Anti-immigrant and nationalistic discourse has existed in Greece since the 1990s, say experts, but has become more radical with the economic crisis.

For Golden Dawn, the neo-facist movement that scooped 6.9 percent of the vote in the June election, the simmering discontent has proved fertile ground.

"People can now stand up in the middle of a cafeteria and start declaring without a thread of shame that they voted for the Golden Dawn," says Aristotle Kallis, a professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Lancaster University.

"The Golden Dawn does not create a new phenomenon in Greece. The Golden Dawn, through its radical action, through its very populist action, are legitimising a particular anti-immigrant rhetoric and anti-immigrant point of view in Greece," said Kallis.

He noted that the party is also targeting the radical left in Greece, including journalists, students and politicians.

The Golden Dawn brands people who oppose their views as "anarcho-communists", an old-fashioned term Kallis says was commonly used in the 1960s when the country was politically polarised.

Manolis Kypreos, a Greek journalist, is familiar with the tactics of Golden Dawn supporters.

"Day-by-day attacks and threats are becoming more [frequent] from the members of the Golden Dawn. The police [are] just sleeping or the police officers are blind or very slow to react," he told EUobserver in an email.

Police on Monday dismantled a Roma encampment near Paris, sweeping 70 people, including 19 children, onto the streets in a move likely to reignite criticism of France's handling of the ethnic minority.

Police in the suburb of Evry moved in at dawn to clear the camp following an expulsion order issued by local mayor Francis Chouat on safety and public health grounds.

The camp was deemed unsafe as it was located on spare land close to a commuter rail line.

Interior Minister Manuel Valls, who has been severely criticised for sanctioning the clearance of several Roma camps since the new Socialist government came to power, described sanitary conditions in the Evry settlement as "unbearable."

An estimated 15,000 ethnic Roma, mostly originating from Bulgaria and Romania, currently live in makeshift camps across France.

The government moved last week to appease critics of its policy by announcing that it would ease restrictions on Bulgarian and Romanian migrants' access to the jobs market.

Greece should get more time to repay its debts provided that it sticks to reforms and savings targets agreed with the European Union, Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann said, taking a softer line than neighbour Germany, which has so far opposed any delay.

Greece's future and whether it stays in the eurozone is expected to be shaped by a series of crunch meetings in September and a progress report from European Union and International Monetary Fund inspectors on public sector cuts required in exchange for billions in aid.

Germany and France both said after recent meetings with Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras that Greece's leaders must show their commitment to reform, and Germany is showing little inclination to consider any delay.

But Austria and others in the eurozone's stronger economies have often provided advance warning throughout three years of crisis of the line the bloc's leaders will finally take.

"I see quite a good chance that we will arrive at an outcome with Greece that the Greeks stick to their agreements with the EU but in return get more time for the repayment," Faymann, who is also chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ), told newspaper Österreich in an interview published on Sunday (26 August).

"The most important thing is that the Greeks stick to the reforms and savings targets agreed with us. If that is guaranteed, I am in favour of a delay in the repayment," he said, adding that the delay could be two or three years.

German position

German Economy Minister Philipp Rösler reaffirmed Germany's stance in an interview with broadcaster ZDF on Sunday.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is considering an EU 'convention' to draw up a new treaty for closer European political unification and help overcome the bloc's sovereign debt crisis, the weekly Der Spiegel reported on Sunday (26 August). Merkel later denied the report.

Germany, the European Union's biggest economy, has long argued for more national competences, including over budgets, to be transferred to European institutions but faces strong resistance from other member states.

Merkel hopes a summit of EU leaders in December can agree a concrete date for the start of the convention on a new treaty, Der Spiegel reported.

The idea, which the magazine said Merkel's European affairs advisor floated at meetings in Brussels, recalls the 100-plus strong convention of EU lawmakers set up in 2001 - inspired by the Philadelphia Convention that led to the adoption of the US federal constitution - charged with the task of preparing a European constitution.

The charter that finally emerged was rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005 and it became instead the basis of the EU's Lisbon Treaty which is still in force today.

Many member states, recalling the lengthy disputes and setbacks that preceded the Lisbon Treaty's entry into force, are reluctant to embark on another prolonged process of institutional reform.

Some countries such as Ireland would have to hold a referendum on any new treaty and the process would increase pressure in Britain - where opposition to closer EU political union runs high - for a complete withdrawal from the EU.

However, Germany believes a much closer fiscal and political union - with EU oversight of national budgets - is needed to ensure that member states get their public finances fully in order and to restore stability to the euro currency.

'I want Europe campaign'

The report by Der Spiegel comes amid signs that Angela Merkel is preparing German public opinion for a further round of European integration.

An untested leftwing party is taking the lead ahead of the Dutch election next month, reflecting resentment over austerity and signalling that one of the eurozone's core northern countries could reject German demands to tighten public deficits.

Polls show the Socialist party could outperform the pro-business Liberal party on 12 September, suggesting it can win between a fifth and a quarter of the seats in parliament.

That would put the Socialist party and its leader, Emile Roemer, in a position to form a coalition where it could influence policy on Europe, despite having no experience of government beyond local level.

The appeal of Roemer, a 50-year-old former teacher, with a toothy smile and a down-to-earth manner, lies in his very ordinariness. He takes his holidays on the Dutch island of Texel, enjoys Italian food and says he's "no bookworm". One of his favourite films is The Silence of the Lambs.

"Of course at local level it's about roads and schools, and at national level it's much harder, you are dealing with Europe. But he understands compromise," Gijs Moes, a Liberal politician who worked with Roemer in local government, said.

One area where the two parties differ and where the Socialists are making waves is Europe.

The Socialist party opposed the euro before it was introduced, although it does not want to scrap it now, and defied a europhile consensus by successfully campaigning against the European constitution in a 2005 referendum.

Corruption is rife in schools, in the police, in commerce, in the tax office, in public exams, and, most importantly, in politics. Encouraged by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, neither of which took the time to look into the details of how it might be done, our politicians have undertaken a massive campaign of privatisations which has amounted to little more than an indiscriminate liquidation of national resources.

The country's political institutions are in a picturesque shambles. The Social Democratic Party, which, let's not forget, is the rightful heir to the Communist Party of the old regime, is now controlled by the 39-year-old Victor Ponta, who recently obtained a parliamentary majority through an alliance with the National Liberal Party.

As soon as he took power, he launched a series of initiatives to undermine the judiciary with overall aim of deposing President Traian Băsescu. The president, 61, who is a former member of the Democratic Party, is accused of involvement in the networks of the infamous communist secret police, the Securitate, as are most of the members of his generation who held important posts under Nicolae Ceauşescu (1965-1989).

Germany has admitted that it trained Belarusian security forces for a period of at least three years despite the country's reputation as "Europe's last dictatorship".

Berlin said it provided the training for 400 border guards, militia officers and technicians from 2008 in the belief that the country was committed to "a process of democracy". But the training programme - which an Interior Ministry spokesman said was provided by German officers in Minsk - was halted in 2010 following the re-election of Belarusian dictator, President Alexander Lukashenko, amid reports that the poll was rigged.

The election provoked widespread protests in Belarus and police responded with a brutal crackdown. Germany protested about the police action at the time.

Spanish prime minister plans a diplomatic offence with the goal to seek support to "avoid or soften" a rescue, according to a Spanish press report; another indication of a possible delay is Rajoy's pressure to bring forward the regional elections in Galicia; the Socialist Party general  secretary  has called on Rajoy to avoid a rescue on the grounds that Spain was a strong country; Francois Hollande also said that this was not the time to use the EFSF; Luis de Guindos says Spain only needs €60bn of the available €100bn for the banking rescue; Olli Rehn said it was possible that trouble countries retain market access; Troika report on Greece ready only early October; Jorg Asmussen details further aspects of the bond purchasing programme; said ECB was keen to avoid last year's mistake to help Italy without conditions; in its first public statements on the future bank resolution regime, the ECB said it wants the right to close down a non-viable bank;the Irish government is pondering whether or not to publish a letter by the ECB, which pressurised the former government to seek a bailout; Germany and France set up a joint working group to make common proposals for the banking union and crisis resolution policies; revised data show that the Spanish economy had performed far worse in 2010 and 2011; the German Ifo index tanks; the French government acknowledges that the 2013 economic growth forecast may have to be revised downwards; Francois Hollande's approval rating is now down at 44%; the French parliament has postponed the vote on the fiscal pact until October; Italy propose a tax on sodas; Holger Stelzner says after the failure of their crisis policies, politicians are now hiding behind the ECB; Landesbanken are reducing the foreign exposures; Daniel Gros and Thomas Mayer, meanwhile, propose a German sovereign wealth fund to recycle the country's current account surpluses.

The European Central Bank plans to resume buying the bonds of crisis-hit countries on a large scale. Jens Weidmann, head of the German central bank, is firmly opposed to the idea, arguing that it will lead to inflation and lessen pressure on governments to carry out reforms. But he is becoming increasingly isolated within the ECB and in the political world.

Volker Bouffier has always portrayed himself as the last true conservative in Germany's center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Bouffier is the governor of Hesse, the western German state where Germany's financial capital Frankfurt is located, and is known for raging against gay marriage, multiculturalism and school reforms. On questions of monetary policy, he has always been a champion of traditional German virtues. "The European Central Bank cannot become an institution that compensates for the failures of individual government budgets, such as Italy's," he said recently. "That isn't part of its mandate."

But on Monday of last week, Bouffier seemed to be a changed man. He had invited Jens Weidmann, 44, president of the German central bank, the Bundesbank, to a meeting at the Hesse state chancellery. For weeks, Weidmann had sharply opposed the ECB's plans to buy up large quantities of Italian and Spanish sovereign debt. In the meeting with Bouffier and his cabinet, Weidmann had just reiterated his position in the ongoing dispute with ECB President Mario Draghi when Bouffier, to the surprise of everyone in attendance, announced his new priorities. Apparently, the values of Southern European bonds on the balance sheets of Frankfurt banks are now more important than his conservative values.

Of course he still supported stable prices, Bouffier said, but noted that the mood in financial markets had become extremely fragile. And despite his characterization of the ECB's debt-buying plans as sinful, he said that there were no longer any alternatives to massive intervention by the central bank. "The political tools have been exhausted," Bouffier said.

The Bundesbank president is becoming increasingly isolated, and not just in provincial German politics.

'Addictive Like a Drug'

A powerful phalanx of key statesmen, from US President Barack Obama to French President François Hollande and British Prime Minister David Cameron, have long called upon Weidmann to finally abandon his resistance to the increased use of the ECB's "big bazooka." Now even some of Weidmann's former allies are turning their backs on him. Recently, Germany's powerful private banks have come out in support of Draghi, as have Weidmann's fellow ECB Governing Council member Jörg Asmussen and a majority of monetary policy experts in Northern Europe.

The head of the Bundesbank has now decided that the best form of defense is attack. In an interview with SPIEGEL, Weidmann explained why he believes the approach taken by European leaders is wrong. "We shouldn't underestimate the danger that central bank financing can become addictive like a drug," he says.

Business sentiment in Germany fell for the fourth consecutive month in August as concern mounted in the corporate sector that the eurozone's largest economy was headed for a downturn.

The Ifo Institute's business climate index reached its lowest level in more than two years, falling slightly more in August than analysts had on average expected, although the rate of decline slowed month on month.

The survey results were broadly in line with previous indications that German companies see business deteriorating. Hans-Werner Sinn, president of the Ifo Institute, said export expectations were slightly negative for the first time in almost three years. "The German economy continues to falter," he said.

While the economy of the eurozone as a whole shrank in the second quarter, Germany's economy's grew, but at a slower rate than in the first three months. Many economists and businesses fear conditions are getting worse as the performance of the country's industries - particularly those that generate significant exports - will increasingly be put at risk by the eurozone crisis.

"Today's release confirmed our view that weaker global demand will soon be felt in Germany and weigh on exports, while domestic investment will continue to suffer from uncertainties created by the euro area crisis," analysts from Barclays Capital said.

The number of registered French job seekers saw the sharpest monthly rise in three years rising to 2.99 million people in July, the 15th consecutive month the country's unemployment line increased, the labour ministry said Monday.

From the previous month, the number of registered job seekers rose by 41,300 people, the ministry said, on pace to break the three million mark next month.

Including the number of people working on reduced hours, 4.45 million people were hunting for jobs in mainland France in July, the ministry said, an increase of 58,300 people from June.

VALLADOLID, Spain--Even though she's one of millions of young, unemployed Spaniards, 22-year-old Silvia Martín takes comfort in knowing that her bank is still standing behind her. It's not a lending institution, but rather a time bank whose nearly 400 members barter their services by the hour.

Ms. Martín, who doesn't own a car and can't afford taxis, has relied on other time-bank members to give her lifts around town for her odd jobs and errands, as well as to help with house repairs. In return, she has cared for members' elderly relatives, organized children's parties and even hauled boxes for a member moving to a new house.

The time bank not only saves her cash, she says, but also lifts her spirits by making her feel "part of a community that's taking some positive action during hard times."

As Europe's leaders struggle with a five-year-old economic crunch that has saddled Spain with the industrialized world's highest jobless rate, young Spaniards are increasingly embracing such bottom-up self-help initiatives to cope. The diverse measures--some commonly associated with rural or disaster-zone economies--supplement a public safety net that is fraying under government austerity programs.

The Norwegian government has announced it would assess the legitimacy of developing countries' debt to Norway. In effect it will investigate whether its loans have been useful enough to warrant repayment.

That makes Norway the first nation ever to carry out a creditor's debt audit. The United Kingdom appears to be following Norway's example but campaigners are still facing some big hurdles.

Last Wednesday Norwegian Minister of Development Heikki Holmås announced an independent public audit of developing countries' debt to Norway. The Norwegian government had promised to do so since being elected in 2009, and to work to establish binding guidelines for responsible lending.

"The Norwegian government is bold," Gina Ekholt, director of SLUG, the Norwegian Coalition for Debt Cancellation, tells IPS. "Something like this has never been done before. It has the potential to change the global creditor society: other countries will start doing the same once everyone agrees this is an acceptable process and a moral obligation. We are proud of the Norwegian government to have made this historical political announcement."

This is not the first time the Norwegian government has openly questioned its responsibility as a creditor. In 2006, Norway decided to cancel debt worth more than 70 million euros to Myanmar, Sudan, Egypt, Ecuador, Sierra Leone, Jamaica and Peru related to the Norwegian Ship Export Campaign.

During that campaign between 1976 and 1980, the Norwegian government tried to solve a crisis in the ship building industry by offering cheap loans to developing countries to buy Norwegian vessels. Ten years after the campaign the Norwegian Parliament concluded that the campaign had had very little developmental effect for the countries involved and therefore, the loans were illegitimate.

While announcing the debt audit, Holmås added that he does not expect to find any more cases of illegitimate debt. But there is reason to believe otherwise. In 2009, SLUG published a report focussing on Indonesia's debt to Norway. According to the report, Indonesia is still repaying loans worth 160 million euros for a wave power plant that was never built, and failed technology for sea monitoring systems.

Apple has listed the eight Samsung phones it wants to ban as a result of its victory in court last week.

Apple determined the phones are subject to a ban after reviewing the jury's decision.

We have the news on our Bloomberg terminal and will update this post with a link to the full story once it's available.

Most of the devices on Apple's list are outdated. They come from last year's flagship model, the Galaxy S II.

Samsung began selling  its current flagship phone, the Galaxy S III, this summer.

Other phones like the Droid Charge were released more than a year ago, but are still for sale.

Mass burials in this Damascus suburb on Sunday showed the carnage of the past few days in gruesome detail: scores of bodies lined up on top of each other in long thin graves moist with mud.

A video of what activists described as the fifth grave to be filled showed two small children near the edge. Up close, in the field where there were more bodies than people to wash and prepare them for burial, the scent of decay swirled and gunshot wounds could be seen in the heads of many men.

"The Assad forces killed them in cold blood," said Abu Ahmad, 40, a resident of Daraya, where the Syrian government has waged a campaign it described as a "cleansing." "I saw dozens of dead people, killed by the knives at the end of Kalashnikovs, or by gunfire. The regime finished off whole families, a father, mother and their children. They just killed them without any pretext."

Several other witnesses here and two activist groups have now offered accounts of what has begun to look like one of the deadliest and focused short-term assaults by the Syrian military since the uprising started nearly 18 months ago. Residents described how the Syrian Army first closed off the town, keeping civilians from fleeing, then methodically began a campaign of heavy shelling and house-to-house searches.

Even as many of the details are still difficult to verify or determine -- the exact number killed, how many were executed or died from shelling -- evidence of what activists described as a massacre continues to mount.

The death toll, rising all week, grew again on Sunday. A day after two activist networks, the Local Coordination Committees and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said that more than 200 bodies had been found in the town, activists said another 15 bodies were discovered in the basement of a home in the area. That put the death toll for the week at more than 630 in the city, said the Local Coordination Committees, including 300 people reported executed.

Four US soldiers plotted to assassinate Barack Obama and overthrow the government, a court has heard.

One, private Michael Burnett, has pleaded guilty to manslaughter and gang charges in the killings last December of former soldier Michael Roark and his girlfriend, 17-year-old Tiffany York.

Burnett said that Roark, who had just left the army, knew of the militia group's plans and was killed because he was "a loose end."

Prosecutor Isabel Pauley said the group bought $87,000 (£55,000) of guns and bomb-making materials and plotted to take over Fort Stewart, bomb targets in Savannah and Washington state, as well as assassinate the president.

Miners are being intimidated into staying away from work at the South African mine where 34 people were recently shot dead by police, the owners say.

Lonmin says just 13% of workers have reported for duty on Monday and says miners have been threatened.

Hundreds of miners have reportedly gathered outside the mine, amid a heavy police presence.

Leaders of the ruling ANC are expected to discuss the deaths.

The ANC has been criticised for the way the matter was handled, and President Jacob Zuma is expected to face tough questions at the closed-door meeting. 'Assaulted in custody'

Lonmin, the world's third largest platinum producer, had hoped that the strike at the Marikana platinum mine would end and production would resume.

"Employees are waiting for the environment to be safe. Groups of people are walking around intimidating people who come onto the property," Lonmin spokeswoman Sue Vey told the BBC.

Iran indicated on Monday it might allow diplomats visiting Tehran for this week's Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit to go to the Parchin military base, which U.N. nuclear experts say may have been used for nuclear-related explosives tests.

When asked about the possibility, Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammad Mehdi Akhoundzadeh said: "Such a visit is not customary in such meetings...However at the discretion of authorities, Iran would be ready for such a visit," the Iranian government-linked news agency Young Journalists Club reported.

The tentative offer was made just three days after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) again failed to gain access to Parchin for its inspectors at a meeting with an Iranian delegation in Vienna.

Iran is hosting the NAM summit, which ends on Friday, at a time when the West is trying to isolate the Islamic Republic over suspicions it is seeking a nuclear weapons capability. Tehran says its atomic program has only peaceful aims.

Any visit to Parchin by NAM representatives would do little to calm Western concerns or those of the IAEA whose talks with Iran on the agency's stalled probe into suspected atom bomb research in the Islamic state ended on Friday without agreement.

"Any tour the Iranians conduct for visiting NAM officials would be nothing more than a very, very bad publicity stunt," a senior Western diplomat in Vienna told Reuters. "It is the IAEA that should have been given access to Parchin."

The U.N. body suspects that Iran has conducted explosives tests in a steel chamber at Parchin relevant for the development of nuclear weapons, possibly a decade ago.

The U.S. is planning a major expansion of missile defenses in Asia, a move American officials say is designed to contain threats from North Korea, but one that could also be used to counter China's military.

The planned buildup is part of a defensive array that could cover large swaths of Asia, with a new radar in southern Japan and possibly another in Southeast Asia tied to missile-defense ships and land-based interceptors.

It is part of the Obama administration's new defense strategy to shift resources to an Asian-Pacific region critical to the U.S. economy after a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The expansion comes at a time when the U.S. and its allies in the region voice growing alarm about a North Korean missile threat. They are also increasingly worried about China's aggressive stance in disputed waters such the South China Sea, where Asian rivals are vying for control of oil and mineral rights.

U.S. defense planners are particularly concerned about China's development of antiship ballistic missiles that could threaten the Navy's fleet of aircraft carriers, critical to the U.S. projection of power in Asia.

"The focus of our rhetoric is North Korea," said Steven Hildreth, a missile-defense expert with the Congressional Research Service, an advisory arm of Congress. "The reality is that we're also looking longer term at the elephant in the room, which is China."

Fires are still burning at an oil refinery in Venezuela, the site of a deadly explosion early on Saturday.

Two storage tanks are still alight but state oil company officials say they have the situation under control.

Forty-one people died and dozens were injured in the blast at the Amuay refinery in northern Falcon state, one of the largest in the world.

Mining Minister Rafael Ramirez said operations could resume within two days of the site being declared safe.

A doctor at Coromoto Hospital said on Sunday that two people had died of burns, raising the number of dead from the earlier figure of 39 to 41.

A thick column of black smoke continued to rise from the refinery throughout Sunday.

Firefighters said their work had been slowed down by increasing winds and a change in wind direction.

Colombia:

Colombia Reports: The Colombian government has signed a formal agreement with the FARC to start a peace process to end the armed conflict which has devastated the country since 1964, reported Venezuelan news network Telesur on Monday.  According to Telesur, "high level sources within the government of Juan Manuel Santos and the FARC have just signed an agreement to begin a formal peace dialogue."

Colombia Reports: Colombia's government is to meet with FARC guerrilla representatives on October 5th in Norway's capital Oslo to formally negotiate a peace agreement to end the country's 48-year old armed conflict, reported RCN Radio Monday.

More HERE, HERE, and HERE.

Miami Herald: As [tropical storm] Isaac heads into the Gulf, the death toll continues to rise. The storm left at least eight dead in Haiti and two dead in the Dominican Republic.

MercoPress: Britain said it remained committed to reaching a diplomatic solution to the presence of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in Ecuador's London embassy, after both countries took steps to defuse a row over his action in taking refuge there.

Sixteen members of a breakaway Amish group accused of hair-cutting attacks against members of their own faith in Ohio are set to go on trial this week in Cleveland.

The group's leader and several family members are among those charged with hate crimes in what prosecutors say were attacks motivated by religious differences. They could face prison terms of 20 years or more if convicted.

A week ago or so I wrote here that given Barack Obama's expansive interpretation of U.S. interests, which involves massive drone attacks against targets in multiple Middle Eastern and African countries, that it was only a matter of time before Israel did the same.  And now it has.

Alon Ben David, Channel 10′s military correspondent reports (at 13:30 of the above video) a drone strike against an Egyptian target 18 miles inside that country's borders.  It assassinated Ibrahim Owida Nasser Madan, a local Bedouin militant, as he was riding a motorcycle.  Ben David characterized him vaguely as a follower of "global jihad."  The victim's sin?  He was supposedly involved in a missile attack against Eilat last year in which no one was hurt or injured.  Ben David did not explicitly credit the IDF for the attack though he did say no one in Israel "will shed a tear" for his death.

The number of young East Jerusalem Palestinians wanting to study in Israeli universities is rising rapidly. As a result, the number of East Jerusalem residents registering for Israeli matriculation exams has risen by tens of percent, Education Ministry officials estimate.

Most Palestinians who take the Israeli exams, which are adjusted for the Israeli Arab students, do so after studying at one of the many private matriculation schools that have opened in East Jerusalem in recent years.

Israeli and Palestinian education experts say that while the change may stem from wanting a better job, or to avoid the roadblocks on the way to the Palestinian universities, the result is a deep transformation in Palestinian society's identity in East Jerusalem.

The extent of Arctic sea ice reached a record low Monday, according to the University of Colorado National Snow and Ice Data Center, and is on track to decline further in the next two weeks.

The news that the Arctic sea ice cover had shrunk to 1.58 million square miles (4.1 million square kilometers) on Sunday came two days after Royal Dutch Shell's drill ship, the Noble Discoverer, took advantage of reduced sea ice and started sailing from Alaska's Dutch Harbor to the Chukchi Sea, in anticipation of final federal approval for oil exploration activities there.

The area covered by Arctic summer sea ice usually reaches its low point around Sept. 13, when the region begins to cool. But it has been melting at an unprecedented 38,600 square miles (100,000 square kilometers) per day, and it is likely to decline even further before the ice begins to re-form. The last minimum sea-ice record of 1.61 million square miles (4.17 million square kilometers) was set in September 2007.

Walt Meier, a research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, said long-term warming coupled with recent weather conditions account for the new low. He noted that the long-term warming trend has produced more open water, which in turn absorbs more heat and makes the ice thinner.

"The thinner ice cover is then more easily melted during the summer, and more easily broken up by winds and waves from storms, which leads to more melting as well," Meier wrote in an e-mail. "This year we had a pretty strong storm go through the Arctic in early August, and that certainly has been a big factor in the rapid loss during August. But before that storm, we were already tracking along the 2007 trajectory, so a record may have happened even without that storm because of the long-term trend."

The carbon storage capacity of protected forests in West Africa has increased despite the region suffering a 40-year drought, a study suggests.

A team of UK and Ghanaian researchers found that the tree composition in these areas favoured species that were able to cope with drier conditions.

Previous studies suggested that drought conditions resulted in less carbon being stored as vegetation died.

The findings have been published in the journal Ecology Letters.

"Despite the long-term drought, there was no biomass loss in the forests. In fact, the biomass actually increased during that period," explained co-author Sophie Fauset from the University of Leeds.

Biomass is a vital component in the global carbon cycle. When plants grow, they absorb carbon dioxide and water in the photosynthesis process.

While oxygen is released into the atmosphere as a waste product of this process, the absorbed carbon primarily remains locked in the plant until it dies.

"We think it is the result of a shift in species composition," Dr Fauset said, explaining why the study showed an increase in biomass.

"Because you have got this long-term environmental shift, it is possible for the species composition of the forests to reshuffle slightly, so the species that can survive under those conditions are favoured.

"This means you are getting less negative impacts of the drought."

Danish Environment Minister Ida Auken has decided to ban four industrial chemicals linked to disrupting the human endocrine system, pushing Denmark ahead of the European Union which has already started a process of phasing phthalates.

Auken said she would introduce a ban this autumn on DEHP, DBP, DIBP and BBP phthalates.

Phthalates are chemical substances which are used to make plastic soft and more flexible. They can be found in everyday products such as rubber boots, oilcloths and vinyl flooring and have already been banned in Europe for use in children's toys.

In deciding the ban, Auken is defying EU regulation in the area. In Spring 2013, the European Commission is due to look into further action in the area of endocrine disrupters that could lead to tougher regulation of phthalates.

Phthalates are among other things suspected of making men sterile and of pushing young girls into puberty too early.

"The Danish Environment Ministry has enough documentation so we feel now is time for action," Auken told EurActiv. 

"The EU will look at this in spring, and we know how long it will take before everyone agrees on what to do. It has to go through all the institutions, and then it has to come into force. It can take a really long time so I don't think that Denmark should wait for that when there are such clear [risk] indications in this area."

"Therefore I take these phthalates off the market," the Danish environment minister said in a telephone interview.

Nuclear energy is a French "industry of the future", the country's minister for industrial renewal said on Sunday in a comment that has upset environmentalists in coalition with the government.

"We need energy that is not too expensive," Arnaud Montebourg told BFM TV. "France's existing nuclear infrastructure is a huge asset, giving us cheap and affordable electricity.
"It is a strategically important asset and we will continue investing in France's nuclear future."

France, which has 59 nuclear reactors, is the world's biggest consumer of atomic energy, which accounts for more than 75% of all electricity produced in the country. (The USA actually produces more, but it accounts for less than 20% of total consumption).

The 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan brought France's reliance on nuclear power into sharp focus and led to a broad investigation into the safety of the country's plants.

For France's environmentalists, who were eyeing positions in government for the first time in a decade, the catastrophe in Japan was an opportunity to push their demands for an end to France's status as the world's leading consumer of nuclear power.

`Big debate'

During his successful 2012 presidential election campaign François Hollande, courting the support of the "Europe-Ecologie-les-Verts" (EELV) grouping of Green parties, pledged to find ways to reduce France's reliance on atomic energy.

In coalition negotiations with the EELV, he promised to launch a "big debate" and to start a process that would see "the nuclear share of the energy market drop from 75% to 50% by 2025."

Leading water scientists have issued one of the sternest warnings yet about global food supplies, saying that the world's population may have to switch almost completely to a vegetarian diet over the next 40 years to avoid catastrophic shortages.

Humans derive about 20% of their protein from animal-based products now, but this may need to drop to just 5% to feed the extra 2 billion people expected to be alive by 2050, according to research by some of the world's leading water scientists.

"There will not be enough water available on current croplands to produce food for the expected 9 billion population in 2050 if we follow current trends and changes towards diets common in western nations," the report by Malik Falkenmark and colleagues at the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) said.

"There will be just enough water if the proportion of animal-based foods is limited to 5% of total calories and considerable regional water deficits can be met by a ... reliable system of food trade."

Dire warnings of water scarcity limiting food production come as Oxfam and the UN prepare for a possible second global food crisis in five years. Prices for staples such as corn and wheat have risen nearly 50% on international markets since June, triggered by severe droughts in the US and Russia, and weak monsoon rains in Asia. More than 18 million people are already facing serious food shortages across the Sahel.

Oxfam has forecast that the price spike will have a devastating impact in developing countries that rely heavily on food imports, including parts of Latin America, North Africa and the Middle East. Food shortages in 2008 led to civil unrest in 28 countries.

About two months back, 28-year old Asif Ahmed* put up an announcement on the internet to sell one of his kidneys.

"I lost a lot of money in business some four years back and pumped in more money by taking a loan, but I've lost all. I know there is a law that prohibits selling of any organ, but I can't think of any other way to pay back this loan," he told IPS over the phone.

However, not one person has contacted him even to inquire or show any interest. But then Ahmed is based in the southern port city of Karachi, in Sindh province, where the illegal organ trade is well under control, unlike reports of a rise in Punjab province.

Pakistan enacted a transplant law in 2010 to shake off its reputation as a leading destination for transplant tourism and bring a stop to illegal organ trafficking.

After the passage of the transplant law, organ trafficking stalled to some extent, due to the "attention it garnered," said Dr Farhat Moazam. But, she added, there is new evidence that "since last year, cases are beginning to surface again."

Moazam is chair of the Centre of Biomedical Ethics and Culture at the Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation (SIUT), institutions that relentlessly campaigned for the organ law for over two decades before the law was promulgated in 2010.
She said while there is "suspicion" that both foreigners and Pakistanis are buying kidneys, the former draw more attention in the media.

"We also get information from our international colleagues (often from the Middle East) about their citizens who have landed in their hospitals with problems following a kidney transplant in Lahore and Rawalpindi (in Punjab province)".

Normal-weight people with fat bellies have a higher risk of death than the obese, according to data presented at the European Society of Cardiology conference in Munich today.

People with a normal body mass index, or BMI, and "central obesity" as defined by a high waist-to-hip ratio had the greatest risk of cardiovascular-related death and the highest death risk overall, researchers said today in a statement. The risk of cardiovascular death was 2.75 times higher and the risk of death from all causes was 2.08 times higher compared with subjects with normal BMI and a normal waist-to-hip ratio.

"We knew from previous research that central obesity is bad, but what is new in this research is that the distribution of the fat is very important, even in people with a normal weight," Francisco Lopez-Jimenez, senior author of the study and a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, said in the statement. "This group has the highest death rate, even higher than those who are considered obese based on BMI."

The risk of death may be related to a higher visceral fat accumulation, which is associated with insulin resistance and other risk factors, Karine Sahakyan, a research fellow at the Mayo Clinic who is presenting the results at the meeting, said at a press conference. Risk for fat-bellied subjects may also be connected to a limited amount of "protective" fat on the hips and legs and a relatively limited amount of muscle mass, she said.

The German postal service is set to issue a stamp reminding Germans that 2,000 years ago Jesus underwent circumcision as an eight-day-old baby, a ritual religious practice that a German court has controversially banned in part of the country.

The stamp, marking the 200th anniversary of the German Bible Society on 11 September, shows a page from the New Testament that includes a description of Jesus being circumcised.

The Bible Society says the stamp's design was finalised well before the heated debate over circumcision began, but it does not intend to delay the date of issue.

The 85-cent stamp bears a passage from the Gospel of Saint Luke that includes the words, "On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise the child, he was named Jesus."

A court in Cologne, ruling in the case of a Muslim boy taken to a doctor with bleeding after circumcision, said in June that the procedure should not be carried out on young boys, but could be practised on older males who gave consent.

The ruling, which applies only to the Cologne area, incensed Jews and Muslims and led to an emotional debate about the rights of children and families and about religious freedom in a country that is very sensitive to charges of intolerance because of its Nazi past.

Jewish religious practice requires boys to be circumcised from eight days old, while for Muslims, circumcision is required but the age at which it is carried out varies according to family, country and branch of Islam.

"We don't want to add fuel to the fire," said Stefan Wittig, a Lutheran pastor who works for the Bible Society.

The developmental psychologist Daphne Maurer made headlines this year with research suggesting that people born with cataracts could improve their eyesight by playing Medal of Honor, the "first-person shooter" video game. But her fame goes far beyond the video screen.

 Dr. Maurer, 56, director of the Visual Development Lab at McMaster University in Ontario, is an author, with her husband, Charles, of the pioneering 1988 book "The World of the Newborn," an inventory of what babies sense and experience. In recent years she has been directing a study tracking infants born with visual impairments into later life. This longitudinal study is her attempt to learn how early sensory deprivation affects vision over a lifetime.

We spoke in person earlier this year and again by telephone last month. An edited and condensed version of the two conversations follows.

How did computer games enter your life? Are you a gamer?

No, not at all. I'm a reader. My husband and I don't have children. So computer games wouldn't be a part of our lives. I've never played one. I can't imagine enjoying playing one.

For more than 25 years, I've been an investigator on a longitudinal study following the visual development of infants born with cataracts in their eyes. These youngsters went through a period of temporary visual deprivation. They didn't get any of that early patterning in the world that regularly sighted infants get. As soon as possible, they received surgeries and corrective contact lenses at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, after which their vision improved.

By following them and another group of youngsters who had developed cataracts after birth and had the same surgery, we could ask questions about visual development. How much of it is an innate unfolding? How much comes from what the baby sees in the early months of life, a time when the sector of the brain that controls vision, the visual cortex, is developing its neural wiring?

And what did you discover?

If the deprivation happened at birth, the children ended up with a few things that were normal. But there would be abnormalities in their adult vision. If the cataracts appeared later, let's say at any time during the first 10 years, there would also be deficits, but not as severe as those in the group that had cataracts at birth.

For 99 years, 363 days, two World Wars and doubtless more than a couple of moments of temptation - the people of the small town of Otta in Norway have resisted opening a mysterious package bearing the inscription, "Kan aabnes i 2012" - "Can open in 2012."

Just the simple inscription, the thick paper, a few pieces of string and a red wax seal have kept the contents from prying eyes, but today the people of Otta finally discovered the secrets of a parcel that was delivered more than 100 years ago.

The package was sealed in 1912 by the then municipality's mayor, Johan Nygaard, and aside from a couple of occasions when it was nearly misplaced the package has remained largely undisturbed.

Until today that is.

In a small ceremony -  held during the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the Battle of Kringen - the package was opened.  And it's fair to say the results were a little disappointing.

It contained some letters from the United States and discussion of finances for a Kringen memorial, along with some newspapers.

Although experts are still analysing what was contained in the parcel it seems safe to say there was nothing to justify the extraordinary hype surrounding the event, which saw it covered by news outlets worldwide.

Testament perhaps to the universal fascination an unopened 100-year-old-parcel can provoke.

So, were the locals lying about the lion?

Police said Monday that they've found no evidence to support locals' claims that they'd spotted a big cat prowling the countryside near the idyllic village of St. Osyth, in the southeastern English county of Essex.

Sunday's reported sightings alarmed the village's 4,000 residents, and authorities sent about 40 officers, tranquilizer-toting zoo experts, and a pair of heat-seeking helicopters to the area in an effort to find the beast.

But a police spokeswoman said that, after and an extensive search, ``we've found no evidence of any big cat.''

So does that mean there never was any lion?

The official, who spoke on customary condition of anonymity, demurred, noting that the people interviewed by police were convinced they'd spotted a lion. That aside, she said, ``we've stopped searching for it.''

It seems the mysterious ``Essex Lion'' will join a host of other mythical beasts who regularly appear and then disappear into the British countryside - particularly in the dead of summer, when journalists struggle to fill papers and news bulletins.

A BNP van brandishing the party's slogans became stuck under a bridge as it made its way to a demonstration outside sandwich chain Subway.

Members of the far right party were in Sunderland using the propaganda vehicle to protest outside a halal branch of Subway.

The van - which members call the 'truth truck' - got stuck underneath the St Peter's Metro Station bridge on Sheepfolds North in the city.