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The bad news is that Greece’s problems are deeper than Europe’s leaders are willing to acknowledge, even now — and they’re shared, to a lesser degree, by other European countries. Many observers now expect the Greek tragedy to end in default; I’m increasingly convinced that they’re too optimistic, that default will be accompanied or followed by departure from the euro.

[..]

Logically, I see three ways Greece could stay on the euro.

First, Greek workers could redeem themselves through suffering, accepting large wage cuts that make Greece competitive enough to add jobs again. Second, the European Central Bank could engage in much more expansionary policy, among other things buying lots of government debt, and accepting — indeed welcoming — the resulting inflation; this would make adjustment in Greece and other troubled euro-zone nations much easier. Or third, Berlin could become to Athens what Washington is to Sacramento — that is, fiscally stronger European governments could offer their weaker neighbors enough aid to make the crisis bearable.

The trouble, of course, is that none of these alternatives seem politically plausible.

What remains seems unthinkable: Greece leaving the euro. But when you’ve ruled out everything else, that’s what’s left.

If it happens, it will play something like Argentina in 2001, which had a supposedly permanent, unbreakable peg to the dollar. Ending that peg was considered unthinkable for the same reasons leaving the euro seems impossible: even suggesting the possibility would risk crippling bank runs. But the bank runs happened anyway, and the Argentine government imposed emergency restrictions on withdrawals. This left the door open for devaluation, and Argentina eventually walked through that door.

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A 48-year-old imam who teaches children about the Koran has been charged with sexually molesting an 11-year-old female student.

According to the charge sheet the incidents are alleged to have occurred in August and September 2009 in the girl’s family home south of Stockholm. The 48-year-old was a regular visitor to the apartment and taught the girl and her 14-year-old elder brother about the Koran and the Arabic language.

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BP (NYSE:BP) has released footage of their remote operating vehicle (ROV) successfully capping one of the three leaks that is pouring an estimated 5,000 barrels of oil a day into the waters off the Gulf of Mexico.

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This makes no sense to me:

The White House said it backed “significantly” raising the cap on damages faced by energy firms that pollute the environment, as it demands BP pays in full for the Gulf oil spill.

Officials also hit out at fresh complaints by Republicans that it had not acted quickly enough in the immediate aftermath of an explosion on a rig in the Gulf of Mexico last month, which triggered the huge slick.

Under a law introduced after the Exxon Valdez oil tanker disaster in Alaska in 1989, oil companies are bound by law to pay for the full clean-up and containment costs of any oil seeping from their facilities after an accident.

But the legislation caps the damages for which the firm is liable at 75 million dollars unless the company is guilty of “gross negligence.” Bills introduced in the House and the Senate would fix the cap at 10 billion dollars.

Here’s a revolutionary idea- why don’t we get rid of the limit altogether! If BP or Exxon cuts corners and makes a hash of things, and they cause 60 billion dollars worth of damage, they are on the hook for the whole 60 billion dollars! And if they can’t pay for the whole bill, the company is liquidated, the shareholders get wiped out, and the company ceases to exist.

Why don’t we give that a shot? And don’t tell me it is because no one will then undertake oil drilling. Of course they will! They’ll just pass on the costs to the consumer. And should being really careful and safe cost too much money, then it might just make other forms of energy look cheaper by comparison, and spur investment in those energy types.

Obligatory: http://xkcd.com/327/

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The male escort hired by anti-gay activist George Alan Rekers has told Miami New Times the Baptist minister is a homosexual who paid him to provide body rubs once a day in the nude, during their ten-day vacation in Europe.

Rekers allegedly named his favorite maneuver the “long stroke” — a complicated caress “across his penis, thigh… and his anus over the butt cheeks,” as the escort puts it. “Rekers liked to be rubbed down there,” he says.

[..]

In the past 24 hours, Rekers, a board member at the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) and cofounder of the Family Research Council, has claimed he took Lucien to Europe to inspire him to accept Jesus into his heart and renounce his homosexuality.

Lucien now offers Rekers a counterproposal: “In all honesty, he should disassociate himself from these [anti-gay] groups.”

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Now, one of the photographers has written in again, pointing us to a photo gallery of the Icelandic volcano eruption last month that was published on Fox News. Like Gizmodo, Fox News is also exploiting the work of Flickr user Orvatli without permission. This clearly violates his copyrights and Örvar is not pleased, to say the least.

“This was a once in a lifetime photo session for me and these big media companies are ruining the value of my images by publishing them. Each time the image gets published their value decreases,” Örvar told TorrentFreak. “Publishers generally want unique and unpublished images on their media so a rarely or unpublished image has higher value than those everybody has seen,” he added.

As with Gizmodo, Örvar sent an invoice to Fox News to get paid for his work. Although Gizmodo eventually paid half of his standard fee after he kept complaining, Fox News is not responding to his inquiries at all. Fox News is obviously not living up to its “Fair & Balanced” tagline.

Now, we probably wouldn’t have covered this issue if Fox News wasn’t owned by Rupert Murdoch. The multi-media tycoon is a known copyright evangelist who accuses Google and other search engines of copyright infringement for indexing the websites of his newspapers.

Murdoch’s News Corp. outfit also owns the film studio 20th Century Fox, an MPAA member that has launched several lawsuits against against torrent sites, including The Pirate Bay. It seems that Murdoch has a double standard when it comes to copyright infringement. Apparently it’s not that bad if he’s the one making money from it.