“If a mosque is constructed for Islamist criminals in Greece, a front of 100,000 Greeks headed by Golden Dawn will be created,” party spokesman Ilias Kasidiaris told supporters at a rally late on Sunday, in footage broadcast by state television.

The threat came after the Muslim Association of Greece over the weekend said it had received a crude note littered with profanities, warning its members to leave the country or face “slaughter like chickens.”

Police said they were examining the note, which had as its backdrop the symbol of neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, which blames migrants for Greece’s economic woes and has pledged to throw them out of the country.

Golden Dawn, which has 18 seats in parliament and is suspected by rights groups of encouraging supporters to beat up migrants, denied sending the note.

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The data comes from national statistics institute ISTAT, which published an annual report demonstrating, among other issues, that Italy is witnessing youth unemployment of nearly 40 percent – the highest in Europe.

A reported 23.9 percent of young Italians are neither in the job market nor receiving education, the report stressed. In southern Italy, one in three young people aged 15-29 fell into this category.

Just over half (57.2 percent) of youths who graduated were currently employed, with the Europe-wide average standing at 77.2 per cent.

Fourteen percent of Italy’s population – 8.6 million people – is living on food assistance, a number that has doubled over the past two years, according to the report.

Nine poverty indicators were taken into account while carrying out the study; if a family meets more than four, it is considered to be seriously deprived. Some 15 million people – 25 percent of Italy’s population – are living in families that meet three or more of the poverty indicators, the research found.

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A judge has ruled that a North Texas lesbian couple can’t live together because of a morality clause in one of the women’s divorce papers. The clause is common in divorce cases in Texas and other states. It prevents a divorced parent from having a romantic partner spend the night while children are in the home. If the couple marries, they can get out from under the legal provision—but that is not an option for gay couples in Texas, where such marriages aren’t recognized.

The issue appears to have first arisen last month during a divorce hearing for Carolyn and Joshua Compton in Collin County, Texas. According to the Dallas Morning News, District Judge John Roach Jr. decided to enforce the letter of the terms detailed in the former couple’s 2011 divorce papers, and ordered Carolyn’s partner of nearly three years, Page Price, to move out of the home she shared with Carolyn and her 10- and 13-year-old daughters. It was the ex-husband who requested the clause be enforced, according to his lawyer.

In handing down the ruling, the judge argued that the clause was “a general provision for the benefit of the children,” and one that was not written to specifically target homosexuals. While that last part my be true, it’s obvious that the provision affects homosexuals differently than it does their straight counterparts given that the Lone Star State doesn’t allow gays and lesbians to marry. According to the AP, the so-called morality clause is part of a standing order that applies to each and every divorce case filed in the county and was also added to the Comptons’ final divorce decree. It has no expiration date, meaning that the lesbian couple will need either a court to overturn the ruling or the state legislature to legalize gay marriage before they can move back in together with the kids.

According to the women’s lawyer, the morality clause technically makes it illegal for Carolyn to have anyone she is dating or intimate with at her home with her two children anytime after 9 p.m. In effect, that means Carolyn Compton had to choose between living with her lesbian partner and living with her children. The couple says they’ll obey the judge’s ruling and Price will move out while they consider their legal options.

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The only people who, occasionally, seem to express doubts about school reform are the schools, teachers, and communities who have to deal with it.

This is certainly the case with the latest, sweeping round of school reform in Chicago. In March, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that the city was going to close 61 school buildings, affecting some 30,000 students, the vast majority of them between kindergarten and 8th grade. The move is necessary, the city argues, in order to deal with a massive budget crunch; the district is supposed to face a $1 billion deficit next year. But the city has also argued that moving students from poorly performing schools to better-performing schools will have educational benefits for everybody.

All of the city’s claims are dubious at best — from the number of schools being closed, to the number of students affected, to whether the closings will actually save money, to the formula CPS uses to decide which schools are under-utilized and ripe for closing. But the argument that the changes will benefit students in poorly performing schools seems especially hard to credit when you look closely at any of the schools actually affected, or at the way the changes have been implemented.

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President Obama has already declared a state of emergency for Oklahoma, directing federal aid for state and local recovery. This allows the Federal Emergency Management to provide temporary housing, home repairs, loans for the uninsured home, and other disaster relief programs. Speaking on Tuesday, the president guaranteed federal resources for victims.

“As a nation, our full focus right now is on the urgent work of rescue, and the hard work of recovery and rebuilding that lies ahead,” he said. “The people of Moore should know that their country will remain on the ground, there for them, beside them, as long as it takes.”

He added later, “Our prayers are with the people of Oklahoma today and we will back up those prayers with deeds for as long as it takes.”

And while the president has directed all needed federal assistance in this case, making no mention of sequestration, cuts to the FEMA and other governmental programs could prove tricky in the weeks and months ahead.

Due to the massive cuts brought on by sequestration, the disaster relief section of FEMA’s budget will lose $1 billion this year. Following the devastation from Hurricane Sandy earlier this year, FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate said FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund would pay out a total of $10.8 billion to storm victims by the end of the fiscal year. That would leave $2.5 billion in its disaster fund for the rest of the year.

While testifying before Congress in March, he said he had concerns that there would be enough money to help state and local governments that help rebuild damaged infrastructure and public. Sequestration also cut $1.9 billion from transportation repair funding and other disaster programs.

Sequestration didn’t just affect disaster relief. It will also cut 7 percent of the budget of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which runs the National Hurricane Center, the National Weather Service and other weather detection programs.

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Kerry says if the world can’t find a path toward a negotiated outcome, the result will be more aid to the Syrian rebels.

He spoke ahead of an 11-nation conference in Jordan on Wednesday night.

Kerry and Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh both stressed, however, that the goal is to get the Syrian government and opposition into political transition talks.

Diplomats hope they’ll begin next month in Geneva.

Also on Wednesday, Kerry said Iranian fighters and Hezbollah are helping perpetuate Assad’s “campaign of terror” in Syria.

Meanwhile, inside Syria, the main opposition alliance on Wednesday urged fighters from around the country to reinforce a rebel-held town under attack by President Bashar Assad’s troops and their allies from the Lebanese militant Hezbollah group.

With its appeal, the Syrian National Coalition sought to bolster embattled rebel forces in Qusair who for a fourth straight day Wednesday came under fierce assault by government troops. The town, which is near the border with Lebanon, lies at the heart of a government offensive to secure a strategic strip of land running from the capital, Damascus, to the Mediterranean coast and Syria’s seaports.

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The trouble began last September, when Nigel Warren rented out his bedroom in his East Village apartment on Airbnb for three days. Even though his roommate was home and there was no reported misbehavior, New York City’s special enforcement officers slapped fines of more than $40,000 on Warren’s landlord for violating illegal transient hotel rules, according to the New York Times. New York City law restricts residents from renting out apartments, or rooms in them, for fewer than 30 days, unless they are also living in the home during the guests’ stay.

On May 9, Judge Clive Morrick ruled in favor of the city, reasoning that since the Airbnb host had “complete strangers” residing in his apartment during the stay, Warren’s landlord was indeed operating an unlicensed hotel and has to pay a fine of $2,400. (Warren agreed to pay the fines on behalf of his landlord in order to avoid eviction.)

No stranger to similar controversies in other cities, Airbnb released a statement saying it will continue to fight the legal battle. While its terms of service say that users are fully liable for complying with local laws, the company maintains that New York City’s laws are not aimed at individual tenants, but instead at preventing landlords from buying residential buildings and operating them as hotels, reports CNN Money. The San Francisco-based company, which currently operates in over 33,000 cities in 192 countries, has raised the ire of authorities elsewhere — most recently in Amsterdam, where the main issue is that local laws, such as paying tourist taxes, are circumvented with Airbnb transactions.

Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/05/21/nyc-judge-rules-airbnb-rental-is-an-illegal-hotel/#ixzz2U2iTudWZ

Leahy’s backing is a major boost, because his committee oversees the Drug Enforcement Administration, which has jurisdiction over hemp, despite the fact that it’s not a drug. His support is also a critical momentum swing because he had previously objected to inserting the provision into the farm bill based on jurisdictional concerns. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a hemp backer, requested late last Monday night, the day before the farm bill came up for consideration, that Leahy grant a waiver of his jurisdiction, a request he declined. It was tough timing for McConnell: Leahy was in the midst of marking-up the historic immigration reform bill working its way through his panel.

In January, however, Leahy sent a strongly worded letter to the DEA asking why it had not been granting permits in recent years to hemp producers, and citing increased state support for domestically grown hemp. The DEA, in its reply, pointedly refused to refer to the plant as hemp, preferring cannabis or marijuana instead.

“Under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), cannabis is a schedule I controlled substance regardless of its potency,” Eric J. Akers, the DEA’s deputy chief of congressional and public affairs, wrote in response, saying he believed the current regulations on hemp were adequate.

About eight people have applied to grow industrial hemp since 2000, he said, with half being approved and the rest denied because they had insufficient security.

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NPR‘s All Things Considered takes a look at how the situation is likely to shake out come January for people who will have to buy health insurance with federal subsidies in the online insurance marketplaces. Many health plans take a credit card for the first month, and then a customer has to pay every month with either a check or through an electronic transfer from their bank account.

If you don’t have that, well, the future is unclear.

“You don’t want to take these millions of unbankable people through the entire enrollment process and then at the end of line say, ‘OK, the only way you can pay for your share of the premium is with a bank account number,’ ” notes Dan Schuyler, a director at Leavitt Partners, a firm that is advising private insurers and states on how to comply with the law.

Consumer advocates are aware of the coming problem for so-called unbankables, and say that if consumers are required to purchase health coverage, they’re going to need other options besides banks that are easy and affordable.

“I think there is a dawning awareness that this is a large problem,” Brian Haile, senior vice president for health policy at Jackson Hewitt Tax Service tells NPR. He formerly worked as the director of he Insurance Exchange Planning Initiative in Tennessee so he knows his stuff. “We raised these issues with the federal government well over a year ago and in a series of about four or five letters.”

Back then? Not a word.

The Affordable Care Act doesn’t require insurers to accept all forms of payment, and it’s not set out in any other federal health care law either. Perhaps, because federal officials don’t want to push insurance companies away from selling plans on the exchanges, and setting up such payment requirements might dissuade them.

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Speaking on the UN’s International Day of Biological Diversity, Ban said there was a “mutually reinforcing” relationship between biodiversity and water that should be harnessed.

“We live in an increasingly water insecure world where demand often outstrips supply and where water quality often fails to meet minimum standards. Under current trends, future demands for water will not be met,” Ban said.

Water, food, energy and climate are all linked.

Most forms of energy generation require water, variable weather is making agriculture harder while extreme weather events are hindering natural water storage.

Ban believes there is an opportunity to address these challenges as the Millennium Development Goals are replaced with a new set of objectives.

“As the international community strives to accelerate its efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and define a post-2015 agenda, including a set of goals for sustainable development, water and biodiversity are important streams in the discussion.

“Although seemingly abundant, only a tiny amount of the water on our planet is easily available as freshwater,” he said.

The latest UN World Water Development Report, released last year, called for $13.7bn to $19.2bn of the Green Climate Fund’s annual targeted funding of $100bn to be directed at the challenges faced by the water sector.

Much of this would be used to tackle supply shortfalls and flood management.

Climate change is already impacting the availability of water through rainfall disruption, soil moisture, glacier, snow and ice melt and river, ground and water flows.

Ban said the once competing campaigns for water and biodiversity protection could now be turned to the benefit of societies facing stresses on both water and food security.

“Where once the focus was on trade-offs between water use and biodiversity, today we are coming to understand how biodiversity and water security are mutually reinforcing,” he said.

“Ecosystems influence the local, regional and global availability and quality of water. Forests help regulate soil erosion and protect water quality and supply. Wetlands can reduce flood risks. Soil biodiversity helps maintain water for crops.

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