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In a new study, a European research team suggests that the average intelligence level of Victorian-era people was higher than that of modern-day people. They base their controversial assertion on reaction times (RT) to visual stimuli given as tests to people from the late 1800s to modern times—the faster the reaction time, they say, the smarter the person.

A FORMER Google executive has blown the whistle on a massive and “immoral” tax avoidance scheme that has “cheated” British taxpayers out of hundreds of millions of pounds over the past decade. Barney Jones, 34, who worked for the internet search giant between 2002 and 2006, has lifted the lid on an elaborate structure which diverts British profits through Ireland to the Bermuda tax haven. Although Google’s London sales staff would negotiate and sign contracts with British customers, and cash was paid into a UK bank account, deals were technically booked through its Dublin office to minimise its liabilities here....

More than 8,000 French households' tax bills topped 100 percent of their income last year, the business newspaper Les Echos reported on Saturday, citing Finance Ministry data. The newspaper said that the exceptionally high level of taxation was due to a one-off levy last year on 2011 incomes for households with assets of more than 1.3 million euros ($1.67 million). President Francois Hollande's Socialist government imposed the tax surcharge last year, shortly after taking office, to offset the impact of a rebate scheme created by its conservative predecessor to cap an individual's overall taxation at 50 percent of income. The...

France’s “énarques” weren’t trained to succeed in the world but in central Paris ___ High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/d76b5fcc-b83f-11e2-bd62-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz2Tgx8Ik00 The French Stalinist Maurice Thorez spent the second world war in Moscow, where he called himself “Ivanov”. When France was liberated, he came home and entered government. After Charles de Gaulle stepped down as French leader in 1946, Thorez picked up one of the general’s pet projects:...

The European Union is to ban olive oil jugs and dipping bowls from restaurant tables in a move described by one of Britain’s top cooks as authoritarian and damaging to artisan food makers. The small glass jugs filled with green- or gold-colored extra virgin olive oil are familiar and traditional for restaurant goers across Europe, but they will be banned from 1 January 2014 after a decision taken in an obscure Brussels committee earlier this week. From next year, olive oil “presented at a restaurant table” must be in prepackaged factory bottles with a tamper-proof dispensing nozzle and labeling in...

A noted climatologist and recently-retired NASA research chief has entered the EU’s energy policy debate, with a warning that any re-industrialization strategy that increases fossil fuels use can only be short-term, irrational and economically wasteful. In a wide-ranging interview with EurActiv, James Hansen branded the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) “ineffectual” and flawed, and accused energy firms of preferring government bribes over investments in clean technology. Hansen, whose Congressional testimony on climate change in 1988 first popularized the issue in the United States, also said that approving the proposed Keystone XL pipeline to bring tar sands fuel from Canada to...

Anjem Choudary and his fellow protestors can be seen fighting with what was reported as other Muslim groups on London's Edgware Road. ... Protestors marched with hard-line Salafist placards and flags, many of which read, "Support Jund Al Sham". ... The protestors were marching in opposition to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, who they are known to deplore for his Alawite religion. Protestors also took up the cause against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hezbollah chief Hasan Nasrallah, who they deem as "Shia Enemies of Allah" for their Shi'ite Muslim backgrounds. The protestors are thought to be hard-line Salafists, who have...

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Former US President Jimmy Carter has once again expressed his blatantly anti-Israel allegiances by calling on the European Union to “introduce proper labeling of goods produced on illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.” Carter was in Dublin together with former Irish president Mary Robinson and former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso for talks with Irish Foreign Affairs Minister Eamon Gilmore and diplomats from some 20 European countries on revitalizing the peace process in the Middle East. “With the Middle East peace process making no significant progress, we call on Europe to play a stronger and more independent role in...

On Thursday I had a chance to go to the Eurasia Foundation’s 20th anniversary gala (thanks Eurasia Foundation!) where I listened to a few very interesting speeches on Russia and the greater Eurasia region. One of these speeches was by Robert Zoellick, the former head of the World Bank and someone who is just a little bit more influential than your humble author. In the course of his remarks, which were primarily focused on the economic transformation that resulted from communism’s collapse, Zoellick made several offhand observations about how Russia’s population is collapsing, the death rate is rising, and alcoholism...

DUBLIN -Former US President Jimmy Carter said in Dublin “the EU should move to introduce proper labelling of goods produced on illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.” (snip)It could therefore introduce a clear labelling of products made in Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law,” he added. Ireland currently holds the rotating EU presidency until end of June. Mary Robinson said this was not “an anti-Israel move,” but rather “a concrete step, supported by many of our Israeli friends, to revive the hope of a future state of Palestine

President Hollande of France recently got a whiff of what is coming from an open letter addressed to him by a 20-year old student named Clara G. “This will probably shock you, but it is mainly for fiscal reasons,… simply because I do not feel like working all my life to pay taxes, a large part of which will only service the 1.9 trillion Euros of debt that your generation has kindly left us. If these borrowings had at least been invested to prepare the future of the country, if I was getting a small benefit from them, it would...

On Sunday, an estimated 150,000 people marched in Paris and gathered in the Place de la Bastille to listen to Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the Left Front. Afterwards , the Socialist Party officials were prompt to call the event highly divisive for the left. Accusations of populism and gauchisme (unrealistic policies) also rapidly surfaced from Solférino, the Socialist headquarters. To paraphrase Bertolt Brecht: would it not be easier for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?

Even as President Obama is following in Eurosocialist footsteps, the 14-year utopian experiment on a single currency is collapsing. The architect of the euro just ran up the white flag on the biggest policy mistakes in history. Former German Finance Minister Oskar Lafontaine called his own brainchild a "catastrophe". "The economic situation is worsening from month to month," he wrote on his Left party blog. "unemployment has reached a level that puts democratic structures ever more in doubt." "Catastrophe" is the right word. Today Greece is suffering more than 50% unemployment. That's worse than the Great Depression in the US....

Former Maoist revolutionary and current European Commission President José Manuel Barroso (declared this week that a federal Europe ruled by the European Union from Brussels would be a “reality within a few years,” sparking furious criticism from Europeans and renewed calls in Britain and other countries to withdraw from the increasingly power-hungry EU. Whether the formerly sovereign member states use the controversial single euro currency or not, Barroso announced, all of the 27 EU governments will be ensnared in the dubious project. While acknowledging that today the idea of a federal regime ruling over Europe may seem like “political science...

Amid growing calls from Tory MPs for David Cameron to respond to the Ukip threat by bringing forward legislation on an EU referendum, Farage warned that his party would not go away even if No 10 "starts singing the same song". William Hague, who famously suffered a major defeat in the 2001 election after tacking to the right, called for a cautious response to Ukip as he warned of the dangers of "quick fixes". Philip Hammond, the defence secretary, said many Ukip voters were "frustrated Conservatives". As the Tories work out their response to Ukip, which won nearly a quarter...

BLUNDERING Ed Miliband yesterday said Britain’s problems are so bad NO ONE can solve them. The Labour chief made the gaffe as he drummed up support for Thursday’s council elections. In a Radio 4 interview in which he repeatedly lost his temper, he said: “Are our problems so deep nobody can actually make a difference to them? My emphatic answer to that is yes.” Mr Miliband also refused to admit Labour would increase borrowing if they were in power — even though Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls had already said as much.

Iceland just elected the parties which plunged them into crisis only five years ago. Is it casino capitalism all over again, or just a slap in the face of the EU? In terms of redemptive electoral stories, the return of the Independence Party in Iceland is quite significant, albeit that they will come back to government with only a few percentage points more votes than they polled at their nadir in the depths of the Icelandic crisis in 2009. However the biggest winner was Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, the leader of the Progressive Party, who propelled his party to hold 19 seats...

The justices of the Supreme Court of Sweden have finished the destruction of a family that was begun in their lower courts, rejecting an appeal of a ruling that permanently separated a young boy from his parents because he was being homeschooled. “In a perfunctory order the Swedish Supreme Court rejected a desperate appeal by Christer and Annie Johansson, parents of Domenic Johansson, who was torn from his parents while minutes from takeoff on an international flight as the family prepared to move to India,” said a report from the Home School Legal Defense Association, which along with a team...

Even if Germany had to write off the loans it extended to Southern European countries as part of the eurozone’s emergency rescue measures, the economic advantages of its membership would still be overwhelming, according to a recent study by the Bertelsmann Stiftung. … “Without the euro, growth of the real gross domestic product [GDP] in Germany would be lower by about 0.5 percentage points per year,” the study says, warning that without that euro, Europe “would fall apart politically” and become “a losing player in international competition.” And projections for the future are looking bright, the study adds. “Adding up...

The World Gold Council has advised Italy to deploy its 2,000 tonnes of gold to break free of EMU austerity dictates. By using the reserves – the world's fourth largest – to collateralise the first chunk of any losses for bondholders, Italy could raise €400bn or so on the capital markets and determine its own future for a while. Italy did this in 1974 when it borrowed $2bn from the Bundesbank, using gold as collateral. Portugal did the same thing to borrow $1bn from the BIS in the 1975-1977, and India used its gold to borrow from Japan in 1991....

Five Iranians have been arrested after allegedly posing as police officers in order to rob motorists in northern Italy. ... The band of thieves allegedly set up fake control points at motorway service stations, where they would walk away with tourists' documents and money under the pretext of checking their authenticity.

UKIP chief Nigel Farage’s “clowns” were today ready to enjoy the last laugh after the biggest protest vote in British history. A wave of support in yesterday’s council elections put the anti-EU party on course to take up to a THIRD of all votes in some battlegrounds. An early indication of their strength came last night in the South Shields Parliamentary by-election. Labour held the seat — but UKIP came second with 5,988 votes. Their slice of the vote in the local elections, meanwhile, looked set to top 20 per cent. That would smash the previous best for a party...

Members of Greek extremist political party Golden Dawn try to open a 'Greeks only' soup kitchen in Athens, as anti-immigrant feeling bubbles against a backdrop of increasing poverty. Mayor Giorgos Kaminis had banned such events in the city's central square and vowed not to allow the "soup kitchen of hate" to take place

Three neonicotinoid insecticides are to be banned from use on crops that attract bees for two years in the EU. This follows a vote by member states yesterday. Although the final vote did not reach the majority needed for legislation to pass, the hung result allows the commission to decide further action. Tonio Borg, health and consumer commissioner, made it clear in a statement that the ban will proceed, citing a study by the European Food Safety Authority, published in January, that concluded that the pesticides posed a ‘high acute risk’ to pollinators, including honeybees. Applying clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiametoxam...

Figures from Eurobarometer, the EU’s own polling organization, suggest that anti-Brussels feeling has spread far beyond Britain and is rising in both poor and better-off EU nations. It follows the continuing eurozone economic crisis, which has sent unemployment soaring and led to a string of multi-billion-pound taxpayer-funded bailouts. Results showed 66 percent of voters in Britain say they “tended not to trust the EU as an institution”. A majority shared that view in Italy (53 percent), France (56 percent) and Germany (59 percent), while in crisis-hit Spain, the figure has soared to 72 percent. The findings are understood to have...

Irish borrowers struggling to meet their loan repayments may be banned from taking vacations and face limits on how much they can spend on food under guidelines published by the country’s personal insolvency service. Monthly individual living expenses for people seeking debt relief may be capped at 35.73 euros ($46.7) for clothing, 247.04 euros for food and 33.40 euros for personal-hygiene items, the Insolvency Service of Ireland said in Dublin today. Households in towns with “adequate public transport links” may not need a car, while private health insurance may also be banned, the ISI said. The guidelines set a “standard...

Speaker: Nigel Farage MEP, Leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), Co-President of the 'Europe of Freedom and Democracy' (EFD) Group in the European Parliament - Video 3:03

LUXEMBOURG (AP) -- The European Union on Monday lifted its oil embargo on Syria to provide more economic support to the forces fighting to oust President Bashar Assad's regime. The decision will allow for crude exports from rebel-held territory, the import of oil and gas production technology, and investments in the Syrian oil industry, the EU said in a statement. Any export or investment initiatives will be taken in close coordination with the leaders of the Syrian opposition, the bloc's 27 foreign ministers decided at a meeting in Luxembourg. The move marks the first relaxing of EU sanctions on Syria...

Violence dominates the streets and a Jew in Sweden today feels like a Jew in Berlin in the '20s. In 2003, Azzam Tamimi, a Hamas member from Hevron, delivered a sermon at the Great Mosque in Stockholm, expressing support for suicide attacks against Israeli civilians. Outside the mosque, militants distributed leaflets containing calls to "liquidate the Jews in Palestine in the name of Allah". Why did the Swedish authorities allow this Arab anti-Semite to deliver a homicidal sermon in their capital's main mosque if not to help foment a new war against the Jewish people? Ten years later, and Sweden,...

Angered by the British media’s coverage of Brussels, the European Commission says it wants to be a “moral compass” against press misconduct, seeking new national and Europe-wide regulatory powers over journalists. The EU has spent £2.3 million on the previously unpublicised “Mediadem” project to “reclaim a free and independent media”. In a “policy brief” co-authored by its lead British researcher, Rachael Craufurd Smith, Mediadem says it is “simplistic” to “see state influence [over the press] as inherently stifling”. Dr Craufurd Smith, an Edinburgh University academic, said that it was also “simplistic” to believe that “market-driven media” were now “free and independent”....

As Independence Day celebrations were winding down Tuesday night, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu made a guest appearance on Channel 2's left-wing satire show Eretz Nehederet. One of the final questions that the show's host Eyal Kitzis asked the premier was how he would like to be remembered after he leaves office. Netanyahu thought a moment and said, "I'd like to be remembered as the leader who preserved Israel's security." On the face of it, Netanyahu's stated aspiration might seem dull. In a year he'll be the longest-serving prime minister in the state's history, and all he wants is to...

President Barack Obama delivered an impassioned speech Thursday at the memorial service for victims of the Boston Marathon bombing. But that was to be expected. We all know Obama can give a stem-winder. What wasn’t expected was that this would be by far the toughest week of the Obama presidency—the first time I can remember the president being dealt an unequivocal policy defeat. Only the “shellacking” of the 2010 midterm comes close, and even there a case can be made that achieving the decades-old progressive dream of universal health care was worth losing the House of Representatives and a filibuster-proof...

Nigel Farage speaking at the EU Parliament: “Years ago, Mrs Thatcher recognised the truth about the European project. She saw that it was about taking away democracy from nation states and handing that power to largely unaccountable people. Knowing as she did that the Euro would not work, she saw that this was a very dangerous design.”

The European Citizens’ Initiative is struggling to gain momentum a year after being launched, bogged down by technical and bureaucratic hurdles that have prevented a single petition from meeting all the requirements, civic activists say. ECIs are a form of petition created under the 2009 Lisbon Treaty to encourage grassroots involvement in European lawmaking. Of the nearly 30 proposed ECIs, only 14 have successfully registered and just one—focusing on water rights—has gathered the required one million signatures. But the latter falls short of requirements because the signatures come only from five EU states, two short of the minimum needed. …

The militarization of a population, the manner by which a regime systematically destines its people for a perpetual clash with an enemy, is a prime method for dangerously prolonging a conflict, sometimes for decades. Indeed, the past couple of weeks of unrestrained provocations have reminded us of the 60- year-old war footing maintained by the North Korean government against the West. But one need not look so far eastward to find another example of a regime using its resources for waging hostilities with both its external and internal enemies. Indeed, Israelis can find a more telling example of a government...

The European Union’s finance ministers today decided to give Ireland and Portugal an extra seven years to pay back loans granted to them as part of their bailouts. The decision, taken by ministers at their meeting in Dublin, should make it easier for those countries to leave their bailout programs and return to normal bond financing markets in the coming months. … Ireland was forced into a €67.5 billion ($88.3 billion) rescue in November 2010 and will receive its last installment in November this year. Portugal obtained a deal worth €78 billion ($102 billion) in May 2011 and will receive...

These are turbulent times for gay rights in America. The 2012 presidential election saw referendums approving same-sex marriage in Maine, Maryland, and Washington (bringing the number of states in which gay couples can marry to nine, plus Washington DC). Polls show public support for gay marriage hitting all-time highs, and the Supreme Court is currently deciding whether to extend federal benefits to married gay couples and strike down bans on same-sex marriage in California and beyond. But the most significant shifts—small in scale, but seismic in implication—are occurring where one least expects them: on the right. Indeed, when controversial Republican...

A video game in which Pope Benedict XVI is depicted as a pimp for pedophile Roman Catholic cardinals is facing calls to be banned. Vatican Quest, released by U.S. firm RoundGames.com on Mar. 14, has sparked outrage in Spain with critics saying it makes fun of both sexual abuse victims and the Catholic Church. Human rights group Maslibres.org has launched a petition demanding the free arcade game is removed from the Web, reports El Huffington Post. The game's main character is a doll, resembling the recently retired Pope, who has to collect young children for cardinals waiting at the gates...

Austria has accused the UK of being a haven for money launderers ahead of an EU meeting in Dublin, with Cyprus, Ireland, Portugal and Slovenia’s (potential) bailout needs also on the agenda. The Austrian finance minister, Maria Fekter, described Britain as “the island of the blessed for tax evasion and money laundering” in an interview with her country’s Kurier newspaper on Thursday (11 April). Comparing the UK and its “protectorates”—micro-states subject to British law—to Cyprus in terms of hosting secretive foundations and trusts, she noted: “Just as we urged the abolition of sealed foundations in the Cyprus rescue to drain...

A math teacher at an Italian high school reportedly told a Jewish female student which she felt was not paying attention in class, “Had you been in Auschwitz, you would have been more careful.”According to the student in Rome’s Caravillani high-school, the remarks were made after she had re-entered the classroom, having left it to wash her face as she was feeling ill. … The student, who considered pressing charges, and two of her friends, decided to boycott the teacher’s classes. The school’s headmaster called the teacher for a meeting in which she reportedly misspoke again when she said, “I...

The Central Council of Muslims in Germany proposed that federal authorities formalize two Islamic holidays as official holidays. This is not shocking news, as in some areas Muslims already have that right. Recent polls suggest that in the future the Turks want to see Germany as the country with a predominantly Muslim population. So far they have minimal representation in the legislature. Germany is Europe's second largest after France in terms of number of residents who practice Islam. The country does not have statistics with regard to the citizen's religion.

Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl—the architect of German reunification—admitted he would never have won a referendum on the adoption of the euro in his country and said he acted “like a dictator” to see the common currency introduced. … Germany’s chancellor between 1982 and 1998, Kohl said it took him “years” to build the trust and negotiation skills to convince other European leaders of his ideas and push them through. … In addition, the freshly reunified East Germans, happy to finally have their Deutsche Mark back, would never have voted in favor of abandoning it again for a new European...

Europe is falling dangerously far behind the US in productivity growth and is blighted by crippling energy costs, the pan-EU industry federation has warned. “Europe doesn’t have an energy policy. It has a climate policy,” said Markus Beyrer, head of BusinessEurope. Mr Beyrer said the US is running away with the shale energy revolution, leaving Europe’s companies in the dust. Spot gas prices are now four to five times higher in Europe, with grim implications for the chemical industry. “Shale gas is a game-changer and we need to have a discussion based on the evidence, not based on risks,” Mr...

Say what you will about the rest of her legacy, but when it comes to the economic disaster today known as the euro, Margaret Thatcher was downright prophetic. In a delightfully acidic speech delivered before Britain's House of Commons in 1990, and posted below, she summed up her feelings about European integration: "No. No. No." Specifically, Thatcher opposed to the idea of handing political power to a European parliament, giving up the pound for a single European currency, or handing over its monetary policy to a European central bank. As she put it (in the blunt way only British politicians...

Eurozone Faces New Challenge As Portugal Blocks Cuts The eurozone crisis threatens to flare up again this week after Portugal's constitutional court blocked the country's planned austerity programme. By Philip Aldrick 07 Apr 2013 The single currency bloc has already been destabilised by Cyprus and now faces fresh uncertainty if Lisbon cannot find new savings to meet the conditions of its €78bn (£66bn) bail-out. Pedro Passos Coelho, Portugal’s prime minister, said last night that the rejection posed “serious obstacles and risks” to Portugal’s progress in meeting its bail-out commitments, but that it would “do everything to avoid a second rescue”....

HELSINKI – Big bank depositors could take a hit under planned European Union law if a bank fails, the EU's economic affairs chief Olli Rehn said on Saturday, but noted that Cyprus's bailout model was exceptional. "Cyprus was a special case ... but the upcoming directive assumes that investor and depositor liability will be carried out in case of a bank restructuring or a wind-down," Rehn, the European Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner, said in a TV interview with Finland's national broadcaster YLE. "But there is a very clear hierarchy, at first the shareholders, then possibly the unprotected investments and...

Portugal's prime minister said he will address the nation Sunday over a crisis triggered when the country's highest court ruled some of the unpopular pay cuts in this year's budget are unlawful, depriving the government of about 1.4 billion euros ($1.8 billion) of expected revenue. Pedro Passos Coelho will speak after his government said in a statement that the position taken by the Constitutional Court "places the country in serious difficulties in meeting obligations to which it is committed internationally and also the budgetary goals it must meet."

President Vladimir Putin said Russia had confidence in the euro and had made the right decision to keep much of its reserves in the European currency. "I would like to say it outright: yes, we trust the euro," Putin said, according to a Kremlin transcript of an interview with German public broadcaster ARD before a trip to Germany and the Netherlands. Putin said Moscow and the European Union have disagreements, but that the leading euro zone countries were moving in the right direction in handling the current crisis. "That gives us confidence that we have made the right move to...

A French court on Thursday ordered Air France to pay a 10,000 euro ($12,800) fine for having ordered a pro-Palestinian Authority activist off a flight to Tel Aviv because she was not Jewish, AFP reports. According to the report, the court also ordered the French flagship carrier to pay 3,000 euros in damages to the passenger and her legal fees. Horia Ankour, a nursing student, had attempted to fly to Israel from France last April to take part in the “flytilla”, which saw hundreds of pro-Arab activists seeking access to Israel in a bid to travel to Gaza. Israel took...