Officials from the troika of international lenders are back in Athens on Tuesday (24 July as the three-party government struggles to meet the spending cuts demanded in return for the bailout money.

The Greek government is several months behind on promised spending cuts and privatisations. The auditors from the EU commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund are set to draw up a report on how big the shortfall is and whether Greece can still receive the next tranche of €31.5 billion in September.

Without this money, the Greek authorities will not be able to repay outstanding debt to the eurozone central bank, or salaries and pensions in the coming months.

Development minister Costis Hatzidakis on Sunday warned that the two months ahead are "the most critical" and that his country is in a "state of emergency."

reece's reform process is showing clear signs of lagging as the government requests more time to meet bailout conditions. International lenders are travelling to Greece this week for more talks and inspections.

Greek newspapers are bracing their readers for a visit from the troika of international lenders this week. Officials from the European Union, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Central Bank (ECB) are preparing to examine Greece's reform efforts closely and, perhaps, mercilessly.

So far, Athens' political class has let a number of reforms slide or pushed them back in light of drawn out elections. Now the troika wants to get down to brass tacks - but will have to do so with a coalition government elected on the promise of renegotiating the terms of the Greek bailout - or at least pushing back its deadlines.

Tax breaks for low-income brackets and the middle class are planned if the bailout terms can be renegotiated. But that could be a reasonable goal with or without a complete renegotiation, says Vassilis Korkidis, president of the National Confederation of Hellenic Commerce (ESEE).

"The troika has set savings targets but largely given us a free hand for realizing them. We can use alternative means of reaching those targets that don't involve constantly raising taxes and fees," Korkidis argued.

Korkidis also believes that lower taxes could have helped stem the rampant tax evasion in recent years.

he death toll has risen to four in forest fires raging in Spain's north-eastern Catalonia region.

A swathe of land is affected on either side of the main road from Figueres to La Jonquera, south of the Pyrenees.

A Frenchman aged 64, who suffered severe burns, died on Monday.

Earlier two French nationals drowned in the sea near the border with France while trying to escape the flames. A 75-year-old man, also French, died from a heart attack in Llers, near Figueres.

Smoke from the fires has reached parts of Barcelona, Spanish media report.

About 20 people have been injured fleeing the blazes, while hundreds of firefighters have been deployed, struggling as 90km/h (56mph) gusts of wind fan the flames.

About 1,300 people left their homes in Alt Emporda district and spent the night in sports halls and social clubs.

However, the AP-7 highway from Figueres to La Jonquera has reopened to traffic and the main railway line north to France is also open.

There are fears that a change in wind direction will drive the flames westwards, into the wooded Alta Garrotxa area, parts of which are difficult to reach. The western flank of the blaze is proving harder to contain.

The authorities have urged people in 17 districts to stay indoors.

The European Union is to suspend most sanctions against Zimbabwe once it has held a credible referendum on a new constitution, EU foreign ministers say.

This would make an "important milestone" towards holding democratic elections, their statement said.

More than a 100 key individuals have been covered under an EU travel ban and assets freeze imposed in 2002.

But sanctions would remain against President Robert Mugabe, UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said.

The sanctions were originally imposed a decade ago in response to human rights abuses and political violence.

Mr Mugabe and his rival, Prime Minster Morgan Tsvangirai, have been sharing power since disputed elections marred by violence in 2008.

Fresh elections are expected to be held sometime next year, after the referendum on the new constitution.

Allies of Mr Mugabe have long argued that the sanctions should be unconditionally removed and that they have had a negative impact on Zimbabwe's economy.

The Spanish market situation deteriorated further yesterday, with ten-year yields hitting 7.5%; the two-year yield jumped 90%; El Pais says investors were demanding interest rates that are unsustainable for Spain; Moody's reaffirmed Germany's rating, but attached a negative outlook; this leaves only Finland with an undiluted AAA-rating; German finance ministry criticises decision as one-sided; European shares fell strongly as a result of yesterday's events; Spain and Italy, once again, install a short-sale ban to scare off speculators; decision amounts to an act of desperation; both countries had banned short-selling last year; Spain's securities regulator says the country needs even more cuts in order to restore credibility; Frankfurter Allgemeine says room for maneauvre is now severely limited; Sueddeutsche Zeitung reports that Angela Merkel will refuse to grant Greece an extension in the loan; Greece makes last minute efforts to demonstrate its determination ahead of meeting with troika represenatives; Portugal met the deficit target for the first half year thanks to bonus cuts and one-off revenues; Italian provinces say schools might not reopen amid plans to scrap 64 out of 107 provincial governments; the French would support the fiscal pact if asked in a referendum; Federico Fubini argues that quantitative easing is not against the EU Treaties, if the ECB were to buy bonds from every Eurozone country; Francesco Giavazzi and Alberto Alesina see a fair chance that the eurozone will get through this crisis; Lorenzo Bini-Smaghi, meanwhile, says the survival of the euro should have greater weight than the pursuit of price stability.

In theory, sure, Europe can further leverage and rehypothecate till Kingdom Come. But only in theory. The EFSF depends on international finance markets for their bond issues. Leveraging collateral won't exactly help it build or restore credibility there. And that's not all:

It may not prove so easy to convince global investors to mop up large issues of debt. "Our clients won't touch the EFSF because nobody knows what it really is. They have cut it out of their benchmarks altogether," said one bond trader.

The Chinese issued their own verdict yesterday. The country's sovereign wealth fund said it will not buy any more debt in Europe until the region takes radical steps to restore credibility. "The risk is too big, and the return too low," said Lou Jiwei, the chairman of China Investment Corporation. "Europe hasn't got the right policies in place. There is a risk that the eurozone may fall apart and that risk is rising," he told the Wall Street Journal. The EFSF had hoped to sell yuan "Panda bonds" but this may prove hard.

Eric Dor, from the IESEF School of Management in Lille, said Spain would have to step out of the EFSF as a creditor the moment it asks for funds. This has instant effects on the residual core. Italy's share rises from 19pc to 22pc, and Italy is in no shape to face extra burdens. France's share rises from 22pc to 25pc, and Germany's from 29pc to 33pc.

"The credibility of the guarantees given to EFSF bonds would collapse. This would cause an incredible turmoil on the European sovereign debt markets," he said. [..]

If you think this through, and include Italy ceasing to be a Eurozone emergency fund creditor, with other countries on the verge, you're left with Germany in the not too distant future paying over 50% of what's needed to "save Europe". If the Germans accept that at all (they probably won't), it will do so only with very stringent strings attached, like a much stronger political and fiscal union effectively run by Berlin. There is zero chance of a consensus for that in all member countries.

vee vill see about zat...

if you were a rational materialist bundesbanker, wouldn't you be thinking about cutting those pesky parasite southerners loose right about now?

course you still have to be a mite worried when they realise all this bailing out isn't even helping anyone but you...

all all these hundreds of billions, stolen from the social services and overtaxing their recipients, the poor and vulnerable among us, those already guttingly astronomical numbers don't even begin to address all the debt that's still below the surface and carefully kept from the public.

folks are backs to the wall with only hundreds of billions screwed out of them, how will they feel when they realise there are hundreds of trillions still waiting to be 'serviced' derivatives still to unwind.

that's how delusional the masters of the heist are, thinking that they can squeeze that much blood out the stone without social upheaval of the worst kind.

these meetings behind closed doors that lead to useless measures, surely most of the time are spent discussing how to break this news to the voters, already with flood waters of debt around their knees, that a far greater tsunami is massing on the horizon, that this is just the foretaste of the insane plans they have to keep the present form of capitalism alive.

maybe gaia's limits will crash this corroded system once and for all just in time to save our habitat -what's left of it- from complete ruination.

barring a mass epiphany of epic proportions, a come to buddha global mo(ve)ment, what other chance do we have, especially considering these winners of the crapitalist fandango are all joined at the hip with the most polluting and predatory corporations they finance.

It's a fine line between homage, parody, and consumer opportunism. Jess Walter

Germany's finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, will meet his Spanish counterpart, Luis de Guindos, for crisis talks on Tuesday amid fears that spiralling bond yields in the eurozone's fourth biggest economy will force it to seek a €300bn bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

Interest rates on Spain's 10-year borrowing rose to 7.59% - the highest since the euro was created - and the stock market in Madrid fell by 5% in morning trading following fresh bad news about the financial health of the country's regions.

Hints from politicians in Berlin that Germany is preparing the ground for Greece to leave the single currency also unsettled markets, with hefty falls in equity prices on European bonuses and the euro under pressure on the foreign exchanges. London's FTSE 100 index was down 100 points at midday, at 5551.

Dealers were unimpressed by de Guindos's claim that Spain would not become the fourth eurozone country to require a formal bailout, after Murcia on Sunday became the second Spanish region to request financial assistance from the government. The Spanish finance minister categorically denied that a bailout was imminent, but media reports from Spain suggest up to six regions could require financial aid, with Catalonia next in line.

"What began as a Spanish banking bailout looks to be moving rather quickly towards a possible sovereign bailout. Overlay that with increasingly negative news on Greece and you get a fairly negative mix, so the path of least resistance for the euro is down," said Jeremy Stretch, currency strategist at CIBC.

The cost of bailing out Spain would dwarf the packages already agreed for the three smaller eurozone countries - Greece, Ireland and Portugal - and would heap pressure on mo

Germany's economy probably avoided a contraction in the second quarter of 2012 despite a slowdown in industrial output, but its future prospects are marked by "great uncertainty," the central bank said Monday.

The economy "should have grown at a moderate pace in the spring," as a slight quarter-to-quarter drop in industrial production was "more than compensated" for by growth in the construction and services sectors, the Bundesbank said in its monthly report.

German industry booked more new orders in April and May, and exporters boosted their deliveries abroad despite problems in the euro area and signs of a global slowdown, the bank said. Imports also rose amid rising wages and employment, it said.

However, companies sharply reduced their business expectations in June, the bank warned.

"The prospects for further economic development are characterized by great uncertainty," it said.

Germany's economy, Europe's largest, has so far remained relatively resilient to the debt crisis that has enveloped its euro-zone peers, posting robust first-quarter growth of 0.5% that helped keep the bloc out of recession.

But signs of weakness have started to emerge in recent months as the euro-zone debt crisis has worsened again.

A closely watched index of German economic expectations by research house ZEW hit a six-month low last week after three straight monthly declines. Earlier this month, a survey of purchasing executives showed German manufacturing activity slowing at its fastest rate in three years in June. Meanwhile, German unemployment has stagnated in recent months after falling sharply last year.

Germany's finance ministry said Friday that the economy probably grew at a slower pace in the second quarter and warned of higher risks for the labor market.

Any slowdown in Germany is worrying for the euro zone as many economists have been counting on resilient spending by German households and businesses to prop up the bloc's economy.

Official second-quarter German gross domestic product data is due Aug. 14. Analysts and investors polled by ZEW expect quarter-to-quarter growth of about 0.3% for the remainder of 2012, ZEW's head of research development Michael Schroeder said last week.

Separately, the Bundesbank said Monday that no euro-zone country is structurally unsuited to be a member of the currency bloc.

Still, that "fundamental structural suitability for using the euro...cannot on its own secure a smooth maintenance of the exchange-rate regime," the bank warned.

In the statement of the last European Council conclusions there is a paragraph that brings into force the agreement for the European Central Bank to intervene in extreme cases of the sovereign debt crisis.

This is no euphemism: it is written down in black on white in a paper that Rajoy carries in his briefcase as if it were a moral safe-conduct pass. It's why the Prime Minister mulls over the financial indices with some perplexity and never ceases wondering in private at what he considers a flagrant breach on the part of the EU.

His anger is more than remarkable; he has the feeling that the European institutions do not take themselves too seriously. Perhaps now, with the premium and the bond rate on the verge of melt-down, he may already have grasped that the problem may not lie so much in the Community's lack of seriousness as it does in an undeclared but firm intention to force the bailout of a state. Draghi's impassivity

The impassivity of Mario Draghi can only be strategic; beneath the gestures and even the official decisions there seems to be a taxation plan afoot that condemns Spain to a formal intervention under the threat of putting a stop to the payments.

The US will make little progress tackling high unemployment before 2014 unless the Federal Reserve eases policy further, one of the central bank's leading officials has warned in the run-up to a meeting next week where the option of "QE3" will be on the table.

The comments by John Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, show how the weak economy is pushing the central bank towards action to support growth.

In an interview with the Financial Times, he forecast that unless "further action" was taken, there would be a lack of progress in boosting the jobs market - where the unemployment rate has been stuck around 8.2 per cent since the start of the year - over the next 18 months.

But he declined to call directly for a Fed move. "I think the argument against further action is the question of uncertainty around the effects, the costs and the benefits of doing so," he said.

Mr Williams is regarded as close to the centre of gravity on the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee, of which he is a voting member this year. The FOMC will conclude its next meeting on August 1.

China's economic outlook was cut by Japan, its biggest Asian trading partner, as the Shanghai Composite Index fell to its lowest level in three years on concern about faltering domestic demand and export growth.

"The slowdown in the global economy is becoming more widespread," the Cabinet Office said in a monthly report released in Tokyo today. Song Guoqing, an academic member of a monetary policy committee, said July 21 that China's expansion may be 7.4 percent, the least since the first quarter 2009.

Rich individuals and their families have as much as $32 trillion of hidden financial assets in offshore tax havens, representing up to $280bn in lost income tax revenues, according to research published on Sunday.

The study estimating the extent of global private financial wealth held in offshore accounts - excluding non-financial assets such as real estate, gold, yachts and racehorses - puts the sum at between $21 and $32 trillion.

This amounts to roughly the US and Japanese GDP combined. Roughly 10 million people worldwide have offshore accounts, with 100,000 people owning half of those secreted assets.

The research was carried out for pressure group Tax Justice Network, which campaigns against tax havens, by James Henry, former chief economist at consultants McKinsey & Co.

John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network told Al Jazeera that he was shocked by "the sheer scale of the figures".

"What's shocking is that some of the world's biggest banks are up to their eyeballs in helping their clients evade taxes and shift their wealth offshore," said Christensen.

After Clinton signed that dreadful and bipartisan repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, an elder banker came into the computing room where a buddy of mine kept the servers running. He said something along these lines:

"The Government just set us up for the next Great Depression. Commercial banks like ours are supposed to be stingy and boring. Now we are going to go into investment, start gambling with our investors' money, and I'm going to retire. Mark my words: I give it ten years before it all collapses."

He was off by 1 year.

A toddler's cries ring out in a paediatric ward where about 20 children lie emaciated from malnutrition in this northern Mali town, whose occupation by Islamists has caused a humanitarian crisis.

"He is suffering from chronic malnutrition," says chief nurse Ibrahim Maiga of the crying three-year-old, pointing out other children suffering from acute malnutrition, and others receiving special nutritional treatment after nearly dying.

Gao, like the rest of northern Mali, has been occupied by Al-Qaeda-linked Islamists since late March, cutting the region off from the south and the capital Bamako.

The arid north is already suffering a food crisis along with the rest of the Sahel region, which has millions going hungry after poor rains last year.

Food supplies are either brought in on charter flights by charities and the Malian Islamic High Council, or are smuggled in from neighbouring countries such as Algeria and Niger and sold tax-free in the main cities of Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu.

Algeria, Morocco and Qatar have also given food aid.

But some residents of the region fear their new Islamist rulers will co-opt the aid to advance their own agenda.

Syria has promised that it will never use its arsenal of chemical and biological weapons against its domestic opponents, but reserved the right to deploy the weapons against "external aggression".

The comments by Jihad Makdissi, the foreign ministry spokesman, were made in a televised press conference. They came after western and Israeli officials voiced concerns about the movement of the weapons, fearing they could end up being used against the Syrian people or transferred out of the country.

"The ministry wants to reaffirm the stance of the Syrian Arab Republic that any chemical or bacterial weapon will never be used - and I repeat will never be used - during the crisis in Syria regardless of the developments," Mr Makdissi said on Monday.

"These weapons are stored and secured by Syrian military forces and under its direct supervision and will never be used unless Syria faces external aggression."

With an estimated 19,000 lives lost since Syrians began their uprising against the Assad regime 16 months ago, regional and international powers have continued their push to see Bashar al-Assad give up the presidency he inherited from his father in 2000.

The EU on Monday tightened its arms embargo against the regime, with foreign ministers agreeing to new rules that require member countries to search ships or planes in their territories that they have "reasonable grounds" to suspect may be carrying weapons headed for Syria.

Sudan has turned down South Sudan's proposal of a higher oil transit fee and an $8.2bn financial deal, ruling out any comprehensive settlement of outstanding issues by the August 2 deadline.

The offer and its refusal on Monday came just days ahead of a deadline imposed by the African Union and the United Nations calling on both sides to reach agreements on issues including oil transit fees, border demarcation and security.

When land-locked South Sudan gained independence from Sudan, it took with it two thirds of the region's oil, but the pipelines and processing facilities remained in the North. In January, Juba cut off all oil production, crippling both economies.

Pagan Amum, South Sudan's chief negotiator, told reporters that Juba was ready to resume oil exports, if "reasonable" transport fees are agreed on.

He outlined a proposal whereby the Juba would pay up to $9.10 a barrel to transit its oil through Sudan.

Khartoum had earlier demanded as much as $36 per barrel, which includes tariffs and transit, processing and port fees.

South Sudan said that "in the interest of peace" it was offering Sudan a financial package, worth $8.2 billion over three years, which includes a cash payment and debt forgiveness to help fill the massive financial gap Sudan reported after the South gained independence a year ago.

'Security a prerequisite'

Sudan, however, dismissed the offer, saying that security remained their top priority and that issues such as South Sudan's alleged backing of rebels should therefore be settled before other issues are tackled.

"We think security is a prerequisite," Mutrif Siddiq, a member of Khartoum's delegation taking part to the talks in the Ethiopian capital told reporters.

He ruled out any comprehensive deal by the August 2 deadline but said he remained hopeful in the longer term.

"It is impossible to be done within... nine or 90 days, some issues need more time to be discussed and be resolved," Siddiq said.

On Saturday South Sudan said it was cancelling planned face-to-face peace talks with Sudan after accusing Khartoum of launching a new air raid on its territory.

But Sudan on Monday said the raid was in response to the crossing of the rebel Sudanese Justice and Equality Movement - fighters whom Khartoum believes are backed by Juba - into its territory.

"We couldn't stay idle, the moment they crossed the border we engaged with them by air force, and now we are engaging with them on the ground," Siddiq said, calling the incident a "stab in the back" by Juba.

The negotiations to settle disputes stemming from the South's independence stalled after border battles broke out
in March, but resumed in May.

The Central Military Commission, China's most powerful military body, has approved the deployment of a garrison of soldiers from the People's Liberation Army to guard islands claimed by China in the South China Sea, the state-run Xinhua news agency said Sunday.

The announcement came as Chinese authorities told state media that 45 legislators elected over the weekend to govern the 1,100 people who live on the island groups of the Spratlys, the Paracels and the Macclesfield Bank -- known in Chinese as the Xisha, Zhongsha and Nansha islands -- met for the first time on Monday.

The new legislators would not only govern the island groups, many of them consisting of rocks and atolls, but also two million square kilometers of the South China Sea over which China claims jurisdiction, according to state media.

The two moves appeared designed to reinforce China's claims over the South China Sea a week after a meeting of foreign ministers of the Association of South East Asian Nations in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, at which China, according to diplomats at the meeting, used its influence to stop even a rudimentary communiqué on the South China Sea among the 10 nations.

The establishment of a legislature for the sparsely populated islands, and the dispatch of soldiers, will antagonize Vietnam, which claims the same islands. Vietnam and China have fought since the 1970s over the three island groups, and last month, Vietnam passed a law that claimed sovereignty over the Paracels and Spratly Islands. In response, China said the islands were the "indisputable" territory of China.

So, how's the farm bill going? Well, the Senate's version of it "could have been worse," I concluded after it passed, straining for positive things to write about it. The House Agriculture Committee's, though, was a full-on disaster, offering harsh cuts to food aid at a time of high unemployment, fat handouts to big ag, and gratuitous gifts to the biotech/pesticide industry.

The bill is now stalled in the House, in danger of being buried by right-wing backbenchers intent on even deeper food-aid cuts. If the House doesn't vote on it before the August recess, the most likely outcome is an extension of the 2008 bill--and the 2013 Congress will have to start the farm bill process from scratch. Let's be blunt: If that scenario plays out, no matter how the November elections go, we're quite likely to see an equally or more dismal bill emerge next year.

This is tragic. The farm bill, a once-in-five-years piece of legislation, lays out federal food and agriculture policy. At a time of accelerating climate change and other ecosystem crisis, including agriculture-related dead zones in two of our most important fisheries (the Gulf of Mexico and Chesapeake Bay) the time has come to reassess our food system.

As the nation suffers through a summer of record-shattering heat, a University of Michigan report finds that Generation X is lukewarm about climate change-uninformed about the causes and unconcerned about the potential dangers. "Most Generation Xers are surprisingly disengaged, dismissive or doubtful about whether global climate change is happening and they don't spend much time worrying about it," said Jon D. Miller, author of "The Generation X Report."

The new report, the fourth in a continuing series, compares Gen X attitudes about climate change in 2009 and 2011, and describes the levels of concern Gen Xers have about different aspects of climate change, as well as their sources of information on the subject.

"We found a small but statistically significant decline between 2009 and 2011 in the level of attention and concern Generation X adults expressed about climate change," Miller said. "In 2009, about 22 percent said they followed the issue of climate change very or moderately closely. In 2011, only 16 percent said they did so."

A newly discovered underground source could supply water to northern Namibia of the driest country in sub-Saharan Africa for hundreds of years, experts say.

The water in the aquifer dubbed Ohangwena II, which lies under the boundary between Angola and Namibia, is up to 10,000 years old but safer to drink than many modern sources, scientists say.

On the Namibian side of the border the aquifer covers an area of about 43 miles by 25 miles.

"The amount of stored water would equal the current supply of this area in northern Namibia for 400 years, which has about 40 percent of the nation's population," said Martin Quinger from the German federal institute for geoscience and natural resources, which has been helping the Namibia government in its search for sustainable water supplies.

The 800,000 people who live in the area currently obtain their drinking water from a 40-year-old canal that carries the scarce resource across the border from Angola, the BBC reported.

They could have ended up as firewood or sawdust but felled trees in the Dutch city of Utrecht are getting a second life as one-of-a-kind tables, each with a booklet of stories by people who saw them grow.

One tree was traced back more than three centuries. Others were the scene of an elderly man's first kiss -- years prior -- with his future wife, or where a mother saw her son take his first steps.

"With every tree taken out, there's always a bit of the history of a neighbourhood or street that gets lost with it," Egbert Boerma of the historic city's Tafelboom (Dutch for "table tree") Association told AFP.

"We aim to keep some of that history," he said.

Like elsewhere, trees in this central university city of 300,000 residents are regularly taken down -- "victims" of urban expansion or simply too old or ill.

A ranking of the UK as the world's most energy-efficient country by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) was "over-generous"and contradicted official EU statistics, Brussels experts have told EurActiv.

Green groups were "puzzled" when Britain claimed gold when ACEEE released its energy efficiency table for the world's 12 largest economies on 12 July.

But the shock may have been greater in the offices of Eurostat, the European statistical agency.

The ACEEE report gave the United Kingdom four out of four possible points for the efficiency of thermal power plants, while France scored one.

This contradicts Eurostat's 2011 report (based on 2009 data) that rates the UK's thermal efficiency of power stations at just 44.4%, compared to 56% for France, marking the continuation of a relatively poor energy-saving trend in the UK dating from the 2005-2009 period.

Overall, ACEEE gave the UK 67 out of a possible 100 efficiency points. Germany came second, with 66 points, followed by Italy with 63 points, Japan with 62 and France with 60.

Russia was at the bottom (36 points), while China scored as many points as the EU average (56). The United States, meanwhile "disappointed" the researchers of this study, achieving only 47 points.

ACEEE rejected suggestions that the ranking was inaccurate, telling EurActiv that it was designed to avoid favouring one country over another and that "we did not know the outcome of the rankings before we began".

"Frankly, many of us were surprised by the results," said Sara Hayes, senior policy and utilities associate at ACEEE

The "greenest Olympics ever" could have been a great deal greener than they will be, says a critical new report that finds fault with the handling of the Games' environmental impact.

On key issues such as energy, waste and the use of resources, as well as the effects on public health, the management of London 2012 has fallen short, said WWF and BioRegional, two green campaigning groups.

They found that the Games would neither be zero carbon nor zero waste, with not enough new renewable energy generated to cover the amount consumed, while many opportunities have been lost - which may be in part owing to the practices of the sponsors and major commercial partners - to use locally grown food and Fairtrade products. Air quality is also likely to fall short of targets.

Sue Riddlestone, executive director of BioRegional, who was involved in drawing up the original strategy, said: "London 2012 has set the sustainability bar high for future summer Olympics [but] there were some promises made in 2005 which London 2012 didn't keep, even though we know they tried. We were especially disappointed about the failure to meet the renewable energy targets. So the journey to deliver a sustainable Olympics will continue."

But the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Locog) defended its performance, saying that it had met the majority of its targets, even though the blueprint for the environmental aspects of the games had been published eight years ago and that expectations for environmental sustainability had increased in that time.

David Stubbs, head of sustainability for the Games, told the daily Guardian: "We have kept the spirit, and in most cases the letter, of what was promised, and we will leave a long-term legacy that is positive, environmentally. To use a footballing analogy, we did not necessarily win every match but we did win the league."

He said that the committee had been thwarted in some of its attempts to improve the environmental performance - for instance, in trying to set up a wind turbine close to the main Olympics site in east London, and that its attempts to ensure a legacy of drastically cutting the waste sent to landfill from the sites proved impossible to fulfil because of local conditions beyond the organisers' control.

The report found that the games would score well on some environmental indicators, such as public transport and ensuring the upkeep of local natural habitats and wildlife.

America's drought threatens a recurrence of the 2008 global food crisis, when soaring prices set off riots and unrest to parts of Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, food experts warn.

Corn prices reached an all-time high on Friday, as the drought expanded across America, trading at $8.24 a bushel on the Chicago exchange. Soybeans were also trading at record levels.

The US department of agriculture meanwhile predicted there would be less corn coming onto global markets over the next year, because of a sharp drop in US exports.

America is the world's largest producer of corn, dominating the market. Corn is also connected to many food items - as feed for dairy cows or for hogs and beef cattle, as a component in processed food - expanding the impact of those price rises.

That means the effects of the drought will travel far beyond the mid-western states baking under triple-digit temperatures, said Robert Thompson, a food security expert at the Chicago Council of Global Affairs.

"What happens to the US supply has an immense impact around the world. If the price of corn rises high enough, it also pulls up the price of wheat," he said.

He went on: "I think we are in for a very serious situation worldwide."

Some analysts are predicting a repetition of the 2008 protests that swept across Africa and the Middle East, including countries like Egypt, because of food prices.

In 2008, the food shock was due to rising prices for rice and wheat. This time, it's because of corn and soybean, and there were no signs of shortfall in rice or wheat production.

But the full effects of the American drought will likely take several months to emerge. Its severity will be determined by a number of additional risk factors.

Global grain stocks have reached a new low, with the US and other countries running down their reserves. "There are no reserves of these foods in the US anymore," said Sophia Murphy, a fellow at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

That means there is no room for manoeuvre for countries forced to import grains.

The operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is still failing to sufficiently ensure the safety of its nuclear operations, a government-appointed panel looking into the causes of last year's disastrous accident said Monday.

But in a final report that largely tracked an interim version released in June, no new light was shed on many questions about the disaster, an indication of the difficulty of getting to the bottom of the crisis. While the panel confirmed that the biggest leakage of radioactive materials occurred at Unit 2, it acknowledged it was no closer to finding out exactly how, when and where it happened.

"High levels of radiation were obviously the biggest obstacle to our investigation. They kept us from conducting an actual examination of the damaged facilities," a panel member said at a news conference.

At the Fukushima Daiichi's six reactors, three suffered meltdowns, spewing deadly radioactive materials inside and outside unit buildings. Accessing the reactors is expected to remain difficult for years or even decades to come.

Poor wildlife-protection efforts by Asian and African countries in response to "skyrocketing" poaching are putting the survival of rhinos, tigers and elephants at risk, according to a report released Monday by World Wildlife Fund, the conservation group.

The report names Vietnam, Laos and Mozambique as the countries that do the least to combat the illegal poaching or trafficking of these creatures, which have body parts that are highly valued in many Asian cultures for use in traditional medicines, or as decorative items.

Demand for rhino horn, ivory and tiger parts has soared in recent years as rising affluence has put such goods within the financial reach of many more people in developing countries. Environmental groups like the W.W.F. have been warning for years that rising consumption and poaching have put many species under severe pressure.

The W.W.F.'s report on Monday focused on 23 countries considered to be either primary sources of rhinos, tigers and elephants or main destination countries for ivory and other animal parts. Rhinos, tigers and elephants are listed as endangered under CITES, the primary international treaty on wildlife. The treaty prohibits the trade in these creatures and their parts.

The report singled out Vietnam for its lack of action on curtailing the consumption and trade of rhino horn, which it said had fueled a "poaching crisis" in South Africa.

• In 2000, the International Energy Agency (IEA) published its World Energy Outlook, predicting that non-hydro renewable energy would comprise 3 percent of global energy by 2020. That benchmark was reached in 2008.


• In 2000, IEA projected that there would be 30 gigawatts of wind power worldwide by 2010, but the estimate was off by a factor of 7. Wind power produced 200 gigawatts in 2010, an investment of approximately $400 billion.

Much longer list at source.


-----
sapere aude

Treasury messing with UK clean energy policy, say MPs

MPs have accused the Treasury of making the government's clean energy revolution unworkable and creating the risk of higher household bills. They said Treasury changes to the draft Energy Bill will increase the risk of borrowing for investors.

(...)

The committee has two major worries about the finance department's impact on the draft bill.

The first is about the long-term contracts for developers who are being asked by the government to plough billions in the UK's low-carbon infrastructure.

Originally, the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) said the government would guarantee the contracts, thereby reducing the risk for investors and allowing them to borrow large amounts at a low rate of interest.

But the Treasury has since ruled that the government will not be the guarantor.

"This will result in higher borrowing costs, and make banks less likely to make loans," observed Mr Yeo. "It makes no sense."

Jerome Guillet, from Green Giraffe Energy Bankers - an international advisory firm - said: "The government keeps trying to come up with complicated ways of disguising the fact that it's subsidising nuclear and renewables.

"In fact it is continuing to subsidise them but the complications are making the financing more and more expensive," he told BBC News.

The MPs' second worry is over the ongoing consumer subsidy to renewable and nuclear power generators, which are needed for the UK to meet its legally binding targets.

I don't like being quoted saying that wind is 'subsidized', but the message about the UK government going through crazy hoops to avoid looking like they support the industry (and nukes) is silly...

Wind power

Tiny genetic mutations that make HIV immune to key frontline drugs have been increasing in eastern and southern Africa, something that should be a clear warning to health watchdogs, they said.

"Without continued and increased national and international efforts, rising HIV drug resistance could jeopardize a decade-long trend of decreasing HIV/Aids-related illness and death in low and middle-income countries," they said.

The study, published in the Lancet, is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the European Union (EU).

It is the widest-ever analysis of a risk that has haunted Aids campaigners since 2003, when drugs started to be rolled out to poorer countries that are home to more than 90% of people with the Aids virus.

The nightmare is that - as with bacteria which become resistant to antibiotics - strains of HIV will emerge that will blunt the armoury of antiretrovirals, leaving millions defenceless.

Silvia Bertagnolio from the UN's World Health Organisation and Ravindra Gupta at University College London looked at published cases of HIV resistance and supplemented this with data from the WHO itself.

Melinda Gates wants you to know this: if women in poor countries can get the contraceptives they want, millions of lives will be saved.

She questions why modern contraceptives should be controversial, when they can reduce a staggering death toll. "We have 100,000 women who didn't want to get pregnant who die in childbirth. We have 600,000 babies, where mothers say they didn't intend to get pregnant and their child dies - every single year!"

Over 350,000 women and three million babies - mostly in developing countries - die annually from complications related to pregnancy and giving birth. "It is a health crisis," Gates says. "It's a life-and-death crisis for these women."

Research supports her. A study of 172 countries published in the current issue of the medical journal The Lancet says that although bleeding, infections and other problems are the leading causes of mothers dying during pregnancy and childbirth in developing countries, "family planning is the primary intervention to prevent maternal mortality."

The Catholic Church in Italy has declared that the introduction of civil partnerships demanded by gays, lesbians and their supporters could "legitimise polygamy".

The bizarre warning came after Milan's liberal mayor, Giuliano Pisapia, announced that the city was to begin a register of civil unions.

Although largely symbolic, Mr Pisapia said that his plan would provide some additional legal rights for cohabiting couples who were unable to marry.

"The establishment of a register of civil unions is aimed at recognising and protecting the rights of many couples in Milan and the rest of the country, couples that have been waiting too long for legal recognition," he said.

Mr Pisapia noted the key ruling earlier this year by the Supreme Court of Cassation that said same-sex couples had a "right to a family life" - and by implication, the same benefits and rights as straight couples.

Italy's record on improving the legal rights of its gay, lesbian and transgender citizens is probably the worst in western Europe.

Catholic parliamentarians on the left and right have blocked anti-hate legislation aimed at combating the growing number of violent attacks against lesbians and gays.

It is the only country in western Europe to allow neither civil partnerships nor marriage for gay couples.

The amiable, scruffy Mayor Pisapia - who cuts an unlikely figure in Italy's hard-nosed financial and fashion capital - promised to help rectify the situation when he campaigned for office two years ago. But his announcement nonetheless provoked a furious response from the Catholic Church.

Alfonso Colzani, the spokesman on family issues for the powerful Milan diocese said: "There's the risk that giving equal status to families based on marriage with those founded on civil unions will legitimise polygamy."

Following controversy sparked by singer Evgeny Nikitin's swastika tattoo, the bass-baritone abruptly cancelled his engagement at the Bayreuth Festival. The Russian had been cast in the lead role of "The Flying Dutchman."

At the main rehearsal of "The Flying Dutchman" in mid-July, to which journalists were admitted, there was tension in the air. No scenes showing the titular hero in the new production were released.

"How can you do a 'Dutchman' without the Dutchman?" asked disappointed TV teams. The singer was also missing at group interviews. He had given many interviews ahead of the festival - including one with Reinhold Jaretzky of ZDF television, whose report "Heavy Metal in Bayreuth: From Rocker to Opera Star" provoked the scandal.

What did organizers know?

Festival organizers do not vet "what somebody wears under his shirt" said Peter Emmerich, press spokesman for the Bayreuth Festival. They had only "hired a voice," he explained, noting that skin color and nationality are also irrelevant for casting decisions.

However, the singer, in an interview with DW, revealed that he was asked a year ago to have all his tattoos photographed and to submit the pictures to the festival, which he'd done. Nikitin had initially assumed that his body ornaments were to be "integrated into the artistic concept."

Speculation on just how things unfolded is now running rampant in Bayreuth. Did other factors also play a role in the cancellation - artistic tensions with the production team or dissatisfaction with his singing? Or was the soloist stressed beyond his limits in the run-up to the premiere on July 25?

"I'm petrified," Nikitin had admitted to DW. "Because they will certainly not take any mercy on me in Bayreuth. It's a real test."

Gary, Indiana was once of the center of American steel production. Movie theaters, department stores, and restaurants were part of the fabric of a bustling industrial city. Now Gary is a ghost town.

Broadway Avenue in downtown Gary, formerly a commercial hub of the community, is a strip of vacant buildings and empty sidewalks. The city is plagued by high unemployment, crime and a shrinking population.

Gary was founded in 1906 for the workers of the United States Steel Corporation. The population peaked at around 180,000 in 1960. Eventually overseas competition led to massive layoffs. White flight to the suburbs further depressed the city. 

Today there are about 80,000 people living in Gary. The city lost around 25 percent of inhabitants in the last decade alone.  

Photographer Sylvain Margaine documented the decay of Gary in 2006. The pictures are featured on his site Forbidden Places. Although recently there has been some effort to revive Gary, including the economic incentives for technology companies, the photographs depict the struggles of a city tinkering on the edge of collapse.   Click here to tour Gary, Indiana >

Sally Ride, who blazed trails into orbit as the first American woman in space, died Monday of pancreatic cancer. She was 61.

Ride died at her home in the San Diego suburb of La Jolla, said Terry McEntee, a spokeswoman for her company, Sally Ride Science. She was a private person and the details of her illness were kept to just a few people, she said.

Ride rode into space on the space shuttle Challenger in 1983 when she was 32. After her flight, more than 42 other American women flew in space, NASA said.

"Sally was a national hero and a powerful role model. She inspired generations of young girls to reach for the stars," President Barack Obama said in a statement.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, a former astronaut, said Ride "broke barriers with grace and professionalism -- and literally changed the face of America's space program."

"The nation has lost one of its finest leaders, teachers and explorers," he said in a statement.