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Palestine can count on about 12 Yes votes by EU countries when it tries to upgrade its UN status, in a move expected later this month. … A senior EU diplomat told this website the Union remains divided on the question, however. He noted that member states’ votes “will probably follow the same pattern as with UNESCO,” referring to a decision by the UN’s Paris-based cultural wing to admit Palestine as a member last year. At the time, 11 countries—Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Slovenia and Spain—backed Palestine’s UNESCO bid. Another 11—Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Hungary, Italy,...

Portugal's EDP-Energias de Portugal SA (EDP.LB) said Monday that it signed a €800 million ($1.04 billion) loan with Bank of China Ltd. The three-year loan has a margin of 350 basis points over the three-month Libor rate and will be used for general corporate purposes, EDP said in a statement. …

CATALONIA may be the catalyst for a renewed wave of separatism in the European Union, with Scotland and Flanders not far behind. The great paradox of the European Union, which is built on the concept of shared sovereignty, is that it lowers the stakes for regions to push for independence. While a post-national European Union may be emerging out of the euro zone crisis, with a drive for more fiscal union and more centralized control over national budgets and banks, the crisis has accelerated calls for independence from member countries’ richer regions, angry at having to finance poorer neighbors. Artur...

The president of the Portuguese Association of Archeological Research (APIA), Nuno Ribeiro, revealed Monday having found rock art on the island of Terceira, supporting his believe that human occupation of the Azores predates the arrival of the Portuguese by many thousands of years, Lusa reported. "We have found a rock art site with representations we believe can be dated back to the Bronze Age," Ribeiro told Lusa in Ponta Delgada, at a presentation in University of the Azores on the topic of early human occupation of the Azores. The oldest cave art known in Europe is of prehistoric origin, dating...

Nick Clegg clashed with the Prime Minister today after criticising plans to claw back powers from the EU. The Deputy Prime Minister said that only 'populists, chauvinists and demagogues' could benefit from a treaty negotiation, even though David Cameron yesterday re-affirmed his intention to repatriate powers. Mr Clegg warned that European politicians should focus on 'jobs and growth' rather than attempting to reform EU institutions. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2061798/EU-treaty-change-Nick-Clegg-clashes-David-Cameron-reform.html#ixzz1dnt5E4wa

--PM says measures will help tackle high unemployment --Portugal must cut budget deficit to 4.5% this year, 3% next --Opposition parties criticize more austerity LISBON--Portuguese Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho announced late Friday new measures he will impose next year to meet budget-deficit targets and tackle a sharp rise in unemployment. In a televised statement, Mr. Passos Coelho said he will increase the social-security contribution from employees to 18% from 11%, while cutting the same payment companies make to the state to 18% from 23.75%. "We will reduce substantially the costs of labor, providing incentives to investment and job creation,"...

New cars and vans in the European Union will produce one-third less carbon dioxide within eight years, under proposed new rules set out on Wednesday (11 July) in Brussels. By 2020, the average emissions from new cars will have to be no more than 95 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer driven (5.4 oz/mile), a cut of more than 40 grams from today's levels and of 35 grams per kilometer compared with the 2015 target, if the proposed new regulations are accepted. Connie Hedegaard, climate chief of the European commission, said the goals were "ambitious but achievable" and would benefit...

snip.... Old News and Current Events: I have written before that the fundamentals of the Euro and European Union didn’t bode well. They still don’t. Each step of these “rescues”, Iceland in 2008, Ireland in 2009, Portugal in 2011, Italy and Greece in 2011 and 2012….and now Spain ….are all just shocking the dying patient back to life for a few more moments of pain and chaos. The inevitable and permanent straight-line on the EKG is coming. It will be a collapse of the Euro and a financial crisis of a size not seen since WWII or the Great Depression....

Video of Garrett McNamara. from Haleiwa, Oahu has surfed what is considered to be the biggest wave ever. The Hawaiian big wave rider caught the huge monster in Praia do Norte, Nazaré, Portugal, during the ZON North Canyon Project 2011.

The European Parliament on Wednesday (13 June) approved draft laws that would strongly increase Brussels' power over eurozone countries' budgets. But they tempered the previously austere proposals with measures for growth, debt redemption and democratic scrutiny. "This is the core of a fiscal union," said Austrian MEP and socialist leader Hannes Swoboda. "This is the first time that there is a structural solution [to the eurozone crisis] on the table," said Liberal leader Guy Verhofstadt. His Green counterpart Daniel Cohn-Bendit called it a "milestone" for the strength of agreement among MEPs. The pair of laws—also known as the two-pack—is among...

Physics on the Fringe: Smoke Rings, Circlons, and Alternative Theories of Everything by Margaret Wertheim Walker, 323 pp., $27.00                                                   Pierpont Morgan Library/Art Resource An engraving by William Blake from The Song of Los, 1795 Physics on the Fringe describes work done by amateurs, people rejected by the academic establishment and rejecting orthodox academic beliefs. They are often self-taught and ignorant of higher mathematics. Mathematics is the language spoken by the professionals. The amateurs offer an...

US President Barack Obama has demanded that European leaders act “right now” as ministers in Brussels deliberate over whether to impose a bail-out on Spanish banks. In Madrid, Berlin and Brussels officials denied that a rescue plan for Spanish banks was ready to launch this weekend, but Mr Obama blew their cover. “The focus must be on strengthening the banks, like we did in 2008,” he said. “EU leaders are in discussions about that and they are going in the right direction.” At the White House Mr Obama said: “The sooner [leaders] act, the more decisive and concrete their action,...

A serious mishandling of the debt crisis by European leaders led Fitch to axe Spain’s credit rating by three notches and issue a warnings on the stability of country’s banks, debt levels and economy. In a report that will be embarrassing for Berlin and Brussels, the credit rating agency said “policy mis-steps at the European level” and an “absence of a credible vision” for the euro had resulted in a “dramatic erosion of Spain’s sovereign profile.” Spain’s credit rating was cut to BBB from A leaving the eurozone’s fourth biggest economy languishing just above junk status. Fitch said the cost...

Spain has admitted for the first time that it can no longer raise money on the global markets or roll over its sovereign bonds, threatening to set off a dangerous escalation of Europe's debt crisis. Premier Mariano Rajoy said the country is "in an extremely difficult situation" and called on Europe to stand by the mutual obligations of euro membership. "Europe must say where it is going and show that the euro is an irreversible project that is not in danger, that helps nations in difficulty," he told Spain's senate. Cristobal Montoro Treasury minister Cristobal Montoro confessed that Spain can...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Spain is fast becoming the biggest threat to Europe's shared currency as the cash-strapped government struggles to contain a growing banking crisis. The depth of Spain's banking crisis was exposed late last week after the government announced a €19 billion rescue of one of the nation's top lenders, Bankia. The move raised worries that Spanish banks face larger-than-expected losses on bad loans stemming from the collapse of the nation's housing bubble. But the Spanish government does not have the money to bail out the entire banking sector, which analysts say could cost upwards of €100 billion....

The United States will accelerate the resettlement of about 7,000 Iraqis referred by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and will contribute $18 million to the agency's appeal for Iraq, about one-third of the total, Undersecretary of State Paula J. Dobriansky said Wednesday. — Washington Post, 2/15/07 I hope it won't be thought impertinent, over-inquisitive, or — Heaven forfend! — mean-spirited of me to ask, but: Just what, exactly, are these refugees seeking refuge from? Us? A few more questions come to mind. Let us suppose, for example, that Sergeant John Q. American, a serving member of the U.S. armed...

On a marble plate, measuring 40 by 60 centimetres, the name "Yehiel" can be read, followed by further letters which have not yet been deciphered... the new discovery might be a tomb slab... "The organic material of the antlers could be dated by radiocarbon analysis with certainty to about 390 AD," excavation leader Dr. Dennis Graen of the Jena University explains... ...Not only is the early date exceptional in this case, but also the place of the discovery: Never before have Jewish discoveries been made in a Roman villa, the Jena Archaelogist explains. In the Roman Empire at that time...

Plato's account of how the fabled city of Atlantis sank below the surface of the ocean has scientific grounding, according to a seafloor survey of an island west of the Straits of Gibraltar. Dr Marc-André Gutscher of the University of Western Brittany in France performed a detailed mapping of the seafloor on Spartel Island, already proposed as a candidate for the origin of the Atlantis legend in 2001 by French geologist Professor Jacques Collina-Girard. Lying 60 metres beneath the surface in the Gulf of Cadiz, the island is right "in front of the Pillars of Hercules", or the Straits of...

There occurred violent earthquakes and floods. And in a single day and night of misfortune... the island of Atlantis disappeared in the depths of the sea." This account, written by Plato more than 2,300 years ago, set scientists on the trail of the lost city of Atlantis. Did it ever exist? And if so, where was it located, and when did it disappear? In a recent paper in Geology, Marc-Andre Gutscher of the European Institute for Marine Studies in Plouzané gives details of one candidate for the lost city: the submerged island of Spartel, west of the Straits of Gibraltar....

The Atlantis between Spain and Morocco Revealing discoveries  Expedition: "The Ibero-Marroqui Atlantis '"   By Maria Fdez-Valmayor  A Scientific Expedition has started off at the end of this summer for the area of the Straits of Gibraltar in search of possible ruins of the well-known civilization like Atlantis by Plato. According to the project? Atlantis Ibero-Moroccan, between the coasts of southwest of the Iberian Peninsula and the northwest of Africa evidences of cities or submerged coastal villages of the Age of the Bronze would have to be, that could belong to the Island or Peninsula of Atlantis. The expedition...