BRUSSELS - The mayors of Athens warned against the increase in racist attacks against minorities and immigrants on Thursday (16 August) as Greek authorities continue to round up and arrest undocumented migrants throughout the country.

"When fellow human beings are being stabbed on an almost daily basis, society has to be alert and the state has to lead the perpetrators to justice," said Athens Mayor Giorgos Kaminis, reported Greek daily Ekathimerini.

On Sunday, a 19-year-old Iraqi man died of stab wounds after being attacked by five men in central Athens.

...Those that carry out of the attacks, she said, "work almost undisturbed" as police have failed to convict anyone linked to the violence. Small gangs on motorcycles typically carry out the attacks.

Rioting earlier this week in France's northern city of Amiens has thrust the country's Interior Minister Manuel Valls into the spotlight, as he attempts to shake off claims that the Socialist government is "lax" on security.

...Stock arguments on how the left is soft on crime, however, may be difficult to pin to Valls, whose political style doesn't necessarily fit into a tidy, well-defined box. Although a longtime member of the Socialist Party, some of Valls' more conservative views have earned him the nickname "the left-wing Sarkozy".

...Since Valls took on the job of interior minister three months ago, he has shown a resolute desire to use policy as a means to shift away from the image that the left doesn't have what it takes to get tough on crime - an image the majority of French people apparently believe. According to a study by French polling centre Ifop published in Le Figaro, only 35 percent of French people believe that Hollande's government is capable of "efficiently fighting security threats".

...Judge Marina Syrova found the women guilty of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred, describing them as blasphemers who had deliberately offended Russian Orthodox believers by storming the altar of Moscow's main cathedral in February to belt out a song deriding Putin.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, Marina Alyokhina, 24, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, stood watching in handcuffs in a glass courtroom cage.

The women say they were protesting against Putin's close ties with the church when they burst onto the altar in Moscow's golden domed Christ the Saviour Cathedral wearing bright ski masks, tights and short skirts. State prosecutors had requested a three-year jail term.

AP - The heads of Russia's Orthodox church and Poland's Catholic church signed an appeal Friday to their nations to forgive each other for past historical wrongs.

The signing in Warsaw during the first visit to Poland by Russia's Patriarch Kirill has been described by the churches as a historical act of reconciliation. The two nations have feuded for centuries and their ties are still marked by distrust.

"We appeal to our believers to ask for the forgiveness of wrongs, injustice and every evil committed against each other," the document said. "We are certain that this is the first and the most important step toward rebuilding mutual trust, which is a necessary element of a lasting community and full reconciliation between people."

Julian Assange is expected to make a public statement later on the diplomatic row that has engulfed him since being granted asylum by Ecuador.

Wikileaks says its founder is to speak outside the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he has been since June.

He faces extradition to Sweden over sexual assault claims, which he denies.

Hungarian students receiving state-sponsored university places have been told they must remain in Hungary for at least 10 years after their graduation - but does this move to halt the country's brain drain violate EU freedom of movement laws?

Plugging the brain drain

Even for the lucky students who can study what they like and get a free state-sponsored place, there is a catch in the new higher education law.

They have to sign a contract promising to stay in Hungary for several years after graduation.

The idea is to pay the state back for investing in their education. The longer they study, the longer they have to stay.

For example, the annual fees to study medicine is around two million forints (£6,000; 7,175 euros) and most young medics will be grounded for at least a decade, considering the length of their study.

But perhaps the state has a point. Why should the hard-up Hungarian government pay to train doctors if they immediately leave for better paid jobs in Western Europe or the US?

The economies of both the European Union and the 17-nation eurozone contracted by 0.2% in the second quarter of the year after posting no growth in the first quarter, official EU figures showed Tuesday.

Air Berlin, Germany's second-largest airline, has been slashing costs, cutting routes and doing everything it can to get back in the black. But repeated delays in the opening of Berlin's new airport have thrown it into a downward spiral from which it may never recover.

Hartmut Mehdorn, CEO of Air Berlin, is good at hiding signs of despondency. But, during a Wednesday telephone conference to discuss his company's semi-annual report, he let his guard down. Twice.

When asked during the joint interview whether he regretted taking the top job at Germany's second-largest carrier, you could almost hear him forcing back a tirade. Instead, he said: "I don't regret anything. It's a challenge that is enjoyable." He also reacted irritably when asked several times about the repeated construction delays to the new Berlin Brandenburg Airport Willy Brandt (BER) and the effects those problems might have on his airline. Indeed, his spokesperson ultimately stepped in to ask journalists to focus on other issues.

Mehdorn is the previous CEO of German Railways DB...

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

A major row erupted after a Cabinet Minister accused BBC Economics Editor Stephanie Flanders of showing a pro-Labour bias by undermining the Government's jobs claims. 

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has made a formal complaint to the BBC about its `carping and moaning'.

He singled out Ms Flanders over her coverage of figures that showed unemployment and welfare handouts are falling in spite of the slump. In an interview with The  Mail on Sunday, he claimed that the BBC backs the economic stance of Labour leader Ed Miliband and Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls and seizes every chance to `dump on the Government'.

There used to be a time when Italy's super-rich gravitated to the smartest enclaves of Sardinia for a summer of relaxation and luxury. Not any more. In an increasingly austerity-conscious country, the yacht-owning classes are coming under increasing and unwelcome scrutiny, some of which would not look out of place in a scene from the film Apocalypse Now.

"We first spotted the targets with the helicopter's radar and closed in to identify about 50 boats off the two islands," said Italian coastguard captain Pietro Mele, describing a recent raid on yachts suspected of straying too close to the coast. Swooping in, the helicopter crew barked orders to the plush pleasure craft through a loudspeaker, telling them to move on from the protected Sardinian islands of Soffi and Mortorio, where anchoring is strictly forbidden.

It was hardly an act of war, but the tough measures have been enough to spark a furious reaction from royalty, actors and entrepreneurs who keep their yachts on the nearby Costa Smeralda and are now threatening to move on to Corsica or France's Côte d'Azur.

Iceland holds some key lessons for nations trying to survive bailouts after the island's approach to its rescue led to a "surprisingly" strong recovery, the International Monetary Fund's mission chief to the country said.

Iceland's commitment to its program, a decision to push losses on to bondholders instead of taxpayers and the safeguarding of a welfare system that shielded the unemployed from penury helped propel the nation from collapse toward recovery, according to the Washington-based fund.

Stuttgarter Zeitung newspaper, quoting labor sources, said shorter hours at the Bosch-Rexroth factory in Schweinfurt, Germany, might be implemented in October, initially affecting 450 to 500 workers. By year-end, 1,100 workers may be affected, the newspaper reported in its Saturday edition.

The Bosch spokesman said customers in the automotive industry were placing fewer orders for diesel systems, slowing down production at plants in Homburg, Stuttgart-Feuerbach and Bamberg.

But these plants are not considering launching a short-work program because workers could reduce their hours by using up vacations and time off accrued from working overtime, the spokesman added.

AFP - South African police insisted Friday they only fired in self-defence in a clash with striking mineworkers in which 34 people died, the deadliest protest since the end of apartheid.

As images of the gunfire cycled endlessly on television, police chief Riah Phiyega told a news conference that officers only used live ammunition after negotiations and crowd control tactics had failed.

...A union leader compared Thursday's shooting to the notorious Sharpeville massacre of 1960, in the darkest days of the apartheid era, when police killed 69 black protestors.

It was the deadliest police action in South Africa since 1985, when more than 20 blacks were shot dead by apartheid police in Cape Town as they marked the 25th anniversary of Sharpeville.

...Before Thursday, 10 people had already died at Marikana in attacks blamed on rivalry between the radical new AMCU and the powerful National Union of Mineworkers, a major ally of the ruling African National Congress.

AFP - Israel is a "cancerous tumour" that will soon be finished off, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Friday told demonstrators holding an annual protest against the existence of the Jewish state.

"The Zionist regime and the Zionists are a cancerous tumour. Even if one cell of them is left in one inch of (Palestinian) land, in the future this story (of Israel's existence) will repeat," he said in a speech in Tehran marking Iran's Quds Day that was broadcast on state television.

"The nations of the region will soon finish off the usurper Zionists in the Palestinian land.... A new Middle East will definitely be formed. With the grace of God and help of the nations, in the new Middle East there will be no trace of the Americans and Zionists," he said.

REUTERS - Japan on Friday sent home the first group of Chinese activists detained after landing on an island claimed by both Tokyo and Beijing, a move China welcomed but at the same time warned its neighbour against further "escalation" in tension.

Japan and China, Asia's two largest economies, have been at odds since the activists were detained on Wednesday after using a boat to land on the rocky, uninhabited isles known as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China.

The Organisation of American States (OAS) has thrown itself into the diplomatic dispute between Ecuador and Britain by calling a meeting of foreign ministers to discuss it.

In a late-night meeting on Friday the group agreed that the row was not over the granting of asylum to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, but instead concerned the "inviolability" of the Ecuador embassy in London.

Foreign ministers from north and south American nations will convene at the OAS Washington headquarters on Friday (Aug 24) at its Washington headquarters after a vote by the organisation's council that was overwhelmingly in favour: 23 to three, with five abstentions.

---

Canada and the US voted against calling the foreign ministers' meeting, saying the dispute should be solved by bilateral talks and that the OAS was not an appropriate forum.

Paul Ryan and his mother tout Medicare plans at Florida event | World news | guardian.co.uk

Republican vice presidential pick Paul Ryan sought to reassure Floridians over his controversial plans for senior healthcare on Saturday, relying on his 78-year-old mother to lend a hand.

"Mom" Betty was introduced to a cheering partisan crowd at The Villages, a gated retirement cluster in the state, as her son looked to counter claims that his budget proposals would see America's cherished Medicare provisions turned into a stripped-down voucher system.

Going on the offensive over the issue, Mitt Romney's running mate said President Obama's healthcare reforms would see "one in six" hospitals go out of business and force 4 million seniors to lose their current Medicare advantage plans, which are provided by private insurers.

Moreover, a Romney-Ryan administration would not allow a "board of bureaucrats" to "mess with my mom's healthcare, or your mom's healthcare", the VP hopeful said.

At least 10 Japanese nationalist activists have landed on a group of disputed islands, amid an escalating territorial row with China.

The activists swam ashore after a flotilla carrying about 150 people reached Japan's controlled Senkaku islands, called Diaoyu in China.

Japan's coast guard is now questioning the activists, who had earlier been denied permission to visit the islands.

The move triggered protests in China and strong condemnation from Beijing.

In all Netanyahu's bluster about the inevitable war, one sentence stands out: "In the Committee of Inquiry after the war, I shall take upon myself the sole responsibility, I and I alone!"

A very revealing statement.

First of all, committees of inquiry are appointed only after a military failure. There was no such committee after the 1948 War of Independence, nor after the 1956 Sinai War or the 1967 Six-day War. There were, however, committees of inquiry after the 1974 Yom Kippur war and the 1982 and 2006 Lebanon Wars. By conjuring up the specter of another such committee, Netanyahu unconsciously treats this war as an inevitable failure.

[...]

Netanyahu considers himself a modern day Winston Churchill. I don't seem to remember Churchill announcing, upon assuming office, "I take responsibility for the coming defeat." Even in the desperate situation of that moment, he trusted in victory. And the word "I" did not figure large in his speech.

The Ilva steelworks, owned by Italy's Riva family, employs 12,000 and breathes life into the depressed local economy, but has long been accused of killing off local people by belching into the air a mix of minerals, metals and carcinogenic dioxins - 8.8% of the total dioxins emitted in Europe, according to a 2005 study. More recent government figures put the cancer death rate in the area at 15% above the national average and lung cancer deaths at 30% higher. Prosecutors say emissions have killed 400 people in 13 years.

So few were surprised when a magistrate this month ordered the shutdown of the most polluting furnaces, described Ilva as "an environmental disaster" and placed members of the Riva family under house arrest, claiming they were "perfectly aware" of what they were dumping on Taranto. A former employee was also put under investigation for allegedly paying off a government inspector to tone down a report.

But what happened next was less expected. Unions went on strike to protest against the magistrate's decision, blocking roads with banners. "Dioxin levels have been reduced and emissions can be cut further with new technology, without stopping production," said Rocco Palombella, secretary general of the UILM union. He has worked alongside the 1,300C furnaces at Ilva for 36 years without, he says, falling ill.

The government then backed the unions, with the environment minister, Corrado Clini, saying it would take eight months for the furnaces to cool down, during which time Chinese competition would reap rewards. Bizarrely, Italy's health minister warned that losing your job was detrimental to your health.

The European Union is considering banning logos on cigarette packs as part of an upcoming review of its law to deter smoking, a spokesman said after Australia's highest court upheld a similar ban.

The Australian court on 15 August dismissed a legal challenge to the government's ban, in a case filed by British American Tobacco, Britain's Imperial Tobacco, Philip Morris and Japan Tobacco.

The ruling means that starting in December, all cigarette packs sold in Australia will brandish plain olive packaging (see background).

The EU will publish a draft revision to its 2001 Tobacco Products Directive in the autumn, and may introduce more stringent rules on packaging as well as extend legislation to newer tobacco products such as electronic cigarettes.

BRUSSELS - Belgium's nuclear safety chief, Willy De Roovere, on Thursday (16 August) said there could be thousands of cracks in the reactor vessel of the ageing Doel 3 nuclear reactor situated 25 km outside Antwerp and 3 km from the Dutch border.

The inspector said the cracks are parallel to the surface of the walls and pose no immediate threat but the large number has left him concerned, reports AFP. Repairs, he noted, would be almost impossible.

...The cracks, which possibly date back to the reactor's construction some 40 years ago, were discovered using ultra-sound during inspections in June and July.

PITTSBURGH (AP) -- In a surprising turnaround, the amount of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere in the U.S. has fallen dramatically to its lowest level in 20 years, and government officials say the biggest reason is that cheap and plentiful natural gas has led many power plant operators to switch from dirtier-burning coal.

Many of the world's leading climate scientists didn't see the drop coming, in large part because it happened as a result of market forces rather than direct government action against carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere.

The head of Norway's police stepped down Thursday after the publication of a damning report on the handling of last July's twin attacks by far-right extremist Anders Behring Breivik, which left 77 people dead.

Saudi Arabia is planning to estabilsh a work-zone to be staffed exclusively by women. With women facing many barriers to joining the country's workforce, experts wonder if the zones will only reinforce segregation.

Hardly a year goes by in Germany without a shrill debate on immigration and Islam. Despite the public hand-wringing, however, those in the country with a Turkish background are increasingly eager to integrate, according to a new survey. But younger Turks are also becoming more religious.

They forget to mention that Spiegel was cheerleading in that public hand-wringing. (In fact they do it right in the next few paragraphs, in an "interesting" framing for the article.)

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

DNA Storage

Scientists have been eyeing up DNA as a potential storage medium for a long time, for three very good reasons: It's incredibly dense (you can store one bit per base, and a base is only a few atoms large); it's volumetric (beaker) rather than planar (hard disk); and it's incredibly stable -- where other bleeding-edge storage mediums need to be kept in sub-zero vacuums, DNA can survive for hundreds of thousands of years in a box in your garage.

A small stone lying just to the side of the vehicle at its landing site on the floor of Gale Crater has been selected as a test target for the ChemCam laser.

The brief but powerful burst of light from this instrument will vaporise the surface of the rock, revealing details of its basic chemistry.

Dubbed N165, the object is not expected to have any science value, but should show ChemCam is ready for serious work.

"I'd probably guess this is a typical Mars basalt - basaltic rocks making up a large fraction of all the igneous rocks on Mars," Roger Wiens, the instrument's principal investigator, told BBC News.

These are frustrated voters, says Aalberts, because they feel the traditional parties are not dealing with the issues they're concerned about, such as immigration. Wilders is the only one talking about this. And his radicalism is a way of forcing the other parties to talk about it. "The aim is not that Wilders becomes Prime Minster and puts all his policies into effect. The aim is to get the parties to the right of the political spectrum to all move in the PVV's direction: more critical of Islam, of integration and now of Europe".  And that aim is being achieved, he says: "it's very clear that the climate of public and political opinion has shifted".

According to Aalberts, it's only a small minority of Wilders' supporters who see Islam as being a serious threat. Mostly they're concerned about the more humdrum irritations of daily life: groups of youngsters from immigrant backgrounds hanging around shopping malls causing a nuisance; hearing foreign languages on the street and not being able to understand what's being said; the suspicion that `foreigners' are given preferential treatment by council housing departments. "If politicians paid more attention to these sorts of issues we'd hear a lot less complaining about a multi-cultural society. Give those youngsters somewhere to go!"

Similar trends at play in France, with the National Front. There is some "success": the mainstream right UMP party has indeed moved rightward with a clear targeting of Muslims and foreigners. And some in the PS (cough- Manuel Valls - cough) are also shifting their policies to appeal to would-be extreme right voters.

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

..."Our firm legal and constitutional system guarantees the rights of each and everyone. We firmly reject any accusations to the contrary," Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said on his Twitter account.

Separately, Swedish foreign ministry spokesman Anders Joerle said: "The Ecuadorian ambassador is expected at the ministry as soon as possible.

...Joerle told AFP that Stockholm had received no extradition request from Washington and even if it did would be legally prevented from sending Assange to the United States.

Swedish law and the European human rights convention ratified by both Britain and Sweden banned extradition of a defendant to a country where he could face the death penalty, he explained.