David Cameron has said he will press ahead with proposed changes to the House of Commons despite the Lib Dems saying they will vote against them.

The prime minister said plans to redraw constituency boundaries would be "put forward" to MPs and urged all parties to back the "very sensible" proposals.

Senior Lib Dems have said they will oppose them after Tory MPs blocked proposals to reform the House of Lords.

Russian prosecutors have asked for three years' in prison for three women musicians accused of inciting religious hatred during a protest in a cathedral.

The three members of the punk band Pussy Riot played a song attacking Russian leader Vladimir Putin in front of an altar on 21 February.

They told the court their performance was a political act, not aimed at hurting the feelings of believers.

Concern about the case has been voiced by the EU and others

Fires on Spain's Canary Islands have destroyed more than 4,000 hectares (9,900 acres) of land, including part of a UN World Heritage site.

The Garajonay National Park on the island of La Gomera is home to hundreds of plant species, some of which are unique to the island in the Atlantic.

Firefighters later managed to stop the advance of the blaze, which they suspect was started deliberately.

Greek authorities have begun one of the country's biggest crackdowns yet on suspected illegal immigrants, deploying 4,500 police around Athens and detaining more than 7,000 immigrants in less than 72 hours.

Most have been released, but about 2,000, mostly Africans and Asians, were arrested. They were sent to holding centres pending deportation in an operation that officials, bizarrely, elected to call Xenios Zeus after the Greek god of hospitality.

On Sunday, 88 undocumented Pakistanis were put on planes, accompanied by guards, back to their home country.

A 60-year-old German civilian who worked at Nato's air command headquarters in Germany has been charged with stealing secret data, federal prosecutors have said .

The suspect, identified only as Manfred K in accordance with German privacy rules, was arrested on Monday on charges of obtaining state secrets with the intent to provide them to an unidentified third party, revealed prosecutors' spokesman Markus Koehler in a written statement. The Nato employee is alleged to have obtained the data and then transferred it to his private computer.

On a recent summer evening 11-year-old Mazlum Akay left his home in Yüregir, a predominantly Kurdish neighbourhood in the southern Turkish city of Adana, to buy sweets at the local corner shop.

Nearby, clashes had broken out between riot police and local youths demonstrating against the solitary confinement of Kurdish militant leader Abdullah Öcalan, who was convicted for treason in 1999.

Witnesses say that there were no protesers on the sidestreet where Mazlum was heading to the shop, but the schoolboy was struck on the head by a police teargas cartridge. Eight days later, on 5 August, Mazlum died from his wounds and became the 501st child killed by Turkish security forces since 1988, according to Turkish human rights organisations.

German politicians have reacted furiously to this front page in the Italian daily Il Giornale with its headline "Fourth Reich" above a picture of Chancellor Angela Merkel raising her hand in a vaguely fascist salute.

The paper is owned by the brother of Italy's former prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, and the article - published on Friday - was written by its editor-in-chief, Alessandro Sallusti.

It says: "Since yesterday, Italy is no longer in Europe, it is in the Fourth Reich." It argues that Germany has won while Italy, Europe and the euro have lost. It blames Merkel for failing to allow the European central bank to assist the Italian economy.

With the end of the first week of the Olympic Games, London looks to have successfully leapt over the hurdles many commentators anticipated for it and produced an Olympic Games that it is taking pride in.

Even the English weather, famed for its showers and changeability, is flattering the Olympics with a backdrop that has often been sunny and warm.

However, there are still problems for the city and the Games.

Principal among these is transport. London's Underground network, while being among the world's largest, is also the world's oldest dating back nearly 150 years in places.

There is, of course, nothing particularly remarkable--or lamentable--in the changing role of the different regions of the world. This has happened again and again. What is really striking is not the historical re-balancing of the different parts of the world, but the mess that Europe has managed to get into in the last decade or so, particularly over the last couple of years. There is a lot of discussion right now--appropriately enough--about how Europe is going to liberate itself from its financial disarray, economic misery, and political chaos. "What to do now" is certainly an important issue today, but "what not to do" is no less important in looking at Europe's immediate past. This is so not just because past mistakes are relevant in deciding on what to do in Europe (even though what has been done cannot be readily undone--there is no automatic translation from past follies into present rectifications), but also because the negative lessons are essential if we are to avoid similar adversities in the rest of the world.

...

There is nothing particularly surprising about the problems of balance of payments and other economic adversities that many of the European countries--Greece, Spain, Portugal--have faced, given the inflexibility of the euro zone restrictions on exchange rate adjustment and monetary policies. The consequent crises and rescues involving demands for draconian cuts in public services have also frayed people's tempers on both sides of the divide. They have strongly exacerbated internecine disaffections within Europe, as is clear from the political rhetoric coming in recent days in very different forms, from the north as well as the south of Europe--with pejorative anger targeted at objects of contempt that vary from "lazy Greeks" to "imperial Germans."

...

If democracy has been one of the strong commitments with which Europe emerged in the 1940s, an understanding of the necessity of social security and the avoidance of intense social deprivation was surely another. Even if savage cuts in the foundations of the European systems of social justice had been financially inescapable (I do not believe that they were), there was still a need to persuade people that this is indeed the case, rather than trying to carry out such cuts by fiat. The disdain for the public could hardly have been more transparent in many of the chosen ways of European policy-making.

...

The policy package demanded by the financial leadership of Europe has been, despite its rhetoric, severely anti-growth. The economic growth of the euro zone has been undermined dramatically, and the GDP there has been falling rather than growing--so much so that the recent report that there was zero growth in the euro zone in the first quarter of 2012 has been widely greeted as "good news." If Germany is taken out of the total, the result would be continued bad news of falling output for the rest of the euro zone. Spain, Portugal, and Italy continued to decline in these months, and while Greece tempered its free fall from a previous negative 6 percent in 2011, the Greek economy has lost nearly a quarter of its production since 2008. While the economies and the people involved have suffered, the deficits have been quite resistant. The earning of public revenue is impeded by dampened--or negative--economic growth, and this directly cuts down the state's ability to cut deficits.

...

Finally, and very importantly, the cause of necessary economic reforms has not been served by confounding that necessity with the policy of austerity. Indeed, serious consideration of the kinds of reform that are needed has been hampered, rather than aided, by the loss of clarity about the distinction between reform of bad administrative arrangements (such as people evading taxes, government servants using favoritism, banks being exempt from necessary discipline, or--for that matter--preserving a nonviable system of early retiring ages), and austerity in the form of ruthless cuts in public services and basic social security. The requirements for alleged financial discipline have tended to amalgamate the two, even though any analysis of social justice would view policies for necessary reform in an altogether different way from drastic cuts in important public services. Even if that distinction may have been lost in rather crude financial thinking, opportunities for adequate public reasoning, in "government by discussion," could have brought out its relevance clearly enough.

The Wall Street Journal recently printed an economically incoherent and dishonest discussion of Spain's budget deficit.  ...

...

The fact that the two subjects [failure to meet deficit targets and rising unemployment] are intrinsically linked appears to have escaped our nation's most famous financial newspaper.  Instead, they treat the following claim by the Spanish government as if it were a fact rather than an assertion falsified by the events recounted in the WSJ article.

"Government officials also expressed confidence that new austerity measures pushed through in July--valued at a total of €65 billion over the next 2½ years--will help ensure the government meets its [budget deficit reduction] targets."

Austerity can never "ensure" meeting a budget target.  Austerity means some combination of raising revenues and reducing expenditures.  A severe recession produces large budget deficits by causing an enormous drop in tax revenues and a material increase in spending, e.g., in payments to the unemployed who are unable to find work.  As the 25% unemployment rate demonstrates, Spain is in a depression.  A recession typically occurs when private sector demand becomes so inadequate that the economy contracts and cannot employ large numbers of workers seeking jobs.

...

Recall the article's statement that the Spanish government "struggled to impose budget discipline on the country's restive regions."  Regional governments face all the urgent needs to spend that are increased by a depression, suffer the severe drop in tax revenues, and have very limited ability to borrow.  A humane and economically rational national government would follow counter-cyclical fiscal policies to combat the depression, including greatly increased financial aid to the regions.  These very real problems that the regional governments struggle with are causing great human misery.  The article briefly notes some of the facts establishing that misery.

"Citing severe liquidity strains, Catalonia's government has delayed July payments for social-service providers, including hospitals and retirement homes. As many as 100,000 employees could suffer payment delays as a result, local media say. Spanish regions are responsible for over a third of spending in the highly decentralized country, including politically sensitive areas such as health and education."

The WSJ conveys no real sympathy for their struggle or the misery and no analysis of why it is the national austerity policy that is the problem rather than the solution.  "Health and education" are not merely "politically sensitive areas," for the economic, political, and social future of the nation rests largely on health and education.  The article treats the regional government leaders as undisciplined, profligate children who require adult supervision by Spain's national leaders.  The victims are demonized and the Spanish national leaders who have gratuitously thrown their nation into a depression and intend to double down on their failed austerity policies are lionized.  The metaphor that the article presents treats the regional governmental leaders as curs who must be brought "to heel."

Shares of Standard Chartered have tumbled despite the bank denying allegations that it illegally "schemed" with Iran to launder money.

Shares in London fell 16.7%, about as much as its Hong Kong stock dropped.

The New York State Department of Financial Services said the UK-based bank laundered as much as $250bn (£161bn) over nearly a decade.

It said the bank hid transactions for "Iranian financial institutions" that were subject to US economic sanctions.

Italy's economy shrank 0.7% in the second quarter, underlining a deepening recession, as government austerity measures continue to affect everything from factory activity to consumer spending.

Italy's GDP fell for the fourth quarter in a row, preliminary figures showed.

Compared with a year earlier, growth slumped by 2.5%, Istat said.

A former Lloyds Bank worker in charge of online security has admitted carrying out a fraud worth more than £2.4m.

Jessica Harper, 50, had been accused of submitting false invoices to claim payments between 2007 and 2011.

At the time she was working as head of fraud and security for digital banking and made false claims totalling £2,463,750.

Harper, of South Croydon, south London, will be sentenced on 21 September

As the Eurozone recession (which started months ago) worsens, the area's manufacturing activity, as measured by the PMI index, is contracting at a pace not seen since 2009.

A great deal of this decline however is now driven by Germany (rather than the periphery), whose manufacturing PMI is showing a rapid deterioration. It is somewhat surprising, given that we had signs of economic improvements in Germany as recently as May. But the German "decoupling" hopes did not materialize, as the economy is pulled down by the rest of the Eurozone combined with the slowdown in China, one of the nation's largest export markets.

Consider the fact if the Bank CEO's paid a Higher Interest for Savings and to the Savings from Customers Equity and then a Lower Interest for Loans, then people would be more willing to pay back their loans, because they know they would get Higher Interest for their Savings recognized in their Equity Account.

The Banks would make money, and the customers would make money, and everything would be fine and dandy.

How would the Banks make money? Banks could essentially say to themselves.

"Well I have all this Equity Savings in my Bank now, and we will make good on our commitment to pay our customers their Equity Savings Interest." So how can I as a Bank CEO use that money, so our Bank can make money?

The Bank CEO will take that money and create a new account in another Bank to afford the other Bank to pay his bank; the Savings Interest to him.

This means the Bank CEO would not risk it on the Stock Market in competing against his Elite Super Computers that are wrecking the Economy.

This is what builds the Wealth Ensconce in the Market Place. Many Banks and Institutions such as Credit Unions, and Insurance Companies will do the same, in building their wealth reserves. Loans for business will be unencumbered because the assurance to loans being repaid is more likely the case.

Businesses will also enjoy Equity Savings Interest paid by the bank as well.

Furthermore the idea that Banks will require security for their loans would no longer be the case.

People would be able to get loans, simply by joining the Bank and paying their separate Banking User Fee each year, as I mentioned, $100 usd per year.

This plan I am proposing would stop the Welfare Scheme Banks are engaged in America and around the world.

Iran will continue to back the Syrian government, which acts as a pillar of an Iran-led regional alliance, a high-level Iranian diplomat has told President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus.

Saeed Jalili, a senior aide to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in the meeting with Assad on Tuesday that what was happening in Syria was "not an internal issue".

It is "a conflict between the axis of resistance on one hand, and the regional and global enemies of this axis on the other", Jalili said.

Egypt's President Mohamed Morsi has not attended a funeral in Cairo for the 16 soldiers killed in an attack on a border army outpost near the Gaza Strip.

The military funeral was on Tuesday by Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, the defence minister and head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, who was joined on Tuesday by senior government officials and generals in a brief procession that followed the caskets.

Thousands of Egyptians were at the ceremony, which was broadcast live on state television. Some of the mourners shouted slogans against Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood for their links to the Palestinian movement Hamas.

Gunmen have shot dead at least 16 people in a church in central Nigeria, an army official has said.

Lieutenant Colonel Gabriel Olorunyomi told the AP news agency on Tuesday that the armed men had stormed a church building where worshippers had gathered to pray late on Monday in the town of Otite, near the city of Okene.

He said the pastor was killed and "many" were injured but he could not immediately give a figure because they had been taken to different hospitals.

Authorities are still searching for people who may have run into nearby bushes, he said.

Burkina Faso's foreign minister has met al-Qaeda-linked fighters who control the northern half of the country.

Djibrill Bassole - the highest-ranking diplomat to travel to Mali's Islamist-held north - flew into the desert city of Gao on Tuesday as part of a trip to assess the chances of a peaceful solution to the crisis that has seen Islamist fighters seize control of more than half the country.

Bassole, who was accompanied by several reporters, was welcomed by local officials as he stepped off his helicopter at Gao airport, then was taken to the city's main hospital to meet with doctors and nurses.

"Thanks to the assistance of aid groups, we have enough medicine," chief doctor Moulate Guiteye told him.

The immigration detention center at the town of Northam in Western Australia is close to full in less than six weeks after opening, local media reported on Tuesday.

The Yongah Hill Immigration Detention Center, which cost 125 million AU dollars (132 million U.S. dollars) to build, was designed to house about 600 asylum seekers.

So far, the facility has housed 536 detainees since it was commissioned in June, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reports.

It's also worth noting that the person who edited Portman's page 15+ times in the past day has now deleted his/her account from Wikipedia. This, plus the types of edits that he/she was doing (removing a paragraph about NAFTA, and removing an entire, well-referenced section about a controversy) points to someone under the direction of the GOP. Whether this is someone from Portman's office just trying to keep his page as clean as possible or the RNC prepping it for VP announcement, remains to be seen.

edit: Here is his page before the user known as "River8009" began making edits: Rob Portman. Note the "Controversies" sections, which has now been completely removed.

edit 2: River8009 also removed references to Portman's lobbyist career and most criticism of his Congressional career.

"It's individuals and their entrepreneurship which have driven America. What America is not is a collective where we all work in a kibbutz or we all in some little entity," Romney told a gathering at Maggiano's Little Italy in downtown Chicago. "Instead, it's individuals pursuing their dreams and building successful enterprises which employ others and they become inspired as they see what has happened in the place they work and go off and start their own enterprises."

The so-called "queen of porn," Jameson announced from the stage of a San Francisco strip club that she was supporting Romney, saying, "When you're rich, you want a Republican in office." While her taxes may be the only thing Jameson hasn't put on display, we can assume her comments were an allusion to the belief that Romney won't require wealthier Americans to pay more money to the government. Ron Jeremy, on the other hand, has said he'd like to see a second Obama term.

Mitt Romney has recently been endorsed by famous porn actress Jenna Jameson as well as actor Clint Eastwood. For his part, Clint Eastwood endorsed Romney at a $2 million-grossing fundraiser at the actor's Sun Valley, Idaho, home. Eastwood also suggested he was supporting Romney because he thought the GOP candidate would restore "a decent tax system."

George Osborne claims £700 on heating oil for his farmhouse in past six months,3.5 times winter fuel payment for elderly via @Iblogtoglasgow

Typhoon Haikui strengthened into a severe typhoon Tuesday as it approached the coast of east China's Zhejiang Province, the provincial observatory said Tuesday.

The storm's center was located 270 km southeast of Xiangshan County as of 2 p.m. Tuesday, and it was moving northwest at a speed of 10 km per hour, the observatory said.

Haikui has brought downpours to Zhejiang, causing some reservoirs to see excessive water levels.

According to the latest forecast, Haikui is expected to make landfall on late Tuesday night or Wednesday morning near the Sanmenwan Gulf of Zhejiang.

News International's chief executive has expressed frustration with Scotland Yard after another Sun journalist was arrested by officers investigating alleged corrupt payments to officials.

In a strongly worded email to staff on Tuesday, chief executive Tom Mockridge complained that the Metropolitan police have ignored pleas from the company to ensure staff detained are treated in a dignified manner.

The 37 year old, male Sun journalist was arrested on Tuesday morning. A 29 year old male serving Sussex police officer was also arrested by detectives working for Operation Elveden. Both were taken to separate police stations and later bailed.

A very British insurrection is under way over plans to bring the first branch of a major coffee chain to a small Devon town. But why are coffee chains such a battleground?

At half nine on a bright morning the aroma of arabica gently percolates through Totnes's narrow lanes and alleys.

That smell of roasting beans is difficult to escape. In this settlement of fewer than 8,000 souls there are 41 different places to buy a hot cup of the stuff.

And yet plans to open just one more coffee outlet have provoked fury - opening up a dispute as bitter as the darkest espresso.

A great irony of the skinhead subculture is that it is rooted in a multiracial style that emerged in London and other English cities. As the 1960s progressed and the hippie generation began to challenge mainstream ideas of war, work and gender, skinheads emerged in working-class London as a more traditional youth group in opposition to the middle-class, flower-power hippies. Working-class white youths began to adopt the look of an Afro-Caribbean youth subculture called "Rude Boy." They listened to Jamaican Ska music, cut their hair close (like the black kids and unlike the hippies), and laced up dockworker boots. In contrast to a hippie style that they viewed as feminine, their look was a tribute to the more masculine working class.

But the bond between working-class whites and working-class blacks deteriorated in the 1970s as a stalling economy began to introduce tensions into British society. An increase in immigration from former colonies such as Pakistan quickly racialized the plight of the falling white worker. Far-right groups, like the British Movement and the National Front (which had 20,000 members by 1974), began fueling skinheads with anti-immigrant rhetoric. "Paki-bashings" broadened to include violent attacks on all immigrant groups, including the very same Afro-Caribbeans who had provided the foundation of skinhead style.

The second half of the 20th century saw plenty of examples of American youth importing the styles of British youth culture, and the skinhead subculture was among them. By the early 1980s, racist skinheads had crossed the ocean as a part of the broader English punk-rock scene. At first, the shaven-headed youths were just a violent part of a growing punk music scene, using swastikas and "sieg heil!" salutes to provoke reaction. But their violent ideology soon moved beyond the clubs.

In the blue corner, the former British and European champion from Liverpool: Natasha Jonas. In the red corner, the five-time European champion, four-time world champion from Bray, near Dublin: Katie Taylor.

In the audience, a few thousand giddily cheerful fans, waving union flags in the way Britons have suddenly lost their self-consciousness in doing, alongside many more entirely unrestrained Irish supporters, flapping tricolours and bellowing with no self-consciousness whatsoever. The green corner, if you will.

Excel's South Arena 2 may have witnessed a small piece of history on Sunday, when the first ever boxing bout between two women was staged as part of the Olympics, but a day later it was host to another striking novelty - the first time in the London Games in which a British competitor has been out-cheered by her rival's supporters.

Jessica Ennis and Bradley Wiggins were among the fans at a secret Stone Roses gig in London on Monday night. The Olympic gold medal winners watched the band at a small secret show at the Village Underground in Hoxton. Frontman Ian Brown told the crowd: "We've got the Queen of England in here tonight: Jessica Ennis - and the King: Bradley Wiggins."

Joining them were rower Pete Reed, Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, the Clash's Mick Jones, Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie, and Boy George.

Waiting on the starting blocks, Liu Xiang looked beyond the hurdles to the finishing line. Several seconds later, Liu crashed into the first hurdle in his first round heat of the men's 110m hurdles at the London Olympic Games on Tuesday.

The 29-year-old Liu injured his right foot and limped off the track, ending his hope to regain Olympic glory in London.

Everything seemed to be deja vu when the former world record holder and 2004 Olympic champion withdrew from the 2008 Beijing Games because of a tendon injury in his right foot.

But this time Liu made things different. He hopped over the rest of the distance on his left foot to symbolically finish his race. He also stopped at a hurdle and kissed it, earning a rousing ovation from the 80,000 crowd at the Olympic Stadium.

The story of Jodrell Bank could serve as a metaphor for post-war British scientific and industrial development. Built in an atmosphere of argument and recrimination over its cost, and plagued by constant union disputes and sniping press comment, it nevertheless triumphed against all the odds, contributing greatly to Britain's scientific reputation and to our understanding of deep space.

When Lovell first proposed building the telescope in 1948, he estimated that it would cost around £60,000 to build. After work began in 1950, it was soon clear that these figures were wildly optimistic; and, in 1952, a more "realistic" sum of £333,000 was agreed on, to be shared equally between the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and the Nuffield Foundation.

But this, too, soon turned out to be an underestimate (the telescope ultimately cost £670,000), as the building work was plagued by strikes, bureaucratic delays, delivery failures and escalating raw material costs. The project became the subject of heated debates in Parliament, and at one point, burdened by a debt of around a third of a million pounds and in trouble with the Public Accounts Committee, Lovell faced possible imprisonment for the alleged overspending of public money.

The traditional nervousness around voting for a third-party candidate - with Ralph Nader's alleged vote-taking in 2000 still blamed for ushering in the George Bush presidency - is magnified when the Republican candidate comes out in favor of firing people and forcing immigrants to "self-deport."

Meanwhile, whether Obama will win the needed support of progressive voters during a time of continued unemployment and rising drone attacks is still an open question. 

Enter Stein, whose key platform is the Green New Deal, a jobs program which she says will both build on the success of the New Deal in the 1930s and also help move the United States toward a sustainable, green economy. She also campaigns on drastically reducing military spending, in favor of abortion rights and against corporate personhood.

good luck Jill

"It's very hard to see what is kept invisible" Roseanne Barr