France's Socialist government announced on Wednesday that it would ease employment restrictions on Roma (also known as Gypsies) in the country in a bid to smooth over an increasingly visible social problem on the streets of the French capital.

The announcement affects some15,000 to 20,000 Roma living in France. This population has been subject to dismantlement of their camps and "repatriations" to their home countries, a policy started in 2010 under former President Nicolas Sarkozy's right-wing government.

Romania and Bulgaria, where the majority of Roma originate, became full members of the European Union in 2007. But "transitional arrangements" in their accession to the EU mean that citizens of these former communist bloc states will not enjoy complete freedom of employment in France until December 31, 2013.

AFP - European ministers warned Thursday that the debt crisis risks splitting Europe between north and south in an echo of the east-west division of the Cold War, as pressure mounted on Greece.

"Two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a new split threatens to divide our continent, this time between north and south," the foreign ministers of Germany and the three Baltic states said in joint statement released in Lithuania.

Germany's most populous state North-Rhine Westphalia (NRW) has banned three far-right extremist groups after police searched 150 premises. Thursday's raids follow a trial opening in Koblenz against 26 neo-Nazis.

Interior Minister of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Ralf Jäger, said searches by 900 police officers in 32 locations early on Thursday had netted hand weapons, computer data and a bust of Adolf Hitler.

In Dortmund, 1,000 placards of the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) were seized.

The placards were apparently intended for a city council by-election due on Sunday in the Ruhr District city, said Jäger.

Sem medidas adicionais para este ano, a meta de défice de 4,5% do PIB é considerada inatingível. Ou a troika aceita suavizar as metas, ou mais medidas de consolidação serão necessárias ainda em 2012.

Without additional measures this year, the 4.5% of GDP budget deficit target is considered unattainable. Either the troika accepts to soften the targets, or more consolidation measures are necessary still in 2012.

Os dados da execução orçamental das Administrações Públicas até Julho colocaram de parte a hipótese da meta orçamental deste ano acordada com a troika (4,5% do PIB) ser atingida, considera o Ministério das Finanças. Nas discussões com a troika para a quinta avaliação ao programa - que têm início para a semana - estará então em cima da mesa a decisão sobre a adopção de mais medidas de austeridade, ou antes a flexibilização das metas para este ano, como já admitido pela Comissão Europeia e o FMI.

The budget execution data for the Public Administration up to July sets aside the chance of the target agreed with the troika for this year (4.5% of GDP) to be reached, says the Ministry of Finance. During the discussions with the troika for the fifth evaluation of the programme - that starts next week - will then be on the table the decision on the adoption of further austerity measures, or in its place the softening of the targets for this year, as already admitted by the European Commission and the IMF.

A group of ten officials have been meeting regularly to study the impact of a Greek eurozone [exit], and to propose policies to mitigate the impact; Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande met yesterday to prepare a joint strategy towards Greece; no official announcements were made; Frank-Walter Steinmeier wants to give Greece one extra year with the programme; Wolfgang Schauble rejects a programme extension; Jan Kees de Jager says he hopes Germany stays firm; a senior CDU lawmaker says there is no flexbility on the programme itself, but some flexibility on the interest rates and the duration of the loan; Manfred Neumann says economically it would make sense for German[y] to leave the euro, though this is not realistic for political reasons; also criticised Mario Draghi for spending too much time in Brussels; Claus Hulverscheidt says the German fiscal surplus is not what it seems to be; Philip Rickert writes that one reason for the fall in spreads is the expectation that the ECB will give up the preferred creditor status; also makes the point that it could reverse that position at any time; Spain's deposit guarantee fund may receive rescue money; in certain cases of bankruptcy, senior bank bondholders may also be bailed under, according to Spain's new bank resolution decree; various sources have told Reuters that the Spanish EFSF negotiations are well under way; Spain is proposing a reform of real estate rental laws; tax revenue shortfall threatens Portugal's deficit target; the Greek finance ministry says liquidity will run out in October; Ireland sells amortising bonds at 5.91% in the country's return to the bond markets; John McHale says the rate still implies a default probability of over 50%; Germany, meanwhile, said it will oppose any Irish debt relief proposal.

Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian far-right extremist, has been sentenced to at least 21 years in prison after a court declared he was sane throughout his murderous rampage last year that killed 77 people.

The Oslo district court declared its verdict that the 33-year-old was not psychotic while carrying out the twin attacks, including the shooting of dozens of teenagers attending a political camp.

The court's decision will have delighted Breivik, who had hoped to avoid what he called the "humiliation" of being dismissed as a madman.

The mass-killer had desperately hoped the court would find him criminally culpable for the killings, claiming they were "cruel and necessary" to protect Norway from becoming overrun by Muslims.

After two months of deliberations, the five-judge panel told a packed Oslo courtroom that they considered the perpetrator of last year's gun and bomb attacks, the worst in the country's history, mentally fit enough to be held criminally responsible for the attacks, which also left 242 wounded.

Breivik is almost certain to end his life in prison. Although Norway has a maximum prison sentence of 21-years, Breivik could be sentenced to "preventive detention", which can be extended for as long as an inmate is considered dangerous to society.

Cándido Méndez, 60, is spending his 15-day summer vacation at a rental apartment in Zahara de los Atunes (Cádiz), a favorite holiday spot for the cool crowd. The secretary general of UGT, one of Spain's two main labor unions, seems a changed man since his recent meeting with German chancellor Angela Merkel.

...

Q. Of your meeting with Angela Merkel, all I'm interested in are the juicy details. Did she smell good? Is she as short as she appears to be on TV? Were there any knowing winks?

A. Everyone smelled good there because we are all people who dutifully perform our morning ablutions. And there was another figurative smell, which is the smell of power and of respect for unions. I know out of personal experience that we all look better in person than we do on TV. And so does Merkel. There were no winks, but I did catch a few perplexed expressions on her face. I had the weird feeling that we were revealing to her things in connection with Spain's dark legends that she was hearing for the first time.

REUTERS - A major Vietnamese bank founded by arrested tycoon Nguyen Duc Kien faced a run on deposits on Thursday, witnesses said, but the central bank has injected funds into the banking system and assured jittery residents their money is safe.

Monday's arrest of Kien, 48, sent shockwaves through the Communist-run country, triggering a 9.2 percent slide in the stock market this week and causing depositors to pull funds from Asia Commercial Bank (ACB), one of Vietnam's biggest lenders, which Kien helped found in 1994.

Withdrawals began on Tuesday when the arrest was made public. By Thursday, crowds had formed at ACB's branches in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam's business centre, residents said. At one branch, depositors shoved tables aside to try to reach bank tellers, a witness said.

Budget airline Ryanair is in trouble once again over its cost-cutting practices.

The airline has found itself mired in controversy after three of its planes were forced to make emergency landings in the Spanish city of Valencia at the end of July due to low levels of fuel, sparking fears over passenger safety.

The incident prompted Spain's government to announce on August 15 that it was opening an official investigation into the emergency landings, and it has since threatened to suspend the airline's operating license, a move Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary dismissed.

REUTERS - Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande will present a united front towards Greece at talks on Thursday, telling Athens not to expect any leeway on its bailout agreement unless it sticks to its terms.

The German and French leaders are meeting to fine-tune their message to Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, who begins a charm offensive trip to Berlin and Paris on Friday in the hope of persuading Europe's big powers that Greece deserves patience.

Samaras has been giving interviews to German media stressing that while Athens may seek more time to meet austerity targets, it was not asking for more money from partners. But German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble sounded a stern note.

Germany has managed to put its public finances in order by logging a decent surplus for the first six months of 2012. It thus managed to outshine most other eurozone nations which are still embroiled in a debt crisis.

Defying the trend, Germany's public accounts showed a surplus in tax revenues of 8.3 billion euros ($10.4 billion) for the first half of the current year, the Federal Statistics Bureau (Destatis) reported on Thursday.

The surplus equated to 0.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Under EU Maastricht Treaty rules, euro area members are not allowed to run up deficits exceeding 3.0 percent of GDP on the negative side of the ledger and are obliged to bring their budget balances close to zero.

Its finances are a disaster, its politics are in disarray and the people alternate between anger and despair. Still, Spain can look with pride on the export successes of its biggest companies like Telefonica and Zara.

Zara, Telefonica and Santander are straws the Spanish economy clings to as if it were drowning. As Spain is drawn further into the maelstrom of the financial crisis in the wake of the burst real estate bubble, these firms and the country's national soccer team at least provide a bit of good news on the Iberian Peninsula. Despite the euro fiasco, Zara, Telefonica and Santander generated an export surplus.

GUANGZHOU, China -- After three decades of torrid growth, China is encountering an unfamiliar problem with its newly struggling economy: a huge buildup of unsold goods that is cluttering shop floors, clogging car dealerships and filling factory warehouses.

The glut of everything from steel and household appliances to cars and apartments is hampering China's efforts to emerge from a sharp economic slowdown. It has also produced a series of price wars and has led manufacturers to redouble efforts to export what they cannot sell at home.

The severity of China's inventory overhang has been carefully masked by the blocking or adjusting of economic data by the Chinese government -- all part of an effort to prop up confidence in the economy among business managers and investors.

The Confidence Fairy, Chinese edition...

Officially, though, most of the inventory problems are a nonissue for the government.

The Public Security Bureau, for example, has halted the release of data about slumping car registrations. Data on the steel sector has been repeatedly revised this year after a new method showed a steeper downturn than the government had acknowledged. And while rows of empty apartment buildings line highways outside major cities all over China, the government has not released information about the number of empty apartments since 2008.

AFP -  Christian hymns sung in Zulu and Xhosa rang out from a white tent set near the site of South Africa's bloodiest police action since apartheid, as the nation began mourning the dead Thursday.

Major platinum mines closed to allow workers to attend memorials for the 44 people killed last week in a wildcat strike at a Lonmin facility.

AFP - Slain leader Moamer Kadhafi's son Seif al-Islam will go on trial next month in the Libyan town of Zintan, a prosecution official said Thursday, despite an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant.

"A committee from the prosecutor general's office has completed its investigation into the crimes committed by Seif al-Islam from the start of the revolution on February 15 (2011) and has prepared the chargesheet," prosecutor general spokesman Taha Nasser Baara said.

He said the chargesheet would be "approved by the prosecutor general in the coming days and a date set for the September trial opening" in Zintan, a hilltop town 170 kilometres (130 miles) southwest of the Libyan capital.

AFP - Syrian civilians are facing "horrific" violence as the battle for the commercial capital Aleppo rages, Amnesty International said Thursday, lashing out primarily at regime troops for launching indiscriminate attacks.

"The use of imprecise weapons, such as unguided bombs, artillery shells and mortars by government forces has dramatically increased the danger for civilians," Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International Senior Crisis Response Adviser, who recently returned from Aleppo, said in a statement.

AFP - Russia formally asked Washington on Thursday to extradite arms smuggler Viktor Bout after a US court jailed him for 25 years for conspiring to supply anti-American guerrillas in Colombia.

Moscow's justice ministry said it sent the petition for Bout to serve his time in Russia after getting written permission from Viktor Bout's wife Alla, a condition it said was imposed by justice officials in the United States.

Japan's premier Yoshihiko Noda has reportedly signaled his readiness to call a snap election in October or November, despite prospects of a drubbing for his fractious Democratic Party (DPJ) that swept to power in 2009.

Japan's Kyodo news agency said Prime Minister Noda had met opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leaders and had floated an October 7 election date after they rejected his suggestion to hold polling in early November.

Earlier this month, Noda had promised to hold elections midway through his term when he got rare opposition backing in parliament to pass legislation that doubled the sales tax to 10 percent by 2015.

News Herald: (ropical Storm) Isaac was centered 165 miles kilometers south of Puerto Rico early Thursday afternoon, with maximum sustained winds of 40 mph. It was moving west at 15 mph, according to the Hurricane Center.  Puerto Rico opened 428 shelters, and 50 people had taken refuge, said Gov. Luis Fortuno. Some 7,800 people were without power and more than 3,000 without water.

Colombia:

Colombia Reports: The entire cabinet of Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos unexpectedly resigned Wednesday at the request of the head of state. According to the presidential website, all 16 ministers signed a letter of resignation in which they "allow you to consider our posts so that you, in full liberty, can take the best determinations for yourself, the government and the country."

See three possible scenarios posted (in Spanish) by La Silla Vacia; plus a Gov't response.

Colombia Reports: Several Colombian media asserted Thursday that the unexpected and voluntary resignation of the government's entire cabinet has everything to do with President Juan Manuel Santos' plans to broker a peace deal with the FARC.

More HERE and HERE.

Colombia Reports: Colombian paramilitary organization AUC participated in a 2004 attempt to overthrow Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a demobilized member of the group told Colombian prosecutors Wednesday. A former member of the AUC's Catatumbo Block told Colombian officials that the paramilitaries were involved in planning the failed coup.

LAHT, SANTIAGO, Dominican Republic - Suspected cases of cholera continue to increase at hospitals in the northern Dominican province of Santiago, where at least 550 people have been treated in the past nine days for acute diarrhea.

Wall Street Journal: Joe Garcia's victory in the Democratic primary for the 26th congressional district in South Florida sets up a rematch with Republican Rep. David Rivera, in what promises to be one of the most vitriolic House races in the state. Mr. Rivera defeated Mr. Garcia by 10 percentage points in 2010 after a bare-knuckled brawl of a campaign. The two Cuban-Americans traded bitter accusations, with Mr. Rivera calling his opponent a "henchman" for Havana and Mr. Garcia saying his rival represented "the worst of Miami politics."

COHA: Central America is the third largest U.S. export market in existence, and up to now the neoliberal ideals imposed by the agreement have mainly benefited large corporations that have migrated to the region. The decision of these governments to establish a free market has hampered the Central American agricultural sector and has decreased food security. This process intensifies the area's dependency on volatile international markets in a region already threatened by structural malnutrition.

AFP - Peruvian President Ollanta Humala announced plans Wednesday to build an international airport near the southern city of Cusco to boost tourism to the legendary Inca citadel of Machu Picchu.

The current Cusco airport, long unable to handle major flights from abroad, only operates with limited daytime flights and is limited by its location in a city, surrounded by hills. Large aircraft cannot fly into the facility.

Droughts in Russia and the US could send grain prices to record highs as a result of low crop yields, the International Grains Council (IGC) said Thursday. The US is suffering its worst drought in 56 years.

In its latest monthly report, the IGC said the combination of drought and rising demand could lead to record prices and a worldwide food emergency similar to what happened in 2008.

Arctic sea ice is set to reach its lowest ever recorded extent as early as this weekend, in "dramatic changes" signalling that man-made global warming is having a major impact on the polar region.

With the melt happening at an unprecedented rate of more than 100,000 sq km a day, and at least a week of further melt expected before it begins to reform ahead of the northern winter, satellites are expected to confirm the record - currently set in 2007 - within days.

Germany-based energy provider E.ON has begun work on a pilot plant that will enable the power generated by wind farms to be stored on the gas grid.

Beginning in 2013, the power-to-gas plant, which will be built in Falkenhagen, Germany, will handle excess power that is generated by wind farms and cannot be fed into the power grid. By storing the excess power, wind farms - which would otherwise be shut down for a while to avoid bottlenecks in the power grid - can continue to generate power.

The plant works by using electrolysis, in which about 360 cubic meters of hydrogen are produced per hour. This hydrogen can then be treated like natural gas. Once the process is complete, it can then be fed into the regional gas grid, where it is then available for producing heat and power, E.ON explains

AFP - Ironic art fans have launched a petition to save the "world's worst restoration": a retouched, century-old church painting of Christ that has become an international joke.

Cecilia Gimenez, described as being in her 80s, has won global fame with her horribly botched impromptu attempt to restore an oil painting of Christ crowned with thorns, his sorrowful gaze raised to heaven.

The "restored" painting looks like a pale monkey's face surrounded by fur, with mishapen eyes and nose, and a crooked smudge for a mouth, a style some wits have compared to Picasso's.

AFP - The global market for tablet computers is extending its sizzling growth and will likely top 100 million in 2012, a research firm said Thursday.

The April-June quarter set a new record for tablet shipments of nearly 25 million units -- up 36 percent from the prior quarter and 77 percent year-over-year, according to ABI Research.

REUTERS - Mark David Chapman, who shot and killed former Beatle John Lennon 32 years ago, was denied parole for a seventh time, New York State's Department of Corrections said on Thursday.

Chapman, 57, is serving a prison sentence of 20 years to life for shooting Lennon four times in the back outside the musician's New York City apartment building on Dec. 8, 1980. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.

Chapman has come up for parole every two years since 2000 and has been turned down each time.

AP -A member of the U.S. Navy SEAL team that killed Osama bin Laden has written a firsthand account of the operation, triggering more questions about the possible public release of classified information involving the historic assault of the terror leader's compound in Pakistan.

U.S. military officials say they do not believe the book has been read or cleared by the Defense Department, which reviews publications by military members to make sure that no classified material is revealed.

AP - A Cairo court on Thursday ordered the chief editor of an Egyptian newspaper detained pending trial on charges of insulting the country's president and "spreading lies."

The case against Islam Afifi of the privately-owned el-Dustour daily is one of several lawsuits brought mainly by Egypt's Islamists against journalists, accusing them of inflammatory coverage and inciting the public against the Muslim Brotherhood, the country's largest political group.

The Cairo Criminal Court on Thursday ordered Afifi held in custody and scheduled his trial for mid-September. The development sparked anger among rights groups and the Press Syndicate called for an emergency meeting.

AFP - NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on Wednesday made its first test drive, leaving wheel tracks near its landing spot -- now dubbed "Bradbury Landing" in honor of late science fiction author Ray Bradbury.

"Curiosity today had its first successful drive on Mars. We have a fully functioning mobility system on our rover," said Matt Haverly, the lead rover planner at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

The $2.5 billion craft -- which landed in Gale Crater on the Red Planet on August 6 -- drove about four meters forward, before turning right at a 90 degree angle and moving backwards a few meters.

AFP - A Saudi columnist has triggered a furore in the ultra-conservative kingdom after he wrote on micro-blogging website Twitter that some Saudi women were working as prostitutes in Dubai.

Dubai, in the neighbouring United Arab Emirates, is the most liberal city in the Gulf and hundreds of thousands of Saudis flock there for holidays or weekend breaks.

"Some Saudi women are working as prostitutes in Dubai," tweeted Mohammed al-Sheikh, who also writes a column in the Al-Jazeera newspaper.

After two mass shootings in a month left 19 people dead and dozens injured in two US states, you'd think gun control would become a major topic of the US presidential race. Instead no one is going near the issue.

After shootings sprees in Winnenden, Germany and Cumbria, England in 2009 and 2010 respectively, left 28 people dead, a heated political debate about tightening the countries already tough gun control laws ensued.

To compare: After two massacres in a row committed each by a single, heavily armed gunman first in a movie theater in Colorado and then a Sikh temple in Wisconsin just weeks apart and in the middle of a presidential campaign, a national debate about gun violence in the US never even got off the ground.

Each year, hundreds of aid workers are severely wounded, kidnapped or killed. DW spoke with Michael Reich, World Vision Germany's Country Program Coordinator for Humanitarian and Emergency Affairs.

The never-ending euro crisis is back on the front pages amid a flurry of meetings between EU leaders. There's economic trouble in Australia, too, as a major mining project gets the thumbs down. And Prince Harry gets the thumbs up from a writer in The Independent who argues the naked pictures of him now online "will do his reputation no harm".

By refusing to mount a defence in the US Anti-Doping Agency's case against him, Lance Armstrong has - whatever equivocation and claims of persecution he persists in - all but conceded that he won his seven Tour de France titles by doping. And by walking away from a defence he has ceded those yellow jerseys and lost his status as the most remarkable serial winner in the history of the sport.

There may be some small fraternity of true believers who still need the master-narrative of the heroic cancer survivor-turned-sports superstar and still cling to a conviction that he could have beaten the rap if the world had not conspired against him.

Armstrong's statement repeats a familiar litany of disingenuous indignation - his record of wins, a lack of physical evidence, the "nonsense" of this "witch-hunt" and so on - but by this decision, Armstrong has excommunicated himself from the Church of Lance: he no longer believes in the plausibility of his own denials. The aggression that kept accusers in check and witnesses silent for so long has been replaced by weariness and resignation.

"There comes a point in every man's life when he has to say, 'Enough is enough.' For me, that time is now," his statement reads.

Next up : Miguel Indurain?

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}