President Barack Obama has pledged up to $1bn in new US funding for European defence, reasserting Washington's role in the region despite warnings from Russia that any military build up near its borders with eastern Europe could provoke a new arms race and a new Cold War.

Prince Felipe's coronation could take place in the second half of June, after Spain's government discussed a provisional calendar for a rapid introduction of legislation covering King Juan Carlos's imminent abdication and the Prince's succession.

"Europe hit by a populist earthquake," read the headlines after the European elections that last month saw record numbers vote for anti-establishment parties of various shades. Tony Blair warned on Monday that Ukip's victory should be seen as a "wake-up call" for the need to reform Europe. But where to start?

The Hillsborough disaster "would have been avoided" if police had not closed 12 turnstiles, an inquest has heard.

Sheffield Wednesday's consultant engineer Dr Wilfred Eastwood said restricted entry at the Leppings Lane end led to a build-up of fans.

In a 1990 statement read to the inquests into 96 Liverpool fans' deaths, Dr Eastwood said 12 turnstiles on Penistone Road were shut.

People's views of Russia have strongly deteriorated since last year, according to the latest 24-country poll for the BBC World Service.

The poll, which was mostly conducted before the crisis in Crimea, showed people were more negative about Russia in the past year than they had been at any time since the poll began in 2005.

It also found that views of the US and the EU had worsened

A large fire has broken out at a Shell chemical plant in the Netherlands following a series of explosions, reports say.

Television footage showed flames and smoke pouring from the plant in Moerdijk, south of Rotterdam.

It is not known if there are any casualties and the cause of the blasts was not clear.

The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland is facing fresh accusations of child neglect after a researcher found records for 796 young children believed to be buried in a mass grave beside a former orphanage for the children of unwed mothers.

The researcher, Catherine Corless, says her discovery of child death records at the Catholic nun-run home in Tuam, County Galway, suggests that a former septic tank filled with bones is the final resting place for most, if not all, of the children.

Church leaders in Galway, western Ireland, said they had no idea so many children who died at the orphanage had been buried there, and said they would support local efforts to mark the spot with a plaque listing all 796 children.

Brooks and Hanna deny all charges. Closing speeches for the seven defendants in the 125-day trial are complete, with the judge's summing-up to follow before the jury are sent out to consider their verdicts.

Undead creep alert! RT @MerheimEyre Blair is out job hunting! 'The case for Europe is power, not peace' @EurActiv http://t.co/nOhMlj2bWb

— Migeru (@MigeruBlogger) junio 3, 2014

In a SPIEGEL interview, French right-wing populist Marine Le Pen discusses the European election victory by her Front National, German dominance in the EU and her admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Il sindaco di Venezia Giorgio Orsoni, del centrosinistra, è finito in manette con le accusa di finanziamento illecito relativa alla sua campagna elettorale per le comunali del 2010. L'inchiesta è quella della Procura di Venezia sugli appalti per il Mose e sull'ex ad della Mantovani Giorgio Baita, già colpito da un provvedimento di custodia cautelare lo scorso febbraio. In manette anche l'assessore regionale alle Infrastrutture Renato Chisso, di Forza Italia.

The head of Britain's "bad bank" has warned that more than 60,000 of its mortgage customers could be put at risk by Bank of England moves to raise interest rates.

An unexpected slump in German inflation has set the scene for a host of radical monetary stimulus measures by the European Central Bank this week.

The "exploited and abused" practice of banks parcelling up debts to sell on to investors in the build-up to the financial crisis needs to be revived, in a more transparent form, deputy Bank of England governor Sir Jon Cunliffe said today.

Syria has held a presidential election in government-held areas, amid heightened security.

President Bashar al-Assad is widely expected to win a third seven-year term in office.

However, critics of the Syrian government have denounced the election as a farce.

Mexico has published new sentencing guidelines that will double prison sentences for kidnapping.

The minimum prison term has risen from 20 to 40 years.

It will apply for all abductions, including those that last only a few hours or days, so-called "express kidnappings".

The Brazilian government is offering federal police officers a 15.8% pay rise to avert a strike during the forthcoming football World Cup.

Under the deal, federal police agents will receive a 12% salary increase from July, and another 3.8% rise in January.

The agreement follows police strikes earlier this year in which an estimated 250,000 agents took part.

A video of a French hostage kidnapped in Mali by al-Qaeda has been broadcast by a TV station in Dubai.

The video showed Serge Lazarevic, who was abducted in 2011, appealing to French President Francois Hollande to secure his release.

In the video, Mr Lazarevic said he was speaking on 13 May. French officials say they are studying the footage.

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has won Egypt's presidential elections by a huge majority, the country's election commission has said.

The former military chief, who last July overthrew Egypt's first democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi, won 96.91 of legal votes cast in last week's election.

Israel's prime minister has said that he is "deeply troubled" by the United States' decision to maintain relations with the new Palestinian unity government, urging Washington to tell the Palestinian president that his alliance with Hamas is unacceptable.

Benjamin Netanyahu's comments on Tuesday reflect the Israeli government's disappointment and frustration over the acceptance of the international community of Mahmoud Abbas' new unity government in Palestine.

"I'm deeply troubled by the announcement that the United States will work with the Palestinian government backed by Hamas," Netanyahu told The Associated Press news agency.

While the scientific community has completely and repeatedly debunked the ill-conceived notion that vaccines cause autism, it has not been able to definitively answer what does cause autism. According to recent research, it could be due to exposure to certain hormones during pregnancy. A study led Simon Baron-Cohen of the University of Cambridge has revealed a link between fetal exposure to elevated levels of steroid hormones and autism. The results were published today in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.

The study analyzed an astounding 19,500 samples of amniotic fluid from a biobank in Denmark, collected between 1993-1999. The samples were provided by women who chose to have an amniocentesis during the second trimester, around weeks 15-16. This is a busy time for fetal brain development and sexual differentiation.

The Obama administration unveiled historic environment rules cutting carbon pollution from power plants by 30% on Monday, spurring prospects for a global deal to end climate change but setting up an epic battle over the environment in this year's mid-term elections.

The new rules, formally announced by the Environmental Protection Agency, represent the first time Barack Obama, or any other president, has moved to regulate carbon pollution from power plants - the largest single source of carbon dioxide emissions that cause climate change.

The EPA said the regulations, which would cut carbon pollution from power plants 30% from 2005 levels by 2030, would "fight climate change while supplying America with reliable and affordable power".

The world is not moving fast enough on investment in low carbon energy to tackle climate change, new research from the International Energy Agency has found.

About $1.6 trillion is invested annually in the global energy supply, but while that represents a doubling of investment since the turn of the century, the amount needs to rise to $2 trillion if the world is to limit global warming to no more than 2C of temperature rises, the energy thinktank said.

Energy efficiency will be key, the IEA said, with about $130bn spent on it globally each year at present, an investment that must rise to more than $550bn by 2035.

Usually associated with play-schools and toy boxes, colouring books have a found a new fan-base in France, where women have taken up colouring to help ease their stress and anxiety. The trend is thanks to a clever marketing ploy used by publishers, which means more of the books are bought in France - mainly by women - than in any other nation in the world, the Telegraph reported.

Mass migration of Christians to Britain from countries such as Poland and Romania is among the factors helping to stem the decline in church attendance, according to new figures.

The latest analysis of church membership shows a growth in black-led churches and the mainstream churches' so-called "fresh expressions" movement have also helped curb the rate of decline.

The fall in church membership previously anticipated for 2020 will now not be evident until 2025, according to the research by Peter Brierley, whose second edition of UK Church Statistics, is due to be published soon.

Crisis of male dislocation has an electoral reality in increased male vote for UKIP and other right parties says @kirstyjmcneill #yffeminism

— Young Fabians (@youngfabians) June 2, 2014

Alexander "Sasha" Shulgin, the pioneering pharmacologist who introduced MDMA to psychologists in the 1970s, has died aged 88 after a battle with liver cancer.

Shulgin was famed for having synthesized and tested over 200 psychedelic drugs.

He earned the title, the "Godfather of ecstasy", after developing a new synthesis method for MDMA - the purest available form of ecstasy - in 1976. He passed it on to his therapist friend Leo Zeff, who began using the drug's effects on an individual's emotional states during sessions with clients.

In 1770 at London, an anonymous pamphlet appeared under the title, An Essay on Trade and Commerce. It made some stir in its time. The author, a great philanthropist, was indignant that "the factory population of England had taken into its head the fixed idea that in their quality of Englishmen all the individuals composing it have by right of birth the privilege of being freer and more independent than the laborers of any country in Europe. This idea may have its usefulness for soldiers, since it stimulates their valor, but the less the factory workers are imbued with it the better for themselves and the state. Laborers ought never to look on themselves as independent of their superiors. It is extremely dangerous to encourage such infatuations in a commercial state like ours, where perhaps seven-eighths of the population have little or no property. The cure will not be complete until our industrial laborers are contented to work six days for the same sum which they now earn in four." Thus, nearly a century before Guizot, work was openly preached in London as a curb to the noble passions of man. "The more my people work, the less vices they will have", wrote Napoleon on May 5th, 1807, from Osterod. "I am the authority ... and I should be disposed to order that on Sunday after the hour of service be past, the shops be opened and the laborers return to their work." To root out laziness and curb the sentiments of pride and independence which arise from it, the author of the Essay on Trade proposed to imprison the poor in ideal "work-houses", which should become "houses of terror, where they should work fourteen hours a day in such fashion that when meal time was deducted there should remain twelve hours of work full and complete"