Only two months after being sworn in, partners in Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government are finding it increasingly difficult to paint over differences on issues ranging from tax cuts to anti-terror measures. 

The conservative bloc comprising Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), had for years longed for a governing partnership with the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP). Their wish was granted when voters at the September 27 general elections gave the parties the required mandate for the alliance.

 

However, the difficult negotiations that preceded the signing of the coalition agreement in October didn't seem to augur well for the partnership. And signs of discord have continued to afflict the coalition into 2010.

 

"The image of the coalition can be better," the head of the FDP's parliamentary group, Brigit Homburger, told the dpa news agency on New Year's day.

 

Meanwhile, the FDP secretary general, Christian Lindner, made it clear who his party held responsible for flaws in the coalition's image. He told the Tagesspiegel newspaper on Saturday, January 2, that the CDU/CSU lacked orientation where questions of core values were concerned.

 

In turn, the chairman of the employees' group in the CDU/CSU parliamentary contingent, Peter Weiss, told the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper that the FDP was finding it hard to "say goodbye to party congress rhetoric and engage in the hard realities of government business."

New full-body scanners are already being ordered by the British Airports Authority, the prime minister said this morning as he outlined a new regime of tightened airport security.

Speaking on BBC One's Andrew Marr programme, Gordon Brown pre-empted the findings of his own review by saying future passengers must expect to be scanned by the controversial scanners. The devices have received mixed appraisals on whether they are suitable to detect the new type of explosive that 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is accused of using in an attempt to blow up a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day.

Since that attempted attack, an urgent review into airport security has begun. The transport secretary, Andrew Adonis, is expected to report its findings to parliament this week.

BAA, which operates six British airports, said today it would move quickly to install full-body scanners at London's Heathrow.

"Now that the government has given the go-ahead, we will introduce full-body scanners as soon as practical," a spokesman for BAA told Reuters. He said BAA was just looking at introducing the scanners at Heathrow - Europe's busiest airport by passenger numbers - at this stage.

Russia has stopped shipments of oil to Belarus following a dispute about pricing, oil traders said on Monday.

The move will set off alarm bells in Europe, triggering memories of last January's natural gas war between Russia and Ukraine that left several eastern European cities without gas for days. Oil, however, is more fungible than gas, and easily made up with alternative suppliers, so the consequences of the dispute are unlikely to be as severe.

The cut-off is the first since January 2007, when Russia stopped pumping oil to Belarus for three days following a similar tariff battle, which was eventually resolved in Russia's favour.

Despite the action, oil exports to Europe were still flowing and refineries in Belarus had a week's worth of oil stockpiled, Reuters reported.

Irina Yesipova, of Moscow's energy ministry, told Russian news agency RIA Novosti on Sunday that oil transit flows to Europe were unaffected by the dispute: "Transportation is being carried out in full measure and the negotiation process is continuing right now," she said, without giving details.

Julia Nanay, of the Washington-based Petroleum Finance Company, said the pipeline via Belarus supplied up to 800,000 barrels a day of oil products to Germany and Poland. "If this delivery were cut it would be serious. However, the crude continues to transit Belarus for now and Germany and Poland are receiving oil," she said.

Bloodthirsty 'sport' is dying a slow death across Spain, as younger audiences turn away

Already faced with a rapidly ageing fanbase at home and widespread incomprehension and rejection abroad, Spanish bullfighting has suffered another major setback after the Catalan parliament voted to outlaw it completely across the region.

The decision was so controversial that some deputies hunched over their desks to hide their fingers from photographers as they punched in their votes. After a narrow initial victory for the abolitionists - 67 in favour and 59 against - the law could become effective as soon as May.

Spain's right-wing press was quick to attribute the result to Catalan separatists' desire to dissociate themselves from an activity often considered as typically Spanish as tapas, siestas and flamenco. Unofficially, though, even before Friday's decision, it seems bullfighting circles in the rest of Spain had given Catalonia up as a lost cause.

Germany's short-time working program has helped prevent massive unemployment during the current recession. Although the model has been admired internationally, its biggest test is still ahead. The hugely expensive scheme is a risky bet that the economy will turn around in 2010.

A Somalian man caught breaking into the home of a cartoonist whose portrayal of the prophet Muhammad sparked fury across the Muslim world five years ago was arrested in Kenya last year, Danish media reports said today.

The Danish PET intelligence agency knew the 28-year-old man had been detained in Kenya in September for allegedly participating in planning an attack against the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, the Politiken newspaper said.

The report, citing unnamed sources, said the man was later released because of a lack of evidence.

Clinton visited Kenya as part of an 11-day tour of Africa during August.

Bo Jensen, the Danish ambassador to Kenya, told the Ritzau news agency the Somali man was arrested in Kenya for having incomplete travel documents.

However, he said the Kenyan authorities never told the embassy that he was suspected of involvement in any terror plot, adding that the newspaper had misunderstood the situation.

Senior Labour figures have voiced concerns that Tony Blair's appearance at the Iraq inquiry in the coming weeks will wreck any prospect of him helping the party at the general election.

The Labour leadership, which fires its opening shot in the election campaign today, has so far not agreed any formal role for the man who led it to three successive election victories.

The Iraq inquiry, which was set up by Gordon Brown and which resumes its hearings tomorrow, is reopening old divisions between Brownites and Blairites months before Labour seeks a fourth term.

Growing criticism is being voiced within the former Prime Minister's inner circle about Mr Brown's decision to hold the inquiry with public hearings in the run-up to the election.

Budget airline Ryanair has been accused of being "puerile and childish" over its payment policy by business watchdog the Office of Fair Trading (OFT).

OFT chief executive John Fingleton attacked the company for fees that Ryanair adds when customers use all but one type of credit card to pay online.

He told the Independent newspaper that the firm used a legal loophole to justify charging the extra fee.

Ryanair said their payme

Those invited for consultation include Jacques Delors, the long-serving Commission President (1985-1994) who is considered as one of the 'fathers of Europe'.

Felipe González, former Spanish Prime minister (1982-1996) and chairman of a reflection group on the future of Europe will also join, alongside former Spanish commissioner Pedro Solbes (1999-2004).

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The meeting's first priority is to make progress on the first objective of the Spanish EU presidency, namely, to re-enforce a "European economic government" and improve the coordination of the EU's common policies in economic affairs and employment, the Spanish daily says.

Just listened to David Cameron's speech on health policy, which was profoundly depressing. Cameron obviously thought so too; much of it was delivered from a text written in the sort of management jargon that has so sapped the will to live in the public sector in the New Labour years. He was so uninterested in some of the detail that he appeared not to notice the glaring discrepancy between the radical decentralisation that he promised and the radical centralisation of unified maternity services in each area.

After facing opposition from all quarters to its initial plan to establish new rules to regulate the sampling and retention of DNA via secondary legislation, the Home Office belatedly introduced clauses about DNA in the Crime and Security Bill 2009-10. Opposition to a blank check for the Secretary of State was so predictable that introducing these clauses, among many other unrelated ones, close to a year after the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruling against the UK appear the result of deliberate delaying tactics. There's no date set yet for when the bill will progress to the second reading stage.

One change introduced in the bill got most of the attention: the proposition to retain DNA profiles of innocents for six years instead of 12. Another figure picked out of thin air with little justification. Missing in the bill is any mention about retention rules of the associated Police National Computer (PNC) records, and it would seem that the Home Office is now keen to hold on to these even when it will relent and delete DNA profiles, fingerprints and palm prints. Here are high level details about what's in store, extracted from the Explanatory notes accompanying the Crime and Security Bill 2009-10: