Last November, the prime minister of tiny Luxembourg announced his plans to quit, SAYING THE JOB WAS TOO STRESSFUL. After almost eight years as head of the 17-member eurozone, Juncker had had enough.

"I WORK FOUR HOURS A DAY FOR THE EUROGROUP. I'd rather have that time for myself," said Juncker following the most recent EU summit last week.

Juncker, who took office in 1995, is the longest serving prime minister in the European Union. Twenty years ago, he helped co-found the common euro currency. The oft grumpy-looking Juncker has the ability to mediate between the Eurogroup's large and small, rich and poor countries.

Germany and Indonesia have had diplomatic ties since 1952. Considering the Southeast Asian island nation's strong economic growth (which is over six percent) and its young population, the spotlight is on economic ties - especially against the backdrop of the euro crisis.

German exports to Indonesia rose in the year 2011 to 5.3 percent, while the volume of Indonesian imports to Germany even rose by 16.8 percent. Haryo Aswicahyono of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Jakarta is convinced that Indonesia is becoming an increasingly attractive destination for foreign investors - especially for ones from Germany. "Because of its high growth rates, Indonesia needs a lot of capital goods - for example for the construction of factories and machines. Considering quality, this is where Germany has a strong advantage. In the energy and mining sectors, there are many promising possibilities for investment," Aswicahyono told DW.

"We do have a plan to close the Strait of Hormuz," state media quoted General Hasan Firouzabadi as saying Saturday. "A Shiite nation (Iran) acts reasonably and would not approve interruption of a waterway … unless our interests are seriously threatened," Press TV quoted him as saying.

The comments by Firouzabadi, the chairman of Iran's Joint Chiefs of Staff, come days after the European Union enforced a total oil embargo against Iran for its refusal to halt its uranium enrichment program.

“The head of the oil products exporters’ union,” reports Reuters, “said the agreement between the exporters’ union, Iran’s central bank, and the oil ministry would get around a European Union ban on shipping insurance for tankers carrying Iranian oil.”

“In accordance with the agreement,” said Hassan Khosrojerdi, the exporters’ union head, ”it is planned that 20 percent of Iran’s oil exports will go through this private consortium.”

The impact of a decade of conflict on Britain’s hard-pressed Armed Forces is revealed in new Ministry of Defence figures. A study of the 1,472 new cases of Servicemen and women seeking help in the first three months of the year shows some clear trends. Female personnel are twice as likely to suffer mental ill-health, and lower ranks are more vulnerable than officers.

Today’s problems seem to be obvious and as more soldiers leave the regimental system and find themselves in civilian life they will not have their friends close at hand. ‘Only they really appreciate the difficulties of spending so long on the frontline.’

The website Jihad Watch cited a report in last Thursday’s Egypt-based Al Wafd newspaper. The report said that, during his weekly sermon, “Muhammad Badi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Supreme Guide, confirmed the necessity for every Muslim to strive to save al-Quds [Jerusalem] from the hands of the rapists [Israelis] and to cleanse Palestine from the clutches of the occupation, deeming this an individual duty for all Muslims.”

More specifically, the report said, Badi “called on all Muslims to wage jihad with their money and their selves to free al-Quds” — the same exact language one finds in al-Qaeda’s tracts.

Some 75% of people in the UK read, watch or listen to a news story every day, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism survey suggests. By contrast, nine out of 10 Germans access the news every day.

The study also suggested that UK readers have less interest in politics, and more interest in celebrity news, than their European counterparts. The findings showed that men were more likely to consume news than women, and that young audiences were typically less interested in current affairs than their elders. UK consumers were more likely to find their news online than by any other medium.

President Vladimir Putin has ordered an inquiry into whether people were given enough warning of the disaster. A separate criminal investigation is under way into possible negligence. Officials deny allegations blaming the ferocity of the floods on the opening of reservoir sluice gates.

The flash floods, the worst in living memory in the region, struck in the Krasnodar region on Friday night, after days of torrential rain. People were reportedly given little or no warning. The rains dumped as much as 28cm (11 inches) of water overnight, forcing many residents to take refuge in trees or on house roofs.

Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche failed to pass on a further 65,000 reports of suspected side effects that were recorded by patients. All of the reactions took place in the United States over the past 15 years with medicines used to treat breast cancer, bowel cancer, hepatitis B, and skin and eye conditions.

Alexander Hamilton, the first US Treasury secretary and the face on the ten-dollar bill, offered cash-strapped states in 1790 a deal they eventually couldn’t refuse: The federal government assumed their debts in return for more centralized power. The alternative risked consigning their creditworthiness to “burst and vanish,” and a breakup, Hamilton warned.

Europe can learn from Hamilton, said Paul de Grauwe, a professor at the London School of Economics and two-time Belgian candidate for a European Central Bank post. “His was a first attempt at pooling debt and as with Germany today there was lots of resistance.”

While policy makers are taking baby steps toward closer ties, national self-interest and ideology leave them balking at the United States of Europe, viewed by some as the only solution to the two-year crisis.

They hone their skills at the head of convoys that trundle along the dusty roads of remote mountainous provinces. As they drive, these soldiers scan ahead for signs of roadside bombs: disturbed earth, a glint of metal, or just something that seems out of place. Spotting them can mean the difference between life and death. Those who are half-jokingly said to possess the “sixth sense” are the ones that seem to have an uncanny ability to spot these almost imperceptible signs of danger. The problem is that it may take several seconds for the brain to become conscious of what it’s seen, and in Afghanistan, that brief time can mean the difference between spotting a bomb, and driving over it and setting it off.

But a device known as an electroencephalogram (EEG) can spot that P300 signal. Hooked into a sophisticated computer that can interpret the signal, it can immediately alert a person to a potential threat, taking a short cut through the brain’s normal conscious processing. Combined with advanced optics, it is possible to imagine a Terminator-like vision system that scans an area and immediately identifies and categorises threats.

They are the Order for Funerals and the Order for the Celebration of Holy Matrimony. There are now three ordinariates established: the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham in the United Kingdom; the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter in the United States and Canada; and the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross in Australia. According to a report by Vatican Radio the texts are drawn from the classical Anglican prayer book tradition and incorporate elements of the Anglican patrimony, now in the full communion of the Catholic Church.

Yet the government will not permit farmers to pump the water to save their crops. Many of the farmers have wells that draw groundwater for use in situations like this. But in 2006, the Colorado Supreme Court ordered 440 wells shut down and curtailed the pumping of another 1,000. The decision to shut down the wells came about during a historic drought in the early 2000s that caused water in the South Platte River to become scarce.

Following the shutdowns, the volume of water discharged into the artificial recharge systems in the South Platte Basin has increased, reaching more than 350,000 acre-feet in 2009. The increase in ground water has now come to the point where local basements are being flooded, causing damage to the homes.

Though seemingly insignificant against the backdrop of all the regional and international crises affecting our world, Balochistan is, in fact, a nexus: the point at which diametrically opposing strategic interests converge.

The United States views Balochistan, an area that encompasses western Pakistan, eastern Iran, and a piece of southern Afghanistan, as critical to the maintenance of US hegemony in the Middle East and Central and South Asia. Conversely, China regards the region as necessary for its own economic and political evolution into a world superpower. Seen in this way, Balochistan becomes central to the development of geopolitical power in the 21st Century.

An estimated 16,000 people have died in the government's violent supression of dissent since March 2011, including members of President Bashar Al-Assad's security forces. The diplomats are expected to formulate a plan of measures to increase pressure on the Assad regime. The plan will be submitted to the United Nations.