the mutations that cause Alzheimer's do. Those mutations lead to excessive amounts of a normal substance, beta amyloid, in the brain. The protective mutation slows beta amyloid production, so people make much less.

The discovery, published online on Wednesday in the journal Nature, provides strong evidence that beta amyloid buildup is a driving force in this destructive brain disease. It also bolsters the hopes of drug companies that have zealously developed drugs to reduce amyloid levels with the expectation they might alter the course of the disease or even prevent it. So far, the drugs have not succeeded, but companies and many researchers have argued that there are reasons for that and that it is too soon to give up on them.

If for no other reason, the discovery's implication for drug development "is hugely important," said Dr. David Altshuler, a genomics expert at Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute of Harvard and M.I.T. who was not involved with the research.

Fifty years ago, a small spherical satellite weighing about 170 lbs. (77 kg) was launched from Cape Canaveral.  Its name was Telstar 1, and it was the first commercial communications satellite--the first in a long line of telecommunications satellites that have led to the digitally connected world of today, where television programs from one country are easily accessible at locations across the globe.

By the following February, though, Telstar 1 had been completely fried by energetic electrons from a U.S. high-altitude nuclear test.

Walter Brown, a Bell Labs engineer who worked on the project, recalls Telstar 1's triumphs and untimely demise. Currently a professor of materials science and engineering at Lehigh University, he says it was his job to "examine how radiation in space affects solar cells and semiconductors." He got rather more than he bargained for.

The billionaire philanthropist Melinda Gates, a practising Catholic, has thrown down the gauntlet to the Vatican and vowed to dedicate the rest of her life to improving access to contraception across the globe.

Gates, who with her husband, Bill, the founder of Microsoft, is one of the world's biggest players on development issues, predicted that women in Africa and Asia would soon be "voting with their feet", as women in the west have done, and would ignore the church's ban on artificial birth control.

Gates, who was a speaker at the London Summit on Family Planning organised by her foundation in conjunction with the UK government and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), said that since she announced her new direction a few weeks ago she had been inundated with messages of support from Catholic women, including nuns.

"A church is made up of its members, and one of the things this campaign might do is help women speak out. I've had thousands of women come on to websites and say" 'I'm a Catholic, but I believe in contraception.' It's going to be women voting with their feet."

ScienceDaily (July 10, 2012) -- President Barack Obama has one. Comedian Stephen Colbert has one. Elvis Presley has one. Even computer software magnate Bill Gates has one. And now, Bob Marley--the late popular Jamaican singer and guitarist--also has one. So what is it that each of these luminaries have? The answer: they each have a biological species that has been named after them.

Paul Sikkel, an assistant professor of marine ecology and a field marine biologist at Arkansas State University, discovered and just named after Marley a "gnathiid isopod"--a small parasitic crustacean blood feeder that infests certain fish that inhabit the coral reefs of the shallow eastern Caribbean. Sikkel named the species Gnathia marleyi.

All of the life stages of Gnathia marleyi are described by Sikkel and his research team in the June 6th issue of Zootaxia. This research was partly funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Sikkel said, "I named this species, which is truly a natural wonder, after Marley because of my respect and admiration for Marley's music. Plus, this species is as uniquely Caribbean as was Marley.

Detectives are investigating whether one of the heirs to the Tetra Pak drinks carton fortune lived with his wife's body for up to a week after her death in their Belgravia mansion in London.

Hans Kristian Rausing was being treated in hospital on Wednesday after being arrested when detectives discovered the body of 48-year-old Eva Rausing in a bedroom during a search of the couple's home.

It emerged on Wednesday that part of the investigation into what detectives are describing as her "unexplained" death is examining how long she might have lain in her home before police arrived. A postmortem on Tuesday proved inconclusive and further tests are being carried out to establish the cause of death, which could have taken place up to a week ago.

Police from the Met's homicide and serious crime command have yet to interview Mr Rausing, 49. Scotland Yard said he remained under arrest but had been transferred to a hospital for treatment, and police officers were present. His condition is not thought to be life-threatening and it is believed he is being treated in the Maudsley hospital for drug-related issues.