EL SALVADOR - The President of the El Salvadoran Center for Appropriate Technologies (CESTA), Ricardo Navarro, has demanded that the US Ambassador to El Salvador, Mari Carmen Aponte, stops pressurizing the Government of El Salvador to buy Monsanto’s GM seeds rather than non-GMO seeds from domestic suppliers. “I would like to tell the US Ambassador to stop pressuring the Government (of El Salvador) to buy ‘improved’ GM seeds,” said Navarro, which is only of benefit to US multinationals and is to the detriment of local seed production, Verdad Digital reported last week. In recent weeks, the US has been pushing the El Salvadoran Government to sign the second Millennium Challenge Compact. One of the main conditions on the agreement is allegedly for the purchasing of GM seeds from Monsanto.

CANADA - Why, after millennia of prohibiting the intentional killing of another human being, in particular by physicians, did Quebec politicians think euthanasia is a “progressive” idea that must be implemented without delay? Bill 52, originally introduced by the Parti Québécois government, was rapidly reintroduced by the Liberals and passed Thursday. Why did Quebec politicians fail to give sufficient weight to the dangers and harms of legalizing euthanasia, especially to vulnerable people — those who are old and fragile or disabled, and whose lives are denigrated by euthanasia’s message that they are not worth living?

EUROPE - The results of the recent European parliamentary elections rattled the continent's political establishment, with the characterisation of the results as a ‘political earthquake' being very much en vogue. The chief source of concern was the spectacular increase in support for Eurosceptic parties across the continent. The strongest effects were felt in Britain, France and Denmark, where the National Front (25 percent), the UK Independence Party (27.5 percent) and the Danish People's Party (27.5 percent) won their respective elections outright. Total support for radical rightwing and leftwing Eurosceptic parties more than doubled.

EUROPE - Last week saw the first time that a major central bank – the ECB [European Central Bank] – cut interest rates below zero. It was also notable for what the ECB did not do, that is to say, it did not begin a policy of quantitative easing. In the end, this non-event could be the more significant. The bond markets have apparently decided that the euro crisis is all over. But we have been here before. They did not foresee the huge crisis of confidence that was to threaten the euro in 2012.

EUROPE - David Cameron says there is a political consensus in Westminster against Jean-Claude Juncker becoming president of the European Commission. Mr Cameron is meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte for wide-ranging talks on the EU's future at Mr Reinfeldt's summer residence in Harpsund. Mrs Merkel has publicly backed Mr Juncker, the candidate nominated by party groups in Europe, but the UK, Sweden and the Netherlands are leading a campaign to block his candidacy. Mr Cameron is strongly opposed to Mr Juncker's belief in a closer political union between EU member states and has described Brussels as "too big" and "too bossy". "The message from the European elections was clear - that we need reform in Europe," a spokesman said. "We need reform so we can promote jobs and growth. Mr Juncker's record shows he would make these reforms more difficult."

UK - Withdrawal from the EU would nullify Britain’s trading treaties with the world in one stroke and reduce the country to a supplicant pleading for re-entry into the global system, a top panel of experts has warned. "Brexit" would pose a grave threat to the UK car industry and the City of London, and cause foreign investment to dry up, a report for the Centre for European Reform (CER) stated. “The regulatory sovereignty that would supposedly flow from leaving would be largely illusory. The UK would still have to comply with the club’s rule book without having power to influence it,” it said. The City would risk a global exodus. American, Japanese and Arab companies would no longer be able to set up their regional headquarters in London and then spread into the rest of the EU. They would have to set parallel structures. The European Central Bank would force clearing houses to relocate euro-business to the eurozone.

USA - Reaction ranged from anger to shock to befuddlement after Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock compared the nation's direction to Hitler's Nazi Germany during a farewell speech at the Indiana Republican Convention on Saturday. "The people of Germany in a free election selected the Nazi Party because they made great promises that appealed to them because they were desperate and destitute. And why is that? Because Germany was bankrupt," he said. Mourdock, who has stoked outrage with incendiary comments in the past, then alluded to the 70th anniversary last week of the D-Day invasion during World War II, saying, "The truth is, 70 years later, we are drifting on the tides toward another beachhead and it is the bankruptcy of the United States of America."

USA - Progressive hero Noam Chomsky is terrified of the surveillance state that has developed during the tenure of President Barack Obama, calling it a grave threat to our fundamental civil liberties. In a column published Monday, Chomsky writes that the documents revealed to the public by Edward Snowden show a system that is flagrantly violating the principles of the Constitution.

UK - Young people willingly give up their privacy on Google and Facebook because they have not read George Orwell’s ‘1984’ unlike previous generations, a leading academic has warned. Noel Sharkey, professor of artificial intelligence and robotics at Sheffield University, said that large corporations were hoovering up private information and modern generations did not realize it was wrong. He said that older people who had grown up reading George Orwell’s 1984 about ‘Big Brother technology and authoritarianism’, were in a better position to resist the creeping erosion of privacy. Professor Sharkey, speaking at Cheltenham Science Festival, said: “I’m 65, I don’t want to be targeted. I am very uncomfortable with it. It seems to me that our privacy is gradually being violated and eroded without us noticing.”

USA - Facebook recently rolled out a new feature that's leaving some users speechless and others running to sign a petition to have it removed, news.com.au reports. When enabled by users, the social network's new quirk allows its mobile app to turn on your smartphone's microphone, listen in on what's around you. Facebook identifies the music or TV shows it hears, and can tell the world you're currently "Listening to Iggy Azalea" if it hears you bumping "Fancy." The opt-in feature has many users creeped out. More than half a million have flocked to sign a sumofus.com petition to have the new gimmick axed from the app. "Tell Facebook not to release its creepy and dangerous new app feature that listens to users’ surroundings and conversations," the petition urges. "Facebook says it'll be responsible with this feature, but we know we can't trust it."

UK - Vodafone, one of the world's largest mobile phone groups, has revealed the existence of secret wires that allow government agencies to listen to all conversations on its networks, saying they are widely used in some of the 29 countries in which it operates in Europe and beyond. The company has broken its silence on government surveillance in order to push back against the increasingly widespread use of phone and broadband networks to spy on citizens, and will publish its first Law Enforcement Disclosure Report on Friday. At 40,000 words, it is the most comprehensive survey yet of how governments monitor the conversations and whereabouts of their people. The company said wires had been connected directly to its network and those of other telecoms groups, allowing agencies to listen to or record live conversations and, in certain cases, track the whereabouts of a customer. Privacy campaigners said the revelations were a "nightmare scenario" that confirmed their worst fears on the extent of snooping.

RUSSIA - Gazprom Neft had signed additional agreements with consumers on a possible switch from dollars to euros for payments under contracts, the oil company's head Alexander Dyukov told a press conference. "Additional agreements of Gazprom Neft on the possibility to switch contracts from dollars to euros are signed. With Belarus, payments in roubles are agreed on," he said. Dyukov said nine of ten consumers had agreed to switch to euros. ITAR-TASS reported earlier that Gazprom Neft considered the possibility to make payments in roubles under contracts. Some contracting parties agree to switch from dollars to euros and Yuans.

UK - Britain may be forced to use “last resort” measures to avert blackouts in coming winters, Ed Davey, the energy secretary, will say on Tuesday. Factories will be paid to switch off at times of peak demand in order to keep households’ lights on, if Britain’s dwindling power plants are unable to provide enough electricity, under the backstop measures from National Grid. The Grid is expected to announce that it will begin recruiting businesses that will be paid tens of thousands of pounds each simply to agree to take part in its scheme. They will receive further payments if they are called upon to stop drawing power from the grid. It is also expected to press ahead with plans to pay mothballed gas power plants to ready themselves to be fired up when needed.

UK - Hundreds of thousands of school children will be taught British values in the wake of the Trojan horse scandal from September. Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, said that in the future all of England’s 20,000 primary and secondary schools will have to promote British values of tolerance and fairness. The recommendation was one of the chief findings in the wake of the scandal which found that schools in Birmingham had been taken over by Islamists. The review found that one of the schools had been funding a Madrassa from its own budget, while at another Muslim children had been taken on trips to Saudi Arabia. A third school regularly broadcast a call to Muslim prayer over the school’s loudspeaker in the playground while another school taught in biology that “evolution is not what we believe”.

VATICAN - Pope Francis told Israeli and Palestinian leaders they "must respond" to their people's yearning for peace "undaunted in dialogue" during an unprecedented prayer meeting among Jews, Christians and Muslims at the Vatican on Sunday. The pope made his vibrant appeal to Israeli President Shimon Peres and his Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas at the end of a two-hour evening service in the Vatican gardens, an encounter he hopes will relaunch the Middle East peace process.