Greece's Socialist party needs to cooperate with the members of the leftist Syriza coaltion for the creation of a future alliance, said Hannes Swoboda, leader of the Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament. EurActiv Greece reports.

The Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) "must change," Swoboda, an Austrian MEP, told a seminar in Athens, stressing that Syriza "is not a bunch of irresponsible people."

Syriza, or Coalition of the Radical Left, became the second largest party in Greece and the main opposition force after elections in June 2012. The centre-right New Democracy (ND) led by Prime Minister Antonis Samaras won 29.66% of the votes, followed by Syriza with 26.89%. PASOK came third with only 12.28%.

Syriza has shaken up the Greek political landscape, which has been traditionally dominated by ND and PASOK.

Catalonia would need to cut €4.8bn (£4bn) from its budget, which includes health and education spending, to meet the central government's target of 0.7 percent of gross domestic product, Mas-Colell said.

"We will not make these cuts," he said. "It is just impossible, I don't know how to even start."

...Catalonia, whose leader Artur Mas is driving for independence from Spain, has an economy almost as big as Portugal's and generates one fifth of Spanish gross domestic product. The region overshot a 1.5% deficit target by 0.5 percentage points in 2012.

Catalonia's leader is in a standoff with Spain's prime minister Mariano Rajoy, as the Catalans plan on holding a referendum on independence next year. The central government, meanwhile, has the power to give the region more time to balance its books.

Tony Blair issued a stark warning yesterday that Labour is in danger of being seen as a party of protest as he urged Ed Miliband not to allow it to slip back into its "comfort zone".

In his most significant intervention in domestic politics since stepping down as Prime Minister in 2007, Mr Blair said Labour should not "tack right on immigration and Europe, and tack left on tax and spending". Questioning Mr Miliband's strategy to shift the political centre ground to the left, he said Labour must keep out of its "comfort zone but on a centre ground that is ultimately both more satisfying and more productive for party and country".

Mr Miliband came under further pressure as other Blairites including Lord Mandelson and Alan Milburn weighed in behind his call, with the latter telling The Independent that voters "want to know what Labour is for".

The Labour leader retaliated last night insisting he was "moving on" from Blair's administration and intended to lead "in his own way".

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has written a letter warning Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban that Brussels might still object to the country's new constitution, which has already been revised once.

The president of the European Commission said in his letter than an initial legal analysis of the changes for Hungary's new constitution still pointed to incompatibilities with EU law.

Once the legal investigations were complete, Jose Manuel Barroso wrote, then the European Commission "will have to take the necessary steps in order to start infringement procedures where relevant."

FT has obtained the leaked troika report, outlining five options of how to extend loan maturities for Ireland and Portugal; there are still reservations by Germany to be overcome; troika is also pessimistic on Portugal, saying an extension will not be sufficient to guarantee a return to markets; report suggests that Portugal may require a second bailout; Michael Noonan said Ireland is not `actively' pursuing to secure precautionary credit line for post-bailout backstop; would rule out Ireland to qualify for OMT, says Reuters; Moody's says gaining eligibility to OMT with precautionary credit line would be perceived `positively'; cross-referencing of the PP accounts matches the "Barcenas papers", according to an upcoming report to be added to the judicial investigation, claims El Pais; ABC publishes an account by former PP parliamentarian Jorge Trias of now he came to leak the Barcenas papers to El Pais; El Pais led Thursday with the news that the judicial investigation into the alleged shadow accounting of the ruling PP kept by framer treasurer Luis Barcenas will confirm that the official accounting matches the so-called Barcenas papers. Spanish government reacts to picketing of politicians by fencing their homes off; European Commission sees rising social tension in Spain, Portugal and Greece; Spain's CNMV market regulator says in a report that Bankia and its predecessor Cajas had unresolved conflicts of interests in relation with the secondary market in their own preferred shares; Corriere della Sera has the story that Italy requires significant new austerity measures to main fiscal targets; expiry of housing tax and the constitutional court dismissal of a prescription charge will require additional measures; Fabio Penetta says Italy is in its biggest crisis since the second world war; Italy's true unemployment rate is 22.3% if discouraged workers are included in the statistics, according to Istat; discouraged workers are also statistically significant in Greece and Spain, but less so than in Italy, where they are dominant; Greek unemployment rate hits new record at 27.2% increase in January 2013 compared to last year; Youth unemployment soared up to 59.3%; Troika talks in Athens planned to continue until Tuesday to find compromise on civil service dismissal; the government of Cyprus has extended capital controls for another week, but relaxed some of the thresholds; companies can now transfer €300,000 domestically, the thresholds for travellers have also been relaxed, but the main capital controls remain in place; Benoit Coeure, meanwhile, says there is little the ECB can do to alleviate the credit crunch for small and medium-sized companies.

THE Scottish Parliament is to debate whether "there is still such a thing as society" on the same day Margaret Thatcher is laid to rest during a ceremonial funeral with military honours in London this week.

Scottish Green MSPs have forced a Holyrood debate on Baroness Thatcher's political legacy this Wednesday as the formal service takes place in St Paul's Cathedral for the former prime minister.

The proposed title for the debate echoes Thatcher's assertion in 1987 that: "There's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families."

Thousands of people on Saturday rallied in the streets of Lisbon to protest rising poverty resulting from the government's belt-tightening measures.

The anti-poverty march was organised by Portugal's leading union, the CGTP, and capped about a week of protest activities that have been held throughout the eurozone country.

"Unemployment in Portugal is a national disgrace" and "a minimum wage increase is a necessity" protesters chanted.

Across Europe, a handful of mostly small nations have built up offshore banking sectors which propelled citizens to prosperity on the back of money made elsewhere.

But as a backlash mounts after the Cyprus crisis, a political scandal in France, and the naming and shaming of dozens of global tax evaders, Europe seems to have finally lost patience with those seeking to squirrel their money away from the taxman, and the nations which court them.

The Prime Minister of Luxembourg - one of two countries which had been blocking a European Union-wide automatic data-sharing scheme - said on Wednesday that it would from 2015 start swapping personal bank account details of EU citizens, lifting the veil of secrecy that activists say attracted not only legitimate businesses but money launderers and criminals.

Intense pressure is now on Austria to also embrace the EU Savings Directive, which aims to detect and clamp down on tax evasion. It remains the only EU nation which has refused to swap data on its bank account holders, leaving it in a "lonely and unsustainable position", one EU official said.

Greek unemployment hit a record 27.2 per cent in January, up from 25.7 per cent in December and 21.5 per cent a year ago, with unemployment in the 15-24 age group at 59.3 per cent.

Greece is in its sixth year of recession and is reliant on international rescue loans. It has imposed strict spending cuts and tax increases that have hammered the already weakened economy.

The firms, which have not been identified publicly but are understood to include a number of household names, were referred by Jo Swinson, the junior employment minister, after a meeting she had with Intern Aware, which campaigns against the abuse of the internship process.

While companies are free to offer work experience, where this ends up amounting to a job - for example if hours and duties are set and the position lasts for a long time - companies are breaking employment laws if they do not pay at least the minimum wage.

Aside from the illegality, critics say the use of long-term, unpaid positions as an entry point to popular professions in effect excludes those without well-off parents or other means to support themselves.

JPMorgan Chase saw its net income rise 33 per cent to $6.5bn in the first quarter as the largest US bank by assets produced steady revenues while cutting expenses.

The results - the first in Wall Street's earnings season - beat analysts' expectations of about $5.4bn in net income.

For fun, check how hard if JP Morgan is working on loans since Lehman.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad offered his resignation to President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday following a rift between the two men over government policy, two sources told Reuters.

...Western governments have offered staunch support to Fayyad ever since he became prime minister in 2007, seeing him as the architect of Palestinian state-building efforts, and his departure could complicate their ties with Abbas.

Long-strained relations between the 61-year-old Fayyad and Abbas worsened last month when the prime minister accepted the resignation of his finance minister, against the wishes of the president.

Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said on Friday he wanted normal ties with his nation's old adversary South Sudan on his first visit there since southern secession in 2011.

The neighbours agreed in March to resume cross-border oil flows and ease tension that has been permanent since South Sudan's independence in July 2011 following a 2005 treaty which ended decades of civil war.

Former Bush staffers and Guantanamo Bay commanders on list released in response to US Treasury visa bans

Moscow listed 18 Americans who are banned from entering Russia in an announcement Saturday - a tit-for-tat measure that comes a day after Washington imposed similar sanctions. The list, which was released by the Russian Foreign Ministry, includes staffers in the Bush administration and two former commanders of Guantanamo Bay.

On Friday, the US Treasury announced financial sanctions and visa bans on 18 Russian officials, the majority of whom were implicated over the arrest and death of the corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. Magnitsky died in a Russian prison in 2009, after being arrested by the same officers he was investigating over a $230m fraud. He was reportedly beaten and denied medical treatment while behind bars.

The bad news: North Korea has threatened to attack another North American city, this time Colorado Springs, where the U.S. Air Force Academy resides. The good news: North Korea seems to have no idea where Colorado Springs actually is.

Number of sailors in Afghanistan to dwindle

Al-Qaida in Iraq already styles itself as the "Islamic State in Iraq" (ISI). The difference between it and Jabhat al-Nusra is that the latter actually controls territory, making the declaration of a state cause for a moment of disconcerted reflection: If Jabhabt al-Nusra currently administers various villages and cities (such as Raqqa) through a manifestation of Islamist governance embodied in shari'a councils, and if Jabhat al-Nusra is al-Qaida, then it's not absurd to say that something resembling a rough patchwork of quasi city-states has been established by al-Qaida in Syria. This is a strange station that no one expected to arrive at when the Syrian uprising began.

Whether or not al-Nusra is developing the various ministries and institutions typically associated with statehood, they are expanding their scope of shari'a governance, and as al-Julani stated in his announcement, they receive some kind of budget from al-Qaida in Iraq.

The lately growing anticipation of total failure of statehood in Syria--code for the emergence of an al-Qaida-branded Islamist patchwork state--is behind the U.S. reaction to train nationalist rebels (of course not "secular rebels"--a strange term frequently appearing now), as well as an alleged change in Saudi policy (more below). Should an al-Qaida state grow into even more of a reality, Israeli and Jordanian border integrity are the primary concerns motivating the counter effort, which would likely develop into buffer zones.

Carbon markets have lost us more than 15 years in the battle against climate change yet we continue to plough forward with scaling them up. Why?

Some hope that this global expansion of carbon markets will revive their fortunes, helping to raise billions for investments in low-carbon and climate change mitigation technologies. Others, including myself, take a more evidence based approach, arguing that this hope of the pro-market lobby is unfounded, given the inefficient and even corrupt nature of carbon markets so far. There is an urgent need for alternatives to be considered, as the world is running out of time to curb the most serious impacts of run-away climate change.

...Carbon markets would not suddenly work better if the carbon price was right. There are at least three systemic failures with the carbon trading approach. The first concerns the link between carbon markets in the developed world and offsetting opportunities in developing countries. In a WikiLeaks released cable, government officials claimed recently that none of the CDM projects in India (the second biggest host of CDM projects after China) can be considered 'additional'. ...

...The second reason is that carbon markets have been infested by corruption and non-transparency. ...

...Contrary to their claims, carbon markets have fuelled unsustainable practices. AT Biopower, a Thai company that generates renewable electricity by the burning of rice husk is able to sell carbon credits to Japanese and other polluters. AT Biopower presents rice husk as a waste product, but, as Carbon Trade Watch activist Tamra Gilbertson says it is actually a vital source of fertilizer in the local, sustainable economy of subsistence farmers. Farmers now have to buy petroleum-based, chemical fertilisers, which makes them worse off and creates negative environmental impacts.

...Steffen Böhm is director of the Essex Sustainability Institute, University of Essex, and professor of management and sustainability at Essex Business School.

Among the first sights to greet visitors to Denmark on the descent to Copenhagen's airport is a sweeping arc of wind turbines rising from the harbor. From the airport, passengers can board an automatic Metro line that hustles them to the city center in just 15 minutes, crossing the path of the City Circle Line, a subway project that will place 85 percent of Copenhageners within 650 yards of a Metro station when the line opens in 2018.

Everywhere, visitors are greeted by streams of bicyclists; 36 percent of trips to work or school in the Danish capital are made by bike, and more than 20,000 cyclists enter the city center at peak hours, filling Copenhagen's 249 miles of cycle tracks. Less visible are state-of-the-art facilities where waste heat from power plants is used to keep buildings warm via the world's largest district heating network, or where waters from the city harbor are deployed to cool department stores, office buildings, hotels, and data centers.

These innovations are just a prelude to what is planned in the coming years, all designed to make Copenhagen the world's first carbon-neutral capital by 2025. Acting on a City Council plan approved last August, Copenhagen intends to replace coal with biomass, to add more wind and solar electricity to the grid, to upgrade energy-guzzling buildings, and to lure even more residents onto bikes and public transit.

Moored at a specially constructed dock 100 metres off the coast of Beirut, a huge hulk of a ship rises impressively at dusk against the fading pinks and blues of the western sky. But this is not a US aircraft carrier or foreign warship sent to keep an eye on politically fragile Lebanon; its purpose is more peaceful, but in its way, equally dramatic.

The ship, the Fatmagül Sultan, is the centrepiece of an innovative project to overcome chronic electricity shortages in developing countries struggling to meet expanding demand. Known as a "power ship", the Turkish-owned and operated vessel with 11 towering steel stacks or chimneys resembles a sort of floating Battersea power station.

It arrived off Beirut earlier this year under a $370m, three-year deal agreed between Lebanon's government and the Turkish energy company, Karadeniz Holding. After securing a supply of heavy fuel oil and hooking up to Lebanon's national grid, the ship is delivering 188MW of electricity daily. This total is expected to rise to 270MW in June, when a second Turkish power ship arrives off Beirut.

"The cultural conversation is devastating," says Fox. "It shifts from `it's not happening and I don't have to pay attention' to "it's over, we're doomed."

IMPACT ON YOUR KIDS AND HOME

So how can that be changed? Fox and others at the Skoll World Forum say they believe answers may be to reframe climate change as a much more personal problem for people, make taking action on it appealing, and engage the enemy - those most opposed to action today - to deliver the messages.

What does that look like? It might mean reaching out to mothers worried about rising rates of asthma in their children - a problem scientists say is growing worse with climate change. That parent might not fight climate change to protect the environment, but they might well fight it to protect the health of their children. Similarly, as owners of homes at risk from worsening floods or storm surges have greater difficulty getting insurance, their personal stories could begin to resonate.

"You begin with what matters, and move from that space," Fox says.

The French Senate has approved the text of a bill that would allow same-sex couples in the country to get married and adopt children. The bill will now return to the National Assembly for a second and final vote in late May.

The Paris-based Institute for Scientific Research on Beverages (IREB) has proposed defining a clear methodology for calculating alcohol-related harm that can be shared by research teams and scientific institutions across the board.

A more consensual methodology should enable policymakers, observers and the wider public to be provided with reliable data, it said.

IREB's proposal comes after the publication of a report in the European Journal of Public Health, which suggested that 49,000 people die of alcohol-related diseases in France per year. Some 36,500 French men die each year from alcohol-related illnesses, making for around 13% of the overall male mortality rate, the report found.

The report, published in March, was based on data from 2009.

The quake struck at 5:33 am (2033 GMT on Friday) near Awaji island in the Seto Inland Sea southwest of the city of Kobe at a relatively shallow depth of 10 kilometres (six miles), the agency said.

13 April 1943 – first public announcement of the discovery of the Katyn massacre by propagandists of Nazi Germany

14 April 193 – Septimius Severus is proclaimed Roman Emperor by his own troops in Carnuntum (half-way between modern Vienna and Bratislava) upon the news of the assassination of his predecessor

Margaret Thatcher will have a street, square or avenue named after her in the Spanish capital of Madrid, after the city council proposed that the late former British prime minister's name should figure on its street map.

...With an absolute majority of seats in the hands of the conservative People's party (PP) the proposal is bound to receive a green light at the meeting - despite the opposition of other parties.

...David Ortega, of the centrist Union for Progress and Democracy, complained that the move was an attempt to politicise the city map.

But mayor Ana Botella, wife of former Spanish prime minister José María Aznar, praised the former British prime minister as a role model for female politicians around Europe.

German prosecutors have said they filed corruption charges against former President Christian Wulff, over alleged favors that prompted his resignation last year. The move came after Wulff had rejected a settlement offer.

Vladimir Putin was briefly banned from entering Finland...

Finnish TV reported that Mr Putin's name was on the list, which could have seen him turned away at the border, because of his close ties to the Night Wolves, a group of Hell's Angels-style bikers with whom the Russian President frequently meets. Three years ago, he even jumped on to a bike himself, part of the macho image that is projected of the Russian leader on state-controlled television.