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Rio summit ends with warning on corporate power

2012-06-23T13:14:00.000+06:00

        The UN sustainable development summit in Brazil has ended with world leaders adopting a political declaration hammered out a few days previously.

   Environment and development charities say the Rio+20 agreement is too weak to tackle social and environmental crises.
Gro Harlem Brundtland, author of a major UN sustainable development report 25 years ago, said corporate power was one reason for lack of progress.
Nations will spend three years drawing up sustainable development goals.
They will also work towards better protection for marine life on the high seas.
But moves to eliminate subsidies on fossil fuels - recommended in a number of authoritative reports as likely to boost economies and curb CO2 emissions - came to naught.
Plans to enshrine the right of poor people to have clean water, adequate food and modern forms of energy also foundered or were seriously weakened during the six days of preparatory talks.
And many governments were bitter that text enshrining women's reproductive rights was removed from the declaration over opposition from the Vatican backed by Russia and nations from the Middle East and Latin America.

'No leadership'


The UN had billed the summit as a "once in a generation chance" to turn the global economy onto a sustainable track.

"It absolutely did not do that," said Barbara Stocking, chief executive of Oxfam GB.
"We had the leaders of the world here, but they really did not take decisions that will take us forward," she told the BBC.
"It was a real lack of action that is very worrying, because we know how difficult the situation is in much of the world in terms of environment and poverty, and they did not show the leadership we needed them to bring."
The president of the most impoverished country in the western hemisphere, Haiti's President Michel Martelly, said the summit could have delivered more.
"I feel like these poor countries, these countries that are always being hit by catastrophe - things have not changed much," he told the BBC.
"So on this summit I will say that much more effort needs to be done so we can correctly and precisely come out with resolutions that will have an impact on the lives of people being affected."

'Cash concern'

Developing countries had argued that they needed financial assistance in order to meet the costs of switching onto a green development path.
But with the US in an election year and the EU deep in eurozone mire, any mention of specific sums was blocked.
As a consequence, developing countries refused to let the declaration endorse green economics as the definitive sustainable development path.
Prof Jeffrey Sachs, the Columbia University economist and special adviser to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, said support was needed.

"Those of us who look at this day in, day out know that many poor countries need that kind of help," he said.

"And it does not do any good to cite large ambitious promises many years out, and then behind the scenes to say 'we're not going to talk about how they're going to be fulfilled."
But Lisa Jackson, Administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and deputy head of the US delegation here, said the US was fully behind the "green economy" - and that the summit could help deliver the vision.
"The negotiated document, which is really the first time we have a multilateral document that talks about the green economy that has broad-based support - that is a big push," she said.
"But probably more important are the connections that are being made between businesses large and small, civil society, academia and of course governments at the national and sub-national level - all those things are pushing the green economy forwards."

''Norwegian would''

The need to put the world on a sustainable track, and the perils of not doing so, were outlined most influentially in a 1987 commission chaired by Gro Harlem Brundtland, then Prime Minister of Norway.

Speaking to BBC News in Rio, she reflected on the lack of real progress since then.
"Obviously when you look back 25 years now, less than one would have expected has happened - that's clear - but you can't think you can turn the world round in 25 years," she said.
She said there were "complex reasons" why governments had been unable to take the vision further - including the power of corporations.
"I think [the allegation] is justified - it's not the whole truth but it certainly is a big part of it," she said.
"In our political system, corporations, businesses and people who have economic power influence political decision-makers - that's a fact, and so it's part of the analysis."
The next key date on the sustainable development journey is 2015.
The sustainable development goals should be decided and declared by then; also, the UN climate convention will have what some, with trepidation, are calling its "next Copenhagen" - the summit that should in theory usher in a new global agreement with some legal force to tackle global warming.

Umberto Bossi urges Silvio Berlusconi to quit : Italy

2011-11-08T21:09:00.000+06:00

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's key coalition partner has urged him to step aside ahead of a crucial budget vote.

Northern League leader Umberto Bossi is a volatile ally who brought down Mr Berlusconi's first government in 1994.
Mr Berlusconi's majority has crumbled ahead of the vote, with several MPs defecting or saying they will rebel.
Until now he has insisted he has enough support to be able to continue to govern and has denied he will resign.
While Italy's deficit is relatively low, investors are concerned that the combination of Italy's low growth rate and 1.9tn euro (£1.63tn; $2.6tn) debt could make it the next country to fall in the eurozone debt crisis.
Meanwhile Milan's blue-chip FTSE MIB stock index rose 2.5% on the news of Mr Bossi's statement. Markets had rallied in the morning on incorrect reports that Mr Berlusconi was stepping down.

Test of strength
"We asked the prime minister to stand aside," Mr Bossi told reporters on the margins of parliament, adding that the former justice minister and personal protege of Mr Berlusconi, Angelino Alfano, should take over.
The Northern League is the second largest party in the coalition, with about 60 seats.
v

The normally routine vote on approving state finances has taken on much more significance now as a test of Mr Berlusconi's political strength.

After late-night talks with his own party and Northern League leaders, Mr Berlusconi is reported to have said that he would wait to see the outcome of the vote before making a decision on his future.
One of Berlusconi's closest allies, MP Francesco Cicchitto, told reporters that leaders of the coalition would wait to see the result of the vote.
"One thing at a time. First the vote, let's let it happen. Then we'll reflect on the vote," Mr Cicchitto said.
Mr Berlusconi spent the morning attempting to shore up his support with those MPs who had threatened to abandon him ahead of the vote, which has now been delayed until 16:00 GMT.
Borrowing costs spike
Last month, the same budget measure was defeated in parliament by a single vote. Mr Berlusconi is reported to be short of the 316 votes - more than than half of the 630-member chamber - needed to prove that he still has a majority.
But analysts say Mr Berlusconi may still win as the centre-left may abstain, allowing the essential measure to pass.
Members of the opposition have said they will be present in the chamber, but will not vote, La Repubblica reports.
"Our message to the coalition is, 'be counted'," Pier Luigi Bersani, secretary of the centre-left Democratic Party said, according to the paper.

Were Mr Berlusconi to lose, he could either resign immediately or be ordered by President Giorgio Napolitano to call a confidence vote.

The BBC's Alan Johnston, in Rome, says it is certainly worth remembering that Mr Berlusconi is a master deal-maker and political infighter, having survived more than 50 confidence motions in the past.
But this crisis is different as it goes beyond Italian politics, our correspondent says.
The international money markets are now forcing Italy to pay interest rates that could eventually ruin it, which means the pressure on Mr Berlusconi is extraordinary, he adds.
Doubt about Italy's governance and its ability to repay its debts have sent the markets seesawing over the past two days.
On Tuesday, the cost of government borrowing spiked at a new record of 6.74% because of the crisis, just short of the 7% threshold at which Portugal and Ireland were forced to accept bailouts.

Russia satirists use YouTube to challenge Kremlin

2011-11-04T10:09:00.000+06:00

Media control has been one of the key factors that have allowed Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to dominate Russia's political landscape since he was first elected president in 2000.

As the country prepares for parliamentary and presidential elections, though, there are signs that the Kremlin is facing a fresh media challenge in the form of an increasingly politicised audience on Youtube.
Over the past few weeks, a number of Russian politics-themed clips on Youtube have achieved over one million views.
The videos are in a variety of genres - political polemic, satire and song - but they have one thing in common: a critical or irreverent attitude to the country's leadership - Mr Putin, President Dmitry Medvedev and their party, United Russia.
Earlier this year, anti-corruption campaigner and blogger Aleksey Navalnyy launched a web campaign against United Russia under the banner "Party of Crooks and Thieves".
One of the latest instalments in this campaign is a clip on his Youtube channel entitled: ". The video lists what it says are United Russia's failures and broken pledges, and concludes: "They have not just lied, they have brought the country to such a state that these and other promises seem to be mockeries". It also urges viewers to vote for any party but United Russia in December's parliamentary election.
The video was posted on Youtube on 7 October. By 28 October, it been viewed more than a million times.
Satire
Youtube is not only giving a powerful voice to the opposition, it is also helping to revive subversive art forms.
TV political satire has been virtually extinct in Russia since the puppet show Kukly (along the lines of the now-defunct UK satirical programme Spitting Image) disappeared from the screens shortly after Mr Putin came to power.
Now, though, this kind of satire is making a comeback on the internet. Not all the satire is anti-government, but it is generally irreverent towards authority.

One of its brightest exponents on Youtube is Dmitry Ivanov, who uses the online nickname Kamikadze_d.
Ivanov's fast-talking stand-up routines on the Russian political scene have been growing in popularity for several months now.
The first of them to break the one-million-view mark was a lampoon of a TV debate between leading politicians that was posted on 9 September.
Ivanov quickly repeated the feat with a routine called "Putin's terrible secret", in which he suggests that hidden clones of the prime minister are taking over Russia.
For those who like their satire a bit darker, there is Mr Freeman, a spooky black-and-white cartoon character whose nightmarish visions of the modern world have won him a cult following among Russian internet users.
On 11 October Mr Freeman abandoned satire and posted an "open letter" to President Medvedev, urging him to stop Mr Putin from becoming president again. By the end of the month it, too, had got over a million views.
The clip says Mr Putin's first stint as president "plunged Russia into a medieval gloom" and that the only way to prevent a repeat of this is for Mr Medvedev to sack him from the post of prime minister.
Protest music
Youtube has also helped revive Russian protest music, which, like satire, has been virtually banned from popular mainstream media outlets.
In 2010, hip-hop artist Ivan Alekseyev, aka Noize MC, got over a million views with a song about his imprisonment for singing anti-police lyrics at a concert in Volgograd.
Another protest song that has gone viral is "Our madhouse is voting for Putin" by the Yekaterinburg-based band Rabfak, which has already reached an aggregate audience of over one million since being posted on Youtube on 11 October.
The song describes how Russia is awash with corruption and abuses, but says that people will still support Mr Putin. And it warns that those who question this will be given "an injection in the backside".
The jaunty refrain runs:
"Our madhouse is voting for Putin; Putin is just the candidate for us"
Politicisation
According to the by polling organisation the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM), some 60 million Russians now have access to the internet out of a total population of just over 140 million.
Until recently, though, political content on the internet has not tended to attract a mass audience.
In 2010, there were some signs that this was changing - most notably, the growing popularity of protest songs.
The appearance of a spate of overtly political videos with one-million-plus audiences in just a few weeks is unprecedented. The Russian website Gazeta.ru . Only six Russian clips got over one million views in the whole of 2010. And it is a further sign that the internet audience in Russia is becoming increasingly politicised.
Moreover, the prevailing political mood is distinctly anti-government.
Since Mr Medvedev became president in 2008, the authorities have made great efforts to influence the internet community. The president himself launched a and then a which currently has over 625,000 followers.
But on Twitter, as on Youtube, the political traffic appears to be mainly one-way. In October, a pro-government activist tried to celebrate Mr Putin's birthday with the hashtag "SpasiboPutinuZaEto" (ThanksPutinForThat). But his plan backfired, as the hashtag became a magnet for jokes at the prime minister's expense.
Changing perceptions
Anti-government or satirical clips on Youtube are unlikely to have a decisive effect on the outcome of the forthcoming elections.
But they may already be changing perceptions.
Recent research by academics from Moscow State University found that Mr Putin is regarded in a much more negative light today than before the previous presidential elections he fought in 2000 and 2004.
The researchers found that just 17.1% of respondents had a positive view of his professional capacities as against 69% in 2000 and 64 per cent in 2004. According to the website Gazeta.ru, among the negative sides of Mr Putin's rule listed by respondents were , "failure to solve corruption problems", "excessive populism" and "excessive authoritarianism".
Watching political content on Youtube is likely to reinforce these perceptions.

Sudan army seizes rebel stronghold in Blue Nile state

2011-11-04T10:06:00.000+06:00

Sudanese forces have captured the key rebel stronghold of Kurmuk in the border state of Blue Nile, government and rebel sources said.

Sudan's defence ministry said the rebels left behind "a large number of dead and injured" after the battle for the town, near the Ethiopian border.
A spokesman for the SPLM-North rebels said they would fight on.
Since September Sudan has been battling rebels allied to South Sudan, which gained independence in July.
'Not the end' "The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have succeeded in pushing the rebels out of Kurmuk. They left behind them a large number of dead and injured," the statement from the Sudanese ministry of defence said.
A spokesman for SPLM-North in the Blue Nile, Sulaiman Othman, said they had pulled out of the town for "strategic reasons".
"The Sudanese army controls Kurmuk but this is not the end of the war in Blue Nile," Mr Othman told Reuters news agency.
The BBC's James Copnall in Khartoum says this is a resounding success, not least in propaganda terms, for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.
He had announced Kurmuk would fall before the Eid al-Adha religious festival due to take place this Sunday, our correspondent says.
People celebrated in the capital of Blue Nile state, Damazin, according to one eyewitness.
Blue Nile is one of three border areas - along with South Kordofan and Abyei - where fighting has broken out since South Sudan's independence.
Many rebels in the three regions fought alongside southerners during the decades-long civil war that ended with Khartoum agreeing to the south's independence.
Our correspondent says the SPLM-North rebels cannot match the Sudanese Armed Forces in a conventional battle, but have had some success with guerrilla warfare.
Khartoum accuses Juba of continuing to support the SPLM-North, but South Sudan denies the charge.

Ireland to close embassies to Vatican, Iran and E Timor

2011-11-04T10:05:00.000+06:00

The Irish Republic has decided to close its embassies to the Vatican and two other nations on cost-saving grounds.

It said the closure of the missions in Vatican City and also in Iran and East Timor would save about 1.25m euros (£1.1m; $1.7m) a year.
But Dublin stressed that the move was not related to a clerical child abuse row between Ireland and the Holy See.
In July, a report accused the Vatican of aiding child-abuse cover-ups in Cork - a claim denied by the Holy See.
The Vatican later recalled its special envoy in Dublin to discuss the impact of the damning Cloyne Report.
'Profound disappointment' "It is with the greatest regret and reluctance that the government has decided to close Ireland's (embassy) to the Holy See," said a statement from the Irish foreign ministry on Thursday.
It added that Dublin "believes that Ireland's interests with the Holy See can be sufficiently represented by a non-resident ambassador".
Irish Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore said diplomats at Ireland's Italian embassy would move into the villa currently used by its Vatican staff.
Mr Gilmore pointed out that the government had to implement cuts to meet targets set out in Ireland's economic rescue deal backed by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.
Ireland - like many other nations - has maintained two diplomatic posts in Rome: one for the Holy See, the other for Italy.
Predominantly Catholic Ireland has traditionally had close relations with the Vatican, where the embassy was opened in 1929.
Responding to the closure announcement, Cardinal Sean Brady, the ecclesiastical head of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, expressed his "profound disappointment".
"I hope that today's decision will be revisited as soon as possible," he said in a statement.

Venezuela prison guards taken hostage after riot

2011-11-04T10:03:00.000+06:00

Venezuelan officials are trying to negotiate the release of two police officers taken hostage during a prison riot in the western state of Tachira.

Eight inmates were killed after fighting broke out between rival gangs.
Two other captive officers were freed after the authorities agreed to transfer members from one gang to another facility.
Venezuela's overcrowded prisons have been the scene of repeated uprisings and gang violence.
The army has taken charge but would not use force to resolve the situation, Gen Hector Coronado said.
He added that there had been "failures" by local police that had allowed prisoners to get hold of weapons.
Overcrowding crisis Last July the Venezuelan government created a new ministry for prisons to reform the system, after a major uprising at El Rodeo jail outside Caracas.
A clash between rival gangs there killed 25 people and was followed by a month-long siege as armed prisoners refused to surrender.
Minister for Prisons Iris Varela has said up to 40% of inmates who have committed only minor crimes could be released to ease overcrowding.
Venezuela's prisons house up to three times the number of inmates they were designed to hold.
Weapons and drugs are widely available as a result of poor security and corruption, and deadly clashes between gangs are frequent.
The Inter-American Human Rights Commission says nearly 500 people died in prison violence last year.

Qantas flight lands safely in Dubai after engine issues

2011-11-04T10:02:00.000+06:00

Qantas has confirmed its flight from Singapore to London has landed safely in Dubai after an engine was shut down.

The flight was QF31 and had 258 passengers on board, with four pilots and 21 cabin crew, Qantas said.
The plane is an Airbus A380 superjumbo and engine number four suffered "an engine oil defect", a spokeswoman said.
Friday's problem comes exactly one year after a mid-air engine blast forced an emergency landing of a Qantas A380 jet in Singapore.
Last year's emergency landing resulted in Qantas grounding its entire fleet of A380 aircraft for safety checks.
A Qantas spokeswoman told the BBC that the two incidents were unrelated.
She added that the company currently had engineers on the ground assessing what caused Friday's shut down.
Growing troubles The incident is the latest in a long line of problems for Qantas.
It has been involved in a labour dispute with workers, which saw the company ground its entire fleet of aircraft earlier this week. The company has been asked by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to compensate passengers affected by the grounding.
At the same time, the company has seen its earnings come under pressure.
Its international operations are losing about $200m Australia dollars ($207m; £130m) a year due to higher fuel prices, wages and a stronger Australian dollar.
It has also been hurt by a number of natural disasters in some of its biggest and most profitable markets.
Floods and cyclones in Australia and a devastating earthquake in New Zealand earlier this year saw a number of its flights in the region being cancelled.
That was followed by an earthquake and tsunami in Japan, which resulted resulted in further losses for the airline.
Earlier this year, the carrier said it expected the disasters to cost it as much as $140m. It also claimed that the grounding of A380 aircraft last year hurt its income by $80m.

Activists say 20 killed in Homs

2011-11-04T10:01:00.000+06:00

This video, released on Wednesday before the deal was announced, is said to have been shot in Homs

Tanks mounted with machine-guns have opened fire in the Syrian city of Homs, killing at least 20 people, activists have reported.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Baba Amr district came under heavy fire on Thursday.
Violence was also reported in other parts of the city.
It comes a day after the authorities in Damascus agreed to an Arab League plan calling on the government to pull the military out of cities.
The plan required Syria to withdraw all troops from urban areas and end all killing immediately.
The Arab League said Damascus had agreed to release all political prisoners and begin a dialogue with the opposition within two weeks.
The Syrian government also said it would allow journalists, rights groups and Arab League representatives to monitor the situation in the country.
At present foreign journalists are unable to move around Syria freely and information is tightly controlled and hard to verify.

'Lack of options'

Samir al-Nashar Syrian National Council

Syrian opposition groups criticised the plan as an attempt by the regime to buy more time.

"The regime has accepted the Arab initiative out of fear of Arab isolation, its weakness and lack of options," a leading opposition figure, Burhan Ghalioun, wrote on his Facebook page.
"But its acceptance does not mean it will respect its clauses."
Mr Ghalioun is a senior figure in the Syrian National Council. Another member of the council, Samir al-Nashar, said it had met Arab League head Nabil al-Arabi to discuss the agreement with Damascus.
"We are not talking about a dialogue," he told AFP news agency.
"We offered to engage in negotiations to move from a authoritarian regime to a democratic regime. And we ask that Bashar al-Assad resign."

From Homs, video footage emerged purporting to show tanks firing in a built-up area on Thursday. The voice of the cameraman gives the date and mentions the previous day's agreement with the Arab League.

Protests against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad started in March but have become increasingly violent.
The government has tried to put down the demonstrations using the security forces and pro-government militia. Opponents of the regime have taken up arms and been joined by soldiers who have defected.
At least 3,000 people have been killed in the unrest in Syria, while hundreds of others have disappeared.
The government of Mr Assad - who took over from his father as president in 2000 - says the violence is being carried out by "armed gangs" and "terrorists".
More than 1,000 security personnel have lost their lives in the fighting, the government says.

G20 seeks solution to debt crisis

2011-11-04T09:58:00.001+06:00

The G20 leaders are set to continue their talks on Friday as they seek to find a sustainable solution to the eurozone debt crisis.

They are expected to discuss ways to increase the firepower of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The hope is that increased resources will help the IMF to support struggling eurozone economies, such as Greece.
There have also been calls for a "financial firewall" to protect vulnerable economies such as Italy.
The US President, Barack Obama, said on Thursday that resolving the eurozone debt crisis was "the most important aspect of our task over the next two days".
Greek threat The second day of the G20 meeting will also see the Greek prime minister George Papandreou face a confidence vote in parliament.
The opposition as well as several government MPs have called for Mr Papandreou to quit after his decision on Monday to hold a national vote sparked a turmoil on financial markets and upset his German and French counterparts.

Some members from his own party, including the finance minister said that they were against the referendum.

On Thursday, the prime minister said he would scrap the move if the conservative opposition party voted to pass the bailout package in parliament.
However, there are fears that he may lose the confidence vote and Greece may have to hold fresh elections, a move which may further delay the implementation of a Greek bailout package.
Eurozone leaders have already withheld 8bn euros ($11bn; £7bn) of fresh rescue loans to Greece and there are fears that further delays may see the government run out of cash and default on its payments.
Mixed messages In other developments on the first day of the two-day G20 summit in Cannes:

President Obama warned that the eurozone financial crisis threatened to engulf the world
Italy is to commit to further cuts to its debts and its annual borrowing rate according to a draft communique
China indicated that it would not consider providing money to the eurozone bailout fund until the situation in Greece has been resolved
Chinese President Hu Jintao also played down the chance of allowing the value of the yuan to rise, contradicting more optimistic remarks by the US
India and Canada expressed their opposition to the idea of a tax on financial transactions, something strongly backed by eurozone governments
the G20 agreed to look at the credit default swaps markets, which has been blamed by some European leaders for exacerbating the eurozone debt crisis

'Health and vigour' Meanwhile UK Prime Minister David Cameron has called for "political will" to solve the current economic woes.
In a report to the summit, Mr Cameron said willingness to act in a united way was the way forward.
"We have the machinery that we need already," he said.
"What we need above all is the most precious and intangible commodity - political will.
"Political will to act together, and to build the consensus we need to confront squarely the problems before us so that we can return our economies to health and vigour."

Honduras arrests 176 police in corruption purge

2011-11-04T09:57:00.000+06:00

A total of 176 Honduran police officers have been arrested in a purge against corruption and organised crime, the authorities there say.

The security ministry said the officers were suspected of offences including murder, kidnap and drug dealing.
The arrests follow public outcry over the release of four policemen accused of murdering two students.
Earlier this week President Porfirio Lobo sacked his top police commanders and deployed troops to combat crime.
"We have to get rid of the rotten apples in the National Police," Mr Lobo said on Wednesday.
The Congress has begun debating a new law to reform the police force and tackle corruption.
Outrage The officers arrested in the purge on Wednesday belong to the same unit as the officers accused of murdering two students a week ago.
The release of the suspected killers, who have gone into hiding, provoked outrage in Honduras.
Four other officers suspected of involvement are still in custody.
There has also been anger over the recent revelation that 300 automatic rifles plus ammunition had been stolen from a police station.
Honduras has been suffering soaring levels of violent crime, which the police have been unable to contain.
According to a UN report it had the world's highest murder rate in 2010, with much of the killing linked to criminal gangs.
It is also a major transit route for drug traffickers moving South American cocaine north to Mexico and on to the United States.

Simulated Mars mission to 'land' back on Earth

2011-11-04T09:56:00.000+06:00

The project was intended to find out how the human mind and body would cope on a long-duration spaceflight

Six men locked away in steel tubes for a year-and-a-half to simulate a mission to Mars are set to end the experiment.

The Mars500 project, undertaken at a Moscow institute, was intended to find out how the human mind and body would cope on a long-duration spaceflight.
It is a venture that has fascinated all who have followed it around the globe.
The study even saw three of the men carry out a pretend landing on Mars, donning real spacesuits and walking across an enclosed sandy yard.

The crew has comprised a trio of Russians (Alexey Sitev, Alexandr Smoleevskiy and Sukhrob Kamolov), two Europeans (Romain Charles and Diego Urbina), and a Chinese national, Wang Yue.

Everything changes for the men when they "land" back on Earth at 14:00 Moscow time (10:00 GMT). That is when the hatch to their sealed home at the Institute of Biomedical Problems (IMBP) is opened for the first time since 3 June, 2010.
It is expected the crew will have a few brief moments to wave to cameras and perhaps make a quick statement before being whisked into quarantine for three days of medical checks.
For much of the Mars500 project, the six have had only limited contact with the outside world. Their "spaceship" has no windows, and the protocols demanded their communications endure a similar time lag to that encountered by real messages as they travel the vast distance between Earth and Mars.
At its maximum, the round travel time for a question to be sent and for an answer to be received was about 25 minutes.
This meant having to resort to text media, such as email and Twitter, and video blogs.
Asked recently what he was most looking forward to when he got out, Italian-Colombian Diego Urbina told BBC News via Twitter: "Meeting my family, calling my friends, bumping into strangers, going to the beach."

MEDICAL MODULE: A 12m-long cylinder that acted as the laboratory. It was also the sickbay were a crewmember to become ill
HABITABLE MODULE: The main living quarters. The 20m-long module has beds, a galley, a social area. It also acted as the main control room
LANDING MODULE: This was only used during the 30-day landing operation. Three crewmembers visited the "surface of Mars"
UTILITY MODULE: It is divided into four compartments, to store food and other supplies, to house a greenhouse, a gym a refrigeration unit
SURFACE MODULE: To walk across the soil and rocks of Mars, crewmembers put on Orlan spacesuits and passed through an airlock

There were many aspects of a real mission that could not be simulated in a Moscow suburb, of course - such as weightlessness and the dangers associated with space radiation.

But scientists have expressed great satisfaction with the data that has been acquired, and are looking forward to applying the lessons learned to ever more realistic scenarios.

During the 17-plus-months of their virtual voyage, the crew took part in various studies to assess the effect their isolation was having on their psychological and physiological well being. Their stress and hormone levels were monitored, as were their sleep patterns, and their moods. The men also carried out an assessment of the benefits of dietary supplements in such situations.
"I can only praise the crew for their courage and their great spirit," said Dr Martin Zell from the European Space Agency, which was a major sponsor on the project.
"They were a brilliant team - they really will finish as a crew and not six individuals," he told BBC News.
Tentative discussions have now begun between the partners on the International Space Station (ISS) about the possibility of doing some sort of isolation experiment in orbit.
Initially, this might simply involve introducing a delay in communications to controllers in Moscow and Houston, US. Ultimately, it could also involve removing crew members into separate modules to give them a taste of what the Mars500 participants have gone through.
Certainly, the partners want the ISS to become more of an "exploration testbed" in the decade ahead - a platform to try out the new approaches and new technologies that will help humans move deeper into the Solar System.

China mine disaster: Dozens trapped by 'rock burst'

2011-11-04T09:53:00.000+06:00

Dozens of miners have been trapped in a coal mine in China after a "rock burst", officials say.

Four miners were killed and 57 are still missing after the accident, which happened late on Thursday in the city of Sanmenxia in Henan province.
State media reported that the rock burst - an explosion caused by the sudden release of built-up pressure - happened shortly after an earthquake.
Hundreds of Chinese miners die every year in pit accidents.
The industry is one of the most dangerous in the world, and is notorious for its lax safety standards.
Earlier this week a gas explosion at a mine in neighbouring Hunan province killed 29 people.
But officials insist the country's record is improving, and say they have taken action by closing many illegal mines.
A spokesman for the state-run Yima Coal Group, which runs the Sanmenxia mine, told the AFP news agency an "intense search" was going on for the missing miners.
Local safety officials said 75 miners had been working in the pit at the time of the explosion.
Some 14 had managed to escape, four had been confirmed killed and 57 others are missing.

Dr Conrad Murray: Trial timeline

2011-11-04T09:51:00.000+06:00

Michael Jackson's personal physician, Dr Conrad Murray, is standing trial over the singer's death.

He is charged with involuntary manslaughter.
Prosecutors say he caused the pop star's death by administering a powerful anaesthetic, propofol.
Dr Murray has denied the charges.
It has taken more than two years for the trial to come to court. BBC News looks back over the events that led to the court case.
1983 Conrad Murray graduates from Texas Southern University in Houston with a degree in pre-medicine and biological sciences. He continues his medical studies in Nashville, Tennessee, before completing his training in California and the University of Arizona where he studies cardiology.
2000 Dr Murray opens a practice in Las Vegas, expanding with a second clinic in Houston in 2006. Serving both ends of the community, he also provides medical care to deprived areas.

2006 Dr Murray meets Michael Jackson after treating one of his children in Las Vegas, and the pair strike up a friendship.
May 2009 Dr Murray is hired by promoters AEG Live, at Jackson's request, as the star's personal physician ahead of his This Is It 50-date concert comeback in London. He is put on a salary of more than $150,000 (£96,000) a month.
25 June 2009 Dr Murray finds Jackson unconscious in the bedroom of his Los Angeles mansion. Paramedics are called to the house while Dr Murray is performing CPR, according to a recording of the 911 emergency call. He travels with the singer in an ambulance to UCLA medical centre
28 June 2009 for three hours. His spokeswoman insists he is "not a suspect".
22 July 2009 The doctor's clinic in Houston from the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) looking for evidence of manslaughter.
28 July 2009 Dr Murray's home is also raided. The search warrant allows "authorised investigators to look for medical records relating to Michael Jackson and all of his reported aliases". are seized, and a pharmacy in Las Vegas is later raided in connection with the case.
29 July 2009 Court documents filed in Nevada show that Dr Murray is heavily in debt, owing more than $780,000 (£501,000) in judgements against him and his medical practice, outstanding mortgage payments on his house, child support and credit cards.
29 August 2009 Jackson's death is ruled a homicide by the Los Angeles coroner, who says the cause of death was . A cocktail of drugs - also including sedatives Midazolam and Diazepam, the painkiller Lidocaine and the stimulant Ephedrine - were detected in his body.
21 November 2009 Court documents reveal that Dr Murray bought five bottles of propofol in May 2009, at around the same time he was hired as Jackson's physician. The papers show that the doctor spent $853 (£515) to purchase the drug in Las Vegas, and then transported it to Los Angeles. The DEA says he has not broken any laws in doing so.
8 February 2010 Dr Murray is charged with involuntary manslaughter. and is released on $75,000 (£48,000) bail. The judge says he can continue to practice medicine, but bans him from administering anaesthetic agents, "specifically propofol".
14 June 2010 Judge Michael Pastor refuses a request to bar Dr Murray from practising medicine in California.
25 June 2010 Michael Jackson's father, Joseph, files a wrongful death lawsuit against the physician.
8 December 2010 California medical board allows Dr Murray to keep his medical licence.
4 January 2011 Preliminary hearings begin. " before calling paramedics on the day Jackson died. They also state that he did not perform CPR properly and omitted to tell paramedics that he had given Jackson propofol.
11 January 2011 for involuntary manslaughter. He faces up to four years in prison if found guilty.
25 January 2011 The doctor officially enters a plea of not guilty. "I am an innocent man," Dr Murray says in court.
3 March 2011 The trial is delayed to allow both sides more time to prepare.
April 2011 Jury selection begins. Because of the high-profile nature of the case, 5. Potential jurors face a 30-page form, which asks questions such as "have you ever considered yourself a fan of Michael Jackson?"
2 May 2011 The trial is delayed again, as Dr Murray's lawyers ask for extra time to prepare for new prosecution witnesses.
25 July 2011 Rehearsal footage from Michael Jackson's This Is It tour , the judge rules.
30 August 2011 . Dr Murray's lawyers had planned to argue that Arnold Klein had administered the singer with painkillers for "no valid reason" but prosecutors said they were attempting to transfer responsibility for his death away from Dr Murray. Testimony from five other doctors who treated Jackson is also disallowed.
24 September 2011 The jury is finalised. Half of the chosen panelists are Caucasian, five are Hispanic and one is African-American. The jurors have a wide range of professions, including a bus driver, paralegal and a bookseller.
27 September 2011 take place in the televised trial. Prosecutors say Dr Murray acted with "gross negligence" and gave Jackson a lethal dose of propofol. The defence claim Jackson administered too much of the sleeping aid himself.
29 September 2011 Jackson's bodyguard, Alberto Alvarez, testifies that on the night Jackson died, before phoning for an ambulance. "In my personal experience, I believed Dr Murray had the best intentions for Mr Jackson," Mr Alvarez said.
30 September 2011 Paramedics tell the court that, as they tried to revive Jackson, Dr Murray that he had given the star propofol.
4 October 2011 Dr Thao Nguyen, an emergency room cardiologist says she and a colleague tried to resuscitate Jackson at Dr Murray's insistence but believed the efforts were futile.
6 October 2011 A recording of Jackson is played to jurors. In the audio, recorded six weeks before the star's death, the star appears to slur his speech as he tells Dr Murray about his plans for the This Is It tour.
8 October 2011 Dr Murray reveals that, on the night of 25 June, he injected Jackson with several sedatives but the pop star remained wide awake. He is heard telling detectives: "He's not able to sleep naturally".
12 October 2011 Dr Murray's defence backs out of claims Jackson swallowed a fatal dose of propofol when he was alone. Prosecution witness Dr Christopher Rogers, the medic who carried out the singer's post mortem, said it was more likely that Dr Murray
13 October 2011 Jackson fans against the courtroom wall from 7:30am in the hope of winning a draw for one of the few seats in the public gallery.
20 October 2011 The prosecution's final witness, propofol expert Dr Steven Shafer, tells the court that Dr Murray when administering the drug to Jackson. Dr Shafer said the drug should never be used to treat insomnia.
24 October 2011 After a short break in the trial, Dr Murray's lawyers call their first witnesses. Dr Allan Metzger, a friend of Jackson's for over two decades, had requested anaesthetics from him as a sleep aid.
26 October 2011 Nutritionist and holistic nurse Cherilyn Lee tells the court about using the sedative propofol to help him sleep. She told him: "No one who cared or had your best interest at heart would give you this". After refusing to supply Jackson with the drug in April, she never saw him again.
27 October 2011 Dr Murray weeps in court as former patients and describe him as kind and generous. "The reason I came here to help Dr Murray is I know his love, his compassion, his feeling for his patients, every one of them and I just don't think he did what he's accused of doing," Gerry Causey, from Utah, tells the court.
28 October 2011 It is likely Jackson was addicted to the painkiller Demerol, defence witness Dr Robert Waldman . Dr Waldman says records from Jackson's dermatologist show he had large doses of the drug in the months before his death and that insomnia is a symptom of Demerol withdrawal.

Michael Jackson doctor Conrad Murray case goes to jury

2011-11-04T09:46:00.000+06:00

Prosecutors ended their case by saying Dr Conrad Murray's care of Jackson had been "bizarre", while the defence said the singer had caused his own death.

The case against the physician charged with the death of the pop star Michael Jackson has gone to the jury, following closing statements.

Prosecutors concluded their case by saying Dr Conrad Murray's care of Jackson had been "bizarre" and left the pop star's children fatherless.
The defence countered that the singer had caused his own death in June 2009 with an overdose of a sedative.
The seven-man, five-woman jury will begin deliberations on Friday morning.
If convicted, Dr Murray could face up to four years in prison and lose his licence to practise medicine.
During Thursday's closing statements after the nearly six-week trial, the prosecution projected images of Jackson's grief-stricken children on a giant screen.

The pop star's mother and siblings watched from the court gallery as Deputy District Attorney David Walgren told the jury: "For Michael Jackson's children this case goes on forever because they do not have a father.

"They do not have a father because of the actions of Conrad Murray."
He cited Dr Murray's delay in calling 911 and phone records that indicated the physician had been on the phone during Jackson's final hours, when he should have been attending to his patient.
"What was so pressing that he just couldn't care for Michael Jackson?" Mr Walgren asked the court.
He also reminded the jury that Dr Murray had failed to tell the paramedics and emergency room doctors how he had been giving Jackson the powerful sedative propofol as a treatment for insomnia.
"That is consciousness of guilt," Mr Walgren told the court. "That is Conrad Murray knowing full well what caused Michael Jackson's death."
But the accused's legal team said in its closing statement that Jackson's death was not Dr Murray's fault.
They said Jackson had caused his own death by injecting a dose of propofol while his doctor was out of the room.
"If it was anybody else, would this doctor be here today?" defence attorney Ed Chernoff asked the jury.
Mr Chernoff said prosecutors had failed to prove that Dr Murray had committed a crime by giving Jackson doses of propofol as a sleep aid in the singer's bedroom.
"They want you to convict Dr Murray for the actions of Michael Jackson," Mr Chernoff said.
Dr Murray, who denies involuntary manslaughter, chose not to testify in his own defence.

Greek crisis: Your stories

2011-11-04T09:44:00.000+06:00

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou isfacing calls to resign , amid uncertainty about a eurozone bailout deal.

Senior members of his own party, including influential Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos, said they opposed Mr Papandreou's plan to hold a referendum on the EU deal.
BBC News website readers in Greece have been reacting to the latest political developments taking place in their country.

Haris Daskalothanassis, Athens

Mr Papandreou's time is up. I am not underestimating the challenges he's faced over the past two years or his accomplishments, but by now he is simply a spent force, and possibly a hindrance to the effort required to get Greece back on track.

His credibility is shaken and his ability to steer Greece through the crisis is being challenged from all quarters.
Mr Papandreou is living proof that nothing in politics can substitute for effectiveness and straight talk.
He aimed to become the first of a new generation of Greek politicians but he ended up being, hopefully, the last of the outgoing generation.
I think Greece is a country with great potential which needs more effective leadership in general - political, intellectual, and in business.
I am pained and angry by the way Greeks are portrayed internationally. It is unfair and does not represent me or the people I know.
Also, I am angry with the brusque and dismissive way that Greece and its people have been dealt with on the level of pronouncements by many European leaders. This is no way to run a union of nations.
My hope is that everyone will step back, take a deep breath, do what is required, tell people the truth, make them believe that there is hope.
Greek families are suffering greatly. There's also a feeling that the austerity measures are indiscriminately implemented on the just and the unjust alike.
Tax evasion remains largely unchallenged - corruption is not being punished and unnecessary bureaucracy is still a feature of daily life. As for the prescriptions of the stabilisation program, there's a feeling that we live in an experiment and we are the lab rats.
The effect on me has been relatively mild so far - still I have lost almost 20% of my disposable income due to new taxes and there's the terrible feeling of seeing your family and friends depressed, some of them desperate.

Anthony Stott, Heraklion, Crete

The PM should go as he has completely lost the confidence of the people who believe him to have been the tool of not only Germany and France but also the US.
He has dithered his way through office and been completely indecisive for far too long.
His legacy is one of incompetence. He is viewed in Greece as having inherited the sins of his father who started the country on this downward slope. He may be thought of as the man who sold his own country.
The visitors to Greece are not stupid. They can see that the government passes laws such as the wearing of seatbelts, the use of crash helmets and the no-smoking law and then fails to implement them.
It is very difficult to see a way out of this crisis as not all the political parties seem able to work together, but the people must be given the chance to speak through an election in the very near future.
Pasok would undoubtedly lose but there is a lack of credibility all round. I cannot see any way that Greece can repay all the money it owes even with a 50% haircut.
A federal Europe is of no use to them. They would be better with the drachma and to allow the currency to find its own level to make the country more competitive. The future is very bleak.

The austerity measures are completely wrong. Businesses are closing on a daily basis resulting in less income for the government and increasing unemployment.

A massive sense of despair is being felt by the people.
Greece needs investment not punishment. One of the largest sources of income has been the tourist industry but this has been negated by the foreign tourist companies insisting on all-inclusive holidays, which means very little of the cost of the holiday actually comes to Greece.
Some are paying hotels as little as 10 euros per day per room. Unemployment on the island of Crete for the 18 to 24 age group is currently 42% this will increase as the tourist season closes.
I have spoken with many people and all say that they wish they had their national currency again the euro has made everything expensive.
A worrying development is the increasing crime rate as desperation sets in.

Thodoris Foudoukidis, Thessaloniki

We live in historical times. Our country has been captured by a multi-faceted crisis - financial, political and social.
The government is going down, the future is uncertain. Some propose elections and some others a caretaker government until Greece picks the 8bn euros, but this is not the solution if the next government continues with the same politics.
We cannot expect a solution to such a problem by those who created it. The Greek financial problem was created by loans that then created interest upon interest which created and demanded more loans - this cannot be solved with yet again more loans and interest.
Loans have been used for selfish purposes by politicians and their friends who supported them financially in the elections.
The government increased the deficit of 2009, by deferring the revenues of 2009 to 2010 and the costs of 2010 to 2009.
The PM hasn't asked the citizens if they wanted to apply to the IMF, he hasn't asked us if we are willing to pay for a crisis that banks and politicians created in the last 30 years. He insisted on an increase in taxes and a reduction in income and pensions.
He assumed the future without democratic legitimacy, as the polls show that less than 15% of the citizens approved his government.
Greek citizens are the victims and not the victimisers. We say no to new loans that make our country poorer, we say no to politics and politicians that have made us addicts to loans.

Other comments

George Tsifoutidis, in Hellenikon, says: Papandreou should have gone to the voters shortly after his electoral victory in September 2009 explaining that he discovered a huge debt that needed extraordinary measures.
It is hypocritical to go to the voters now. I feel disgraced by Papandreou.
Hielmi Abdurahman, in Sparti, says: The referendum needs to take place here in Greece so the people have a chance to make their feelings known officially.
Austerity is one thing. The poverty being foisted upon the Greek people has become unacceptable.
Further more Greece should call for an audit of the country's finance which, I believe will write off approximately half to two-thirds of the debit as either odious or illegal.
Of course the biggest losers in this scenario would be Germany and France. Is it any wonder therefore that they are so adamant that Greece accepts the debt relief package that is on offer?

G20 'agrees to boost' International Monetary Fund

2011-11-04T09:36:00.000+06:00

The Group of 20 leaders have agreed to increase the firepower of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

It means the Fund will be more able to support struggling eurozone economies.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy confirmed that most talks had revolved around the eurozone crisis.
In Greece, Prime Minister George Papandreou has defied calls to resign ahead of a vote of confidence on Friday. He has said he may scrap a plan for a referendum on the bailout deal.
Mr Papandreou's surprise decision on Monday to hold a national vote sparked turmoil on financial markets and upset his German and French counterparts.
However, facing opposition from his own finance minister, on Thursday the prime minister said he would scrap the referendum if the conservative opposition party voted to pass the bailout package in parliament.
But the opposition as well as several government MPs have called for Mr Papandreou to quit and there are fears that he may lose the confidence vote.

The debt crisis also continues to threaten the much bigger Italian economy.

Rome has been finding it increasingly difficult to borrow money in financial markets, and the Prime Minister, Silvio
Berlusconi, has been called upon by some of his own MPs to quit. China reticence
In other developments on the first day of the two-day G20 summit in Cannes:

US President Barack Obama warned that the eurozone financial crisis threatened to engulf the world
Italy is to commit to further cuts to its debts and its annual borrowing rate according to a draft communique
China indicated that it would not consider providing money to the eurozone bailout fund until the situation in Greece has been resolved
Chinese President Hu Jintao also played down the chance of allowing the value of the yuan to rise, contradicting more optimistic remarks by the US
India and Canada expressed their opposition to the idea of a tax on financial transactions, something strongly backed by eurozone governments
the G20 agreed to look at the credit default swaps markets, which has been blamed by some European leaders for exacerbating the eurozone debt crisis Euro exit Eurozone leaders had wanted to present the G20 with a clear action plan, but Greece has thrown this into disarray.
Eurozone governments struck a deal with Greece last week for a debt write-down and to bolster Europe's bailout fund and support the banking sector.
But it is feared that the package may yet unravel.
The French and German leaders, and Mr Papandreou himself, openly talked for the first time of the possibility of Greece leaving the euro if it is unable to ratify the bailout package.
On Thursday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the stability of the eurozone was more important than Greece's continued membership of it.
The view was echoed by Mr Sarkozy, who warned: "We cannot accept the explosion of the euro, which would be the explosion of Europe."
Eurozone leaders made clear that the next 8bn-euro tranche of bailout money would not be released to Greece until after any referendum had been held.
On Thursday, the Greek finance minister, Evangelos Venizelos - who led an internal government revolt against Mr Papandreou's referendum plan - said the government still had enough cash to get by without the bailout loan until 15 December.
Pressure on Italy There was continuing unease on the bond markets, with Italy and Spain forced to pay higher interest rates in order to borrow billions of euros.
Many economists fear that if Greece does exit the euro, it could lead to financial contagion, as investors and ordinary bank depositors in other eurozone countries may fear that their own government will follow suit.
The biggest fears surround Italy, whose economy and debts dwarf those of Greece.

Italy's one-year cost of borrowing has risen to 5.1%, its highest since joining the euro, and far above the mere 0.3% interest rate that Germany must pay.
The country's cost of borrowing has continued to rise despite interventions by the European central bank to buy up Italian debts.
Just like Athens, Rome is under pressure from European counterparts to implement further economic reforms and austerity. But also as in Greece, this is undermining the political cohesion of the government.
Six Italian government MPs wrote an open letter on Thursday calling on Mr Berlusconi to make way for a transitional government.
The Italian cabinet agreed a limited package of budget reforms at an emergency meeting on Wednesday evening.
But they failed to agree to issue a decree implementing the changes, meaning that they must now go to a confidence vote in parliament - one that Mr Berlusconi may be at risk of losing.

Greece and the euro: A game-changing summit after all

2011-11-04T09:33:00.000+06:00

Last week's European summit was supposed to be the game-changer, but the real change in the game might have happened on Wednesday night here in Cannes, as a direct result of the Greek prime minister's shock decision to call a referendum.

The change is that for President Sarkozy and Chancellor Merkel, keeping Greece in the euro is no longer priority number one. And a eurozone without Greece is no longer necessarily the worst outcome.
Just a few months ago, when Greece came under pressure, these two leaders were making joint statements saying "the future of Greece is in the euro." Not now.
To a packed hall of journalists here in Cannes, the French president and the German chancellor have now told the world that Greece could stay in the euro - but it had to want it.
If the Greeks are going to get a referendum - President Sarkozy said - that is the question they ought to be asked.
France and the rest of the eurozone have done everything they can to help Greece, but "there are rules" to this common European currency.
Greece has to decide whether it wants to follow them.
The leaders made no effort to hide their frustration that the Prime Minister had taken this step, "unilaterally", "without consultation", and only days after a European summit that was supposed to have put the eurozone on a better path.
The hard news that came out of their statement was that there would definitely be no disbursement of the next slice of bailout money until the referendum question is resolved.
And the vote itself will be held on 4 December - earlier than initially suggested, and a week before the Greeks have to make a crucial €12bn bond payment.
But there was another crucial message in tonight's joint appearance: France and Germany want Greece in the eurozone but they don't want it at any price.
Put it another way: they don't want to keep Greece in the euro if the price of its membership is going to be never-ending drama and uncertainty.
Of course, you can see all this as scare tactics: a message to the Greeks that they should not expect to hold the rest of Europe to ransom.
That is certainly a good part of the story. But this feels like more than brinkmanship. There is a weary sense among officials here in Cannes that Greece is reaching the end of the road, and the priority now must be to contain the damage.
That is why the talk is all of accelerating the creation of the European Stability Mechanism, the successor to the EFSF. And of additional IMF funds to backstop the entire system.
If and when it happens, that new money won't be for Greece: it will be there to persuade the financial markets, finally, that the resources are there to protect everyone else from any Greek fallout.
It will be interesting to see how the financial markets respond tomorrow.
Since Monday we've been talking about the Greek prime minister's "great gamble" with the referendum. The French and German leaders have just made a great gamble of their own.

Eurozone leaders admit exit from euro is possible

2011-11-04T09:32:00.000+06:00

Markets are behaving in a way that I find even more baffling than usual.

Naturally I can understand why investors may be taking comfort from ...
But that doesn't imply that the grip on power of the current Greek government, or of a coalition that may replace it, would be anything other than tenuous.
So whether through plebiscite or general election, the Greek people may yet turn their back on the package their government has agreed of rescue loans and budget squeeze.
But perhaps more importantly, eurozone leaders have for the first time (in my memory) publicly conceded that it is possible to leave the eurozone.
The point about joining the euro is that it is supposed to be forever. And as the new president of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi pointed out today, there is no legal mechanism for withdrawal from the euro.
So it was momentous to hear the German Chancellor Angela Merkel say that "the (Greek) referendum will revolve around nothing less than the question 'does Greece want to stay in the euro, yes or no?'"
Contagion dangers Certainly I can't recall a European leader, let alone the government head of the most powerful economy in Europe, acknowledging that it is anything other than fatuous to suggest that a eurozone member could revert to a national currency.
What's more, the Luxembourg premier Jean-Claude Juncker, who also chairs meetings of eurozone finance ministers - and has been around the euro scene seemingly forever - went further, saying that the authorities were "absolutely prepared" for the possibility of Greece adopting a new currency in place of the euro.
He added: "It's not only about Greece, it's also about possible contagion dangers for others and we'll do everything…to build firewalls".
Which is absolutely the point.
In and of itself, Greek withdrawal from the euro would be very painful for its creditors, who would incur huge losses, for Greek businesses, many of which would go bust, and for Greek people, who would face the risk of hyperinflation from a collapsing new Greek currency.
Just to give some idea of the scale of losses, overseas banks have lent $131bn (£82bn) altogether to the Greek public and private sectors and have $64bn (£40bn) of contingent and potential liabilities.
So if there were a default on much of these loans, and if they were redenominated into neo drachmas, we would be looking at losses of perhaps £90bn for non-Greek banks.
And then there would be additional losses for the European Central Bank, the eurozone's bailout funds, and the IMF - which (according to Open Europe) have collectively lent around 130bn euros (£112bn) to the Greek government. Losses for European and other taxpayers on all that could be more than £80bn.
On top would be devastating losses for Greek banks - which would be bankrupted - and for Greek and non-Greek investors.
It would be carnage.
Saying goodbye But it as as well to remember that Greece is a relatively small economy.
The real disaster for the eurozone and for global economy would be if it looked a realistic possibility for a vastly bigger, indebted economy, such as Italy, to leave the currency union.
Italy's government debt on its own is not far short of 2 trillion euros.
The recent rise in the interest rate that Italy has to pay for loans reflects a rise from negligible to possible in investors' assessment of whether they could be paid back by Italy in a currency other than euros.
The implied interest rate that Italy has to pay to borrow for ten years is stubbornly refusing to fall below 6% - which is dangerously close to a rate that is unaffordable and that could tip the Italian economy into vicious cycle of economic contraction.
Quite how that interest rate can be reduced - in the absence of a eurozone bailout fund with firepower vastly greater than the trillion euros of its proposed expansion and after the admission by Mrs Merkel that a country could say goodbye to the euro - well my powers of imagination are failing me.
Or to put it another, in the history of the eurozone, the panicked admission by eurozone leaders that Greece or any country could regain an autonomous currency may turn out to be a very important milestone - and a milestone that may be on the side of the road to ruin.

Papandreou blinks first in euro poker game

2011-11-04T09:30:00.000+06:00

ATHENS - The last 24 hours have seen all manner of political gyrations here. If one had to sum up what it has all meant, it is that the government of George Papandreou has felt the heat from Europe's most powerful players and realised that it cannot take it.

This city is still wracked with rumour about how he might bring Greece through this acute phase of its ongoing crisis, but the prime minister seems to have realised that either he, or his plan to put the European Union's bail out package to a national referendum, will have to go.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday characterised Mr Papandreou's proposed vote as a game of poker, and she was evidently determined that he should blink first.
Briefing from European Central Bank and EU officials that failure in the referendum would force Greece out of the euro and, some suggested, of the EU itself has startled many people here.
Soundings of public opinion suggest that most could oppose the bail out because of its accompanying austerity measures, but that the majority of Greeks are still in favour of remaining in the EU.
The linkage between a possible No vote and continuing membership of the union proved too much for many of Mr Papandreou's supporters, including his Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos, who this morning withdrew his support from the referendum plan.
Many Greeks still feel they should be at the heart of Europe, and the sharp response to Mr Papandreou's referendum plan - particularly from France and Germany - put that role in jeopardy.
Speaking to his party in parliament on Thursday evening, the Greek leader said he had been told during those Cannes talks that not only would a "no" in the referendum mean leaving the euro, but that the question of rejoining would be off the agenda for at least a decade.
When I suggested this evening to an MP from his party that this type of talk could easily have been a bluff intended to intimidate Greece, they replied, "yes, but we cannot take the chance".
The issue of whether France and Germany could really precipitate a meltdown of the Greek economy by withholding as they had threatened, the 8bn euros in emergency aid needed to keep the economy afloat during the coming week is therefore unlikely to be tested.
A decision by Mr Papandreou to backtrack on the referendum plan would suggest that Mrs Merkel has won her poker game.
On Thursday morning it became apparent that the prime minister, who has a small majority, faced a big enough revolt within his party to make it unlikely that he could win a vote of confidence, and so press on with his referendum.
At times it was rumoured that he had gone to the president's office to tender his resignation.
When he appeared in front of his party in the evening, Mr Papandreou tried another option. He suggested that the opposition join him in endorsing the European bail out plan, implying that this could make a national vote unnecessary.
Until now, the New Democracy party, his main opponents, have refused to back the European rescue plan or the referendum, calling instead for immediate parliamentary elections.
Where does this all leave us? It shows that Mr Papandreou would prefer to avoid the referendum by gaining cross party support for the economic hardship that will inevitably follow acceptance of the EU bail out.
Whether people come to agree that he has successfully intimidated the New Democracy opposition into supporting these measures or whether he has overplayed his hand, infuriating Greece's creditors, and will soon have to resign are questions for tomorrow.

Greece PM Papandreou faces fresh call to resign

2011-11-04T09:28:00.000+06:00

Greece's centre-right opposition has demanded Prime Minister George Papandreou resign, throwing into disarray plans for a unity government.

Opposition leader Antonis Samaras also called for snap elections before leading his MPs in a dramatic walkout of parliament.
Mr Papandreou's government faces a crucial confidence vote on Friday.
He earlier said that opposition support could mean dropping controversial plans for a referendum on an EU bailout.
Mr Papandreou had faced a rebellion in his governing Socialist party (Pasok) over the proposed referendum, which sent markets into turmoil.
The BBC's Gavin Hewitt in Athens says Greece had seen 24 hours of political horse trading and power struggles.
Mr Papandreou's party holds a tiny majority in parliament - 152 out of 300 seats.
Last week's hard-fought EU deal to bail out debt-ridden Greece was heralded as a breakthrough.
But Mr Papandreou threw it into doubt by announcing on Monday that Greece would put the deal - which would mean crushing austerity measures - to a referendum.

He was summoned for urgent talks at the G20 summit in Cannes on Wednesday where the leaders of France and Germany told him that any referendum would turn on the question of whether Greece wanted to stay in the eurozone.

They also put on hold the next tranche of Greece's existing bailout until after a vote was held.
With Greece's euro membership and its bailout lifeline in danger, Mr Papandreou returned to Athens under mounting pressure to resign.
After a day of turmoil on Thursday, he told MPs that talks with the opposition on forming a "broader scheme" - apparently meaning a coalition government - should start immediately.
However, an angry Mr Samaras questioned the motives behind Mr Papandreou's actions.
"I am wondering; Mr Papandreou almost destroyed Greece and Europe, the euro, the international stock markets, his own party in order to ensure what? So that he could blackmail me and the Greek public? Or to ensure what I had already said several days ago; that I accept the bailout agreement as unavoidable?"
Mr Papandreou told MPs the referendum was never an end in itself, and there were two other choices - an election, which he said would bankrupt the country, or a consensus in parliament.
Division within Mr Papandreou's own party was clearly visible when Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos, addressing Pasok MPs immediately after the prime minister, said Greece must say it was not holding a referendum.
He said Greece should do everything it could to reassure its international partners it will immediately implement the eurozone bailout deal.
The EU bailout deal, agreed last month, would give the heavily indebted Greek government 130bn euros (£111bn; $178bn) and it imposes a 50% write-off on private holders of Greek debts, in return for deeply unpopular austerity measures.
Analysts say eurozone leaders must solve the Greek problem swiftly or risk the crisis spreading to other vulnerable economies, particularly Italy.

Amy Winehouse death: Coroner records misadventure verdict

2011-10-27T01:53:00.000+06:00

Amy Winehouse's death was the result of the singer drinking too much alcohol, a coroner has said.

A verdict of misadventure was recorded into the 27-year-old's death after an inquest heard she was more than five times the drink-drive limit.
Winehouse was found dead at her home in Camden, north London, on 23 July.
St Pancras coroner Suzanne Greenway said the "unintended consequence" of Winehouse drinking so much alcohol was her "sudden and unexpected death".
Three empty vodka bottles, two large and one small, were found at her flat, St Pancras Coroners Court heard.
'No pulse found' The inquest heard the singer, who won five Grammy awards in 2008, had 416mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood. The legal drink-drive limit is 80mg.
The pathologist who conducted her post-mortem examination said 350mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood was considered a fatal level.

Andrew Morris Winehouse's live-in guard

The examination found Winehouse's vital organs had been in good health but she had huge amounts of alcohol in her system which could have stopped her breathing and sent her into a coma.

Toxicology tests showed there were no illegal substances in her system when she died.
The inquest was told she was found in her bed by live-in guard Andrew Morris, who looked in on her at 10:00 BST, but thought she was asleep.
Five hours later she was "lying on the bed in the same position", he said.
"I was immediately concerned, went over and checked to see if she was OK," he added.
'Very strict views' "I checked on her and realised she wasn't breathing and had no pulse, so called the emergency services."
Winehouse had kicked her drug habit but fell back into a pattern of abstaining from drink for weeks then starting again for a few, the inquest heard.
The coroner was told Winehouse had not had a drink in the three weeks to 22 July.
Her GP, Dr Christina Romete, who had been treating the star for several years, said the night before her death, the singer told her she did not know if she was going to stop drinking but "she did not want to die".
"She was looking forward to the future," the doctor said.
Winehouse was taking medication to cope with alcohol withdrawal and anxiety and was reviewed last year by a psychologist and psychiatrist about her drinking.
"She had her own way and was very determined to do everything her own way," said Dr Romete.
'Battling problems' "Including any form of therapy. She had very strict views."
After the inquest, Winehouse's family issued a statement thanking people for their messages of support.
They said it was "some relief to finally find out what happened to Amy".
Their statement added: "We understand there was alcohol in her system when she passed away - it is likely a build-up of alcohol in her system over a number of days.
"The court heard that Amy was battling hard to conquer her problems with alcohol and it is a source of great pain to us that she could not win in time."
Since her death, Winehouse's 2006 album Back to Black has become the UK's bestselling album of the 21st Century.

How the Joy of Sex was illustrated

2011-10-27T01:50:00.000+06:00

Illustrator Chris Foss explains how he become involved in the book

Forty years ago, a London publisher was working on a groundbreaking sex manual - a "gourmet guide" to sexual pleasure, with copious and detailed illustrations. But how could this be done tastefully and legally?

Think of The Joy of Sex and chances are your mind will drift to an image of a man with a bushy beard and a woman with hairy armpits.
It's not a photograph, but the nearest thing to it in pen and ink.
In early 1970s Britain, photographs would have been too risque. But hand-drawn illustrations based on photographs? Maybe society was ready for that.
"We were a bit nervous when we took this on," remembers one of the book's illustrators, Chris Foss.
"The publisher had to write a contract which confirmed that they would pay our defence if some old fart decided to make an issue out of it."

In the summer of 1971, Britain had been gripped by the Oz trial, in which the editors of a satirical magazine were found guilty of obscenity for publishing a sexualised parody of the children's comic character Rupert Bear. (The judge was famously called a "boring old fart" in court by a defence witness, the comedian Marty Feldman.)

It was also only 11 years since Penguin Books had faced an obscenity charge for publishing DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover - the full text, complete with four-letter words and descriptions of sex between the lady and the gamekeeper.
But Penguin had been found not guilty thanks to the literary merit of the work, so Joy of Sex art director Peter Kindersley calculated that the quality of the art work would shield the publishers, Mitchell Beazley, from prosecution.
The images were graphic - they showed genitals and countless sex positions - but they were also artistic, and tasteful.
For good measure, he also added a number of historical images from India and Japan.
"There was concern about the explicitness of the pictures and therefore we thought as a foil we would put in some of these ancient pictures," says Mr Kindersley.
"In a way we were relating ourselves to the past… We wanted to make the book feel as though it was related to a great tradition of explicit pictures."
Positions But before the artists could start work the team had to find models to pose for them.

Plan A, explains Mr Kindersley, was to use models from London's Soho district - the hotbed of the capital's sex industry.

"We found all these people who started posing, but halfway through the pose they would ask for an extra £100 ($160) - it was just complete chaos," he says.
There was some difficulty finding a workable Plan B. As the project approached a dead-end, it was the book's other illustrator, Charles Raymond - responsible for the colour artwork - who came to the rescue. He volunteered to do the modelling himself, with his German wife, Edeltraud.
Chris Foss, who was responsible for the book's black-and-white illustrations, took the photos. The book's author, Dr Alex Comfort, had given them dozens of positions to get though, and all were done for real over two hectic days in early 1972.

The miners were on strike and they had only limited light to work with before the power cuts would plunge them into darkness.

"We'd say: 'Charlie, we've only got another 20 minutes,'" recalls Mr Foss. "And he'd say: 'Oh I'm terribly sorry' and he'd go off to prepare himself to perform again, and Edeltraud would go: 'Charles, Charles, please, please come on, we only have 10 minutes, please two more positions.'
"So it was all quite fraught shooting the positions - but it worked."
The same kind of matter-of-fact approach applied in the post-production.
"I remember Chris and Charles coming into the office with all these absolutely explicit photographs," says Mr Kindersley.
"And we all stood round saying: 'That's a good one, yeah that's very good.'
"Perhaps we were in a bubble, we were all completely bonkers!" he laughs.
"We just all took it literally. We said: 'Yes, that's a great picture of bondage' or whatever it was.
"There was never the conversation: 'Oh we couldn't put that in the book.'"

California
The pictures delighted author Alex Comfort, partly because Charles and Edeltraud looked so natural and unposed, absorbed in their private sexual relationship.
"The great thing about Charles and his wife was that they were completely authentic - you couldn't get more authentic," says Mr Kindersley.
"It was a real happening - it wasn't a cooked-up thing - and Alex really liked that."

Dr Comfort had been spending a considerable amount of time in California, whose permissive sexual mores, including "foursomes" and "moresomes", he believed would become the norm everywhere.

He was a frequent visitor to the Sandstone Ranch - a kind of retreat for sexual adventure, where clothes were more often off than on, and sex with multiple partners was the norm.
His message in the book - which marked a big departure from earlier writings on the subject - was that sex, and sexual experimentation, were fun. The different positions reproduced by Charles and Edeltraud were compared to the courses of a meal.
He too, however, was anxious about possible repercussions, such as being struck off the medical register. So he presented himself in the original edition as the editor, claiming that an anonymous couple had handed him the text, which he had merely tweaked and contextualised.
But there were no repercussions. The timing of the book was perfect and the marriage of a sexually liberal message and daring but inoffensive pictures was an instant hit.
As Mr Kindersley toured book fairs around the world, the response was "electric" and many big publishers took it on.
There were of course some rejections. The one he remembers best was the US men's magazine Playboy - the models were just a little too hairy for their liking.
The Joy of Sex ended up selling more than 10 million copies around the world - more than five million in the United States alone, where it stayed in the New York Times best-seller list for a decade.

''Photos take over''

James McConnachie Author of The Book of Love

There had been sex manuals before of course, but they had not been illustrated in anything like such a comprehensive way.

Contrary to popular belief, the Kama Sutra was not originally illustrated, according to James McConnachie, author of The Book of Love: In Search of the Kamasutra, and The Rough Guide to Sex.
The image we have of "a world of exotic, moustachioed aristocrats doing exaggerated acrobatic sex, with women on swings, or with their ankles round their ears" has nothing to do with the original Kama Sutra, says Mr McConnachie.
Miniatures from 16-18th Century India - well over a 1,000 years after the book was written in India - were only tagged on when the text was translated into French and English at the end of the 19th Century, he says.
The Joy of Sex was therefore jumping into untested water, but carried off the illustrations with such aplomb that few have dared even try to emulate it, according to Mr McConnachie.
"The illustrations are fantastic - they are legendary in the history of sex manuals," he says.

Anne Hooper, a British sex therapist and author of numerous bestselling books, agrees.

Like many other sex books in the 1980s, the first ones she wrote were not illustrated at all.
In the years since then there has been "a general easing" in what can be published, she says.
From the 1990s onwards it became common practice - and remains so to this day - to use photography in sex manuals, and once photos were used illustrations suddenly looked dated, says Ms Hooper.
In order to mark a clear distinction with pornography though, genitals are never shown, nor do the models have real sex.
The Joy of Sex is still on sale, but is now a very different book from the original.
Its free-love message sat uneasily with the arrival of HIV/Aids, and Alex Comfort himself revised the text in light of this.
Then, in 2008, the book was significantly updated and re-worked by relationship psychologist Susan Quilliam, who added more of a female perspective on sexuality.
The illustrations were also changed in an attempt to bring it up to date.
"The bearded man was an icon - but he was a '70s icon," says Ms Quilliam.
Tenderness Chris Foss has not looked at the original black and white illustrations he did for the book for almost 30 years. Snapping open a sturdy little grey suitcase, he starts to root through.
He used to do up to three book covers a week, and so - back then - considered this just another job.
"With the benefit of hindsight, it was a seminal work, but of course at the time, you just didn't realise this."
What does he attribute the book's success to?
He stops and lingers on an image of Charles and Edeltraud, stretched out post-coitally on a rug.
"That's very tender isn't it? They are obviously having a relationship. You can just tell by the way her body lies."
He pauses for a moment. "I think the fact that they were in love had something to do with it."

Painstaking search for survivors

2011-10-27T01:44:00.000+06:00

The main street in Ercis has been transformed. Some of the buildings lean over at alarming angles, bits of debris dropping from them.

Then there are the mounds of concrete slabs, multifloor apartment blocks crushed down to the height of a single storey.
They are all swarming with orange-suited rescue workers, hammering and drilling, cranes standing by to lift the sawn-off hunks of masonry in the hope that someone may have survived in an air pocket.
Every so often, there is a call for silence. The drills, saws and generators stop, and one of the rescuers shouts into the rubble, listening intensely for any sounds of life.
For most of the day, those calls have gone unanswered. But in the morning, they could hear a woman's voice.
The activity moved down to a buckled doorway, and after hours of digging away, a rare moment of elation in this tragedy. A rescue worker walked out cradling two-week-old Azra in his arms, remarkably unharmed by her ordeal.
A few hours later, they brought out her mother and grandmother, carrying only minor injuries.
Throughout the day, there have been these ups and downs.
At another site, they brought out a 29-year-old man, alive and well. But they also brought out the body of six-year-old Elif, who had lived on the top floor of the six-storey building. Her family buried her a few hours later.
Lessons learnt All day, families have walked down the street, grieving openly for their loss. I met Fikret Ergin, watching in tears as they dug through the remains of the building where his daughter and son-in-law had lived.
He had seen bits of their clothing in the rubble, and was sure they were dead.

It is an emotional task for the rescuers. I met Savas, who has been working without a break since Sunday. How did he keep going? "I just think all the time about my four year-old daughter, and what I would do if she was under there," he said.

At the airport in the city of Van, plane after plane have been flying in, carrying emergency teams and relief supplies.
Turkey insists it does not need any outside help, and the rescue operation has certainly been scaled up very quickly to meet the needs.
But there have been complaints about the way the operation has been organised, even from some of the rescuers themselves, who told us they were initially sent without essential equipment.
Turkey has come a long way since the last big earthquake of August 1999, when at least 17,000 died, and the response by the authorities was widely condemned as hopelessly inadequate.
Lessons were learned, and improvements made.
But one lesson that seems not to have been learned is how to ensure buildings are constructed to withstand the tremors that frequently shake the country.
The building codes are quite strict - but the distressing sight of all those mangled apartment blocks in Ercis suggests the codes are not always honoured.

Government will accept foreign aid

2011-10-27T01:42:00.000+06:00

Turkey will accept offers of aid from foreign countries to cope with the aftermath of the Van earthquake, after initially declining offers of help.

Officials said that, with more than 2,000 buildings destroyed, there was an urgent need for accommodation.
The death toll from the disaster stood at 461 but the Red Crescent fears hundreds are still trapped under rubble, feared dead.
A teacher, 27, and a student, 18, were rescued on Wednesday in Ercis.
Gozde Bahar, an English-language teacher, was rescued as her mother watched in tears.
University student Eyup Erdem was found using tiny cameras mounted on sticks.
Rescuers broke into applause as he emerged from the debris.
Caravans needed
Turkey is seeking assistance for reconstruction and temporary accommodation for the thousands who have been left homeless, the semi-official news agency Anatolia reports.

The government is seeking tents, prefabricated houses and living containers, it says.

Israel will be among the first to send aid, according to AFP news agency.
Ties with Turkey have been strained since May 2010, when Israeli naval commandos stormed a flotilla trying to sail to Gaza in defiance of a blockade, killing nine Turks.
"Turkey has asked us for caravans for the homeless after the earthquake," Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told AFP.
He said they had accepted the request and would seek to supply them as quickly as possible.
Israel's defence ministry said a first Boeing 747 would transport mobile homes to Turkey on Wednesday, and other planes would follow in the coming days.
The Japanese embassy in Ankara said its government would send around $400,000 (£250,000), Anatolia reports.
The BBC's Jonathan Head, in Ercis, says that the government has recognised that it now needs specific help in technical areas where it lacks the resources to get things up fast enough.
Aid trucks looted The Turkish government has pledged more aid to the thousands made homeless and aid agencies have set up field hospitals and kitchens and distributed thousands of tents and blankets.
But survivors, many now living in camps, have fought over shipments of aid and blocked aid shipments.
Health officials have urged them to drink bottled water after detecting an increase in diarrhoea cases, especially among children.
Nazmi Gur, a local politician in Van, told the BBC News website that "hundreds of thousands of people" needed help.

Two people were pulled from the rubble on Wednesday

"We can provide food but they desperately need shelter," he added.
The Turkish Red Crescent said that 17 trucks carrying aid had been looted in Van and Ercis.
People in Ercis, which bore the full brunt of the quake, told AFP that unidentified individuals had stopped a truck carrying tents. They told AFP they suspected the goods would be sold on the black market.
Local officials in Van said that early on Wednesday, dozens of survivors, furious at not receiving aid supplies, had raided trucks carrying food and blankets in the city of Van.
Turkish officials have warned that the death toll is likely to rise but there has been no official estimate of the number of people missing.
Turkey is particularly vulnerable to earthquakes because it sits on major geological fault lines.
The latest disaster struck on Sunday at 13:41 (10:41 GMT) at a depth of 20km (12 miles), with its epicentre 16km north-east of the city of Van.

Libya ex-spy chief Moussa Koussa denies torture claims

2011-10-27T01:39:00.000+06:00

Muammar Gaddafi's former spy chief has denied claims made in a BBC documentary that he tortured prisoners.

Moussa Koussa, who fled to Britain from Libya in March, dismissed the allegations as "untrue and vengeful".
A former prisoner told the BBC Panorama programme that Mr Koussa used electric rods on him during interrogations.
Mr Koussa was once regarded as the slain Libyan ex-leader's right-hand man. He says he has co-operated fully with the country's new leaders.
"I have never tortured anyone nor been involved in torture," he said in a statement provided by his lawyers.
"Since my defection, I have co-operated with anti-Gaddafi forces in providing intelligence and information."
Mr Koussa also used the statement to deny that he had any knowledge of the 1988 bombing of a passenger plane over the Scottish town of Lockerbie.
By the time of his defection, Mr Koussa had risen to the rank of foreign minister in Gaddafi's government.
He is credited with playing a key part in the negotiations with Western governments that led Gaddafi to give up his weapons programme.
He now lives in a Qatar hotel, which he says is paid for by his friends.