“Russian President Vladimir Putin is beginning a three-day visit to China, with energy and foreign policy expected to dominate the agenda.

Mr Putin said ahead of the trip that he wanted to further boost booming bilateral trade, which reached $84bn (£55bn) last year.

The Syrian crisis is also expected to be discussed during the talks.

Some 17 major business and trade deals between Russia and China are expected to be signed in Beijing, Mr Putin’s aides say.

But it remains unclear whether this will include a long-awaited gas agreement that would allow Moscow to supply some 70bn cubic metres of gas to its neighbour.”

“The day after Hollande’s election victory on Sunday, Merkel said that she would welcome the new French leader with ‘open arms’. But she also warned that the fiscal pact, which Hollande widely criticised throughout his campaign, was ‘not up for renegotiation’.

France’s soon-to-be-president has also added a semantic shift to ease investors’ concerns. Instead of demanding a complete renegotiation of the fiscal pact, he is talking about ‘a greater emphasis’ on growth.”

“In a televised statement, [President Medvedev] said ‘modern weapons systems’ could be deployed in Kaliningrad if Russia, the US and Nato failed to come to a deal [on the proposed American missile shield].

President Medvedev’s warning follows an announcement by the United States on Tuesday that it would stop sharing information with Russia on non-nuclear military forces in Europe.

The information was being provided to Moscow under the CFE (Conventional forces in Europe) treaty.”

“Ethnic tensions simmered in Kosovo on Tuesday after the central government deployed a special police unit to establish control over two border crossings in a bid to block the import of goods from Serbia.

The move comes in response to the collapse of talks between Kosovo and Serbia on trade liberalization. Belgrade had banned the import of goods from Kosovo after the majority ethnic Albanian region declared independence from Serbia in 2008.  

Serbia refuses to recognize Kosovo as an independent state but has agreed to work to ease tensions that hamper daily life in a bid to bolster its aspirations for European Union membership.”

”’Gaddafi should put the well-being and the interests of his own people first and he should step down from power,’ Mrs Clinton said in Spain.”

“Europe’s banks, sitting on $1.19 trillion of debt to Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland, are facing a wave of losses if Greece abandons the euro.

The prospect of Greece leaving the 17-nation euro region increased after parties opposed to the terms of the nation’s second bailout by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund won most of the votes in May 6 elections. A fresh round of voting will be held June 17 after politicians failed to form a government. For the first time since the crisis began in November 2009, European leaders and central bankers are speaking openly of Greece abandoning the currency union.

Should Greece go, its new currency probably would suffer an immediate devaluation of as much as 75 percent against the euro, forcing individuals and companies to default on foreign loans, economists at UBS AG (UBSN) said. Unless European leaders could make a credible case that a Greek exit was an exceptional and isolated incident, depositors in other nations might decide to withdraw euros from banks or shift them to countries seen as safer.”

“At least 12 people have been reported killed in two explosions on the outskirts of Makhachkala, capital of Russia’s restive Dagestan region.

The attack began when police stopped a vehicle on the road to the city of Astrakhan to check the driver’s identity papers. The car exploded.

Less than 20 minutes later, a second blast went off, this time in a van packed with explosives. It caused further casualties.

Dagestan, a predominantly Muslim, multi-ethnic republic which borders Chechnya, has seen some of the worst militant violence in the North Caucasus in recent years.”

“Unfortunately, no tinkering with the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and its bailout terms can save Italy, which has estimated financing needs over the next three years that are more than double the size of the current fund’s lending capacity. The cost of bailing out Italy and Spain may be $1.4 trillion and $700 billion, respectively, which would amount to some 25 percent of the eurozone core’s GDP. This sum is not only politically inconceivable, but it would also undermine the debt-carrying capacity of the core. Greece’s failed bailout has not encouraged policymakers to travel down this path, either.”

“Mr Berlusconi, 74, who is half-way into his third stint in office, said that he had even considered resigning before his mandate expires in two years’ time.

Repeating remarks that he has made over the last few months, Mr Berlusconi named his political successor as Angelino Alfano, 40, a Sicilian lawyer who currently serves as the justice minister and is regarded as an ultra-loyalist. The prime minister said he would act as a ‘father figure’ to Mr Alfano.

He dismissed reports that his coalition ally, the Northern League, a party that champions northern Italy over what it sees as the corrupt and inefficient south, would struggle to accept Mr Alfano as the new head of the centre-Right.”

”’These people [the Libyans] are able to one day take this battle […] to Europe, to target your homes, offices, families, which would become legitimate military targets, like you have targeted our homes,’ [Gaddafi] said.”