Iron lady, leader of the Fourth Reich, lacking compassion: Chancellor Angela Merkel's image has suffered during the euro crisis. Suddenly, though, she is all smiles and full of praise for the efforts made by indebted euro-zone states. But will her charm offensive be enough to transform Germany's battered image in Europe?

About 150,000 immigrants living in Spain will lose their right to public health services on Saturday as the recession-hit country tries to save money. But doctors warn that excluding immigrants from the health system will have a wider impact on ordinary Spaniards' health.

The move by Mariano Rajoy's conservative People's party government has provoked anger among doctors and some regional governments that deliver public health to Spaniards.

Amnesty International and other NGOs have accused the government of breaking international agreements by excluding a significant section of the population - immigrants without proper residence permits - from public healthcare.

A secretive power enjoyed by the Queen and Prince Charles to alter new laws is set to be exposed after the government lost a legal battle to keep details of its application private.

The information commissioner has ruled that the Cabinet Office must publish an internal Whitehall guide to the way the senior royals are consulted before legislation is introduced to ensure it doesn't adversely affect their private interests.

The application of the controversial veto was revealed by the Guardian last year and has been described by constitutional lawyers as "a royal nuclear deterrent". Some believe its existence may underpin the influence Charles appears to wield in Whitehall over pet issues ranging from architecture to healthcare.

The French government has rejected a Marseille senator's call for military intervention in the wake of a record number of gang-related killings France's second city, characterised by widespread use of AK-47 assault rifles, the local gangsters' weapon of choice.

The latest victim was 25-year-old Walid Marzouki, a known drug dealer. His killers fired some 30 rounds from a fully-automatic Kalashnikov at him late on Wednesday as he sat in the passenger seat of a car stopped for a red light.

He is the 19th victim of inter-gang murders in the Marseille region this year, up on a total of 16 in 2011. They are mostly a consequence of territorial disputes between local drug gangs who rule the city's northern suburbs in a climate of lawlessness and violence.

Exasperated local Senator Samia Ghali on Thursday called for soldiers to be deployed to the troubled suburbs.

Because the army knows how to track down assassins, right...

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

REUTERS - Julian Assange expects to wait six months to a year for a deal to free him from Ecuador's embassy in London, and hopes Sweden will drop its case against him, the WikiLeaks' founder said in an interview broadcast on Thursday.

The former computer hacker has been holed up at the embassy for more than two months, seeking to avoid being sent to Sweden for questioning over rape and sexual assault allegations - and triggering a diplomatic spat with Britain.

Talks over Assange's fate resumed this week, and Ecuador's government said it was optimistic it will be able to strike a deal with Britain for Assange to receive guarantees he would not be further extradited from Sweden to the United States.

This after several pledges from Swedish officials that Assange won't be extradited should he be in danger of facing the death penalty.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

The European Commission plans to give the European Central Bank (ECB) oversight of all banks in the eurozone from 2014, said Michel Barnier, in charge of the internal market at the EU executive.

Under the plans, the ECB will oversee all banks that have tapped the European Stability Mechanism from January next year, Barnier told German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

All banks relevant to the financial system would be covered from July and all remaining banks from 2014, Barnier further told the paper in an interview.

Countries outside the eurozone can subject their banks to the oversight of the ECB voluntarily, said the commissioner.

AFP - A Japanese court Friday rejected Apple's claim that Samsung stole its technology, dealing a blow to the iPhone maker after a US jury ordered its South Korean rival to pay over $1.0 billion in damages.

The ruling by the Tokyo District Court was the latest chapter in a bitter global patent war between the smartphone giants who have accused each other of stealing intellectual property for their own products.

The Japanese court found that Samsung did not infringe on Apple's iPhone and iPad patents for some of its own Galaxy smartphones and tablet computer. The three-judge panel also awarded legal costs to Samsung.

AFP - Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky lost his long-running legal battle with fellow tycoon Roman Abramovich in London's High Court on Friday and was roundly criticised by the trial judge.

Berezovsky, 66, was seeking more than £3 billion ($4.75 billion, 3.8 billion euros) in damages after accusing the 45-year-old owner of Chelsea football club of blackmail, breach of trust and breach of contract.

But Judge Elizabeth Gloster ruled in Abramovich's favour and described Berezovsky as an "unimpressive and inherently unreliable witness" after a trial which started in October last year and ended in January.

Berezovsky claimed Abramovich "betrayed" him and "intimidated" him into selling shares in the Russian oil company Sibneft for a "mere 1.3 billion dollars". Abramovich firmly denied the allegations.

Over a year of conflict has destroyed the foundations of Syria's economy. Economists working on the "Day After" project want to use the reconstruction to make some fundamental reforms.

The Shock Doctrine is alive and well.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

Iranian interpreters at the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Tehran did some quick thinking when Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi decided to criticise Iran's Syrian ally Bashar al-Assad - by simply swapping the word "Syria" for "Bahrain".

In his much-awaited speech on August 30 the newly-elected Egyptian president said: "The revolution in Egypt is the cornerstone for the Arab Spring, which started days after Tunisia and then it was followed by Libya and Yemen and now the revolution in Syria against its oppressive regime."

This prompted the Syrian delegation to walk out of the summit, although the millions of Iranians watching the event on TV or listening on the radio were told Morsi was actually referring to Bahrain.

And when Morsi called on the fractured Syrian opposition movement to unite, the interpreters slipped in another a convenient swap for Bahrain, a Gulf State where largely Shiite protests against the ruling Sunni monarchy have been supported by Iran.

Polls opened Friday in Angola with President Jose Eduardo dos Santos expected to win another term amid opposition fears that the vote will fall short of being free and fair. It is only the second election since Angola's civil war ended in 2002.

...During his 33 years in power, Dos Santos has centralised power in the presidency, dominating Angolan politics and exerting a strong role in business in Africa's second-largest oil producer.

His family, notably his daughter Isabel, has built an international business empire, but has also poured billions of dollars into rebuilding the country after 41 years of armed conflict -- 14 years of liberation struggle and 27 years of civil war.

The main opposition Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita) battled the government until its feared leader Jonas Savimbi was killed by the army in 2002.

AFP - Mexico's electoral tribunal rejected Thursday a left-wing bid to overturn the presidential election win of Enrique Pena Nieto, as protesters shouted "fraud" and threw stones at the court.

One by one, the tribunal's seven judges rebuffed claims by leftist runner-up Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador that Pena Nieto's party bought millions of votes, exceeded campaign spending limits and received biased news coverage.

...The ruling clears the way for Pena Nieto to be formally declared president-elect and begin his six-year term on December 1, returning the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to power after a 12-year absence.

Four years ago, Sarah Palin energized the Republicans with her convention speech. This year, it is Paul Ryan who has found a common cause with the party's grassroots. His stark brand of conservatism is bad news for the socially weak.

I quoted this op-ed by Spiegel's Washington correspondent for the sole reason that it deviates from the toothless to enthusiastic accounts in most of the European MSM.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

RCN Radio published the alleged agreement in which the Colombian government and guerrilla group FARC commit to end the country's armed conflict. The following is a translation of the original Spanish text.

A United Nations body has found that the European Union has failed in its commitments towards transparency and public participation in renewable energy policies - a move which has been hailed as a victory by wind farm opposition groups.

The Compliance Committee for the Aarhus Convention, an international agreement on environment policy transparency, claimed the EU - which is a signatory - has failed to put in place a proper regulatory framework and clear instructions on how to consult local populations in their renewable energy plans.

In the firing line are the national renewable energy action plans (NREAP) that all 27 EU countries have submitted under the 2009 renewable energy directive.

It also reported that the EU had failed to properly monitor the implementation of such an energy action plan in Ireland, and ensuring there was sufficient public participation in drawing up the plan.

The world's biggest offshore windfarm could be built off the northern Scottish coast, after a scheme with enough capacity to power 40% of Scottish households was submitted for planning permission.

The £4.5bn complex would have 339 turbines covering 300 square kilometres off Caithness, making it 50% bigger than the giant London Array scheme off Kent. It is expected to be the first in a series of deep water schemes under "Round 3" licensing.

The renewable industry has hailed it as a watershed moment but warned these new deep water farms might only be fully realised if the government provides policy stability by pushing through its proposed Energy Bill.

The 1.5-gigawatt farm is being developed by Moray Offshore Renewables, a joint venture between Spanish oil company Repsol, and an arm of Portuguese power group EDP, which has recently become partly owned by China's state-owned Three Gorges Corporation.

After more than a century lighting up the world, the switch will be flicked off across the EU for the final time on incandescent bulbs on Saturday as the phased ban on their sale is completed.

From 1 September, an EU directive aimed at reducing the energy use of lighting means that retailers will no longer be allowed to sell 40W and 25W incandescent bulbs. Similar bans came into effect for 60W and 100W incandescent bulbs over the past three years. The restrictions are predicted to save 39 terawatt-hours of electricity across the EU annually by 2020.

A recent 18-page essay by respected French journalist and author Richard Millet has caused a major stir within the country's literary community. For a hint as to why, look no further than the work's title, "Literary Elegy for Anders Breivik".

Millet penned the essay after delving into Breivik's 1,500 page online manuscript, "2083: A European Declaration of Independence", in which the self-styled Norwegian "crusader" detailed the reasons that led him to kill 77 people in Norway's capital, Oslo, and the nearby island of Utoya on July 22 of last year.

...The literary critic elaborates by expressing his regret that Europe has, over time, "renounced asserting its Christian roots" and that it "refuses to consider the Muslim call to prayer as sounding the death knell of Christianity, and therefore the end of our nations".

Millet fought in the early part of the Lebanon civil war. What's more interesting is why his publisher chose to publish this incitement to hatred.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

A unique experiment, one without rules, is taking place in the Hadba prison, where former prisoners are now the prison guards and former guards the prisoners. What they have in common is Abu Salim, the most notorious prison for political prisoners in Tripoli, the epicenter of fear during dictator Moammar Gadhafi's reign. Thousands were tortured there. And in 1996, about 1,200 inmates were executed, as a brutal retribution for rioting against inhuman conditions in the prison.

Not just at the Hadba prison, but throughout the entire country, this exchange of roles is taking place in a legal and institutional vacuum. The revolutionaries arrested more than 7,000 people, and many are still being held in secret prisons. Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, who is to be put on trial in the city of Zintan in northwestern Libya in September, is the most famous of the inmates. But most were merely small cogs in the big wheel of the dictatorship: informants, murderers, torturers and mercenaries. They are now in the hands of those they once fought and oppressed. Now the question arises as to what should happen to them. Some want revenge, others want forgiveness, and everyone wants justice. But how can reconciliation be brought to a nation that has suffered so much?

...But who is guilty? Gwaidar has interrogated many of the murderers of Abu Salim, and they have all said the same thing: If we hadn't killed, we would have been killed. Gwaidar says that he doesn't know what he would have done in their position. "But I believe that they also did it to demonstrate their loyalty. No one called in sick, not even on the second day of the massacre. And even those who had the day off showed up to participate. Today some weep when they speak about it, while others show no emotion at all."

Anti-mafia activist Rosy Canale, who nearly died in a brutal beating, is being threatened again after writing a book

Former Formula One head Max Mosley's name is synonymous with scandal thanks to a British tabloid and, years later, Google. Compromising images can still be found using the search engine, and Mosley has launched a broad legal offensive in Europe to force Google to filter out the photos. It could become a landmark digital-rights case.

Statistics Finland reports that more than 23,000 people in the Helsinki region and nearly 60,000 nationwide speak Russian as their first language.

I recently met the founders of a Russian website that solely promotes Finnish tourist events and destinations. They have 14.000 unique visitors a day. (Porvoo is on the route from St P to Helsinki, and one can hear Russian spoken here almost every day during the summer).

Finland welcomed 3.3 million Russian visitors in 2011, up 27% over 2010. The first waves of a decade ago were the rich and the poor. The rich were enticed by luxury shopping (simply open a store called 'Very Very Expensive' and they'd flock in). The poor came on day trip coaches to stock up on unobtainable goods.

The wave that is building now is the Russian middle class - who are remarkably 'European' in outlook.

This is what Helsinki tourism says: "Russians are interested in Finland's pristine nature, tranquillity, cleanliness and safety. Holidays spent at spas, skiing, fishing and at cottages are ever-popular. Finns are considered reliable and Russians know that they will get what they pay for. There is little crime. Russians appreciate receiving service in their own language."

You can't be me, I'm taken

Munir Jaffery, an investigating officer in the case, said on Sunday that Khalid Jadoon Chishti was arrested late on Saturday for allegedly having planted pages of a Quran in a shopping bag containing burned papers and ash that had been carried by the Christian girl.

...

The reversal could lead to the girl being released from prison and defuse what has been a religiously charged case in Pakistan.

The case has been especially sensitive because of the girl's young age and questions about her mental capacity.

The bizarre mix up occurred last Saturday in Iceland's southern volcanic region near the island's Eidgja canyon, a remote but popular walking area for visiting tourists.

The woman in question was reported to have failed to return to her tour bus.

The tour company driver waited for an hour. When the woman failed to turn up, he alerted police and search teams were dispatched to the area shortly afterwards. They started combing the barren treeless hillsides looking for an Asian woman described as 5ft 2in and wearing dark clothing.

The expedition was only called off at 3am after it emerged that the woman had been on the bus all along and had even participated in the search, having had no idea that she had been reported missing.

In their book, Anna Cabana and Anne Rosencher offer some new insights into the origins of the Twitter spat which distracted from Mr Hollande's presidential campaign and continues to haunt his time in office. It began with a message sent by Valerie Trierweiler in June which implicitly attacked Ségolène Royal, Hollande's former partner. They say Ms Trierweiler has an "irrational hatred" of Ms Royal which goes back 10 years, much longer than previously reported.

They say it began with a meeting in the French parliament in 2002 in which Ms Royal, then a minister, summoned Ms Trierweiler, then a political journalist, to tell her to "stay away from François or you will be sorry". This happened, say the authors, three years before the "official" start of the affair between Mr Hollande and Ms Trierweiler.

Samuel Israel III is, apparently, real. The story of how the conner got conned
 is a fascinating, endlessly recursive tale of what it's like to live in a fiction.

Even now, with Israel's current status as 'incarcerated', the fiction continues. Somebody is selling a book.

You can't be me, I'm taken