Herman Van Rompuy tends to be overlooked whenever European heads of state and government meet for their summits. The Belgian politician, president of the European Council, is an inconspicuous man with a receding hairline and metal-rimmed glasses, someone who doesn't seek the limelight, and who enjoys writing haikus about nature in his free time. He is one of the most powerful politicians in Europe, but he is almost unknown in most EU countries, including Germany.

Van Rompuy has been traveling a lot lately. His current schedule includes meetings with Finnish Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen and French President Nicolas Sarkozy. On Monday, Van Rompuy meets with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, where he can look forward to a particularly pleasant conversation. Merkel wants to propose giving the European Council president even more power.

The chancellor is planning her next political policy reversal . Until very recently, she has insisted that she was firmly opposed to creating divisions within Europe. But under the pressure of the euro crisis, Merkel has recently been thinking about abandoning the concept of a unified EU - and assigning a key role to Van Rompuy in the process.

The EU has always been careful to ensure that all members acted in unison, whether it involved moving forward or standing still. But in times in which the common currency threatens to break apart, the 17 nations of the euro zone need a common economic and financial policy. Otherwise, as the crisis has demonstrated, the euro cannot function.

TODAY, IT IS PRIMARILY GREAT BRITAIN THAT IS PREVENTING THE EU FROM GROWING CLOSER TOGETHER. Merkel, though, has had enough - and is now planning a two-speed Europe. It would mean tightly interlocking the countries of the euro zone, possibly by means of a separate treaty that would apply in parallel to the EU Treaty of Lisbon. This was the concept German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble proposed last week to the leadership of his party, the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Merkel sees Van Rompuy, who already chairs the council of the 27 EU leaders, as the head of the new power center.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso is also alarmed. In a "speech on the state of the union" last year, he warned against a division of Europe. He intends to read the member states the riot act before the European Parliament in Strasbourg at the end of the month. Last Thursday, Barroso tested the mood at a lunch with a few members. He argued that because of the principle of unanimity, THE INTERGOVERNMENTAL METHOD WOULD ALLOW "A FEW IDIOTS" IN ONE COUNTRY (BRITAIN) TO "BLACKMAIL" THE EU.

SPIEGEL: Then where are they (the problems) coming from?

Schroder: Great Britain is causing the biggest problem. Great Britain is not part of the euro, and yet the British always want to have their say in the design of an economic zone. This is inconsistent. And besides, the British have been very skeptical about every integration step, and that's putting it very diplomatically.

SPIEGEL: In reality they've been obstructionists?

Schroder: Yes. I was originally of the opinion that Great Britain could be treated like France. But what was overlooked, also by myself, is that Great Britain still sees itself in a sort of middle position between the United States on one side and Europe on the other. In other words, it's in an "in-between" position. And that is unacceptable.

SPIEGEL: But if nothing works with Great Britain, what role can the British play in the future?

Schroder: The decision on the concrete configuration of the economic government can only be made by members in the euro zone, and not by the Council (the powerful EU institution comprised of European national leaders) as a whole.

Read full interview at - http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,784357,00.html

Scores of fires are burning across Texas, which has been hit by high winds generated by Tropical Storm Lee. He urged people to heed evacuation orders and not to stay in their homes if they had lost power. "I understand that losing your home or lifetime possessions is incredibly difficult, but do not put your life in jeopardy," Mr Perry said. A blaze in east Texas killed a 20-year-old woman and her baby daughter on Sunday before it was extinguished.

An estimated 5,000 people have been forced to leave their homes because of the Bastrop fire, which is about 30 miles (50km) south-east of Austin and moving away from the state capital. Earlier, Jan Amen of the Texas Forest Service described the central Texas blaze as "a monster" that had been "zero percent contained". The fire is the largest of dozens of wildfires burning throughout the state, including more than 60 that started on Sunday.

Powerful winds from Tropical Storm Lee, hundreds of miles to the east, have fanned the flames. Texas has been suffering its worst drought since the 1950s.

It has been a mere three years since the collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers plunged the world into a deep financial crisis. But now, with economic indicators offering little room for optimism, a new crisis may be on the horizon. That, at least, was the message offered by Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackermann on Monday in comments delivered at a conference in Frankfurt. "We should resign ourselves to the fact that the 'new normality' is characterized by volatility and uncertainty," Ackermann said. "All this reminds one of the autumn of 2008."

The volatility was on full display on Monday as the leading German market index, the DAX, plunged to a two-year low and stocks of European banks, including Ackermann's Deutsche Bank, lost value. The price of gold once again spiked upwards as investors sought security.

In addition, the European Central Bank reported that European banks on Friday parked 151 billion euros ($213.3 billion) overnight with the ECB, the highest total in more than a year. The increase reflects growing distrust on the financial markets, with banks shunning the higher interest rates they would earn by depositing money with each other.

"It looks like the Arab Spring, but it can also be a radical Islamic winter," he said in a speech at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. "This leads us to the conclusion that through a long-term process, the likelihood of an all-out war is increasingly growing," the IDF general said. "Iran has not abandoned its nuclear program. The opposite is true; it continues full steam ahead," he said. "In Egypt, the army is collapsing under the burden of regular security operations, and this is reflected in the loss of control in the Sinai and the turning of the border with Israel into a terror border, with the possibility that Sinai will fall under the control of an Islamic entity."

"In Lebanon, Hezbollah is growing stronger within government arms, but it has not lost its desire to harm Israel, and the ties with Turkey aren't at their best," Major General Eisenberg added. During his address, the senior IDF official revealed that new, more lethal arms surfaced in the hands of Gaza terror groups during the latest round of fighting in the area. As result of the disturbing development, Israeli civilians were instructed to adopt greater precautions, he said. "We discovered a new weapon, and as result of this we instructed the public to hide under two roofs, rather than only one," he said.

Scores of residents were left wondering whether they had homes to return to as many of the fires continued to burn Sunday night. The largest and most destructive fire was in Bastrop County, where a blaze burned 14,000 acres and grew to an estimated 16 miles long by the end of the day, said Mark Stanford, fire chief of the Texas Forest Service. "It's catastrophic," Stanford said of the Bastrop County fire. "It's a major natural disaster."

Forest Service spokeswoman Lexi Maxwell said that fire began about 2 pm in the Circle D subdivision off Texas 71. It merged with another fire north of there that pushed south and crossed over Texas 21 and Texas 71, Maxwell said. Aerial units estimated that at least 300 homes had been damaged or destroyed by the fire.

Frankfurt's Dax index ended the day 5.3% lower, while the Paris Cac 40 fell 4.7% and the FTSE 100 a comparatively modest 3.6% - its second-biggest fall this year. The German market dropped below the low point that it reached during the sharp sell-off in early August. Asian markets also fell earlier in the day, with the Nikkei in Tokyo ending 1.9% down, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng 3% lower. US markets remained closed on Monday for Labor Day.

The current slide in markets, which began in late Thursday trading in New York, was triggered by mounting evidence of a slowdown in the global economy and fears over the impact of US and European government austerity. In the latest such indication, August service sector survey data released by the research group Markit on Monday showed that activity in the UK almost stagnated and business confidence in the eurozone fell at its fastest rate in August since the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers.

Bank shares have taken the brunt of the latest stock market sell-off. Royal Bank of Scotland fell 12.3%, Deutsche Bank 8.9% and Societe Generale 8.6%. Most major banks in the US and Europe have lost about half of their value over the last six months. Fears began to mount again that the eurozone may not be able to contain its debt crisis, and a government default could in turn lead to a European banking crisis. Deutsche Bank's outgoing chief executive, Josef Ackermann, said on Monday that some European banks would go bust if they were forced to recognise in their accounts the existing losses on government debts they own, based on current market prices for government bonds.

It bankrolled French farmers through the Common Agricultural Policy, that disguised tithe for war reparations. It then bankrolled Spanish farmers as well. It funded each new wave of EU expansion, though reeling itself from the 60 billion euros annual cost of its own reunification. It gave up the cherished D-Mark, the anchor of German economic stability. We are so used to German self-abnegation for the sake of Europe that we can hardly imagine any other state of affairs. But the escalating protest against EMU bail-outs by Germany's key insistutions go beyond the banalities of money. The fight is over German democracy itself.

You can feel the storm brewing in Germany. Within days of each other, President Christian Wulff accused the European Central Bank of going "far beyond" its mandate and subverting Article 123 of the Lisbon Treaty by shoring up insolvent states, and Bundesbank chief Jens Weidmann said bail-out policies had "completely gutted" the EU law.

Both believe the EU Project has taken a dangerous turn. Fiscal powers are slipping away to a supra-national body beyond sovereign control. "This strikes at the very core of our democracies. Decisions have to be made in parliament in a liberal democracy. That is where legitimacy lies," said Mr Wulff Otmar Issing, the ECB's founding guru, fears that the current course must ultimately provoke the "resistance of the people". Instead of evolving into an authentic union with a "European government controlled by a European Parliament" on democratic principles, it has become deformed halfway house.

In its rush to save EMU, he said, Europe has forgotten that legislative primacy over tax and spending is the crucible of our democracies. It was monarchical assault on the power of the purse that led to England's Civil War, and America's Revolution. We will find out to what extent Germany's constitutional court shares these fears when it rules this Wednesday on the legality of the EU rescue machinery, and delivers its verdict of life or death for monetary union.

The motley rebel forces who overthrew Gaddafi two weeks ago have set up no guard to prevent anyone taking it away or looting it for parts. Western powers and Libya's neighbors fear that the power vacuum could allow huge quantities of unsecured weapons left over from the civil war to end up in the hands of Islamist militants, in particular the North African branch of al Qaeda.

Officials with Libya's interim government, the National Transitional Council, say they are trying to secure these weapons. But there was little evidence of that at the Scud site, in farmland about 25 km (15 miles) southeast of Tripoli. Abdelhamid Omar Derbek, a colonel at the local anti-Gaddafi military headquarters, said he and his men visit the site several times a day.

A Scud-launching complex, consisting of an 11-meter (33-foot) rocket with a range of up to 300 km (200 miles) depending on the variant, could be a valuable resource for any insurgent. Even without launching it, the warhead alone contains up to a tonne of high explosive, which could be stripped from the missile and used to make improvised bombs for urban guerrillas. "The possibility is certainly there," said Shashank Joshi, a military expert at Britain's Royal United Services Institute. In an interview with Reuters on Friday, the senior European Union representative in Tripoli said the bloc was concerned that Islamist militants could obtain weapons in Libya and take them out across the country's largely unpoliced borders. "This is an evident risk," said EU envoy Agostino Miozzo.

"Our situation is extremely serious," the postmaster general, Patrick R Donahoe, said in an interview. "If Congress doesn't act, we will default." In recent weeks, Mr Donahoe has been pushing a series of painful cost-cutting measures to erase the agency's deficit, which will reach $9.2 billion this fiscal year. They include eliminating Saturday mail delivery, closing up to 3,700 postal locations and laying off 120,000 workers - nearly one-fifth of the agency's work force - despite a no-layoffs clause in the unions' contracts.

The post office's problems stem from one hard reality: it is being squeezed on both revenue and costs. As any computer user knows, the Internet revolution has led to people and businesses sending far less conventional mail. At the same time, decades of contractual promises made to unionized workers, including no-layoff clauses, are increasing the post office's costs. Labor represents 80 percent of the agency's expenses, compared with 53 percent at United Parcel Service and 32 percent at FedEx, its two biggest private competitors. Postal workers also receive more generous health benefits than most other federal employees.

Missing the $5.5 billion payment due on September 30, intended to finance retirees' future health care, won't cause immediate disaster. But sometime early next year, the agency will run out of money to pay its employees and gas up its trucks, officials warn, forcing it to stop delivering the roughly three billion pieces of mail it handles weekly.

"There is no alternative to this decision and no going back on it and if the United States vetoes it, we will continue to knock on the door of the UN Security Council seeking full Palestinian UN membership," he told AFP. The comments from Shaath, a member of the Fatah party led by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, came after The New York Times reported that Washington was trying to put together a new peace talks proposal that would convince the Palestinians to hold off seeking membership at the United Nations.

Washington has said it will veto any Palestinian bid, but has made it clear it would prefer that the issue does not reach a vote at the Security Council. The Times, citing US officials and foreign diplomats, said Washington was labouring to find language that would be sufficient to lure the Palestinians away from their bid, bring Israel to the negotiating table and be acceptable to the other members of the peacemaking Quartet - the EU, UN and Russia. Europe has struggled to define a unified position on the Palestinian bid, and Shaath said Sunday that EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton would visit Ramallah this week for talks with Abbas on the issue.

The director general of the official Voice of Palestine radio Ahmed Aridi told AFP on Sunday that the station would soon begin broadcasting radio spots in six languages to promote the membership bid. The messages, which will run in English, Arabic, Hebrew, French, Spanish and Russian, state: "You are being offered peace with the state of Palestine on the 1967 borders." The spots are part of the broader "Palestine 194" campaign, which is being officially launched later this week and is expected to include adverts and peaceful protests inside the West Bank and overseas.

"The appeal to the UN is a battle for all Palestinians, and in order to succeed, it needs millions to pour into streets," Palestinian official Yasser Abed Rabbo told the Associated Press following a Palestinian Authority vote endorsing a mass protest march on Israel. Rabbo and other Palestinian leaders insist the protests will be peaceful, but Israeli officials noted that more often than not the Palestinians' definition of "peaceful" does not match Israel's. And even if the intention truly was for a peaceful march, the Israelis say that having tens or hundreds of thousands of Palestinians march on Israeli civilian neighborhoods is a situation that can quickly spiral out of control.

While Jerusalem is certain to be a primary target of such a march, it is pretty heavily barricaded from the north and east, the directions from which the Palestinian protestors would be coming. But the Jewish settlements make much softer targets. That's why the IDF, which will preoccupied defending the northern neighborhoods of Jerusalem and the portion of the "Green Line" separating the Tel Aviv metropolitan area from the West Bank, is busy preparing the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria to defend themselves.

Those preparations include unspecified drills on how to handle various situations, including a large Palestinian mob beseiging the gates of a small Jewish community. Jewish settler leaders stressed that the training exercises do not constitute the formation of a new Jewish militia, noting that these are pre-existing local security teams, the members of which are, like all Israelis, also members of the IDF reserve forces. Even with all the preparations, the situation can still devolve into chaos and violence at a moment's notice. If armed Palestinian elements open fire from among the protestors, or a Palestinian mob manages to break into a Jewish community, Israeli security forces will be obliged to use deadly force in defense of local men, women and children.

The administration has circulated a proposal intended to be the basis of renewed peace talks with the Israelis - based on a formula that President Barack Obama outlined in May - in hopes of persuading the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to abandon the bid for recognition at the annual gathering of the UN General Assembly beginning September 20.

The administration has privately made it clear to Mr Abbas that it will veto any request that comes before the UN Security Council to make a Palestinian state a new member outright. But the United States alone does not have enough support to block a vote by the General Assembly to elevate the current status of the Palestinians' nonvoting observer ''entity'' to that of an nonvoting observer state.

Senior officials said the administration wanted to avoid not only a veto but also the more symbolic and potent General Assembly vote that would leave the United States and only a handful of other nations in opposition. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatic maneuverings, said they feared that in either case a backlash could sweep the Palestinian territories and the wider Arab world when the region is already in tumult.

Two administration officials said that Mr Abbas had indicated as recently as last week that he would forgo a UN vote in favor of the prospect of real talks. But a senior Palestinian official, Nabil Shaath, angrily dismissed the American proposal now being circulated as inadequate and said a vote would go ahead regardless. ''Whoever wrote this thought we are so weak that we cannot even wiggle, or that we are stupid,'' he said in a telephone interview from the Palestinian capital in the West Bank, Ramallah. He added, ''Whatever is to be offered, it is too late.''

Talas had crossed the southern Japanese island of Shikoku and the central part of the main island of Honshu early on Sunday. But because of the storm's slow speed, weathermen warned heavy rains and strong winds would continue, increasing the likelihood of more floods and landslides. Nearly 500,000 people in western and central Japan were issued with evacuation orders and advisories, the Kyodo News agency reported.

The worst hit areas were in Nara and Wakayama prefectures, with homes swept away by flood waters and landslides. Three homes were buried in a landslide in Wakayama prefecture, and one woman who was rescued later died, four remained missing and a 14-year old girl was saved from the debris, police said. They said 10 people were dead and 32 people were missing. In nearby Nara Prefecture NHK TV said seven people were missing after their homes were swept away down a river.

If the court rules that Berlin's commitment to the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) goes against EU law, or worse, against the German constitution, the entire Eurozone could collapse. Think of the Eurozone as a minefield full of bombs that have long lay dormant, but are all still very active. Now, Germany's court ruling - itself a single bomb timed to go off next Wednesday - could ignite a massive chain reaction.

If the German court rules that European law has been broken, then it has been broken by all other nations subject to the Maastricht Treaty who have participated in bailouts and directly or indirectly assumed each other's debts. If the German constitution has been broken, it's unlikely that German citizens will tolerate any government that refuses to protect the constitution and their rights to participate in determining whether or not they want to backstop all the profligate neighbours that surround them.

The court may sidestep any hard and fast decisions to avoid destroying the entire EU. But it may not have a choice. The law is the law.