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Now that the issue of the president’s birth certificate has been laid to rest (mostly), some conservatives are turning their attention to a new obsession: Barack Obama‘s college transcripts.

Last week, a website that already had offered a $10,000 reward for Obama’s transcripts from Occidental College,Columbia University and Harvard Law School, increased the bounty to $20,000.

About a year ago, Donald Trump, among the highest-profile “birthers,” helped get the mini-movement started. After the president released his long-form birth certificate, Trump abruptly changed subjects:

“The word is, according to what I’ve read,” said Trump, “that he was a terrible student when he went to Occidental. He then gets into Columbia; he then gets to Harvard. … How do you get into Harvard if you’re not a good student? Now maybe that’s right or maybe it’s wrong, but I don’t know why he doesn’t release his records.”

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Greece handed 18 billion euros ($22.6 billion) to its four biggest banks on Monday, an official said, allowing the stricken lenders to regain access to European Central Bank funding.

The long-awaited injection—via bonds from the European Financial Stability Facility rescue fund—will boost the nearly depleted capital base of National Bank, Alpha , Eurobank and Piraeus Bank.

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There are growing concerns that the regulatory bodies overseeing the financial sector are incapable of understanding, preventing or even properly investigating excessive risk taking that threatens to ruin the economy.

This issue was raised before the 2008 financial crisis and received more attention during the debate that led to the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial-reform law. Some tweaks were made in various parts of the regulatory apparatus, including the governance of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, to reduce the influence of Wall Street.

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Toyota Motor Corp. (7203)’s Prius, a niche oddity when it went on sale 15 years ago, jumped to the world’s third best-selling car line in the first quarter as U.S. demand and incentives in Japan turned the hybrid into a mainstream hit.

Prius sales more than doubled as Toyota extended the name to a four-model “family” of vehicles at the same time that rebates and tax breaks in Japan are saving buyers the equivalent of $2,500 or more. In the quarter, sales soared to 247,230, trailing only Toyota’s Corolla, at 300,800, and Ford Motor Co. (F)’s 277,000 Focus sales.

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David Cameron on Monday summoned top policy makers to discuss contingency plans for an implosion of the eurozone, as Spanish bond yields neared the danger zone.

Against the backdrop of a banking crisis in Spain and uncertainty in Greece, Mr Cameron and his senior ministers met Sir Mervyn King, Bank of England governor, and Lord Turner, the City’s top regulator, to discuss the worsening outlook.

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Asia stocks reversed losses and oil gained on speculation China will take steps to boost growth in the world’s second-largest economy. The euro traded near a 22- month low as Europe’s banks seek more financial support.

The MSCI Asia Pacific Index (MXAP) advanced 0.2 percent as of 10:56 in Tokyo. Standard & Poor’s 500 Index futures advanced 0.5 percent, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng China Enterprises Index of mainland stocks added 0.6 percent. The euro slid 0.1 percent to $1.2525 and Australia’s currency fell 0.2 percent to 98.32 U.S. cents. Crude rose 0.4 percent in New York, while gold declined 0.4 percent.

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(Reuters) – Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney chose Veterans Day to proclaim to the American people his conviction that the world is a dangerous place, and the United States must remain its most formidable military power.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday voiced “revulsion” over the bloodshed in Syria, while accusing Iran and its Lebanese militia ally Hezbollah of being accomplices.

He was “revolted was by the incessant massacres conducted bySyrian President Bashar Assad’s forces against … civilians … which continued over the weekend in the town of Houla,” the premier’s office said.

“Iran and Hezbollah are an inseparable part of the Syrian atrocities, and the world needs to act against them too,” Netanyahu was quoted as saying.

At least 92 people, more than a third of them children, were killed in the central Syrian town of Houla on Friday and Saturday, provoking international outrage.

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Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, insisted that “both sides” inSyria’s conflict were responsible for the deaths of at least 108 people in the town on Friday, and that Russia was not interested in trying to remove Bashar al-Assad from power.

Mr Hague had expressed hope on Sunday that he could persuade the Kremlin to lean on the Syrian president – whose forces are suspected of committing the massacre – to curtail the spiralling violence.

The US’s top military officer has warned Syria it could face armed intervention as international outrage grows over the massacre of women and children by tanks and artillery in Houla.

General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said that following the UN security council’s condemnation of the slaughter – in which more than 100 people were killed, many of them children – there needed to be increased diplomatic pressure on Damascus. But he added that the US would be prepared to act militarily if it was “asked to do so

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Greece will leave the euro zone on June 18 if the populist government wins the country’s elections on the 17 as the rest of the euro zone rounds on “cheaters,” Nick Dewhirst, director at wealth management firm Integral Asset Management, told CNBC.com Monday.

“The euro zone is a club but you get cheaters who get away with it until everyone finds out and at that point you need to remove them otherwise everyone will cheat. It’s better for Greece to leave,” Dewhirst said.

He added that Greek society was built on cheating and scheming, saying “everyone does it” but that voters elsewhere in the euro zone were now calling Greece to account.

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Listen here to the band’s first album in nine years.

Read the Rolling Stone article here.

How do we know if we are where it’s at? Tarleton Gillespie explores the controversy over Twitter Trends and the algorithmic ‘censorship’ of #occupywallstreet.

Read the article here.

Gallup is out with a new poll showing that Romney is destroying Obama with male veterans.

See Gallup’s polling results here.

More equivocation? Did he just add context to his comment? Or is he truly sorry?

Read the article here.

Four German retirees, who are all between 61 and 80 years old, reportedly bound and gagged their financial adviser, broke two of his ribs while savagely beating him, drove him in the trunk of their car to a lakeside house where they’d prepared a basement cell and forced him to sign papers stating he would refund their investments.

Read the rest here.

(Reuters) – The United States is well poised to withstand any fallout from Europe’s escalating debt crisis, a top Federal Reserve executive told the Wall Street Journal.

Read the article here.

Spanish banks are masking their full exposure to soured property loans while they continue to prop up insolvent “zombie” developers, leading to credit-rating downgrades and plummeting share prices.

Spain is trying to clean up its banks, requiring lenders to set aside more for possible losses on loans deemed performing to developers like Metrovacesa SA (MVC), which hasn’t completed a project in more than a year and has none under way. While that represents about 30 billion euros ($38 billion) of increased provisions, it’s not enough because many of the loans said to be performing aren’t, said Mikel Echavarren, chairman of Irea, a Madrid-based finance companyspecializing in real estate.

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Portugal’s government will approve a 1 billion-euro ($1.3 billion) credit line to municipalities to help them repay short-term debt to suppliers, said Miguel Relvas, the country’s minister for parliamentary affairs.

“The credit line, with a total value of 1 billion euros, aims to inject money into the local economy,” Relvas said at a news conference in Lisbon today after meeting the president of the country’s association of municipalities, Fernando Ruas.

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