Two parliamentary inquiries will investigate why 34 separate German police and intelligence agencies were unable to get solid leads on a murderous trio of neo-Nazis who killed 10 people before their group collapsed last year.

 

The Bundestag, Germany's lower house of parliament, on Thursday unanimously voted to establish one inquiry. The other was established in the state of Thuringia, the home state of the members of the group.

 

Peter Altmaier, parliamentary leader of the ruling Christian Democrats in the Bundestag, said the debate was largely marked by consensus. ""We were shocked that these people were able to create terror undetected and for so long," he said.  

The government has said it will not allow any more time to debate a bill on moving UK time forward by an hour, despite calls from MPs on all sides of the House for it to do so.

Speaking during the business statement on 26 January 2012, Commons Leader Sir George Young said the Daylight Saving Bill, a private members' bill , introduced by Tory Rebecca Harris, should not be given any more time because it stood no chance of becoming law.

A small group of MPs talked out the bill during its report stage on a recent Friday sitting.

AFP - The European parliament website came under cyber attack Thursday but hackers failed to penetrate the assembly's internal network, a spokesman said.

"This morning the parliament's site came under attack with massive consultation bids," spokesman Jaume Duch told AFP.

"But the hackers were unable to penetrate the parliament's inner network which continued to operate normally internally," he said, adding that an inquiry was under way.

REUTERS - Police arrested Jean-Claude Mas, the founder of the French company at the heart of an international health scandal, at his home in southern France on Thursday, a police source told Reuters.

A second executive from Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) was also detained, the source said.

REUTERS - French presidential frontrunner Francois Hollande says he will raise taxes on the rich, cut tax on profits for smallest firms and cancel billions of euros of tax breaks introduced by conservative Nicolas Sarkozy if he replaces him in May.

The Socialist Hollande, leading opinion polls, also says he will erase a large public deficit by 2017, marginally later than the current government, but argues in a manifesto unveiled on Thursday that he could do so and still create 60,000 teaching jobs and 150,000 state-funded jobs for first-time workers.

His election campaign director Pierre Moscovici said the left was serious about balancing the country's books and accused Hollande's main adversary of attempting to mislead voters.

As the European crisis ratchets up antagonism between countries, there has been a rise in name-calling and finger-pointing: from lazy southerners to domineering northerners, with plenty in between. And that's before the football starts this summer. The six newspapers in the Europa project were asked to stereotype each other, and then asked cultural commentators in each country to assess how accurate they are

Russian police don't take kindly to opposition protesters - even if they're 5cm high and made of plastic.

Police in the Siberian city of Barnaul have asked prosecutors to investigate the legality of a recent protest that saw dozens of small dolls - teddy bears, Lego men, South Park figurines - arranged to mimic a protest, complete with signs reading: "I'm for clean elections" and "A thief should sit in jail, not in the Kremlin".

"Political opposition forces are using new technologies to carry out public events - using toys with placards at mini-protests," Andrei Mulintsev, the city's deputy police chief, said at a press conference this week, according to local media. "In our opinion, this is still an unsanctioned public event."

Documents have been found after they were thought to have been destroyed, which had led to the collapse of the UK's biggest police corruption trial.

The announcement came as emerged that a review has been ordered into the end of the trial of eight officers, who were all cleared in December.

They were involved in the original investigation of the 1988 murder of Cardiff prostitute Lynette White.

The review has been ordered by Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer.

This one will sting: the troika has presented its demands; Greek ministers expressed concern about the reaction of lawmakers; there has been some progress in the PSI+ talks, as Olli Rehn holds out the possibility of an increased participation of the public sector; Reuters says the ECB remains split on its position; Jean-Claude Juncker says there is a need for a greater public sector contribution; he also says that the second loan package will not come unless all parties sign up to the programme; Michel Barnier said he will wait before implementing proposal to force write-downs for banks; Francois Hollande came out with his economic plan: €20bn more expenditures, €29bn in higher taxes on the rich and large companies; sticks to deficit targets, and a trajectory towards a balanced budget by 2017; Le Monde welcomes Hollande's programme; Frankfurter Allgemeine does not; Brussels estate agents have been swamped by calls from potential French tax exiles; the Spanish government seems determined to hit the 4.4% deficit target, despite the economic slump this year; economy minister Luis de Guindos says this would create confidence in the financial markets; the European Commission dismisses Angela Merkel's plans to divert unused structural funds to stimulate jobs and growth; market participants say the ECB's LTRO will have a very significant effect, but the danger is that policymakers might see this as a signal that they have done enough; Philip Stephens says that Italy is once again a political power, thanks to Mario Monti; Hugo Dixon, meanwhile, explains why a merger of the EFSF and ESM will not suffice.