In his third visit to Germany in the past year, US President Barack Obama is meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel in the eastern city of Dresden before the two head off to visit the Buchenwald concentration camp. 

US President Barack Obama met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel Friday morning in the eastern German city of Dresden, which was flattened by Allied bombing towards the end of World War II.

Obama, who has just finished a tour of the Middle East, was greeted by Merkel at his hotel in the center of the city, before they headed off on a tour of Dresden's highlights, including the Gruenes Gewoelbe museum and the recently rebuilt Frauenkirche.

After their meeting, the two leaders will travel west to visit to the former Nazi concentration camp Buchenwald, located just outside the city of Weimar, where they are expected to meet Holocaust survivors.  

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Italy, which has been under fire for its treatment of migrants in particular since in May it forcibly returned hundreds of people intercepted in its territorial waters to Libya, has called for "obligatory burden sharing" among EU member states when it comes to taking in asylum seekers.

Thousands of African migrants risk their life crossing the Mediterranean to the EU every year

On Thursday (4 June), EU interior ministers meeting in Luxembourg discussed how to tackle the increasing number of migrants coming from the Mediterranean, especially to particular member states such as Italy and Malta.

Italian interior minister Roberto Maroni, a member of the anti-immigrant Northern League, said before the meeting that proposals made recently by the European Commission in that respect were "interesting, but ... not sufficient."

"We asked for obligatory burden sharing, the proposal foresees a voluntary system ... so those who don't want to needn't take in any refugees," Mr Maroni told journalists.

Disquieting tensions between Slovakia and Hungary are not likely to be dispelled any time soon. Adrift in the polls, sovereigntist groups like Ján Slota's Slovak National Party and the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia led by Vladimír Mečiar are counting on Hungarian populists and a dispute about Slovakia's Hungarian minority to make up lost ground.

While Hungary is preparing for the return to power of populist Viktor Orbán, in Slovakia Ján Slota has fallen on hard times. In the past, voters tolerated his brutality and his ostentatious taste for luxury, but it now seems that the favourite from the extreme right has overstepped the mark. The European Commission recently invalidated a call for tender organized by Slovakia, in which several billion euros were at stake, on the basis that the money would be distributed among Slota's friends. In recent weeks, he has also been on the receiving end of hostile attention in the media: reports on his luxury car collection have raised questions about his tax returns, and he has also been admonished for an incident in which he insulted a woman police officer.

talian PM Silvio Berlusconi is being investigated for misuse of public funds after photos showed he had used state aircraft to fly friends to Sardinia.

Mr Berlusconi confirmed on Thursday that he had been formally placed under investigation by prosecutors, but said the probe would be "swiftly shelved".

He insisted he was allowed to transport "people he needs" for security reasons.

Photographs of a naked man and topless women at the villa have been published by Spanish newspaper El Pais.

Gordon Brown backed away from shifting Alistair Darling out of Number 11 today as he shook up his top team - and saw two more ministers resign.

Mr Brown had seemed determined to make his close ally Ed Balls chancellor, but sources confirmed he will now remain as schools secretary.

Mr Brown was also hit with two more Cabinet resignations.

Firstly, the Defence Secretary John Hutton announced he was stepping down, although he insisted his decision to quit was taken for entirely personal reasons and pledged his support for Mr Brown from the backbenches.

Debris recovered from the Atlantic by Brazilian search teams is "sea trash" and not from a lost Air France jet, a Brazilian air force official has said.

Brig Ramon Borges Cardoso contradicted earlier reports, saying "no material from the plane has been recovered".

Teams found buoys and a wooden pallet and spotted a fuel slick, and are now searching for an airline seat and a chunk of metal seen earlier this week.

Relatives have been told that there is no hope of survivors being found.

Finally a US President who is neither an idiot nor a sociopath.  Where will it lead?  Let us hope.

They tried to assimilate me. They failed.

The Dutch far-right Freedom Party (PVV) of Geert Wilders made the greatest leap forward in the country's EU elections on Thursday (4 June), with 16.9 percent in exit polls. But the ruling conservatives came top overall.

The result is a major victory for the openly anti-Islamic party, giving it four seats in the European legislature and a possibility that this could rise to five once the final count is completed.

Neo-nazi youth look on as Geert Wilders campaigns in Leeuwarden, Netherlands

The Freedom Party came second only to the ruling Christian Democrats (CDA) of Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, which exit polls suggest will win 20 percent of the vote or five of the 25 seats up for grabs.

This is a fall of four percent from the last European elections in 2004, resulting in the loss of two MEPs for the party.

French MoDem Party chief and a Green Party candidate exchanged harsh words on a live televised debate, with the former accusing the latter of having defended pedophilia, in one of the few memorable moments of this year's campaigns.

AFP - The European parliamentary election campaign may not have fired up voters, but it has triggered an ugly debate among French political chieftains, who traded bitter insults at a televised debate.
  
The most heated exchange was between the leaders of the parties battling for third place, when Francois Bayrou of the centrist Modem accused Green flag-bearer and Daniel Cohn-Bendit of having defended paedophilia.
  

Get the latest results from council elections around England as they come in

The results in terms of seats would have - if high school kids ruled the land - been:

Pirate Party 5 seats (+5) Group: Likely Green, depends on post-election negotiations
Green Party 3 (+2) Green
Soc Dem 3 (-2) PES
Moderaterna 2 (-2) EPP
Sverigedemokraterna 2 (+2) UEN
Vänsterpartiet 1 (-1) EUL-NGL
Folkpartiet 1 (-1) ALDE
Centerpartiet 1 (+-0) ALDE
Kristdemokraterna 0 (-1) EPP
Junilistan 0 (-3) ID

In terms of party groups Greens goes up 7 seats, UEN takes two seats, while everyone else loose.

Obviously high school students do not rule the land, but this very encouraging news for Greens and Pirates. This big sample of 16-19 year olds does indicate something of the ever so important first time voters preferences (18-21 year olds).

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank, is reporting the country's economy will contract by 6.2 percent in 2009 as a result of the global economic crisis. A recovery is expected to start in 2010, but economists warn Germany will struggle at least until 2013.

After a disastrous first quarter, a new forecast from Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank, indicates pressure on the German economy will lessen later in 2009. "The German economy is currently in a sharp recession," the bank said in a statement on Friday. "Downward pressure on the German economy is likely to ease during the course of 2009." Still, any kind of upturn isn't expected until 2010.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

SEOUL, South Korea -- The United States has told South Korea that it will impose its own financial sanctions on the North apart from punishments the U.N. has been mulling for Pyongyang's latest nuclear test, a news report said Friday.

The U.S. sanctions call for blacklisting foreign financial institutions that help the North launder money and conduct other dubious deals, the South Korean Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg briefed the South Korean president on the new sanctions at a meeting Thursday, the mass-market paper said, citing an unidentified official at the presidential office. The U.S. Embassy in Seoul could not confirm the report.

All flights to Beirut are full and most hotels in the city are booked, as tens of thousands of Lebanese abroad come home to vote in Sunday's parliamentary election.

Throughout the campaign, political parties have been criticised, and have accused each other of spending millions on offering free trips to Beirut in exchange for votes.

"I think there's been a huge amount of money spent here, per capita more than anywhere else on any election in the world, and this money distribution certainly deligitimises the election," says Karim Makdisi, a political scientist at the American University of Beirut.

But between hugs and kisses in the crowded arrivals hall of Rafik Hariri International Airport, Rima said she had paid for her own passage home.

"I had to be part of this historic moment, our future is being decided" said Rima, a student at Harvard University in the United States.

Former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld could soon be in trouble for the role he played in human rights abuses committed in the Guantanamo prison, a United Nations expert said Wednesday.

"In a year or two, his responsibilities will be established. Wherever he goes, he will face difficulties," Leandro Despouy, who is Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, told journalists in Geneva.

A US bipartisan Senate report released late last year found Rumsfeld and other top administration officials responsible for abuse of Guantanamo detainees in US custody.

It said Rumsfeld authorised harsh interrogation techniques on December 2, 2002 at the Guantanamo prison, although he ruled them out a month later.

New research has given credence to the idea that laughter evolved in a common ancestor of the great apes and humans.

Researchers tickled 22 young apes and three humans and acoustically analysed the laughing sounds that resulted.

Though the vocalisations varied, the team found that the patterns of changes fit with evolutionary splits in the human and ape family tree.

The research in Current Biology also suggests that gorillas and bonobos have some control over their breathing.

Britain's atomic test veterans, involved in nuclear tests in the 1950s, have won their High Court bid for the right to sue the Government for compensation.

Around 1,000 servicemen who blame their ill-health on their involvement in the nuclear tests want to sue the Ministry of Defence.

The veterans, who took part in the programme on the Australian mainland, Monte Bello islands and Christmas Island, between 1952 and 1958, say that new scientific evidence has shown links between exposure to ionising radiation and their conditions, which include cancer, skin defects and fertility problems.

Many Europeans think that the US is full of gun-toting maniacs and illiterate morons. In part two of his series on trans-Atlantic differences, American historian Peter Baldwin shows why Europeans have this -- and plenty of other facts about America -- plain wrong.

In a three-part essay for SPIEGEL ONLINE, American historian Peter Baldwin argues that the EU and the US are much more similar than they think. You can read part one of his essay here.

When compared to Europe, the US welfare state is often portrayed as miserly and undeveloped. And so it is, if the standard is taken to be Sweden or Germany. But if we look at the span of social policy across Europe, a different picture emerges.

Next week marks the 60th anniversary of the publication of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Jeremy Paxman pays tribute to one of England's greatest writers.

If you want to learn how to write non-fiction, Orwell is your man. He may be known worldwide for his last two novels, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. But, for me, his best work is his essays.

Who would have imagined that sixteen hundred words in praise of the Common Toad, knocked out to fill a newspaper column in April 1946, would be worth reprinting sixty years later? But here it is, with many of the characteristic Orwell delights, the unglamorous subject matter, the unnoticed detail (''a toad has about the most beautiful eye of any living creature'') the baleful glare, the profound belief in humanity. Because what the piece is really about, of course, is not the toad itself, but the thrill of that most promising time of year, the spring, even as seen from Orwell's dingy Islington flat.

You can play with Rosling's Gapminder tool here.

See a thread on Rosling here.

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

I urge anyone who enjoys classical guitar, or any kind of music for that matter, to have a listen:

Classical Guitarist Eliot Fisk | WBUR and NPR - On Point with Tom Ashbrook

The classical guitar -- and for that matter, the instrumental root of every head-banging Guitar Hero rocker -- goes back to the lute and Spanish vihuela.

In the 18th century, the modern six-string guitar emerged for a heyday. It came back, classically, with Spanish great Andres Segovia in the 1920s. And half a century later, Segovia handed the tradition to a young Eliot Fisk.

Now virtuoso in his own right, Fisk carries the torch for a musical tradition -- and a role for the guitar as exquisite cultural bridge.

This hour, On Point: A conversation with classical guitar virtuoso Eliot Fisk.

When Obama said that Western countries should avoid "dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear", it could have been perceived as a personal attack in France. The hijab, along with all religious symbols, was banned in French schools in 2004. Read more...

The French government's decision to ban pupils from wearing "ostentatious religious symbols" caused a ruckus with hijab-wearers in the country when it was first enforced. Although the law remains in place five years on, Obama's highly critical comments on the subject come as a slap in the face for the French model. Our Observers who wear, or have worn the hijab, give us their opinion.

The statements in question:

The United States government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab and to punish those who would deny it.

It is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practising religion as they see fit -- for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear.  We can't disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretence of liberalism.

I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal, but I do believe that a woman who is denied an education is denied equality. 

You are killing our creative industries. "Downloading costs billions," said the Sun. "MORE than 7 million Brits use illegal downloading sites that cost the economy billions of pounds, government advisers said today. Researchers found more than a million people using a download site in ONE day and estimated that in a year they would use £120bn worth of material."

The Obamas turn up in Paris this evening, but have declined a dinner invitation from the couple next door: the Sarkozys.

President Obama's reluctance to spend more than minimum time with the French leader on his visit for the D-Day anniversary has come as an embarrassment to the Elysée Palace.

America's First Family will not be dining with President Sarkozy and his wife, Carla Bruni, even though they are staying at the residence of the US Ambassador, yards from the Elysée apartments where the Sarkozys spend their weekends.

Mr Sarkozy's staff were trying yesterday to arrange another private moment between the couples. Mr Obama is due to fly back to Washington tomorrow night or on Sunday.

Veteran actor Shih Kien, who played Bruce Lee's archrival in the movie Enter the Dragon, has died aged 96.

Shih made his film debut in 1940 and went on to star in around 350 films.

He is best known by western audiences as the one-handed criminal mastermind Han in the film which launched martial artist Lee to stardom in 1973.

AKA Shek Kin.