PressTV – German prosecutors have dropped a probe into allegations that the country’s top cleric, Freiburg Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, hired a pedophile priest. “The investigation into Freiburg Archbishop Robert Zollitsch has been closed,” the Associated Press quoted Prosecutor Christoph Hettenbach as saying in a statement released Wednesday. “Since no concrete abuse cases or victims’ names have come to light from the priest’s second period in Birnau from 1987 to 1992, there are no grounds for holding Dr Zollitsch criminally responsible,” Hettenbach said in the statement. Read article
BBC – The health inequality gap in Britain is greater than it was during the post-World War I slump and the Great Depression, a study suggests. Despite the continued rise in life expectancy, it is well documented that the gap between richest and poorest has actually been widening in recent years. Researchers from Sheffield and Bristol looked at early death rates since 1921. Read article
Thelocal.de-A blue-green algae bloom the size of Germany has formed in the Baltic Sea, threatening marine life and even posing a danger to humans, authorities warned this week. The prolonged heat and lack of wind or storms has given the cyanobacteria the chance to form the largest carpet since 2005, covering about 377,000 square kilometres of the sea’s surface – roughly Germany’s entire land area -Read Article
BBC – The UK economy grew by a faster-than-expected 1.1% in the second quarter of the year, according to official data. The figure – a preliminary estimate from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) – was almost double the 0.6% growth rate expected by economists. It was the fastest quarterly expansion since 2006, and marked a sharp pick-up in pace from the 0.3% growth of the first three months of the year. Read article
BBC – A police officer who was filmed pushing a man to the ground during the G20 protests will not face charges over his death. Ian Tomlinson, 47, died after being caught up in the clashes on 1 April 2009 in the City of London. Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer said there was no prospect of conviction because experts could not agree on how Mr Tomlinson died. Mr Tomlinson’s son Paul King described the decision as “outrageous”. Read article
Irish Central – New bill is welcomed by police, rural groups; Irish homeowners can now legally use guns to defend themselves if their homes are attacked under new legislation. The new home defense bill has moved the balance of rights back to the house owner if his home is broken into “where it should always have been”, say top Irish police. Read article
Associated Press – Moody’s Investors Service has downgraded its rating on Irish government bonds by one notch, citing a deteriorating economic outlook. Moody’s said Monday that it is concerned about the government’s loss of financial strength, weaker prospects for growth in the economy and liabilities in the banking system. In a statement from its office in Frankfurt, Moody’s says it has dropped its rating on government bonds from Aa1 to Aa2. Read Article
Press TV – France and Germany have signed a joint declaration on tightening punitive measures against European Union countries that fail to curb their soaring budget deficits. The two countries sent their joint proposals to the EU on Wednesday, calling on the 27-member bloc to speed up the process it deems necessary for the establishment of economic convergence. According to AFP, the declaration also called for the imposition of sanctions on countries that undermine the stability within the EU’s financial regulatory system. Read Article
BBC – A bailiff has been filmed apparently kicking a demonstrator while evicting him from a peace camp outside the Houses of Parliament. Bailiff firm Shergroup evicted protesters from Parliament Square on Tuesday, after Boris Johnson obtained a High Court order for their removal. The footage shows a protester kicking out and being dragged by bailiffs, one of whom then appears to stamp on him. Shergroup said it would review the video and investigate the incident. Read Article
Wall Street Journal – British oil major BP PLC (BP, BP.LN) and partners China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC.YY) and Iraq’s state-run South Oil Co. expect to issue tenders to drill between 80 and 100 wells in the immense Rumaila oil field this year and next year, a company executive said Monday. Earlier this year, BP awarded three deals valued at least $500 million to drill…Read Article
ScienceDaily — A team of researchers from the University of Valencia (UV) has found that 34% of ultraviolet radiation filters through under beach umbrellas. According to a new study, umbrellas intercept the full direct flow that comes from the Sun, but not the diffused radiation that penetrates through from the sides. Read article
The Independent – HIV infections among the over-50s have more than doubled in seven years, it was revealed today. The number of new cases per year recorded in England, Wales and Northern Ireland rose from 299 to 710 between 2000 and 2007, research has shown. Half were diagnosed late, increasing the risk of an early death from Aids. Among younger age groups, a third have the HIV infection identified at a similar level of progression. Read article
Express – TONY BLAIR faces a Parliamentary inquiry into the spiralling cost of his security after six police officers were photographed guarding the rear of his home. Local residents say the presence of such large numbers of armed officers is making them nervous and affecting the once calm atmosphere of the upmarket neighbourhood. Tory MP Mark Field will this week table a Commons question about the costs of protecting Mr Blair, estimated at £6million a year and rising. Read article
PhysOrg.com – Deaths in England and Wales from injuries and diseases caused by work have almost halved in 20 years, indicates research published online in Occupational and Environmental Medicine. But there are still some jobs, such as being a publican, a coal miner, or a pilot in which the chances of a work related death remain relatively high. The researchers analysed information on occupation and cause of death from the death certificates of some 2.7 million men aged 20-74 who died between 1979 and 2000. Read article
Guardian – George Osborne and Vince Cable will spell out next week the dangers of a double-dip recession caused by a drying up of bank lending to Britain’s hard-pressed small and medium-sized businesses. A green paper, to be rushed out by the chancellor and business secretary before next week’s parliamentary recess, will acknowledge the scale of the lending rationing crisis, which could “abort” the fragile recovery. Read Article
Wall Street Journal – Negotiators for the International Monetary Fund and European Union walked away from talks with Hungary over the weekend, saying Budapest needs to do more to shrink its budget deficit before it can get any more bailout money. The move is likely to alarm markets already suspicious of the new populist government’s pledges to cut spending. After nearly two weeks of meetings with senior Hungarian officials, the IMF and EU teams on Saturday called an abrupt halt to the discussions. They said Hungary couldn’t have access—for now, at least—to the remaining funds in a 20 billion euro ($25.9 billion) loan package secured in late 2008 to rescue the country from a financial meltdown. Read Article
BBC – Peace protesters who have been camping in Parliament Square since May have been evicted. Last week the Court of Appeal rejected an application by demonstrators at the camp, dubbed Democracy Village, who wanted to be allowed to remain. Bailiffs and police moved in at about 0100 BST, although a handful of activists tied themselves to scaffolding. They have now been removed and a fence has been put up around the square. Read Article
Irish Central – A report published in Britain recently recommends Ireland and other countries reverse its decision to follow the American example, and stop putting the poisonous chemical called fluoride in public drinking water and hygiene products. Published in the peer-reviewed journal Toxicology — the official journal of the British Toxicology Society and the German Toxicology Society – author Dr. Robert Verkerk said “mass fluoridation of the public water supply [must be] stopped immediately. This is borne out by actual data from Ireland which shows that every third child is affected [by a high risk of dental fluorosis].” Read article
Guardian – European governments are turning their backs on Goldman Sachs, the all-conquering investment bank that has suffered a series of blows to its reputation, capped by the biggest ever fine imposed on a Wall Street firm. According to data from Dealogic, Greece, Spain, France and Italy have all denied the bank a lead role in their recent sovereign bond sales. Read Article
Daily Telegraph – The Conservatives said before the general election that the pensions age should rise to 66 by 2016. Now Iain Duncan Smith [Government minister]has said workers should also be prepared for the retirement age to rise to 68 eight years earlier than scheduled. Read article
Guardian – A veteran British journalist and author promoting his book on the death penalty in Singapore was arrested in the country today for alleged criminal defamation and other offences. Alan Shadrake’s arrest came two days after Singapore’s Media Development Authority lodged a police report. The Foreign Office in London said it was seeking more information from local authorities. Read Article
The Independent – Saodat Rakhimbayeva says she wishes she had died with her newborn baby. The 24-year-old housewife had a cesarean section in March and gave birth to Ibrohim, a premature boy who died three days later. Then came a further devastating blow: She learned that the surgeon had removed part of her uterus during the operation, making her sterile. The doctor told her the hysterectomy was necessary to remove a potentially cancerous cyst, while she believes he sterilized her as part of a state campaign to reduce birthrates. Read article
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Daily Mail – Tony Blair was flown to Libya for secret talks with Colonel Gaddafi just days after denying he was an adviser to the dictator. Mr Blair was ‘entertained as a brother’, a senior Libyan government source has revealed. He told the Daily Mail that the former prime minister had offered Gaddafi, with whom he is on first-name terms, ‘a great deal of invaluable advice’. Read Article
Reuters – Moody’s cut Ireland’s credit rating on Monday, warning the country faces a slow climb out of recession as the cost of a rescue of its banking sector mounts. The one-notch downgrade to Aa2, which came a day ahead of a scheduled sale of up to 1.5 billion euros of Irish debt, put Moody’s on par with rival agency Standard and Poor’s AA rating and still one notch above Fitch. Moody’s also changed its outlook to stable from negative. Read Article
Guardian – A former Guantánamo Bay detainee says that key exchanges from his interrogation by British security service officers have been blacked out or deliberately omitted from the notes to hide the agents’ complicity in torture. Other exchanges, he says, have been removed simply to hide evidence of spurious and potentially embarrassing lines of questioning. Read Article
