German Chancellor Angela Merkel has pledged her country's continuing support to Greece.

During her first visit there since the eurozone crisis erupted nearly three years ago, she said it had made good progress with its vast debt but that it was on a "difficult path".

Thousands of Greeks who blame Germany for forcing painful austerity measures on them have protested in Athens.

Police used teargas and stun grenades against some of the demonstrators.

Just over two weeks ago, I heard and wrote about the case of Liam Barker. Eighteen years old, paralysed since birth, he breathes through a ventilator.

His parents had just received a letter informing them that in order to receive Employment Support Allowance, he might have to prove he is unable to work by attending a Work Capability Assessment.

Just over two weeks ago, I first started wondering how many more Liam Barkers there would be.

I am sad to say that on Thursday, I heard of a case very similar to that of Liam Barker.

David Cameron has given his strongest hint yet that he will offer the British public referendum on the UK's relationship with the European Union.

The Prime Minister gave ground to Tory Eurosceptics, who reacted angrily to his previous suggestion that Britain's position could be decided either at a general election or in a referendum. The sceptics rejected the election option, saying other issues would muddy the waters.

Today Mr Cameron said a separate referendum would be the "cleanest, neatest and simplest way" to give people a say on Europe. Aides said it would almost certainly be held after the 2015 election, when the shape of the fiscal union being forged by eurozone countries would be much clearer.

A deal has been reached between the UK and Scottish governments over the rules for the independence referendum.

The ballot paper is expected to have a single yes/no question on whether Scotland should leave the United Kingdom.

It is also understood the agreed plan will extend the vote to include those aged over 16.

It paves the way for a meeting between David Cameron and Alex Salmond expected to take place on Monday in Edinburgh.

The entire council of the city of Reggio Calabria in southern Italy has been sacked to stop it from being taken over by the mafia, officials say.

The move came after some councillors were suspected of having ties to the powerful 'Ndrangheta crime syndicate.

Officials said it was the first time that the entire government of a provincial capital had been dismissed over suspected mafia links.

Three commissioners will run the city for 18 months until elections.

An estimated 20,000 farmers have demonstrated in Dublin amid concerns about future EU and government funding.

Many streets around Leinster House and Government Buildings were closed as the farmers marched through the city to Kildare Street.

Irish Farmers' Association President John Bryan said the turnout sent a clear message to Europe and the government that farming matters.

Their main concern is the reform of the EU Common Agricultural Policy.

Global financial stability report warns of large-scale capital flight with the potential to trigger a credit crunch and an ensuing recession; IMF predicts further bank asset shrinkage of between $2.8 trillion to $4.5 trillion by end-2013; José Viñals says it is of utmost necessity that the eurozone achieves banking and fiscal union; it says the function of a banking union must be to break the pernicious link between banks and their sovereign; says a banking union requires a fiscal union to be credible in the form of a resolution fund and deposit insurance; Peter Orszag warns Europeans not to underestimate the hysteresis effect that results from the austerity policies;  Luis de Guindoes said the IMF forecasts for Spain are too pessimistic; Vittorio Grilli presents the 2013 budget law, which includes further savings to achieve the budgetary target; there will be new cuts to the health budgets, and a non-renewal of temporary contracts of public workers; Angela Merkel's visit to Athen was no PR disaster after all; the Wall Street Journal says the purpose of her visit is to stabilise the Samaras government and to defend herself against attacks from Peter Steinbruck; says no one in Merkel's surrounding is under any illusion about her perception by ordinary Greeks; Kathimerini reports that Merkel assured Samaras that he will get the next round of money as long as he keeps on going with the reforms; the Greek finance ministers says that talks about an extension of the Greek programme are finally on the table; the French parliament passes the fiscal pact with a wide margin - Hollande managed to secure a small majority of leftist MPs, not having to rely on opposition vote; Portugal replaces tax measures with spending cuts in 2013 budget; a former German government advisor says Germany is using bailouts to rescue its own banks; Ecofin reaches agreement on financial transaction tax on the basis of  enhanced coordination; Finland has yet to decide whether it wants to take part in this programme; Suddeutsche Zeitung wonders how this tax could conceivably stop the next financial crisis; Silvio Berlusconi, meanwhile, reiterates his support for Mario Monti, but nobody believes him.

He said that the introduction of the euro laid the foundation for the crisis in Europe, but that going back now would be even a greater catastrophe. He said that Croatia should be in no hurry to join the eurozone.

...

He compared Croatia to Spain in terms of the poor flexibility of foreign exchange rates and the balance of payments deficit.

The governments of small countries, such as Croatia, do not have much room for manoeuvre. The government should accept demands of outside players, but need not do more than necessary. The Croatian government cannot say no to demands from the European Union, but should adapt, Krugman concluded.

Hollande got his governmental majority : 282 votes from the left, which is a majority of votes expressed (274 required), but not an absolute majority of the Assembly (which would be 289).

Traité budgétaire : Hollande se félicite que la gauche se soit "réunie" pour le vote

Groupe SRC (PS...) : pour, 264 ; contre, 20 ; abstention, 9.
Groupe EELV (écologistes) : pour, 3 ; contre, 12 ; abstention, 2.
Groupe RRDP (radicaux de gauche) : pour, 14 ; abstention, 2.
Groupe GDR (Front de gauche...) : pour, 1 ; contre, 13 ; abstention, 1.

Groupe UMP : pour, 167 ; contre, 17 ; abstention, 6.
Groupe UDI (centre) : pour, 28 ; contre, 1 ; abstention, 1.

Non inscrits (FN, Dupont-Aignan...) : contre, 7.

It is very important that Croatia should pay particular attention to completing its preparations in time so that that is reflected in the final monitoring report which the Commission will present in the spring of 2013, Fuele told the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee after the Commission adopted a so-called enlargement package.

...

Those are: sign the privatisation contract for Brodosplit and take the necessary decisions to find a viable solution for the shipyards 3. Maj and Brodotrogir in order to complete the restructuring of the Croatian shipbuilding industry; implement short-term measures elaborated in September 2012 for increasing the efficiency of the judiciary and reducing the court backlog; adopt the new enforcement legislation in order to ensure the execution of court decisions and reduce the backlog of enforcement cases; establish the Conflict of Interest Commission so that it starts its regular working activities; adopt the new law on access to information in order to strengthen the legal and administrative framework in the area of access to information; complete the adoption of related by-laws to ensure the implementation of the police law; complete the construction of border crossing points at the Neum corridor; achieve the established recruitment target for border police for 2012; finalise and adopt the migration strategy clearly defining measures for the integration of the most vulnerable groups of migrants; and increase the capacity to translate and review the acquis such that this task can be completed in time for accession.

The global economic recovery is weakening as government policies have failed to restore confidence, the International Monetary Fund has said.

It added that the risk of further deterioration in the economic outlook was "considerable" and had increased.

The IMF downgraded its estimate for global growth in 2013 to 3.6% from the 3.9% it forecast in July.

One of the biggest downgrades was to the UK economy, which the IMF expects to shrink by 0.4% this year.

This compares with its forecast of 0.2% growth in July. Next year, the UK economy should grow by 1.1%, the IMF said, down from its previous forecast of 1.4%.

The UK, French and German governments are holding talks that will decide whether the merger between defence companies BAE and EADS goes ahead.

France and Germany need to agree to conditions laid down by the UK and the two firms.

At the moment, a deal seems unlikely, according to the BBC's business editor Robert Peston.

The two companies must decide whether to ask for an extension to merger talks by 16.00 GMT on Wednesday.

Iraq has signed contracts to buy Russian arms worth $4.2bn (£2.6bn; 3.2bn euros) this year, Russian news agencies report.

Moscow, the main supplier of arms to Iraq under Saddam Hussein, thus becomes the country's second-biggest arms supplier after the US.

The new contracts were announced after talks between the two countries' prime ministers near Moscow on Tuesday.

Reports suggest attack helicopters and missiles are included in them.

The MEP, one of Britain's most senior politicians in Brussels, said that if her application to be Governor were accepted, it would be a "strong signal of change" that the City needs.

...

She said that compared to the other applicants, that include Paul Tucker, deputy Governor of the Bank, Lord Turner, chairman of the FSA, and economist John Vickers, "just about everything about me is different. I'm an independent. I'm not from the Bank or the City of the Financial Services Authority.

...

Ms Bowles, who said she applied for the job the day before the deadline on October 7, added: "We need a strong signal of change - change that flows through the City. The new Governor has is to restore faith in the banking system. What bigger sign of change is there than choosing a woman and an outsider?"

If you are by now thoroughly confused, you are not alone. The average historic return on the volatile equity market is central to calculations of the cost of capital and provision for future pension liabilities. But the figure has been debated for decades. The dispute is less about the underlying data than about the way you make the calculation. The question is often framed as the choice between arithmetic and geometric means. But there is no right or wrong answer. In all problems of this kind, the relevant measure is specific to the particular purpose you have in mind.

...

If you can only sell an old computer at a discount to a new model, economists say the new computer is better - that is how statisticians measure the rising quality of computers. Yet it seems absurd to say that a black skirt is of better quality than a burgundy skirt, and to conclude that skirts are getting better every year because new skirts always sell at a premium to the old. But what is the difference between a skirt and a computer?

Only an economist, or a statistician, could ask that question. And yet these arcane details of index number construction make a substantial difference to our estimates of inflation and market returns. Adjustments to pensions and tax allowances and repayment of index-linked debt - issues involving billions of pounds - are affected by their resolution. Who would have thought the difference between arithmetic and geometric means could matter so much?

What happens if a large, high-income economy, burdened with high levels of debt and an overvalued, fixed exchange rate, attempts to lower the debt and regain competitiveness? This question is of current relevance, since this is the challenge confronting Italy and Spain. Yet, as a chapter in the International Monetary Fund's latest World Economic Outlook demonstrates, a relevant historical experience exists: that of the UK between the two world wars. This proves that the interaction between attempts at "internal devaluations" and the dynamics of debt are potentially lethal. Moreover, the plight of Italy and Spain is, in many ways, worse than the UK's was. The latter, after all, could go off the gold standard; exit from the eurozone is far harder. Again, the UK had a central bank able and willing to reduce interest rates. The European Central Bank may not be able and willing to do the same for Italy and Spain.

...

So how did this commitment to fiscal famine and monetary necrophilia work? Badly. In 1938, real output was hardly above the level of 1918, with growth averaging 0.5 per cent a year. This was not just because of the Depression. Real output in 1928 was also lower than in 1918. Exports were persistently weak and unemployment persistently elevated. High unemployment was the mechanism for driving nominal and real wages down. But wages are never just another price. The aim was to break organised labour. These policies resulted in the general strike of 1926. They spread a bitterness that lasted decades after the second world war.

...

Nevertheless, this is an extremely useful study, not least for bringing out the lessons of the UK's interwar experience for the eurozone today. There is a high risk that the combination of tight fiscal policies with stringent monetary conditions will push Italy and Spain into debt traps via the interaction of high interest rates with low growth. At least the UK retained control over monetary conditions: in the end, it went off gold and lowered interest rates. Members of the eurozone do not have those painless options. But fiscal austerity and efforts to lower wages in countries suffering from monetary strangulation could break societies, governments and even states. Without greater solidarity, the story is unlikely to end well.

The so-called "Lagarde List" -  the name given by the Greek press to a list containing 1,991 names of wealthy, Swiss-bank-account-possessing Greeks who are being investigated for corruption and tax evasion - is causing a major stir in Greece right now.

Since Friday, two men suspected to be on the list have turned up dead in apparent suicides.

The "Lagarde List" has not been made public, so there is no way to say for sure at present whether Tzanis, Sbokos, or Kambouroglou's names actually appear on the list. However, the timeline of events is striking, and all are tied to past deals between the defense industry and the Greek government.

Meanwhile, the "Lagarde List" doesn't just contain names of Greek tax evaders. It's a list of closer to 22,000 names of wealthy people from various EU member states with Swiss bank accounts. The implication is that wealthy elites from other countries could be revealed in a corruption probe as well.

This is all starting to blow up during a crucial moment for Greece as it tries to come to an agreement with the troika over additional spending cuts and German chancellor Angela Merkel visits Samaras tomorrow in Athens.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Tuesday urged the international community, especially the United Nations Security Council, to put "much stronger" pressure on the Syrian government to bring about a political solution.

"It is for the United Nations Security Council to send a very strong, united message to the Syrian leadership: stop violence, engage in political process," Rasmussen said following a meeting of NATO defense ministers.

The NATO chief said he deeply regretted that the Security Council failed to reach "a legally-binding resolution that could send such a strong message."

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said that the Islamic republic will not back down on its "peaceful" nuclear program, Press TV reported Tuesday.

Mehmanparast emphasized that the Iranian nation will not back away from its "inalienable right to a peaceful nuclear energy program under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)," according to the report.

He also criticized the British Defense Secretary Philip Hammond for his recent comments on the Iranian nuclear program, said the report.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has hailed a "perfect victory", after defeating Henrique Capriles to secure a fourth term in office.

Mr Chavez won 54% of the vote, the electoral council announced, with turnout at about 81%.

Brandishing a replica of the sword of independence hero Simon Bolivar, he pledged Venezuela would continue its "march towards democratic socialism".

But he also vowed to engage opponents and to be a "better president".

Turkey has confirmed it is deploying more fighter jets to an airbase close to the border with Syria, amid artillery exchanges along its tense southeastern border with Syria.

The announcement came amid reports of fierce fighting in the northern Idlib province on Tuesday where Syrian rebels are trying to take control of a strategic town.

"Assad ... is only able to stand up with crutches," Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, who was once a close ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, told a meeting of his ruling AK Party.

"He will be finished when the crutches fall away."

Binyamin Netanyahu, Israeli prime minister, has called an early general election, saying it should be held "as fast as possible".

The polls had been due to take place in October 2013 and Israeli press reports suggested the vote would be held in late January or mid February.

"My duty as prime minister is to put the national interest before everything, and so I've decided that for the good of Israel we must go to an election now as fast as possible," Netanyahu said on Tuesday, without giving a date for what will be a vote for Israel's 19th parliament, or Knesset.

Heriberto Lazcano, the leader of the Zetas drug cartel, appears to have been been killed in a firefight with soldiers in the northern border state of Coahuila.

The Mexican navy says fingerprints taken from the body of one of two men killed in the shootout have matched the records of Lazcano, known as El Lazca, confirming his death.

State authorities said that they managed to establish Lazcano's identity before the body was snatched, according to prosecutors, from a funeral home by armed men.

Al Jazeera's Adam Raney, reporting from Mexico City, said that it appears the government may have been "embarrassed" by the loss of Lazcano's body.

New Zealand and Chinese scientists have begun a joint study into how to improve seeds so that farmers can produce more and bigger grains to help feed the world's growing population.

University of Canterbury Professor Paula Jameson and senior research fellow Dr. Jiancheng Song, of Yantai University, in east China's Shandong Province, had published a paper finding the wheat genes that could be prime targets for increasing grain size and grain number, said a statement from the University of Canterbury on Tuesday.

"The beauty of wheat is that there are so many different varieties in the world. Now we have worked out what genes are important for changing hormone levels to increase grain size and number, we can use traditional breeding techniques to find the varieties of wheat that already have this feature," Jameson said in the statement.

Thousands of people have avoided getting skin cancer thanks to Canadian scientists who invented the UV index and the gold-standard tool for measuring the thickness of the Earth's ozone layer. But now Canada's ozone science group no longer exists, victim of government budget cuts.

"Everyone who was still left in the ozone group has been re-assigned," said Prof Thomas Duck of the department of Physics and Atmospheric Science at Canada's Dalhousie University.

In 2011 Canada unexpectedly experienced its first ever ozone hole over the Arctic. "The ozone problem is not solved," Duck told the Guardian.

"Some people want to tell you the Conservatives have abandoned their green pledges, but nothing could be further from the truth," the climate minister, Greg Barker, told his party conference in Birmingham on Tuesday. He repeated the denial several times, protesting a little too much. The only spontaneous applause from the sparse audience during the energy and environment session on the main stage was in favour of killing badgers.

Owen Paterson, the new environment secretary, has been uncompromising on the imminent badger cull, aimed at curbing TB in cattle. He even laid claim to the policy as his own: "I started this policy in opposition." The person who introduced him went even further, giving his work on fisheries credit as the "intellectual underpinning" for Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's Fish Fight, though I'm not sure anyone has told Hugh.

Paterson exudes confidence and felt sufficiently at home at the NFU's reception on Monday night to deride opposition to the badger cull as "sad sentimentality." Moments before, a woman from Blue Badger - Conservatives against the cull - had been forcibly told by a farmer that she needed re-education.

Iraq could become the world's second-largest oil exporter within two decades and double its output by 2020, a major study has found.

The International Energy Agency said Iraq can overtake Russia for exports and be responsible for nearly half of all anticipated growth in global output.

But the country's government must overcome internal disputes over oil rights with the autonomous Kurdish region in the north and increase current investment from $9bn (£5.6bn) in 2011 to $25bn a year on average for the rest of the decade, the authors warned.

The IEA's chief economist, Fatih Birol, explained: "Developments in Iraq's energy sector are critical for the country's prospects and also for the health of the global economy.

The GMO mass experiment on the public is producing results--terrifying ones. GM toxic elements can be found in nearly all pregnant women and children. (Update of the article featured in Genetic Roulette movie.)

The toxins designed into genetically modified crops are finding their way into the bloodstreams of all pregnant women and their fetuses. This shocking result belies the genetic modification industry's claims that such toxins are destroyed by the digestive tracts of people who eat the animals fed these GMO crops. Obviously, that claim was based on nothing.

(If you've seen reports claiming less than 100% are affected, it's because they picked up the wrong figures from the study, as shown below.)

Abstract

Conversion of food to ethanol in the US since 2005 is a major cause of global food price increases during that time and has been shown to be ineffective in achieving US energy independence and reducing environmental impact. We make three key statements to enhance understanding and communication about ethanol production's impact on the food and fuel markets: (1) The amount of corn used to produce the ethanol in a gallon of regular gas would feed a person for a day, (2) The production of ethanol requires so much fossil fuel energy that its energy benefit is only about 20%, and (3) The cost of gas made with ethanol is actually higher per mile because ethanol reduces gasoline's energy per gallon.

A man has been charged with defacing a Mark Rothko painting at London's Tate Modern gallery on Sunday, Scotland Yard has said.

Wlodzimierz Umaniec, 26, a Polish national of no fixed abode, will appear at Camberwell Green Magistrates' Court on Wednesday.

Mr Umaniec, also known as Vladimir Umanets, is charged with one count of causing criminal damage in excess of £5,000.

The artwork is a 1958 Seagram mural.

Don't get me wrong.  No one loves radio (and podcasting) more than me.  But sometimes you have to see a picture to believe it.  That's the case with the XDF, a mind-bending and spectacular image released on September 25 by the Space Telescope Science Institute.

You've probably seen the UDF or Ultra Deep Field.  It has become one of the most popular astronomical images of all time.  I have it hanging behind my desk.  I know a member of the US House of Representatives who has it mounted on the wall of his office.  Basically, astronomers pointed the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) at one tiny patch of sky for a long time, revealing thousands of galaxies that stretch back through most of the history of our universe.

But the data for the UDF was gathered in 2003 and 2004.  The Hubble has been upgraded since then, primarily with the addition of the Wide Field Camera 3 during the 2009 servicing mission.  This gave the HST unprecedented infrared observing power.  That's particularly useful when you want to look into the distant past, as the inevitable "red shift" of light from early galaxies moves them out of the visible light range.

For part of its existence as an ancient temple, Stonehenge doubled as a substantial prehistoric art gallery, according to new evidence revealed yesterday.

A detailed laser-scan survey of the entire monument has discovered 72 previously unknown Early Bronze Age carvings chipped into five of the giant stones.

All of the newly discovered prehistoric art works are invisible to the naked eye - and have only come to light following a laser-scan survey which recorded literally billions of points micro-topographically on the surfaces of the monument's 83 surviving stones. In total, some 850 gigabytes of information was collected.

France's Serge Haroche and David J. Wineland from the United States on Tuesday won the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on interaction between light and matter.

They were rewarded for "ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems, "announced Staffan Normark, Permanent Secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm.

"The Nobel Laureates have opened the door to a new era of experimentation with quantum physics by demonstrating the direct observation of individual quantum particles without destroying them," commented the academy in a statement.

Transcript by the Brisbane Times.

I distribute. You re-distribute. He gives your hard-earned money to lazy scroungers. -- JakeS

Yes, another blog is now being launched into the world as I type these words.  Does the world really need yet another blog?  Obviously, there are lots and lots of them already out there--many, many bad ones, but some good ones as well.   There are even lots of good ones out there already dealing with economics and economic policy, which is the focus on this blog as well.  So why take up more cyperspace with this blog, on top of all the other ones already going strong?

The aim of this blog will be to develop, extend, and debate the themes that I present in my new little book, Back to Full Employment.  In my view, creating a full employment economy is absolutely crucial to creating a decent society--that is, a society in which everyone has the right to earn a reasonable living through their own efforts or the efforts of family members and friends.   It's that simple a point. But at the same time, it turns out to be not so simple.  There are large numbers of controversial economic issues around 1) how to get to full employment; 2) how to stay there, once there; and 3) whether full employment should be a basic goal of economic policy to begin with.

I tried to cover lots of territory around these questions in my book.  At the same time, I also tried to keep the book accessible to people who didn't necessarily have heavy technical backgrounds in economics and economic policy, and equally, to people who have lots of other things to think about and do in their lives.  As such, the book is quite short.  It comes in at less than 200 pages total.  But even that pretty low page count is misleading.  That is because my publisher, MIT Press and the Boston Review, decided to make the pages very small, and the book quite compact.  I happen to like the design a lot.  To me, it has the look and feel of something like the classics by Beatrix Potter, such as The Tales of Peter Rabbit, Mrs. Tiggle-Wiggle, Benjamin Bunny, Squirrel Nutkin, and on.  There are some figures in my book, though, unfortunately,  nothing that can compare with the Potter's brilliant illustrations in these books.

Austrian adventurer Felix Baumgartner has been frustrated in his attempt to make the highest ever skydive.

Unfavourable winds at Roswell, New Mexico, have prevented the launch of the helium balloon that was to take him to more than 120,000ft (36.5km).

Meteorologists say Thursday now looks to be next best day for a record bid.

One of Britain's few black women judges, who shot to prominence six years ago with a "misery memoir" about her tough early life, has been arrested and questioned by police.

Constance Briscoe, 55, was arrested in Clapham, south-west London, at the weekend by officers from Kent and taken to a police station for interview. She was later released on bail pending further inquiries.

Kent police declined to name the arrested woman or say why she had been arrested. "A 55-year-old woman was arrested on Saturday in Clapham, south London, interviewed by officers and bailed pending further inquiries," a spokeswoman said.

We've seen Rowan Atkinson as Blackadder going forth in the First World War, ruffed-up and ruffled as a courtier to Elizabeth I and trussed up in a wig as a stroppy Prince Edmund in the middle ages. But a `lost' episode due to be revealed this week presents the character as we've never seen him before: Edmund Blackadder the Bethlehem innkeeper.

The unfinished script was written as a Christmas special in 1988 by Richard Curtis and Ben Elton but was never filmed. The story featured Blackadder's haphazard servant Baldrick (played in the long-running series by Tony Robinson), some of the more comical moments in the nativity story, the Three Kings, and a talking turkey.

A judge in Hull has settled down with his law books to try to find the answer to the famous old question in the sea shanty: what shall we do with the drunken sailor?

Hull Crown court heard that the fate of Viatcheslav Poleshchuk, who crashed twice into Goole lock gates on the Humber and then asked police in a vodka-slurred voice "Can I have another go?", posed a legal brainteaser.

The estuary's combined ports are the busiest in the country, and a skipper with a bottle of vodka freshly inside him, as Poleshchuk admitted he had, is no laughing matter in charge of a 30,000 tonne scrap metal carrier in such waters. The 44-year-old captain was more than four times over the drink-drive limit with 157 milligrams of alcohol in his blood compared to the legal maximum of 35 when he was arrested last month.

#FFS

I distribute. You re-distribute. He gives your hard-earned money to lazy scroungers. -- JakeS

The other finalists named yesterday (9 October) for the European Parliament prize are Ales Bialiatski, an imprisoned Belarussian opposition figure; and Iranians Nasrin Sotoudeh, an imprisoned lawyer and human rights advocate, and Jafar Panahi, a film director.

The laureate will be announced on 26 October following a decision of the Conference of Presidents. The winner will receive €50,000 and be invited to attend the award ceremony on 12 December in Strasbourg.

The Sakharov Prize, named after Soviet scientist and dissident Andrei Sakharov, was established in 1988 by the European Parliament (see background). Recent recipients were the Russian civil rights society Memorial in 2009, the Cuban dissident Guillermo Fariñas in 2010, and in 2011, representatives of the Arab people in recognition of their role in the Arab Spring.