War in the north Greece. Police attacks Ierissos village

“NOW SOS IN IERISSOS CHALKIDIKI. STRONG POLICE FORCE ENTERED INSIDE IERISSOS VILLAGE. PLEASE SHARE AND HELP US AS YOU CAN. THEY ARE USING GASES!!!! THIS IS DEMOCRACY OF GREECE TODAY !! PLEASE HELP US WE ARE BEGGING THE POLICE DENDIAS AND SAMARAS TO STOP! STOP THIS NOW!!!!ALL DUE TO EL DORADO MINING PROJECTS!!SOS CHALKIDIKI”

Why Germany Wants to See its US Gold

DPA

For decades, almost half of Germany's gold has been stored deep below the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Now, with the euro crisis swirling, German politicians are asking their central bankers to take stock of the reserves. Some even say that the gold should be shipped home.

Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann wanted to personally convince Peter Gauweiler that the German gold was still where it should be. Early this summer, the head of Germany's central bank took the obstinate politician from the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), a party that is a member of the government coalition in Berlin, and a number of his colleagues into the Bundesbank's inner sanctum: the gold vault.

There, 6,000 gold bars are stacked on industrial-strength shelves in a purpose-built building in Frankfurt. An additional 76,000 bars of bullion are stored in four safe boxes, in sealed containers. But even this personal inspection wasn't enough to reassure the visiting member of parliament -- on the contrary: "The Bundesbank monitors its domestic gold in an exemplary fashion," Gauweiler says, "and this makes it all the more incomprehensible that the bank doesn't look after its reserves abroad."
For quite some time now, Gauweiler has been pestering the government and the Bundesbank with questions concerning where and how the country's reserves are stored, and how often they are checked. He has submitted requests and commissioned reports on the topic.
Last week, Gauweiler celebrated his greatest triumph to date in his gold campaign, which has been a source of some amusement for many fellow German politicians: A secret report by the Federal Audit Office had been made public -- and it contained stern criticism of the German central bank in Frankfurt. The Bonn-based auditors urged a better inventory system, including quality checks.
This demand, which even the bank's inspectors saw as nothing more than routine, alarmed the Berlin political establishment. Indeed, the partially blacked-out report read like the prologue to an espionage thriller in which the stunned central bankers could end up standing in front of empty vaults in the US.
'Grotesque Debate'
For decades, German central bankers have contented themselves with written affirmations from their American colleagues that the gold still remains where it is said to be stored. According to the report, the bar

Greece Welcomes Gold Miners to Rank First in Europe: Commodities

For three years, Steve Sharpe’s company prodded Greek officials for permission to drill for gold. Before approval was finally granted this year, European Goldfields Ltd.’s battered share price attracted a takeover bid.
“No way on earth would I go back to Greece,” said the Canadian producer’s former head of business development, who left to head a mining company across the border in Macedonia.

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TVX Gold Inc. repeatedly clashed with local government officials and courts and eventually abandoned Greece in 2003 after its permits for Olympias were declared illegal and annulled. Photographer: Elena Becatoros/AP

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More than 25,000 protested in Athens yesterday as German Chancellor Angela Merkel made her first visit to the Greek capital in five years. Photographer: Kostas Tsironis/Bloomberg

Delays like Sharpe’s are less common after the economic collapse in Greece spurred a new urgency in