Barnaby Phillips

A letter from Athens

I'm walking late at night up the side of Syntagma Square. There, just across the road from the Greek parliament, stands a prostitute, self-consciously overdressed and waiting for clients.

She's a young black woman; perhaps one of the many Nigerians trafficked into Greece by ruthless gangs in recent years.

I happen to know the owner of the imposing building right next to where the woman is standing. He is a wealthy Greek, but these days he is a worried man.

The ladies of the night on the pavement are symptomatic of ominous changes. His commercial tenants have moved out of the building, fed up with riots, vandalism and strikes.

He has lost a valuable source of income, and although he's dropped the rent dramatically, he can't find another firm that wants to move in.

Charles Taylor verdict's wider significance

There was a strange contrast between the setting, a quiet courtroom in an orderly town in the Netherlands, and the terrible events that the judge was describing.

He spoke of young girls forced into sexual slavery and young boys made to kill, of the forcible carving of initials onto children's flesh, and mass rape and amputations.

He was talking about events in distant West Africa, in Sierra Leone's civil war, more than a decade ago.

The defendant, Charles Taylor, listened intently for more than two hours, his chin in his hand.

At the end, when he was pronounced guilty on all counts of having "aided and abetted" Sierra Leone's rebel RUF, Mr Taylor blinked, and looked around the room.

For one moment, he appeared confused.

We were here, on a cold spring day in the Hague, because Mr Taylor, a former warlord and president of Liberia, was judged too dangerous a man to put on trial in West Africa.

Historic verdict

Europe's struggling trade unions

Here's a sobering thought for Europe's trade unions. Throughout the long and painful story of the Eurozone crisis, from early 2010 to the present, it's difficult to think of a single significant victory for organised labour.There have been many strikes and protests in Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal. Some have been well attended, others not. Sometimes there has been violence, but most protests have been peaceful.But heavily indebted governments have pushed ahead anyway, with big cuts in public spending and a range of economic reforms.

Are the unions simply helpless before what they would characterise as the powerful forces of neo-liberalism and international finance? Do they lack the stomach for a fight? Or are they simply failing to present viable alternatives for Europe's struggling economies?

World reacts to Putin's victory

Here's a quick round-up of global reactions to Vladimir Putin's not-so surprising triumph in the Russian presidential elections:

First prize for effusiveness goes to ... Syria, where the official news agency said President Bashar al-Assad "offered in his name and that of the Syrian people his sincere congratulations for his remarkable election".

Another happy man was Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, who sent his personal congratulations to Moscow, saying that Vladimir Putin had "initiated a strategic relationship of co-operation between Venezuela and Russia, connected by a very strong bond of friendship".

There was also a warm reaction from Beijing.

President Hu Jintao sent a congratulatory message, and the Chinese foreign ministry said the election had been "a success".

West's reaction