Opposition mounts against a proposal from the German and French interior ministers that called for the ability to reintroduce border controls in the Schengen area for up to a month at a time.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has warned repeatedly in the run-up to Sunday's presidential election that if countries bordering non-Schengen nations fail to comply with their obligations to secure the frontiers appropriately, France have no choice but to protect its borders against illegal immigration by reinstituting passport controls.

This week, German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich is singing from the same hymn book. He and his French counterpart Claude Gueant wrote a letter to the Danish EU Council Presidency, calling for countries to have the right to reintroduce checks at the internal borders for no more than 30 days.

It is an election campaign maneuver, say critics, who reacted promptly. But Ska Keller, a German member of European Parliament for the Greens, said she believes there is more to the joint letter than just electoral politics.

Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, is threatening another controversial revolution in the NHS by proposing that its staff be paid less if they work in poorer parts of the country.

The cabinet minister is backing a plan for regional pay, which would mean that nurses, midwives, hospital porters, cleaners and paramedics would earn less if they work in the north or the Midlands rather than in the south of England. Official documents reveal that the only exemption backed by the Department of Health would be for highly paid managers working in new bodies established to deliver Lansley's controversial NHS reform programme, widely criticised as a privatisation of the health service.

The department, according to a submission to the NHS pay review body, believes special arrangements would be necessary for this new cohort of executives to "attract and retain high-calibre leaders and staff responsible for transforming delivery".

The revelation was seized upon by the government's critics on Saturday night as fresh evidence that the coalition is out of touch with the British public.

Nick Clegg has delivered a thinly veiled warning to David Cameron that he must stand his ground in the face of a major Tory rebellion over Lords reform.

The deputy prime minister pointed out that he had asked Liberal Democrats to support coalition measures they did not like, and others should act in the same "spirit".

However, he also hinted at possible concessions to placate opponents - even avoiding ruling out a referendum.

The comments, on the BBC's Sunday Politics show, came amid reports that at least six cabinet ministers would prefer to see the changes delayed.

At the FDP's national meeting, leader Philipp Rösler failed in trying to revive the party's self-esteem. The party's former general secretary did a little better. But is it enough for success in upcoming key elections?

Soccer fans among the FDP's party members with the slightest tendency towards superstition would probably have preferred a different location for the party congress other than Karlsruhe. Just three years after playing in Germany's top soccer league, Karlsruhe SC is threatened with relegation to the third division.

Parallels with the pro-business and free-market, liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) seem as strange as they are astonishing: At the federal elections three years ago, the party earned some 14.6 percent of votes and became the junior partner in Germany's governing coalition with the Christian Democrats. But since then, voters have kicked the party out of five state parliaments.

But the FDP still has a chance to avoid further decline if it manages to grab the minimum of 5 percent of votes it needs to remain represented in the state parliaments of Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia during elections in May. Polls, however, predicted the FDP below the 5 percent threshol

In a rare, authorized rally just outside the capital of Azerbaijan, host of next month's Eurovision Song Contest, thousands of protesters have called for new elections and democratic reforms.

Some 5,000 Azerbaijanis protested Sunday near the venue for next month's Eurovision Song Contest, demanding greater freedoms, release of political prisoners and elections.

Organized by the Public Chamber opposition coalition, protestors demanded the resignation of President Ilham Aliyev. Aliyev succeeded his father, Haidar, in 2003 and has been accused of election fraud and civil rights abuses.

The UK's intelligence services have come under renewed pressure with the emergence of a fresh cache of secret documents that suggest MI5 officers forced Libyans seeking asylum in Britain to co-operate with the very regime from which they had fled.

For the last three months, Scotland Yard detectives have been investigating MI6's alleged involvement in two so-called rendition operations that saw two Libyan dissidents kidnapped along with their families and flown to one of Muammar Gaddafi's prisons in 2004.

The role that MI6 is said to have played is detailed in a batch of documents discovered in an abandoned government office in Tripoli last September. The two men have lodged civil claims against MI6 and against Jack Straw, who was foreign secretary at the time.

Well-placed officials said on Sunday that a key question, and the one that worried them, was how much information MI5 offered Libya about individuals in Britain. That is a central issue in investigations now under way into MI5 and MI6 relations with Gaddafi and his security and intelligence agencies, they made clear.

Tens of thousands prayed outside Moscow's main cathedral on Sunday to show their support for the Russian Orthodox church in a controversy over a punk rock political protest.

Christ the Saviour cathedral was the scene of a brief surprise performance in February by Pussy Riot, a female punk rock group protesting against Vladimir Putin's return to the presidency. Three band members remain in police custody and face up to seven years in jail on charges of hooliganism.

Their treatment has provoked a public outcry and contributed to growing criticism of the church and its close ties to the Kremlin.

Patriarch Kirill has portrayed the punk performance as part of a broader attack on the church, considered by many Russians to be part of their national identity and an intrinsic part of a powerful state.

Francois Hollande wins first round of French presidential elections - 1.5pp ahead of Nicolas Sarkozy; Marine Le Pen is surprisingly strong, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Francois Bayrou is surprisingly weak; latest polls show Hollande ahead in the second round with 54% against 46%; Le Pen now styles herself as France's opposition leader; Günter Nonnenmacher says France is in real trouble with one third of the voters against the EU; Thomas Hanke says new French president will have a nightmare job; Olli Rehn's calls on the next French president to respect deficit rules; so does Jens Weidmann; Geert Wilders rejected the budget cuts,  a decision likely to trigger new Dutch elections; Wilders is likely to return to his anti-establishment roots, political analysts say; latest poll suggests the country is likely to remain politically fragmented; Antonis Samaras promises lower taxes, and higher social spending; Olivier Blanchard appeals to Germany to accept higher inflation and eurobonds; Spain has taken a decision to set up real estate companies to manage the banks' property portfolios; Paul Krugman says a euro exit would be similar to the abandonment of the gold standard in the 1930s; Wolfgang Münchau warns against underestimating the politics of eurozone-wide bank resolution regimes; Gavyn Davies, meanwhile, says the eurozone may have lost its ability to shock, but ability may soon return.