Europe

Highlights of the Summer Tour 2011 include first concerts in Asia, a concert at Berlin’s Waldbühne, and a recording of all of Beethoven’s symphonies.
After its triumphant tour through the Middle East and Europe in May, Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra continue their Beethoven project on the upcoming summer tour.

By Aljosa Milenkovic

As Greece faces the worst economic woes in its history, Greek journalists struggle with their own fears and their failures in covering the crisis.

One of the most popular editorial coping mechanisms is to blame the problem on others, in this case the European Union. Many in Greece consider the EU to be part of the problem rather than the solution.

When one of the most arrogant men in the world is forced to issue a full-page apology in national newspapers, you know that he feels he has little other choice. That must have been the calculation in the inner sanctum of News Corporation when billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch signed off on a full-page ad in several of his (and his competitors’) British newspapers.

Can Lord Justice Leveson be really impartial? He socialised, like many other important people, with Rupert Murdoch, his family & his PR man. Are we surprised by this cosy relationship between Politicians, Media, the higher echelons of the Police (Sir Paul Stevenson, Metropolitan Police Commissioner resigned over indirect links to News Corps) and even the Judiciary? Sadly not.

What was incomprehensible only 20 years ago is commonplace today.

In the blink of any eye, messages, pictures, movies, everything that can be digitalized, can be sent from one corner of the earth to another. People have come to depend on the Internet and new media services to communicate with the world, from the person next door to a relative several time zones away.

The indignant marchers finished the last kilometres of the walk towards the Puerta del Sol that some had begun thirty-four days ago. At Sol there were already hundreds of people even before any of the six main routes into the centre of Madrid had arrived. From the main streets the walkers converged at Kilometre 0 to demand political, economic and social reforms.

When summer arrives citizens are thinking more about holidays and less about politics. At least this is what governments hope, so as to be able to pass certain laws and decrees without creating waves that could incite rejection whether from student activists, fully-functioning trade unions and associations with all their membership.

Yesterday, the popular marches of the indignant arrived in Madrid — and took back the square. Another major demonstration is planned for today.
Saturday indignados brought much of Madrid to a standstill as the popular marches arrived in the city, taking 6 different routes from all over the country and culminating in a spectacular re-occupation of Sol by thousands of protesters

Police say they are questioning a right-wing Christian over the massacre of 92 people in a killing spree that prime minister says turned a paradise into hell on earth.
As harrowing testimony emerged from the camp where scores of youngsters were mown down, Norway was struggling to understand how a place famed as a beacon of peace could experience such bloodshed on its soil.

When German Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to take a firm stand vis-a-vis Greece bleeding financial crisis, she was surly aware that black economy accounts as high as one-third of Greek GNP, that tax invasion amounts to 20 billion dollars a year, and that corruption is rooted everywhere, at all levels, particularly among political parties.