New French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault named his first cabinet, a fine balance of women and men across the political spectrum.

French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault has completed his first task and named the new Cabinet. Laurent Fabius, a former prime minister, is to be the new foreign minister. Pierre Moscovici, President Francois Hollande's campaign director and a former minister for European affairs, will become finance minister.

Jean-Yves Le Drian, a friend of Hollande's, will lead the defense ministry. Hollande's campaign communications director Manuel Valls was named interior minister. Hollande also chose close ally Michel Sapin as labour minister and placed Arnaud Montebourg in charge of reindustrialisation.

The appointments were, as promised, a balance of gender parity but the important posts went to men. The 17 women appointed include justice minister Christiane Taubira, culture minister Aurélie Fillippetti, health and social affairs minister Marisol Touraine and ecology minister Nicole Bricq. Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, a 34-year-old Franco-Moroccan councillor in Lyon becomes government spokeswoman and minister for women's rights.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has announced that Norbert Röttgen has been dismissed from his post, days after an embarrassing defeat in crucial state elections.

Chancellor Angela Merkel called a press conference in Berlin Thursday to announce that Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen had been dismissed from his federal post. Peter Altmaier, a close ally of the Chancellor's, is set to take over the role.

Röttgen was party chairman in North Rhine-Westphalia until the weekend election, but quit that post soon after the CDU recorded their worst-ever result in Germany's most populous state.

Late on Sunday, when quitting his regional post, Röttgen had said: "It is an unmistakable, clear defeat that we have suffered today. The defeat is bitter, it's clear, and it really hurts all of us - obviously including me."

Greece is to have another election, following the failure of last-ditch attempts to form a coalition government. The Radical Left may be in a position to increase its share of the vote.

A senior judge took charge of an emergency government in Athens on Wednesday. With no political decision-making power, Panagiotis Pikrammenos will lead the country to new elections scheduled for June 17.

The next election will place different demands on the participants. The political parties must finally adopt clear positions on the issues at hand and come up with pragmatic solutions, according to the political scientist Manolis Kottakis in a recent television interview.

In the last election voters simply closed their eyes to the urgent need for debate over the issue. It is a debate, Kottakis said, can no longer be ignored.

Europe's human rights court began hearing the first case arising from the US's post-9/11 rendition programme on Wednesday, when the government of Macedonia went on trial accused of multiple human rights abuses of a German citizen.

Khaled el-Masri, 48, a car salesman of Lebanese descent, was detained in Macedonia in December 2003 and held for more than three weeks in Skopje, before being handed to CIA officers who flew him to Afghanistan, where he was allegedly tortured for the next five months.

The CIA appears to have realised it had made a mistake: it had been looking for another man of the same name. El-Masri was then flown from Afghanistan to Albania and abandoned by the side of a road in a mountainous area, with no means of returning home.

The grand chamber of the European court of human rights in Strasbourg began hearing a case brought by el-Masri's lawyers which alleges a breach of his European Convention rights to liberty and freedom from torture.

Germany has pledged ongoing annual aid to the Afghan security forces after western troops withdraw from the country in 2014.

On his way to the NATO summit in Chicago this weekend, Afghan President Hamid Karzai met with Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin. Germany pledged 150 million euros (190 million dollars) in annual aid to the Afghan security forces after western troops withdraw from the country in 2014.

Signing the agreement on Wednesday that secures German funding for security training in Afghanistan after 2014 Merkel said: "This shows we are committed to Afghanistan in the long term." Germany's engagement in Afghanistan is "not just words," Merkel added. "Afghanistan's fate is close to our heart."

Karzai said he estimates Afghanistan will need 3.21 billion euros annually to run its security services, of which it could pay 392 million euros itself and possibly more as its economy strengthens. Further pledges are expected at the NATO summit in Chicago on Sunday and Monday.

The trial of Ratko Mladic at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague began on Wednesday, with the Bosnian Serb facing 11 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Mladic, a former general, is accused of masterminding the week-long massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica during the Balkan wars of the 1990s. The killing is considered Europe's worst atrocity since World War II.

The systematic slaughter of unarmed men and boys took place in the presence of UN peacekeepers who were supposed to be enforcing a "safe haven."

"Ratko Mladic assumed the mantle of the criminal goal of ethnically cleansing Bosnia," prosecutor Dermot Groome told the judges at the Yugoslav war crimes court in The Hague.

Russian riot police have dispersed an Occupy-style protest against President Vladimir Putin, forcing dozens of people out of central Moscow park, where they had been camped for more than a week.

The action against the sit-in was the latest step in a government crackdown on protests over Putin's return to the presidency on May 7 for a six-year term following four years as prime minister.

Police converged on the site at Chistiye Prudy Park early on Wednesday and told about 50 people who had spent the night there to leave, citing a court order issued on Tuesday requiring them to clear the area.

Police clashed with demonstrators, beating some on the head with batons in the worst violence since a wave of protests prompted by suspicions of fraud in a December parliamentary vote.

Lorenzo Bini Smaghi explains why the troika can't blink in the face off with Greece http://t.co/keVdzE8o

ECB says it is not lending to under-capitalised institutions, as it seeks to protect its own balance sheet; ECB did not say which banks are affected; those that are now put on Emergency Liquidity Assistance, under which banks borrow from the national central banks at higher rates; Draghi hinted that the integrity of the ECB's balance sheet has a higher priority than the integrity of the eurozone; Robert Zoellick warned of a contagion of the crisis to Spain and Italy; Christine Lagarde warned a Greek exit would be a cataclysmic event for the global economy; Lorenzo-Bini Smaghi said a Greek exit would require a policy response of similar determination than the US response after the Lehman collapse; Wolfgang Munchau says a Greek exit would require an immediate fiscal and banking union; Angela Merkel unceremoniously fires her environment minister, the losing candidate in the North-Rhine Westphalia state elections; she replaced him with Peter Altmaier, the parliamentary whip who has been crucial in lining up support for her eurozone policies; Nikolaus Blome says the move represents strength; Roland Nelles says the move represents weakness as the party is running out of high-calibre talent; Francois Hollande announces cabinet: Pierre Moscovici gets finance, Laurent Fabius gets foreign; Martine Aubry gets nothing: she wanted to be PM, or nothing; PM Jean-Marc Ayrault said all ministers who lose at the forthcoming parliamentary elections will have to quit; David Cameron and Mervyn King, meanwhile, warn that the eurozone may be about to unravel.