Chancellor Merkel has opened a meeting in Berlin to discuss the future role of nuclear power in Europe's largest economy amid a dispute over extending the lifespan of German nuclear plants beyond 2021. 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is hosting a summit in Berlin on the future of nuclear energy in Germany amid a long-running row about extending the lifespan of the country's nuclear power plants. 

Hundreds of anti-nuclear power demonstrators have been gathering outside the chancellory where Merkel is meeting with fellow coalition leaders Guido Westerwelle of the Free Democrats (FDP) and Horst Seehofer of Bavaria's Christian Social Union, along with other parliamentary leaders.

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Sunday's meeting focuses on granting the country's nuclear power plants an extra 10 to 15 years of production time and to decide on a levy for the utility companies' expected additional profits.

Basque separatist group ETA has said it will not "carry out armed actions" in its campaign for independence, according to a video obtained by the BBC. The Spanish government, meanwhile, has rejected the announcement. 

Basque separatist group ETA has declared a ceasefire, the BBC reported Sunday, citing a video statement it had earlier obtained from a Basque newspaper.

The video said the group would no longer "carry out armed actions" in its campaign for independence in a decision it came to several months ago "to put in motion a democratic process if the Spanish government is willing."

Spain's governing Socialist Party dismissed the ceasefire announcement on Sunday as "clearly insufficient."

"Theoretically, there is room for a political party to the right of the (center-right) Christian Democrats," Gero Neugebauer, a professor of political science at Berlin's Free University, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "But right-wing populists in Germany tend to be like mayflies. They swarm to the manure, eat their fill, and the next day they are gone."

The fleeting nature of right-wing populism in Germany is almost unique in continental Europe. Belgium has the Vlaams Belang party, the Netherlands has Geert Wilders and France's far right has periodically found significant success at the polls under Jean-Marie Le Pen. In Switzerland, voters supported a populist movement to ban the construction of minarets. Austria's right wing has a long history of political success under now deceased Freedom Party leader Jörg Haider and many eastern European countries, led by Hungary, have an active right wing.

Indeed, in much of Europe, Sarrazin's views, if not necessarily part of the political mainstream, would hardly elicit more than a shrug from most given the political platforms they enjoy.

Still, the almost unanimous opprobrium German political parties have heaped on Sarrazin is misleading. Recent studies suggest that the lack of a robust, right-wing populist party in Germany is more of a political anomaly than an indication of tolerance in the country. According to a study by the University of Bielefeld published last December, fully 46 percent of Germans agree that there are "too many Muslims" in the country. Only 16.6 percent of German respondents agreed with the statement "the Muslim culture fits well into Germany," a result that was the lowest among the eight countries that were surveyed, including the Netherlands, France and Hungary.

Dramatic video footage has emerged of a police sergeant dragging a women to a cell and hurling her inside, an incident which has led to his suspension.

Pamela Somerville, 57, was left with blood gushing from a head wound after Sergeant Mark Andrews pulled her by the wrist across the floor of Melksham police station in Wiltshire and threw her into the custody suite. A camera cell showed Somerville lying briefly unconscious after her head hit the floor and then staggering to her feet, dripping blood.

The officer, a former soldier, 37, was convicted of assault causing actual bodily harm at Oxford magistrates court in July, and is due to be sentenced on Tuesday. He faces a formal disciplinary hearing next month and is currently suspended on full pay.

Another officer at the police station reported the incident to a supervisor.

The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman

David Miliband, the Labour leadership frontrunner, must ditch his attachment to Blairite policies on privatisation and globalisation if he is to avoid splitting the party, the leader of Britain's biggest public sector union insists today.

Dave Prentis, the general secretary of Unison, said that Labour was at a watershed moment in its relations with the unions and accused the elder Miliband of having been part of a New Labour elite which caused untold "trauma" to public sector workers and sought to "beat up" unions. The comments, in an interview with the Observer before next week's trades union congress, are part of an attempt by the unions to reassert their influence, after years of being sidelined, as the Labour party prepares to choose a new leader.

They also suggest that after the new leader is announced on 25 September, Labour will be plunged into a heated argument at its party conference on its future direction. Prentis, whose union is backing the more left-leaning Ed Miliband in the election, said that Ed Miliband reflected the values of the 1.4 million public sector Unison members "far better than the other candidates".

French trade unions protested Saturday against a clampdown on immigrants, launching a week of action against tightening security and pension reforms on which President Nicolas Sarkozy has staked his political reputation.

Demonstrators opposed to new measures including repatriation of Roma to eastern Europe waved French flags and placards and chanted slogans including "let's stop repression" and "no to Sarkozy's inhumane policies". "It's rare that I demonstrate like this," said protestor Alexis Peskine, "but [Sarkozy] went too far.

A threatened Conservative rebellion on voting reform - which could have raised serious tensions within the coalition - looks to have been averted after intense pressure by the Tory whips.

David Cameron told whips to ensure the coalition did not suffer its first defeat in the Commons on Monday night, when Nick Clegg, deputy prime minister, presents a bill allowing a referendum next May on adopting the alternative vote to elect MPs.

The push appears to have worked, with prominent rebels telling the Financial Times they do not intend to oppose the bill at second reading when MPs return to Westminster for a two-week session after their summer break.

One said: "The whips have been hitting the phones pretty hard. They're desperate to make sure this isn't the government's first defeat."

Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov personally examined on Sunday the scene of the suicide bombing that killed three soldiers at a military firing range in Russia's North Caucasus republic of Dagestan.

The bomber drove a car full of explosives into the army camp near the Dagestani city of Buinaksk shortly after midnight on Sunday. The Defense Ministry said the three servicemen were killed and more than 30 injured. Five of the wounded are in serious condition.

Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Alexei Kuznetsov said Serdyukov received reports from the commander of the Southern Military District and the commander of the troops camped at the firing range.

The policy that Germany has gotten most right is the one that has kept its unemployment rate (currently 7.0 percent) at or below pre-recession levels despite a steeper decline in output (4.6 percent) for 2009 than the U.S. experienced. This is the policy of subsidizing employers to keep workers on the job at reduced hours, instead of laying them off. This has saved hundreds of thousands of jobs in Germany and could save millions in the United States, if only we had some political leadership with the courage to take these modest but obvious steps.

Ironically, however, the reforms that Spain is being pressured to adopt are in the opposite direction - the European authorities want Spain to make it easier for employers to get rid of workers.

Another flaw in the argument: Germany's record second quarter growth - 2.2 percent over the previous quarter, or 9 percent at an annual rate - was driven mostly by exports, which grew 8.2 percent over the previous quarter, or 37 percent annualized. As the South Centre has noted, for 2002-2007, exports accounted for 143 percent of Germany's growth - meaning that the German economy would have actually contracted over these years if not for export growth.

Since most of Germany's exports go to Eurozone countries, it is clear that not everyone in the Eurozone can follow Germany's example, even if they had the manufacturing competitiveness to do so.

Electricity at a bureaucratic pace

In solar photovoltaic energy, however, bureaucracy does slow progress. Here the government invests in the establishment of this innovative means of generating electricity. Applied on a grand scale, the Greek programme provides financing for 40% of these types of electricity generation projects at the rate of 40 euro cents (30p) for every kWh (kilowatt-hour).

Despite their efforts, sources at the environment ministry confirm that financing requests are piled up in the building's hallways due to the lack of technical training for a survey and study of the various cases that arise. `Occasionally, permits expire and it is necessary to start again,' affirms the officer-in-charge of this function. Kostas Tigas, representative of CRES (centre for renewable energy sources and saving), corroborates this assessment. With certain reservations, Tigas chastises the country's mismanagement in squandering the funds received from Europe and Greece's own government. In 2010, one billion euros were allocated for the stimulation of renewable energy use. `More than half remains only on paper,' he says, `which explains our technical deficiency when attempting to take advantage of the resources this country enjoys, like sun and wind.' Since political survival does not depend on development of green programmes, as it does in northern Europe, such waste is not yet punished electorally.