Business Insider: Google hired at least 65 European government officials in 10 years

Tomas Gulbinas, a former ambassador-at-large for the Lithuanian government, and Georgios Mavros, an advisor to a French member of the European Parliament, are two recent Google hires. Both were hired as lobbyists in 2015.

The CfA claims Google has also hired from the likes of Poland’s ministry of economy, NATO, the European Parliament, the British Embassy to the US, the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Spain’s justice ministry.

The UK government appears to be one of Google's preferred preying grounds, with Google hiring Conservative and Labour officials from 10 Downing Street, the Home Office, UK Treasury, House of Commons, and Departments of Education and Skills, International Development, and Transport. In total, Google has hired over 25 British public officials since 2005.

read the article 

Reuters: Italy's Renzi not happy with local vote, but sees no bearing on referendum

In the capital Rome, the candidate for the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement took a substantial lead against Renzi's PD party, while in the southern city Naples, the PD failed to make the cut. However, the centre-left party came out on top in the other three cities -- Milan, Turin and Bologna. [...]

However, he dismissed suggestions Sunday's vote was a triumph for the 5-Star Movement, which has looked to capitalise on voter anger against widespread corruption, saying it had only flourished in Rome and Turin.

He also said the populist, right-wing Northern League party had failed to make major advances.

read the article 

Independent: The six-hour work day increases productivity. So will Britain and America adopt one?

For about a year, nurses at the Svartedalens retirement home have worked six-hour days on an eight-hour salary. They're part of an experiment funded by the Swedish government to see if a shorter workday can increase productivity. The conclusion? It does.

As with any cultural shift in the workplace, the six-hour day has to prove itself more than just humane. For any employer, in Sweden or elsewhere (and perhaps especially in the U.S.), an abridged workweek can't damage productivity if it's going to have a chance. A year's worth of data from the project, which compares staff at Svartedalens with a control group at a similar facility, showed that 68 nurses who worked six hour days took half as much sick time as those in the control group. And they were 2.8 times less likely to take any time off in a two-week period, said Bengt Lorentzon, a researcher on the project.  [...]

Svartedalens is part of a small but growing movement in Europe. Sweden has dabbled with shorter workdays before: From 1989 to 2005, home-care-services workers in one Swedish municipality had a six-hour work day, but it was abolished due to a lack of data proving its worth. The Svartedalens experiment is designed to avoid that problem: "This trial is very, very clean because it's just one homogenous group of workers," said Lorentzon. In Sweden's private sector, the practice is taking root in places such as Toyota service centers in Gothenburg. In the U.K., a marketing agency adopted a staggered schedule to allow for reduced work hours while ensuring coverage; a survey last month found that six out of 10 bosses in that country agreed that cutting hours would improve productivity. 

read the article 

Al Jazeera: Macedonia activists defiant as 'I Protest' marches grow

Angered by perceived corruption and the government's alleged wiretapping of more than 20,000 politicians, judges and journalists, protesters have recently started throwing paint-filled balloons at government buildings and controversial state-funded statues in the capital.

The statues, which have become targets for the "I Protest" movement, were erected in recent years as part of Macedonia's Skopje 2014, a project aimed at renovating the capital's centre at a price of 80 million euros ($91m).

Critics of the government are angry that the actual cost reportedly tops 560 million euros ($636m), according to a 2015 investigation by the Balkans Investigative Reporting Network. 

read the article 

Independent: Christian fundamentalist schools teaching girls they must obey men

Christian fundamentalist schools are teachingchildren that creationism is fact, that gay people are “unnatural” and that girls must submit to men, according to a series of claims.

Former pupils and whistle-blowers have told The Independent that the schools, which originated in the US but are now dotted around the UK and registered as independent or private schools, teach children at isolated desks separated by “dividers” from other students. It is thought more than a thousand children are being taught at dozens of schools, although little is known about them. [...]

By extension, it is believed that children must teach themselves in order to get closer to God. Children are therefore expected to spend the first half of each school day teaching themselves by reading textbooks in silence, while facing the classroom walls in specially designed booths, which mean they cannot see children around them or interact with them. In the second half of the school day, children are taught in groups.

read the article 

London Evening Standard: Couple find unexploded World War II bomb in their basement...but delayed calling police because they 'didn't want to wake the neighbours'

Stephen Sin, 44, found the incendiary device at his home in Crystal Palace on Wednesday but did not want to cause a scene late at night.

Mr Sin, along with his wife Janice Hardy, moved the unexploded bomb into the garden and carried on with their day before alerting the police on Thursday afternoon.

The 44-year-old told the Croydon Guardian he was initially reluctant to call the police straight away because they did not want everything to “stand still”.

Ms Hardy said she previously read a story about someone finding an unexploded bomb but added it caused chaos in the neighborhood.

read the article 

Deutsche Welle: Protests against the Kadyrov Bridge in St. Petersburg

The protests were triggered by plans to name a city bridge after the former president of the Russian Republic of Chechnya, Akhmad Kadyrov. The responsible city commission gave its approval to the initiative in late May, and a city government representative said that the body sought to "extend the hand of friendship to the Chechen people." [...]

The prospect of the bridge being named after Kadyrov has been causing fights for weeks. Activists have been collecting petition signatures since the idea became public and hope to persuade regional Governor Georgy Poltavchenko to block the plan. In a matter of days, they had collected more than 70,000 signatures for the online petition. Director Alexander Sokurov, who won the Golden Lion at the 2011 Venice Film Festival, was among those who signed it. The liberal opposition party Yabloko, which has a large following in St. Petersburg, intends to push for a referendum on the issue. [...]

The activists' case against the "Kadyrov Bridge" is not necessarily a lost cause. About ten years ago, citizens won a major victory against an even mightier opponent: the energy giant Gazprom. The company wanted to build a skyscraper in the middle of St. Petersburg, yet after much protest, it was forced to find a new site - away from the historic city center. "When we took up the fight against the Gazprom Tower, everyone told us it was already a done deal," recalls the independent city council member Olga Galkina. Now she is collecting signatures against the Kadyrov Bridge. "We won then, and we will win again this time."

read the article 

Deutsche Welle: Kijowski: "Poland needs a strong civil society"

When Walesa moved into the spotlight as head of the Solidarity labor union, he had no idea that he would decisively accelerate his country's path to democracy. He moved the masses then, as Kijowski is doing now. Still there is one major difference. Back then, the movement sought to topple a totalitarian regime, today protests are directed at the policies of a democratically elected government. Kijowski is the first to emphasize that fact. [...]

What the two have in common, however, is a special talent - some even say charisma - that helps them mobilize the masses. When Kijowski founded the Committee for the Defense of Democracy (KOD) he consciously drew upon a legendary Communist era organization: the Workers' Defense Committee (KOR), which fought against the old regime in the 1970s. The KOR, Walesa's Solidarity and today's KOD are all movements that have captivated residents in Poland's big cities.

The most recent mass demonstrations began in the winter of 2015, when temperatures hovered around -15˚C (5˚F), and they have grown larger each week. It remains to be seen whether the movement can force the national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government to change its current course. As does the question of whether Kijowski will become "today's Lech Walesa." He shrugs off questions about his political ambitions or people's attempts to focus too much on him personally. He constantly repeats, "We do not want to topple the legally elected government, we just want to stop the dismantling of Polish democracy."

read the article 

The Guardian: Russia's 'valiant hero' in Ukraine turns his fire on Vladimir Putin

“Putin and his circle have recently taken steps which I believe will almost inevitably lead to the collapse of the system,” Strelkov said. “We don’t know yet how, and we don’t know when, but we are certain it will collapse, and more likely sooner than later.” [...]

Strelkov, who studied history and models himself on the White officers who fought the Bolsheviks during the Russian civil war, has been put on international sanctions lists for his role in the Ukraine war. Last week, Polish MP Małgorzata Gosiewska presented a report on alleged war crimes committed by Strelkov to the international criminal court in the Hague, and hopes an inquiry will be launched.

Strelkov does not deny having people shot for looting, but claims the executions were legal, as they were carried out according to a Soviet law on wartime justice.

read the article