Greek police seek Golden Dawn phone records

Greek police have asked for permission to check the phone records of Golden Dawn politicians as part of an investigation into the killing of a anti-racism rapper by a supporter of the far-right party, police said. The headquarters of the far ...

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Best World Reads Of The Week: September 14

Spending our days on the interwebs has its advantages, one being that we come across lots of excellent pieces of journalism. Every week, we'll bring you our favorite online reads that didn't appear on our site. Disagree with the selection? Leave your suggestions in the comments or tweet #bestreads at @HuffPostWorld.Trading Privilege For Privation, Family Hits A Nerve In South Africa The New York Times -- Lydia Polgreen When Julian and Ena Hewitt moved their family to a squatter camp last month, they didn't expect the kind of backlash that ensued. The white, middle-class couple found themselves at the heart of South Africa's stark racial divide, eliciting applause from some for their desire to understand the black experience in South Africa and resentment from others who dismissed their experiment as "poverty pornography." As Lydia Polgreen writes, the segregation of experience and perspective from Apartheid lingers, despite its legal abolishment in 1994. "[I]f their motives were noble, did they inadvertently confirm what many here suspect: black poverty gets little notice until a white person experiences and highlights it?" Polgreen wonders. Spanish Saddle Up And Ride The Bike Boom That's Sweeping The CountryThe Guardian -- Paul Hamilos Amid a relentless recession, at least one industry is thriving in Spain: Bicycles sales. Rising automotive costs have led hundreds of thousands to turn to cycling, a sharp turnaround from Spain's boom years when many Spaniards lived and bought beyond their means. But the recent cycle trend is about more than simple finances; as Paul Hamilos notes, bikes have simply become "cool." Hamilos describes the rise of cycle cafes, hotspots for hip riders "where art, discussion groups, workshops come together with only the very best cafes con leche." Residents hope the industry growth will lead to shifts in public policy and urban landscape, with activists pressuring local governments to make previously cycle-unfriendly cities more accommodating to Spain's hottest mode of transport.Modern Art Was CIA 'Weapon' The Independent -- Frances Stonor Saunders CONFIRMED: The CIA used modern art as as a weapon during the Cold War. And in so doing, Frances Stonor Saunders notes, the agency ended up promoting the Abstract Expressionist movement despite its unpopularity among the American public and the dismissal of many artists as communists. In an ever-escalating propaganda war, Modern art provided the United States with the ammunition to contrast the intellectual freedom democracy affords with the Soviet aesthetic perceived as "strapped into the communist ideological straitjacket." Saunders is careful to note that even without the invisible hand of the CIA, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and the like would probably have still found success along with the burgeoning movement. "But look where this art ended up: in the marble halls of banks, in airports, in city halls, boardrooms and great galleries," she writes. "For the Cold Warriors who promoted them, these paintings were a logo, a signature for their culture and system which they wanted to display everywhere that counted. They succeeded."Venezuelan Women Are Dying From Buttock Injections The Atlantic -- Alasdair Baverstock In Venezuela, the never-ending quest for beauty has turned deadly. Alasdair Baverstock reports that in the last year, 17 women have died from silicone buttocks injections. These cheap, illegal procedures -- which parents often gift to their daughters for their 15th birthdays -- cost as little as $8, take just 20 minutes to perform and have effects that could last a lifetime, including tumor formation and spinal paralysis. Still, Venezuelan women won't be deterred, as beauty hums along as the country's second-most profitable industry, behind only petroleum. As a representative of an anti-bipolymer injection foundation explains: "When you live in a country where a beautiful woman has greater career prospects than someone with a strong work ethic and first-class education, you are forced into the mindset that there is nothing more important than beauty."Mermaids of Asia: Dugongs, Dragon Wives And The DeepThe Diplomat -- Jonathan DeHart Mermaids have long been a ubiquitous part of popular culture, appearing in tales ranging from ancient Syria, classical Greece, Ireland, Africa and India to modern Disney film. Most know the accepted origins of their mythos: drunken sailors starved of any shred of female contact sublimating their desires onto illusory sea mammals in the distance. But a new, emerging theory tracing mermaid folklore back to Asian roots offers a more subversive interpretation of the mermaid myth. Could it be that the seemingly normative, feminine allure of mermaids really derives from the strength of the so-called "Dragon Wives" of historically patriarchal societies in China and Japan? Jonathan DeHart investigates.

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Rapper's Murder Sparks Protests in Greece

Here And NowRapper's Murder Sparks Protests in GreeceHere And NowHis message comes after violent protests in cities across Greece last night, in response to the stabbing murder of anti-fascist rapper, Pavlos Fyssas, who goes by stage name Killah P — allegedly by a member of the country's far-right Golden Dawn party.Greece: Anti-Terror Police Probe Far-RightABC NewsGreece: Anti-terror police probe far-right after rapper stabbedFox NewsAnti-terror police probe far-right after rapper stabbed in GreeceGuelph MercuryThe Japan Timesall 28 news articles »

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Scottish Madwoman Trills as Greek Queen Wails in Paris

BloombergScottish Madwoman Trills as Greek Queen Wails in ParisBloombergScottish Madwoman Trills as Greek Queen Wails in Paris. By Jorg von Uthmann - 2013-09-18T23:01:00Z. Agathe Poupeney/Opera de Paris via Bloomberg. Sophie Koch and Yann Beuron as Alceste and Admete in Gluck's "Alceste" at the Palais Garnier in ...and more »

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Die Zeit Venizelos Asks Asmussen to “Reorganize” Figures

German newspaper Die Zeit has cited an article claiming that Deputy Prime Minister Evangelos Venizelos asked European Central Bank executive board member Joerg Asmussen to "reorganize" figures in order for Greece's fiscal gap for 2015 and 2016 to appear smaller than it is. The article is written by Mark Ciric and Jana Simon, makes the public sceptical when referring to ...

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MoneyGram on Buying Spree in Greece

MoneyGram International announced the purchase of Advanced ChronoCash Services and pact to acquire MoneyGlobe Payment in Greece.

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European Federalism 2.0: A Fix for Europe?

Co-written by Thanos Papaïoannou Unemployment, intra-national strife, and political and economic stasis are ravaging Europe at the moment. What is there to do? How should we pull out of the morass? Messieurs Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Felix Marquardt, co-founders of the federalist Europeans Now movement, recently suggested bypassing the instruments of European nation states and concentrating political power in the hands of pan-European institutions. Down with national governments, they demand, and up with a "transfer of power to truly European institutions." Increased federalism and direct democracy, the principles behind their proposal, are key for Europe's long-term prosperity and success. The central question for Europe's long-term future is: Should we change the influence of the nation states at the EU level? There are three possible directions the European Union could take: decrease the power of nation states at the EU level (federalism); increase it (dissolution), or keep it constant (stasis). The good people of Europe have enjoyed stasis for quite some time now, and it has been failing them. Europe has been suffering a prolonged economic crisis, her parliaments full of alleged frauds and far-right radicals. The malaise appears tied not only to the global financial circumstance, but to the intrinsic financial and political structure of Europe, and to the common features of the European nations' economic policies: agricultural protectionism, expansive social states, and rule by Brusselian committee. There is hardly a glimmer of hope that the situation would improve on its own in the short or long term. This rules out stasis. We would like to argue for a long-term move towards federalism over long-term dissolution. A shift toward federalism would help Europe move out of the current crisis and protect her against future ones. For the recipient nations, federalism would allow for structural financial support and cheaper credit, but with central political control over how it's spent. For example, federalism requires a banking union, which would give healthy companies in debt-burdened countries access to credit despite their sovereigns' ill health. The current situation is hurtful and nonsensical, as it would be to deny credit to a Silicon-Valley startup because of California's horrifying state finances. For the contributing nations, federalism would mean even more open markets for products and labor, and unhindered competition. Of the European nations, Germany and her exporting machine would stand to benefit the most; indeed, Germany's dominating the common European market with her products has contributed to her sustained growth since the beginning of the European experiment. Combined with the direct democracy envisioned by Cohn-Bendit and Marquardt, Germany would reap multiple benefits. It is hard to imagine a similar path if we moved to dissolve the European Union in the long term. Federalism would dispatch with the old guard in Europe. They have brought us to this standstill; why should they be trusted to pull us out? In fact, in each of the recipient nations -- especially Greece and Spain -- the role of the EU in national politics can be likened to a spigot of money, around which the political old guard have crusted firm. They allow subsidies and sinecures to flow through to supporters in exchange for influence and power. Direct, pan-European democracy would break the crust off. As for the contributing nations, direct democracy would mean direct power, commensurate with population size. No longer would unelected Brussellian bureaucrats have the political whipping hand, no longer would Europe remain as opaquely undemocratic. It is the more flamboyant wings of the euroskeptics that bring up the lack of democracy in Europe most often, but their complaint is very valid nonetheless. Naturally, introducing full direct democracy in the short term would likely be self-defeating for the purposes of the unification: The voters themselves might even vote the Union into dissolution, since Europe's financial situation has bred sharp intra-national antipathies. Besides, no amount of supra-national committees could change the fact that Europe consists of different nations with different interests and cultures. Nonetheless, European politics is rapidly converging. In fact, today we can observe what was difficult to even conceive in 1995: ordinary voters in one corner of Europe inspired by politicians from a different one -- take Cohn-Bendit and his pan-European appeal. Also, macroeconomic thinking comes to the favor of a tighter Union. Conglomerate states appear more economically efficient than their parts, and are becoming easier to manage and sustain as technology progresses. Even at present, it is conglomerate countries that are dominating the international scene: The USA, China, Russia, India, the UK, even Germany and Italy, are products of successive, often painful conglomerations. No European nation would be able to stand up on its own to the world superpowers, but a true European Federation would carry enough weight to matter on the world stage. The strength of our cultures, of our ingenuity, the glory of our civilizations deserves an equally grand and material edifice.Thanos and Luka are researchers at Harvard University. They tweet at @lukaoreskovic and @TDPapaioannou.

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