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They set up a controlled experiment in Punjab earlier this year comparing the behaviour and productivity of bees in two hives – one fitted with two mobile telephones which were powered on for two fifteen minute sessions per day for three months. The other had dummy models installed.

After three months the researchers recorded a dramatic decline in the size of the hive fitted with the mobile phon, a significant reduction in the number of eggs laid by the queen bee. The bees also stopped producing honey.

What is the breakdown? Foreign foreign institutions are estimated to have held €338bn of Greek debt at the end of 2009 - equivalent to 142 per cent of Greek GDP. In Spain’s case, the figure is €1,500bn - also 142 per cent of GDP. For Portugal, the figure is €333bn, the equivalent of twice its GDP. The combined amount for the three countries is €2,171bn, but the RBS authors think the total exposure of foreign institutions has declined a little in the first five months of this year.

The South African Transport and Allied Workers Union yesterday signed an agreement with state-owned Transnet Ltd. for an 11-percent wage increase and a once-off payment of 1 percent of workers’ salaries. The deal added 1 billion rand ($132.4 million) to Transnet’s wage bill, the company said.

One Afghan friend, who speaks flawless English and likes to quote Charles Dickens, Bertolt Brecht and Anton Chekhov, says the reason is clear. "The US has an interest in prolonging the conflict so as to stay in Afghanistan for the long term."

"The US uses Israel to threaten the Arab states, and they want to make Afghanistan into the same thing," he says. "Whoever controls Asia in the future, controls the world."

"Even a child of five knows this," one Kabuli radio journalist tells me, holding his hand a couple of feet from the ground in illustration. Look at Helmand, he says; how could 15,000 international and Afghan troops fail to crush a couple of thousand of badly equipped Taliban?

But the bank will also in future "stop setting the country's monetary, financial and foreign exchange policy", merely "participating" in interest rate decisions, overseeing the oil producing country's foreign exchange reserves and organising the currency auctions that determine the value of the kwanza.

And not for the first time either.

That’s the third scrapped auction of Brazilian fixed-rate bonds maturing in 2021 in the past month. The first cancellation was on May 6 and the second on May 27.

Canada has budgeted up to $930 Canadian (US$885 million) for the summits. By comparison, the stated amount spent by Pittsburgh on security for last September's G-20 summit was US$12.4 million. London's stated amount for the G-20 last year was US$10.9 million.

"The objective of keeping the AAA rating is an objective that is a stretch, and it is an objective that, in fact, partly informs the economic policies we want to have," Baroin said.

"We must maintain our AAA rating, reduce our debt to avoid being too dependent on the markets, and we must do this for the long term," he told Canal+ TV in an interview.

The death toll is expected to rise with experts forecasting temperatures approaching 50C (122F) in coming weeks. More than 100 people are reported to have died in the state of Gujarat where the mercury topped at 48.5C last week. At least 90 died in Maharashtra, 35 in Rajasthan and 34 in Bihar.
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Even India's northern hill stations – historically a refuge from the heat – have not escaped. Temperatures in Shimla, recorded a peak temperature of 32.4 Celsius, eight degrees hotter than the seasonal average.
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Mean temperatures for both March and April were the highest in more than 100 years.

With so many people kicking their heels, the number of 18-34-year-olds still living with their parents rose to almost 60% last year, up from 49% in 1983. Among those between 30 and 34, a third are still enjoying home-cooked pasta. Releasing the figures, the national statistics agency Istat said the stay-at-home generation could no longer be derided as lazy "bamboccioni", or big babies, since those actively seeking to flee the nest had tripled since 1983. The downturn turned them into hostages in their own homes.

Temperatures in the nearest town, Larkana, have been only slightly lower in the last week, with 53C recorded last Wednesday. As the temperatures peaked, four people died, including a prisoner serving a life sentence for murder and an elderly woman. Dozens are said to have fainted.

For the first time in 20 years, the gravitational pull of the EU is abating. Herein lies a geopolitical opportunity for Moscow to push for an economically viable form of integration in the former Soviet space — and even in parts of Eastern Europe — that would spark economic growth in the region and provide a boost, not a drag, to Russia’s economy.

The war on drugs and frequent raids by federal drug agents have helped support the local economy — keeping prices for street sales of pot high and keeping profits rich.

But high times are changing. Legal pot, under the guise of the California's medical marijuana laws, has spurred a rush of new competition. As a result, the wholesale price of pot grown in these areas is plunging.
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With the Reagan crackdown, Custer recalls, wholesale prices shot up — to as high as $5,000 a pound. That sudden and ironic windfall for those growers willing to risk prison time transformed the community.
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"Outdoor growers are having a hard time unloading their fall harvest," Custer says. "And this is six months later and when some people do move it, they don't get nearly the price they were hoping for."

That goes for both legal growers who cultivate limited quantities of pot under the medical marijuana laws and illegal operators who often grow larger amounts.

Prices are now much less than $2,000 a pound, according to interviews with more than a dozen growers and dealers. Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman says some growers can't get rid of their processed pot at any price.

His comments come on the heels of remarks made by his Swiss counterpart who said that the Swiss National Bank purchased euros to buttress the single currency.

"It is a regular procedure of central banks," to intervene in currency markets, Bruederle said. "It is not a secret," that central banks have a foreign exchange rate target, he added.

Bruederle said "eruptive" movements have to be avoided. He previously said that China holds 25 percent of its foreign exchange reserves in euros.