Germany

Jonathan Steinberg presents the fabled German chancellor as both an egomaniacal hypochondriac and a political-military genius: “He is the statesman who unified Germany in three wars .  .  . a hypochondriac with the constitution of an ox, a brutal tyrant who could easily shed tears, a convert to an extreme form of evangelical Protestantism, who secularized schools and introduced civil divorce.”

Berlin
The European Union is stumbling through a new Iran sanctions discussion, as member states wrestle with conflicting policies to thwart Iran's quest to obtain nuclear weapons.

Washington Post: No health care rationing here. Move along.

Philip Klein: "Is it possible for Congress to cut spending?"

We are all Europeans now. Doubt that—and just try to get news about the American economy on the financial news networks on any morning. No luck.

Arid Uka, 21, a German-Albanian Muslim who killed two U.S. servicemen and wounded two more at Frankfurt Airport on March 2 of this year, will go on trial in a German court beginning August 31, on two counts of murder and three of attempted murder.

With the debt ceiling debate behind us, now might be a good time to get back to the biggest problem currently facing the world economy: the eurozone. While the European debt crisis may have slipped off Americans' radar screens in the past weeks, its significance has not diminished.

In Western Europe, Fukushima’s power reactor disaster has produced a loud round of anti-nuclear power reactions. Germany says it will phase out atomic power by 2022, and the Swiss insist they will shutter their reactor fleet by 2034.

Berlin—On Tuesday, federal prosecutors in New York brought charges against Arid Uka, a radical Islamist who killed two U.S. servicemen and wounded two more in Germany’s Frankfurt International Airport in March.

The issue of nuclear power will be front and center when German chancellor Angela Merkel visits Washington this week. Consider the front-page story in the May 31 Washington Post: “Germany to shut down nuclear plants by 2022: Decision in aftermath of crisis in Japan is a turnaround for Merkel.” The headline was striking. It also didn’t make any sense.

Berlin—Since President Obama ordered the special forces strike that killed mass murderer Osama Bin Laden earlier this month, the German government has grown increasingly reluctant to help Washington find terrorists who are fighting U.S. and allied troops in Afghanistan and Pakistan.