21 June 2012 

NICOSIA, Cyprus — Former Prime Minister Adrian Nastase of Romania shot and wounded himself on Wednesday, apparently in a suicide attempt, hours after the country’s Supreme Court ruled he must serve a two-year sentence for corruption.

Mr. Nastase is the most senior Romanian politician to be jailed since the overthrow of Communism in 1989.

The court’s decision shocked Romania, a poor country where senior politicians have long been seen as above the law. Analysts hailed it as a sign of political maturity in a nation struggling to shed a culture of graft and lawlessness that was honed during decades of Communist rule.

Mr. Nastase, who will turn 62 on Friday, had denied any wrongdoing and insisted that the case was politically motivated.

He had appealed his March 30 sentence after he was convicted of illegally raising $2 million for his failed presidential campaign in 2004 by drawing from the profits of an event organized by a state agency. Mr. Nastase was prime minister in a leftist government from 2000 to 2004 and before that was foreign minister.

Read more @ 

Leading Syrians prepare to defect

Members of Bashar al-Assad's inner circle 'making secret plans to defect' as Syria air force colonel abandons attack mission and flies MiG to Jordan.

9:00PM BST 21 Jun 2012

Karlsruhe Judges…fancy dress, or citizen protection with teeth?

The Karlsruhe judges today found that the center-right coalition government led by Chancellor Angela Merkel had breached the rights of the German parliament by failing to sufficiently inform lawmakers during negotiations towards the creation of the permanent euro rescue fund, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM).

This decision is “a further important building block in a series of decisions by the Constitutional Court that strengthen parliamentary responsibility in the context of European integration,” the president of the court, Andreas Vosskuhle, said.

But is it? If – like the case for a Weimar ruling against Nazi violence in 1931* – it is simply ignored, then what good is Karslruhe?