Europe

The lower house of the Russian parliament, the Duma, yesterday approved a bill on third reading that will allow the authorities to compile a website blacklist, fuelling concern about Internet filtering and censorship. The bill will have to be passed by the upper house and ratified by President Vladimir Putin before it takes effect.

We reproduce here part of an investigation carried out by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism [BIJ](http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/07/11/inside-the-citys-best-connected-lobby-group/) on the workings of the City of London, the Financial District at the centre of a system that affects every aspect of ordinary people’s lives.

Four people dead, many injured and a priest battered by the police following massive protests in Cajamarca, Peru, are just the tip of the iceberg. Conga gold mine threatens the water of four lakes. The same story repeats throughout several Latin American countries. Multinationals (surprise, surprise!) are involved. Financial crisis fuels Gold (and other minerals) Rush

Seemingly unconnected events like the unfolding civil war in Syria and a President deposed by his Parliament in Paraguay are in fact remarkably similar in their ultimate goals, if not in their methods. As the International Financial Empire fears losing its hegemony we witness its attempts to discipline dissenting voices.

The last ten days of May, and the first twenty of June, 2012, proved difficult ones for Armenian-Azerbaijani relations. The conflict between the two countries, which has gone on for over two decades, has led to numerous deaths. And in spite of the fact that a truce has by and large held between the two nations, people continue to die on the line of contact.

Around three years ago, the U.S-born world financial crisis forced five European Union member countries to receive a really little honorable “title” — the PIGS. These were Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain. With Ireland added to the group, the acronym became PIIGS. More recently came Cyprus, the current EU president.

If added together, there would be a nation of nearly 700 million people—the third most populated one on Earth after China and India. Its population is made of over 210 million jobless, 215 million children obliged to work; 21 million victims of forced labor, and 228 million working poor youth living on less than the equivalent of US$ 2 per day.

In the wake of an enormous fine for rigging fundamental interest rates, general outrage at banker’s bonuses, and the devastation ravaging the world’s economy, the stink from the Banking sector is set to rise with a stink bomb attack planned for Barclays Bank. Will the UK government be capable of undertaking the Herculean task of cleaning out the Augean Stables?

Luc Gnacadja has rock-solid reason to be upbeat: some 100 heads of state agreed at the Rio+20 – to strive for “a land-degradation neutral world”, characterised by zero growth in desertification.
In doing so they were responding to the UNCCD’s clarion call in a “policy brief” for ‘A Sustainable Development Goal for Rio+20: Zero Net Land Degradation’.

This is what the scientists say and it is CERN that announced the finding of the most sought-after elementary particle of recent decades, the Higgs boson, opening the doors to the subatomic world. Although other experts are more cautious: what has been registered indicates what could be the signature of the Higgs particle, such is science, very careful.