Así desmontó Borrell a Junqueras (Vídeo)

Hacer del Brexit una oportunidad [Henry Kissinger]

Too much of the Europe of today is absorbed in management of structural problems rather than the elaboration of its purposes. From globalization to migration, the willingness to sacrifice is weakening. But a better future cannot be reached without some sacrifice of the present. A society reluctant to accept this verity stagnates and, over the decades, consumes its substance.

Inevitably a gap arises between the institutions and their responsibilities, which accounts for increasing populist pressures. The deepest challenge to the EU is not its management but its ultimate goals. In a world in which upheavals based on conflicting values span the continents, a common act of imagination by Europe and its Atlantic partners is badly needed.

Instead, European leadership is now faced with an unexpected challenge. Under the terms of its charter, the EU is obliged to negotiate with a principal member over the terms of withdrawal. Britain will want to maintain extensive ties with Europe while lifting or easing the constraints of its many legislative and bureaucratic requirements. The EU leadership has almost the opposite incentive. It will not wish to reward Britain’s Leave majority by granting Britain better terms than it enjoyed as a full member. Hence a punitive element is likely to be inherent in the EU bargaining position.

Many of us who have grown up with and admired the vision of European unity hope that the EU will transcend itself, by seeking its vocation not in penalizing the recalcitrant but by negotiating in a manner that restores the prospects of unity. The EU should not treat Britain as an escapee from prison but as a potential compatriot.

Punishing the U.K. will not solve the question of how to operate a common currency in the absence of a common fiscal policy among countries with disparate economic capacities, or of how to define a union whose ability to achieve common political strategies lags fundamentally behind its economic and administrative capacities.

By the same token, Britain needs to put forward the concept of autonomy for which its people voted in a manner that embraces ultimate cooperation. Britain and Europe together must consider how they might return, at least partially, to their historical role as shapers of international order.

In recent decades, Europe has retreated to the conduct of soft power. But besieged as it is on almost all frontiers by upheavals and migration, Europe, including Britain, can avoid turning into a victim of circumstance only by assuming a more active role. These vistas cannot yet be discussed at a geopolitical level, but the EU’s leaders should be able to form discrete and discreet panels for exploring them. In this manner, the Leave vote can serve as a catharsis. | HENRY KISSINGER

Leer el artículo completo, aquí (The Wall Street Journal)

Descubren el primer cáncer contagioso que puede saltar entre las especies

Se estudiaron colonias enfermas de mejillones de cerca de Vancouver y berberechos y almejas de la costa de España

THE WASHINGTON POST.- The first contagious cancer was discovered in the 1990s, when researchers studying Tasmanian devils noticed that the fierce marsupials were perishing from ugly facial tumors. Eventually, they identified two cancer cell lines that were causing the disease. Meanwhile, scientists working with dogs found that canines on every continent have been suffering from a sexually transmitted tumor for hundreds of years.

Goff and his colleagues found a third example of this phenomenon last year in soft shell clams living along the Atlantic coast. A colleague working at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass., asked him to come take a look at her dying clams, which she thought were suffering from a virus. Instead, they were being killed by a form of bivalve leukemia.

"It was really wild," Goff told The Washington Post at the time. "It was not what we were expecting."

Cockles (Cerastoderma edule) collected in Galicia, Spain. They are one of three new species that suffer from contagious cancer. (David Iglesias via Nature) But the discovery got him wondering whether transmissible cancers might be more common than anyone realized. So he set about collecting specimens from sick bivalve colonies on opposite sides of the world: mussels from near Vancouver and cockles and golden carpet shell clams on the coast of Spain. All three species were dying from cancer, he found. And all three of the cancers were genetically different from their hosts (the cockles suffered from two distinct strains).

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Lo que ocurrió en Sheffield explica por qué Gran Bretaña optó por el Brexit

El voto de los obreros empobrecidos por la globalización, desilusionados con el laborismo, se fueron al UKIP

Like the rest of the country, the city voted in favor of Brexit by a paper-thin margin: just 51% voted to Leave, with only 6,000 votes separating the Brexit and Remain camps. And right up until the eve of the result, Sheffield was expected to vote Remain – as was the UK as a whole.

To understand what happened here, we need to go back to April 2014, when UKIP leader Nigel Farage launched his campaign for the European Parliament elections in central Sheffield. For some, this seemed bizarre. Many had seen his party as an electoral threat primarily to the Conservatives. But Sheffield is a long-time Labour stronghold, in a Labour-dominated region. It hardly looked like fertile territory for a party nipping at the Conservatives’ heels. What was Farage up to?

At the launch, he made his intentions clear. Labour’s northern strongholds were very much in UKIP’s sights. Political scientists Rob Ford and Matt Goodwin later revealed that older, working class voters – who had long formed the core of Labour’s support – were becoming disillusioned. They felt “left behind” by social and economic change, and ignored by the political establishment (not least on concerns over rapid immigration from the EU). As a result, many were thinking of shifting to UKIP.

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WSJ, NYT y FT coinciden: España frena al populismo y precisa de un acuerdo entre PP y PSOE

Still, the bottom line is that Spain needs a functioning government. Creating one requires cooperation from the Socialists, who vigorously oppose Mr. Rajoy. Given the widespread anxiety and instability elsewhere in Europe, the Socialists should think twice before rejecting any accommodation with Mr. Rajoy’s party, Sunday’s clear front-runner. Mr. Rajoy should also put the welfare of Spain above personal ambition, and consider stepping aside to allow a party member more palatable to the Socialists to lead a government that will address Spanish citizens’ deep yearning for political renewal, transparency and equity.

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The Socialists don’t seem inclined to join a left-right coalition government. But perhaps they could be persuaded to abstain on an organizing vote in return for PP concessions. Those could include the resignation of Mr. Rajoy, who has already served his country well. New, more charismatic PP leaders could help the center-right cause if they would continue to push the Rajoy agenda.

The Brexit vote has triggered a new round of pessimism over Europe, but the EU is composed of individual countries whose fate is in their own hands. Spain shows that it’s possible for Old Europe to get some new life.

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A grand coalition between the PP and Socialists may be neither realistic nor desirable. However, there is an opportunity — and an urgent need — for the two main parties to enter negotiations and try to reach a broad agreement on the path forward. One early test would be whether they can achieve cross-party support to pass a new budget.

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