Denmark's centre-right government yesterday (11 May) agreed to introduce border controls at its ports and airports, as well as along its only land border with Germany and its bridge to Sweden. The European Commission asked for additional information and said it would not accept any roll-back of the Schengen treaty.

The Danish government caved in to the demands of the Danish People's Party, a populist and anti-immigration party that has been holding up approval of its 2020 economic plan.

"We have agreed on permanent border controls which we will implement as soon as possible," Finance Minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen said on TV 2 News after the border deal had been struck with the Danish People's Party and the small Christian Democratic Party.

The European Commission is contemplating making Internet providers police their networks to tackle illegal downloads, a highly contested measure which is currently being scrutinised by the European Court of Justice.

Sources close to the Commission claim that the EU executive will try and replicate a Spanish law which forces Internet providers to come down hard on users for making illegal downloads.

A draft of the EU's upcoming Intellectual Property Rights strategy, due out on 24 April, will reportedly announce upcoming amendments to existing EU law that "should tackle the infringements at their source and, to that end, foster cooperation of intermediaries, such as Internet service providers".

Residents in the Spanish town of Lorca are assessing the damage from quakes that killed nine people and forced thousands to spend the night outdoors.

The mayor of the historic town, with a population of 90,000, said: "Almost no-one slept in their homes".

Some 20,000 buildings are believed to have been damaged in what was Spain's worst earthquake for 50 years.

The magnitude 5.2 tremor hit early on Wednesday evening, around two hours after a quake measuring 4.4.

Those who died - including at least one pregnant woman and a child - were killed by falling masonry in the second tremor.

Regional officials say at least 130 people have been injured, with several in a serious condition.

Bundestag votes in favour of Portugal package, but more and more MPs come out in opposition to a second loan package for Greece; Schäuble says Germany's support was a question of fate for Europe; Der Spiegel says Europe has become the fault line of centre-right politics in Germany; Bild Zeitung has another outrageous article about overpaid and lazy Greeks, and why the crisis will last forever; Antonio Borges and Jean Claude Juncker call for more Greek privatisations; Holger Steltzner bemoans that the ECB is becoming more French, and less German; the IMF warns that the crisis may yet spread to core Europe; El Pais wonders why the IMF still considers Spain to be among the Euro Area 4 peripheral countries; economists and investors overwhelmingly expect a Greek restructuring, according to a Reuters poll; Barclays Capital calculates that Greece needs a 67% haircut; True Finns stay out of government in protest over the decision to support a Portuguese aid package; there were more violent protests in Athens after the serious injury of a protester earlier this week; John Walters argues why Ireland is the victim in this crisis; Christine Lagarde is to revise the 2011 growth forecast upwards following a better than expected first quarter;there is much speculation, meanwhile, about the future of Lorenzo Bini-Smaghi after Mario Draghi's accession to the ECB presidency.

(Reuters) - The White House and Congress intensified negotiations on Thursday for a deficit-reduction deal, as major U.S. corporations clamored for lower tax rates they said would increase their global competitiveness.

With the U.S. deficit expected to reach $1.4 trillion this fiscal year, there is added urgency to finding a broad spending-cut deal. President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden hosted separate meetings with Republican and Democratic lawmakers in search of a compromise.

(Reuters) - A broad crackdown on Wall Street is churning forward, even as regulators assured a Senate panel on Thursday they would seek more input on how to pick which financial institutions need stricter policing.

Members of a new inter-agency council on U.S. economic stability said they would extend their public comment period on how to choose important banks, insurers and hedge funds for heightened surveillance and tougher capital rules.

The concession by the Financial Stability Oversight Council came as a House of Representatives panel was expected to vote on Friday for weakening the consumer protection provisions of 2010's Dodd-Frank law and slowing down implementation of its new rules for derivatives markets.

The measures in the Republican-controlled House were not expected to advance in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

An Al Jazeera investigation has found evidence that Bahrain's security forces are torturing medical workers to force criminal confessions.

Since pro-democracy protests erupted in the Gulf kingdom in February, doctors and nurses have been targeted, with hundreds facing arrest, Charles Stratford reports in this Al Jazeera exclusive.

The government of Bahrain deployed security forces onto the streets on March 14 in an attempt to quell more than four weeks of protests.

Medics working to save the lives of hundreds of wounded demonstrators were among those threatened and arrested.

"Obviously we remain very concerned about all these reports of human rights abuses there," Mark Toner, the US state department spokesman, said in response to the violations documented in Stratford's reports.

Nineteen people have reportedly been killed in shelling by tanks in residential areas in Syria as president Bashar al-Assad attempts to crush anti-government protests, defying calls for an end to the brutal crackdown.

Ammar Qurabi, head of the National Organisation for Human Rights in Syria, said 13 people were killed in the southern village of al-Harah on Wednesday.

Tanks also shelled a residential district in Syria's third largest city Homs and at least five people were killed, a rights campaigner in the city said. A sixth person was killed by a sniper shot to the head as he stood in front of his house.

Most were killed in shelling, but gunfire killed several of the victims, Qurabi said.

A senior ex-intelligence official has disputed Alastair Campbell's evidence about a dossier which outlined the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

Tony Blair's ex-spokesman told the Iraq inquiry last year the September 2002 document was designed to set out UK concerns, not "make the case for war".

But Michael Laurie said those producing it "saw it exactly as that and that was the direction we were given".

Mr Campbell said he had "nothing to add" to the evidence he had given.

UNITED NATIONS, May 12, 2011 (IPS) - Afghanistan, once described as the graveyard of empires, is ranked number one as the country with the most "significant rise" in civilian deaths last year, turning it into a veritable killing field, according to a new report by the London-based Minority Rights Group International (MRG).

The annual report, titled "Peoples Under Threat", says civilian killings in Afghanistan have increased every year in the last five years.

"And the continued weakness of the central government, internal disunity and systemic corruption contribute to the poor prognosis," the report notes.

According to the study released Thursday, this year's figure is expected to exceed the 3,000 civilians killed in 2010.

Mark Lattimer, MRG's executive director, told IPS the Taliban or other anti-government forces were responsible for 75 percent of these killings.

ISTANBUL, May 12, 2011 (IPS) - Civil society groups have vowed to mobilise citizens of the world's poorest nations to take to the streets, rejecting the Istanbul Programme of Action agreed today by the Fourth U.N. Conference on the Least Developed Countries.

"The plan of action has no teeth and appears to have left the people living in the least developed countries in a worse position than before," said Arjun Karki, the spokesperson for the civil society forum at the conference, known as LDC-IV. "We are appalled and disillusioned," he said.

More than 800 million people live in the 48 countries are classified as least developed; 33 of these are found in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Programme of Action for the decade 2011 to 2020 declares that the ownership and primary responsibility for development lies with the least developed countries themselves. LDCs are called on to incorporate the Programme of Action into their national development strategies, plans and programmes and identifying the domestic authorities responsible for overseeing implementation and multi- stakeholder engagement by parliamentarians and the private sector.

HONDURAS, [Quotha]: In Morazan, Yoro, Héctor Francisco Medina Polanco, 35 years old, was shot dead as he was leaving Channel 9 news, Omega Vision, where he was General Coordinator.

Colombia Reports: Amnesty International (AI) commended human rights progress made in Colombia under President Juan Manuel Santos, but said the country still faces serious problems, during a Thursday presentation in London, Colombian media reported.

Colombia Reports: A leader of a group of peasants reclaiming land they were forced to leave by illegal armed groups, was assassinated in northern Colombia said the human rights ombudsman Wednesday.  "[Martha] Gaibao, the spokesperson in a process of resettlement of 17 families displaced in the municipality of La Apartada in the department of Cordoba, was shot several times by unknown perpetrators who subsequently fled" said Volmar Perez, Human Rights Ombudsmen, reported news agency AFP.

MEXICO CITY -- A Guatemalan court has acquitted a former president, Alfonso Portillo, of charges that he embezzled state money. The decision appeared to be a setback to United Nations-sponsored efforts to reform Guatemala's corruption-racked judicial system.

The Raúl Reyes Affair:

Colombia Reports: Venezuela's dismissal of a report on ties between Caracas and Colombian rebel group FARC is "completely invalid," said the head researcher of the IISS report who insists the links between Chavez and the guerrillas are proven.

Setty's Notebook, FARC links to GW Bush campaign? Hmmm: The Raul Reyes files are exactly like the Wikileaks files. There may be edits, inaccuracies and fabrications in there, but it can't all be fake. And most likely, none of it is fake. And yet, there are tidbits in there that are almost too weird to be true. (...) Which I would translate as:

We met with the Chinese emissary. He demonstrated the best intentions and said a a man from the FARC should be sent to China June 15 to demonstrate what they have and see on-site qualities that fulfill our needs. He'll be attended by people from the Party who work in Intelligence. It's foreseen that any deal would be paid in advance or by credit card. Before, a meeting was held ... There it was agreed to send oil to China and that the Chinese would pay part in arms. It would seem to be a "commission" [kickback]. To the Chinese man, it is foreseen that as they receive oil, we, to avoid getting entangled, we would pay the Venezuelans our part. He accepted.

(...) And then there is this one, which to my mind is the weirdest thing I have seen in this whole collection. This is dated Nov 23, 2000, after the Bush-Gore election but long before the winner had been finally chosen by the Supreme Court:

Its foreseen for December 6 that a delegation will arrive in Caracas of US Republicans linked to the oil industry and very grateful to Chavez for the crude oil prices that he defends at the international level. Upon winning the presidency, this Republican faction would seek to withdraw gringo advisors from Colombia. It's been foreseen that they want to converse with us. To do this, I propose to you that Olga and I make a stop in Caracas on our way from Rome to attend to the case. Hugs, RYCHY

...

MercoPress: London-based BP this week received approval from Brazil's ANP energy regulator for its purchase of assets from US-based Devon, a deal signed in 2010, but put on hold following the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Tokyo Electric Power Co plans to exclude central Tokyo from a rolling blackout program this summer, company officials said Friday.

Any planned blackout, due to electric power supply shortages triggered by the utility's damaged nuclear power station, could cause serious confusion in central Tokyo that features a heavy concentration of railway networks, traffic lights, medical institutions and government offices, they said.

One of the reactors at Japan's crippled nuclear power plant has been damaged more severely than originally thought, officials said, a serious setback for efforts to stabilise the radiation-leaking complex.

The data released on Thursday also showed that the water level in the core of Unit 1 at the Fukushima Daiichi plant is much lower than previously thought, leaving the portion of the fuel rods still intact fully exposed.

Other fuel has slumped to the bottom of the pressure vessel and is thought to be covered in water.

The findings also indicate a greater-than-expected leak in that vessel. Radioactive water pouring from troubled reactors has flooded around the complex, hindering work to bring the plant under control.

However, temperatures in the unit are still far below dangerous levels because the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., continues to inject new water to keep the rods cool.

That radioactive water is apparently leaking into and through the larger containment vessel.

DSB has ordered lawyers to investigate how the Danish state railways service can get out of a contract with the Italian train producer AnsaldoBreda for IC4 trains that do not fulfil requirements.

Denmark ordered 83 IC4 trains from AnsaldoBreda in 2001, only 42 of which have been delivered and most of which have extensive technical problems.

"DSB doesn't believe that the DSB trains will ever run in the way they envisaged and certainly not to the extent envisaged. So we have to find out whether we can even expect them to run properly. Will they ever be able to fill the role envisaged when they were ordered," said Transport Minister Hans Christian Schmidt following a Transport Committee meeting.

Rome (AFP) May 11, 2011
Around a third of the food produced in the world every year -- around 1.3 billion tons -- gets lost or wasted, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation said on Wednesday.

"Given the limited availability of natural resources it is more effective to reduce food losses than increase food production in order to feed a growing world population," the FAO said in a report.

FAO said the amount of food lost or wasted every year is equivalent to more than half of the world's annual cereals crop.

Some 925 million people around the world suffer from hunger.

To "feed the world" by 2050, we'll need a massive, global ramp-up of industrial-scale, corporate-led agriculture. At least that's the conventional wisdom.

Even progressive journalists trumpet the idea (see here, here, and here, plus my ripostes here and here). The public-radio show Marketplace reported it as fact last week, earning a knuckle rap from Tom Laskway. At least one major strain of President Obama's (rather inconsistent) agricultural policy is predicated on it. And surely most agricultural scientists and development specialists toe that line ... right?

Well, not really. Back in 2009, Seed Magazine organized a forum predicated on the idea that a "scientific consensus," analogous to the one on climate change, had formed around the desirability of patent-protected genetically modified seeds. If I must say so, my own contribution to that discussion shredded that notion. If anything, a pro-GMO consensus has formed among a narrow group of microbiologists -- the people who conduct gene manipulations to develop novel crops. But no such accord exists among scientists whose work takes them out of the laboratory and into farm fields and ecosystems: soil experts, ecologists, development specialists, etc.

The latest evidence against any consensus around Big Ag as world savior: In a paper [PDF] just published in Science, a team of researchers led by the eminent Washington State University soil scientist John P. Reganold urges a fundamental rethinking of the U.S. ag-research system

ScienceDaily (May 12, 2011) -- In a head-to-head battle of harvesting the sun's energy, solar cells beat plants, according to a new paper in Science. But scientists think they can even up the playing field, says researcher David Kramer at Michigan State University.

Plants are less efficient at capturing the energy in sunlight than solar cells mostly because they have too much evolutionary baggage. Plants have to power a living thing, whereas solar cells only have to send electricity down a wire. This is a big difference because if photosynthesis makes a mistake, it makes toxic byproducts that kill the organism. Photosynthesis has to be conservative to avoid killing the organisms it powers.

"This is critical since it's the process that powers all of life in our ecosystem," said Kramer, a Hannah Distinguished Professor of Photosynthesis and Bioenergetics. "The efficiency of photosynthesis, and our ability to improve it, is critical to ...

Guess what?

...whether the entire biofuels industry is viable."

No shit.

A Japanese government panel says the country's next-generation high-speed train should take an almost straight route between Tokyo and Nagoya.

The Central Japan Railway Company plans to begin operating the magnetically levitated - or maglev - train between the two cities in 2027.

In its report to the transport ministry on Thursday, the advisory panel says that sending the trains through tunnels in the southern part of the Japan Alps would cost less and produce a greater economic effect than its two alternatives.

The new route is expected to serve as Japan's main artery, together with the existing Shinkansen bullet train line.

A detailed new energy report argues that the natural gas industry has propagated dangerously false claims about natural gas production supply, cost and environmental impact. ...

The most significant of the natural gas industry's claims - one that has been bought hook, line and sinker by everyone from the Energy Information Agency (EIA) and the Obama Administration, to leading environmental groups - is that the United States has a 100-year supply of cheap natural gas. The report shows this to be a pipe dream. Natural gas would require higher costs and unprecedented drilling efforts to meet even baseline supply projections. In fact, the U.S. faces a decline in domestic gas supplies in the very near future unless drilling rates quickly increase.

Also debunked is the perception that shale gas is better for the climate than coal. Building on other recent analysis, the report shows that shale gas is worse than coal over a 20-30 year timeframe, even after efforts to mitigate fugitive methane emissions. This should have major implications for those who have touted natural gas as a near-term bridge to a clean energy future.

Report (PDF, 13MB)

_{Schengen is toast!}

A German court has found John Demjanjuk guilty of helping to murder more than 28,000 Jews at a Nazi death camp in World War II.

He was sentenced to five years in prison, one year less than prosecutors had asked for, but will be released pending a possible appeal.

Prosecutors said the Ukraine-born Demjanjuk, 91, was a guard at Sobibor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1943.

He denied serving as a guard, saying he was a prisoner of war and a victim too.

Lawyers for Demjanjuk have said they will appeal against the conviction.

ScienceDaily (May 11, 2011) -- Direct dating of a fossil of a Neanderthal infant suggests that Neanderthals probably died out earlier than previously thought.

Researchers have dated a Neanderthal fossil discovered in a significant cave site in Russia in the northern Caucasus, and found it to be 10,000 years older than previous research had suggested. This new evidence throws into doubt the theory that Neanderthals and modern humans interacted for thousands of years. Instead, the researchers believe any co-existence between Neanderthals and modern humans is likely to have been much more restricted, perhaps a few hundred years. It could even mean that in some areas Neanderthals had become extinct before anatomically modern humans moved out of Africa.

Billionaire's role in hiring decisions at Florida State University raises questions: A conservative billionaire who opposes government meddling in business has bought a rare commodity: the right to interfere in faculty hiring at a publicly funded university.  A foundation bankrolled by Libertarian businessman Charles G. Koch has pledged $1.5 million for positions in Florida State University's economics department. In return, his representatives get to screen and sign off on any hires for a new program promoting "political economy and free enterprise."

You probably would not be too surprised to learn that the vast majority of people in the Texas Department of Public Safety's sex offender list are male.

And most are not good-looking.

But there are females on there, too. Most of them are not good-looking, true, but who takes a good mugshot besides Tom DeLay?

We combed through 15 of the biggest counties in Texas and came up with the ten hottest women in the database. Warning: In some cases, we picked out the best of a series of mugshots. Alternative choices were starkly different. So click on each link before you send any marriage proposals.

Tut-tut.