BRUSSELS - A new legal challenge filed with the German Constitutional Court on Monday (13 August) calls on judges to further delay their ruling on the eurozone's permanent bailout fund, pending a verdict by the EU's top court.

The Karlsruhe-based court had already said it would rule on 12 September on six legal challenges lodged against both the permanent, yet-to-be-set-up European Stability Mechanism (ESM) and the treaty on fiscal discipline signed by 25 EU countries.

But a group of plaintiffs led by German professor Markus Kerber, who already had challenged the Greek, Portuguese and Irish bailouts for allegedly being in breach of EU law, on Monday asked the court to further delay its verdict because a similar complaint has been filed with the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice.

...The court on Monday confirmed it had received the complaint, but refrained from commenting on whether it would accept it or not, Die Welt reports.

For weeks, Prime Minister Victor Ponta's government has tried to have suspended President Traian Basescu removed from office, violating laws and rulings by the Constitutional Court as a means to an end. The government's efforts have been blasted as a "revolution of thieves" by Romania's Hotnews website. Forgery of the country's eligible voters and election fraud have meanwhile been added to the list of grievances.

On August 10, prosecutors at Romania's Supreme Court made public transcripts of intercepted phone calls made by ministers and senior officials.

The calls showed Ponta's government was planning to falsify electoral lists on a large scale: tens-of-thousands of people were to be declared dead and expatriate Romanians were to be taken off the lists. The Romanian judiciary has launched a probe into the alleged manipulation of voter rolls.

BRUSSELS - Iceland's coalition government risks splitting up over how to handle the country's EU bid and the euro crisis.

Foreign minister Ossur Skarphedinsson, from the Social Democratic Alliance party, told national radio on Monday (13 August) that EU membership is integral to the left-wing coalition's platform.

...But for their part, some in Left Green party, who had always opposed joining the EU, want to reconsider their coalition deal on EU membership in the context of the euro storm.

AFP - Norwegian authorities could have prevented the first of twin attacks that killed 77 people in July 2011 and arrested Anders Behring Breivik sooner as he carried out the second, investigators said Monday.

An independent commission tasked by Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg with reviewing the authorities' response to the attacks submitted its 500-page report to him on Monday, handing down harsh criticism of both the police and the government.

A eurosceptic think-tank in Berlin brought a new legal challenge to the ESM, by calling on the Constitutional Court to refer the case to the ECJ; this follows a case in Ireland, which challenges the legality of the ESM and fiscal pact under European law; no decision has yet been made, but ECJ is said to be considering a fast-track procedure; if the German constitutional court followed the same procedure, it would create a legal precedent; Italy had a moderately successful T-bill auction, with short-term interest rates falling below the levels of July; but the latest Bank of Italy data show that the percentage of foreign owners of Italian government bonds has fallen to a recent record low; the Northern League reintroduces the lira as a means of payment during a political rally; Italians are streaming into the Austrian real estate market to avoid property taxes, and over fears of the future of the euro; a poll among economists has a consensus over a 0.2% decline in Q2 GDP for the eurozone; Greek statistical office state decline with 6.2% in Q2; Germany's current account surpluses is likely to exceed EU threshold of 6%, as a result of which Germany is likely to receive an official warning; the German government says there is nothing wrong with surpluses; Philip Plickert writes that only current account deficits are a problem, but not surpluses, because they reveal a country's innate strengths; CDU deputy parliamentary spokesman Michael Fuchs says there is no majority in the Bundestag for an ESM banking licence; Greek banks turned to national central bank for liquidity support after ECB stopped accepting Greek bonds as colleteral; Jean Pisany Ferry, meanwhile, says Francois Hollande may have gained some room for manoeuvre by opting against a constitutional deficit rule but now needs additional institutional reforms if he wants to use it.

A massive tax rise affecting foreigners who own second homes in the country has been given its blessing by France's highest authority, the Constitutional Council.

The legislation was approved on August 9, despite strong claims by many in the property market that it is against EU laws.

It comes even after President François Hollande appeared to reassure Britain's legion of holiday home owners during a recent trip to the UK.

The law imposes an extra "social charge" of 15.5% on the existing capital gains tax related to the sale of second homes, meaning the original levy will rise from 19% to 34.5%.

Europe's largest economy has been hit by a series of increasingly gloomy data releases in recent days, showing declines in manufacturing orders, industrial output, imports and exports.

In an unusually stark warning on Friday (10 August), the economy ministry said these figures and a sharp drop-off in business sentiment in recent months pointed to "significant risks" to Germany's outlook.

On Tuesday, gross domestic product data for the second quarter is expected to show modest growth of about 0.2%. But the danger of recession in the second half of the year is growing, leading economists say, at a time when Europe's single currency bloc desperately needs growth from Germany - its economic powerhouse.

Italy's public debt hit an all-time high in June of almost €2 trillion and the annual budget deficit was also bigger than a year before, due largely to Italy's share of bailouts for other eurozone states, the central bank announced.

Public debt at the end of June rose €6.6 billion to €1.973 billion, the Bank of Italy said yesterday (13 August), as the Treasury's cash reserves increased by €10.3 billion.

Italy's benchmark bond yields remain close to 6% despite tough austerity measures introduced by Prime Minister Mario Monti's government.

With the country mired in a deep recession, markets are sceptical of Italy's ability to bring down a debt pile equivalent to around 123% of output, the second highest debt in the eurozone after Greece's.

REUTERS - Thousands of Tunisians rallied on Monday to protest against what they see as a push by the Islamist-led government for constitutional changes that would degrade women's status in one of the Arab world's most liberal nations.

The protest, by some 6,000 mostly Tunisian women, is the latest twist in a row over the role of Islam in a constitution being drawn up by a new assembly.

Tunisia's ruling Ennahda Movement is under pressure from both hardline Salafi Muslims, calling for the introduction of Islamic law, and secular opposition parties.

Activists are not happy with a stipulation in a draft of the constitution that considers women to be "complementary to men" and want a pioneering 1956 law that grant women full equality with men to remain in place.

AFP - Leaders of Muslim countries, including Iran's pro-Syrian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, will gather Tuesday for an extraordinary summit called by Saudi King Abdullah who is pushing to mobilise support for the Syrian rebellion.

"The Syrian issue will be a top priority" in the summit taking place in the Muslim holy city of Mecca, according to Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the secretary general of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.

War-ravaged Syria will not be represented in the summit, the head of the Jeddah-based 57-member organisation told AFP, adding that a preparatory meeting of OIC foreign ministers on Monday is expected to "announce the suspension of Syria's membership as recommended by member states."

A German colonel, Georg Klein, who ordered a tragic bombing near Kunduz three years ago, will be promoted to the rank of general. The Bundeswehr says it's `normal', but Afghan survivors view it as a provocation.

after the first bit on Syria

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wp4O7v5320

Preliminary results from the European Space Agency's CryoSat-2 probe indicate that 900 cubic kilometres of summer sea ice has disappeared from the Arctic ocean over the past year.

This rate of loss is 50% higher than most scenarios outlined by polar scientists and suggests that global warming, triggered by rising greenhouse gas emissions, is beginning to have a major impact on the region. In a few years the Arctic ocean could be free of ice in summer, triggering a rush to exploit its fish stocks, oil, minerals and sea routes.

Using instruments on earlier satellites, scientists could see that the area covered by summer sea ice in the Arctic has been dwindling rapidly. But the new measurements indicate that this ice has been thinning dramatically at the same time. For example, in regions north of Canada and Greenland, where ice thickness regularly stayed at around five to six metres in summer a decade ago, levels have dropped to one to three metres.

At least 85% of electrical and electronic waste generated in the European Union will have to be recycled by 2020 under new rules that took effect today (13 August).

The update to a decade-old Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive followed hard-fought bargaining over how to improve the recovery of computers and other electronic and electrical waste, much of which is now either dumped in landfills or shipped abroad for disposal because of the high cost of recycling in Europe.

BRUSSELS - National governments and the EU should maintain state funding for the arts rather than leave it in the hands of the market said EU culture commissioner Androulla Vassiliou on Monday (13 August).

Vassiliou was speaking at the start of the first International Culture Summit in Edinburgh.

The two-day event at the Scottish parliament, which brings together politicians and artists against the backdrop of the annual Edinburgh festival, comes as governments across Europe are making deep cuts in arts spending.

The debate over what happened to the Neanderthals and whether they ever had children from "mixed marriages" with Homo sapiens has raged for several decades. In 2010, the first genetics evidence emerged in a study showing that between 1 and 4 per cent of the DNA of some modern humans was shared with the Neanderthals, indicating a brief period of hybridisation between the two species.

However, the latest study has concluded that this shared DNA was not a fossilised remnant of the time when Neanderthals and modern humans "made whoopee", but in fact a leftover from a much earlier point in human pre-history when Neanderthals and modern humans had shared a common ancestor in Africa.

A judge at the Vatican has ordered the pope's butler and a fellow lay employee to stand trial over leaks from Pope Benedict XVI's private apartment.

The indictment accuses the butler Paolo Gabriele, who was arrested in May, of grand theft.

While the Vatican had insisted Gabriele was the only person under investigation, the indictment also charges Claudio Sciarpelletti, a layman in the secretary of state's office, with aiding and abetting Gabriele.

The scandal has embarrassed the Vatican as it has exposed the infighting at high church levels, primarily among Italian prelates.