Metro lines shut down in Milan due to discovery of a suspicious package: #UCLfinal

The discovery of a suspicious package on the exterior steps of the Cadorna station in central Milan has led authorities to suspend service on part of the M1 and M2 metro lines according to Italian paper 'La Gazzeta dello Sport'.

The police are investigating the package and are hoping to return the public transport to normal service as quickly as possible. The stations affected are the M1 from Cadorna to Cairoli, while the M2 line is suspended from Garibaldi to Porta Genova.

A two-star general will investigate the murky circumstances around Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl's departure from his base in Afghanistan in 2009, which led to his capture by the Taliban, a defense official told Saturday.



Bergdahl was released on May 31 in exchange for five Taliban commanders previously held at the Guantanamo Bay military detention facility in Cuba.

The defense official did not name the general in charge of the investigation.

Bergdahl returned to the United States on Friday. He was taken to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, where he will continue the reintegration process started at a U.S. military hospital in Germany.

Some of Bergdahl's fellow former soldiers have described him as a deserter who left the remote outpost in eastern Afghanistan in June 2009 before he was captured.

As Bowe Bergdahl finally arrives back in the U.S. Army appoints General to lead investigation into his capture by the Taliban and claims that he was a deserter.

The investigation into how Bowe Bergdahl came to leave his base in Afghanistan is to start next week, after the Army appointed a General to lead the inquiry.

The two-star General, whose identity has not been released, will examine the events leading up to Bergdahl's departure from the base in June 2009.

You never know who'll show up at a Hillary Rodham Clinton book event.

Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks at an event to discuss her new book in Washington, Friday, June 13, 2014.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor dropped by Clinton's book signing at a Costco warehouse in suburban Virginia, and surprised the former secretary of state.

Clinton shouted that she couldn't believe it.

Sotomayor told reporters she was "just shopping" and decided to get a signed copy of Clinton's new book, "Hard Choices."

The Saturday morning book event attracted more than 1,000 people, including Democratic Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, Costco co-founder Jim Sinegal and a few former Clinton aides and relatives.

The potential 2016 Democratic presidential candidate autographed copies for nearly three hours.

The former first lady kicked off her book tour this week, with stops in New York, Chicago and Philadelphia.

It's crunch time at the Supreme Court, where the justices are racing to issue opinions in 17 cases over the next two weeks.

An American flag flies in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington.

The religious rights of corporations, the speech rights of abortion protesters and the privacy rights of people under arrest are among the significant issues that are so far unresolved.

Summer travel, European teaching gigs and relaxation beckon, but only after the court hands down decisions in all the cases it has heard since October.

In rare instances, the justices will put off decisions and order a case to be argued again in the next term.

This is also the time of the year when a justice could announce a retirement. But the oldest of the justices, 81-year-old Ruth Bader Ginsburg, has signaled she will serve at least one more year, and maybe longer.

The justices will meet Monday and again on Thursday to issue opinions, and could wind up their work by the end of the month.

A look at some of the cases that remain:

— Contraceptive coverage: Corporations are claiming the right to exercise religious objections to covering women's contraceptives under their employee health insurance plans, despite the new health law's requirement that birth control be among a range of no-cost preventive services included in health plans.

— Abortion clinic buffer zones: Abortion opponents are challenging as a violation of their speech rights a Massachusetts law mandating a 35-foot protest-free zone on public sidewalks outside abortion clinics.

— Cellphone searches: Two cases weigh the power of police to search the cellphones of people they place under arrest without first obtaining a warrant from a judge.

— Recess presidential appointments: A federal appeals court said President Barack Obama misused the Constitution's recess power when he temporarily filled positions on the National Labor Relations Board in 2012.

— TV on the Internet: Broadcasters are fighting Internet startup Aereo's practice of taking television their programming for free and providing it to subscribers who can then watch on smartphones and other portable devices.

— Greenhouse gases: Industry groups assert that environmental regulators overstepped their bounds by trying to apply a provision of the Clean Air Act to control emissions of greenhouse gases from power plants and factories. This case is unlikely to affect the recent proposal from the Environmental Protection Agency to slash carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by nearly one-third by 2030; that plan involves a different part of the same law.

— Union fees: Home health care workers in Illinois want the court to rule that public sector unions cannot collect fees from workers who object to being affiliated with a union.

—Securities fraud: Investors could find it harder to bring class-action lawsuits over securities fraud at publicly traded companies in a case involving Halliburton Co., a provider of energy services.

— "False" campaign claims: An anti-abortion group says state laws that try to police false statements during political campaigns runs afoul of the First Amendment.

A sign informs commuters of the work stoppage at the East Falls commuter rail station in Philadelphia on Saturday June 14, 2014.

Philly rail service resumes after Obama intervenes.

Commuter rail service in the Philadelphia area was restored early Sunday, just hours after workers returned to their jobs following a brief strike that was ended when President Barack Obama intervened, Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority officials said.

SEPTA spokeswoman Jerri Williams says all workers scheduled for morning shifts Sunday showed up and "some lines with early run starts, such as the Airport Line, are rolling."

"Regional Rail is back," Williams said.

Williams said the first train back in service left Temple Station at 4:18 a.m. on the way to Philadelphia International Airport.

Related: Obama order forces Philly rail workers back on job

The strike began after negotiations between SEPTA and its engineers and electricians unions failed to reach a new contract deal Friday. It shut down 13 train lines that carry commuters from Philadelphia to the suburbs, Philadelphia International Airport and New Jersey.

Obama on Saturday granted Republican Gov. Tom Corbett's request to create a presidential emergency board to mediate the contract dispute, forcing the 400 union workers to go back. Obama ordered the establishment of the three-member board effective at 12:01 a.m. Sunday and called for "a swift and smooth resolution."

The last regional rail strike, in 1983, lasted more than three months.

Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen vice president Stephen Bruno said his union's members were complying with the order to be back on duty at 12:01 a.m.

SEPTA said it expected to have rail service up and running Sunday morning.

International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers president Terry Gallagher said Obama's intervention was "what we were waiting for."

"We have been five years without an agreement, trying to get to this point, and we're happy we're here now," Gallagher said.

The unions and SEPTA don't have to resume talks with each other, but they do have to participate with the board's process, which typically involves written submissions and hearings. Obama is giving the board 30 days to deliver a report recommending how the dispute should be resolved.

The strike added to the commuting headaches in the region, where major construction projects are making it more difficult than usual to get around. Commuter Carolyn Tola and three friends paid $40 apiece to take Amtrak from central New Jersey to Philadelphia instead of $9 on SEPTA because they had nonrefundable Pennsylvania Ballet tickets.

Corbett called on SEPTA and the unions to work together and keep commuters in mind.

"The people of Philadelphia and the surrounding region expect and deserve a safe and efficient rail system to get them to work, medical appointments, school and recreation," Corbett said.

The unions said the strike, which began early Saturday, was designed to force SEPTA to agree to their demands or accept binding arbitration. Workers are seeking raises of at least 14.5 percent over five years, about 3 percentage points more than SEPTA has offered.

Members of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen union and members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers man a picket line outside the Roberts Avenue rail yard in Philadelphia on Saturday June 14, 2014.

Pakistani military jets pounded militant hideouts in the northwestern tribal region bordering Afghanistan early Sunday morning, officials said, killing as many as 100 militants in the second strike on the region since a deadly attack on the Karachi airport a week ago.




Pakistani Air Force jets targeted eight militant hideouts in the North Waziristan tribal area, two intelligence officials said.

Many of the dead were believed to be Uzbeks and other foreign fighters, they said.

One of those killed was Abu Abdul Rehman al-Maani, who is believed to have helped orchestrate the airport siege carried out last Sunday, said two other officials. Uzbek fighters and the Pakistani Taliban both claimed responsibility for the airport attack, and the Pakistani Taliban said the two had worked together to carry it out, marking a disturbing increase of militant groups working together.


All the officials did not want to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the media. The information could not be independently verified. The tribal areas are remote, dangerous and difficult for journalists to access.

The airstrikes are the second time this week the military has hit the tribal regions in what appears to be a strong response to last Sunday's five-hour siege at the country's busiest airport that left 36 people dead, including 10 assailants, and deeply shook the nation.



On Tuesday, Pakistani military airstrikes targeted the Tirah Valley in the country's northwest. The military said it killed 25 suspected militants in strikes on nine hideouts, but the information could not be independently verified. The area is part of a lawless terrain along the Afghan border that is home to a mix of local militants and al-Qaida-linked foreign fighters.

As a teenager growing up in a Jim Crow society, Roy DeBerry wasn't waiting for white folks to come down to Mississippi and "save" him. But in the summer of 1964, the factory worker's son was very glad to see people like Aviva Futorian.

In this April 4, 2014 photo, Aviva Futorian and Roy DeBerry sit in Futorian's Chicago apartment. They have been friends since they met 50 years ago during "Freedom Summer." Although fewer than one-tenth of the 17,000 black residents who attempted to registered to vote during the freedom summer succeeded, the effort helped create momentum for the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The young history teacher from the affluent Chicago suburbs was among hundreds of volunteers — mostly Northern white college students — who descended on Mississippi during what came to be known as "Freedom Summer." They came to register blacks to vote, and to establish "Freedom Schools" and community centers to help prepare those long disenfranchised for participation in what they hoped would be a new political order.

Opposition was brutal. Churches were bombed, volunteers were arrested, beaten — even murdered.

"There was real terror in Mississippi," DeBerry said during a recent visit to his hometown, Holly Springs.

Fifty years later, Freedom Summer stands out as a watershed moment in the long drive for civil rights. Mass resistance to integration started to crumble. Congress took a monumental step toward equal rights. And scores of young, idealistic volunteers embarked on careers of activism that continue to shape American politics and policy today.

And in this vortex of history, lifelong friendships formed between people from vastly different worlds.

So it was that a black 16-year-old from Mississippi and the 26-year-old daughter of a Jewish furniture mogul bonded over books and bologna sandwiches during a summer that would define their lives.

___

Sitting side by side recently in Futorian's condominium overlooking Chicago's Lincoln Park, the two friends reminisced about lessons under a tree, practice sessions for a sit-in at a segregated theater, taboos that prevented a white woman and black man from sitting next to each other in a car.

"I probably didn't have as much trepidation as I should have," said Futorian, now a 76-year-old attorney. "Because it's hard to imagine your own death."

Years of demonstrations by determined local blacks, boycotts, legislative campaigns and bloody pitched battles had not dislodged segregation. On March 20, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which had been fighting for integration, announced the "Mississippi Summer Project." The group concluded it needed a dramatic tactic to draw national attention to the injustices — and putting Northern whites in harm's way seemed sure to accomplish that.

Volunteers converged for training at a college in Ohio. On June 21, even before orientation ended, chilling word spread: Three young volunteers — New Yorkers Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, and Mississippi native James Chaney — had vanished while investigating the burning of a black church.

En route to Mississippi, the menace quickly became clear to Futorian. Following a gasoline stop in Tennessee, her car and its mixed-race passengers were chased for miles at high speeds. Finally, their pursuers gave up.

___

Maybe it was because his grandparents had been landowners since just after slavery days, or because his father wasn't dependent on sharecropping a white man's land. Whatever the source, DeBerry had "an independent streak."

He sensed the injustice of having to climb to the gallery at the segregated Holly Theatre. He resented having to call the white kid behind the counter at Tyson's Drug Store "sir."

"No one needed to teach you that," the 66-year-old DeBerry said. "It was just something that was in your DNA."

So when a Freedom School opened in an unassuming white-frame building, DeBerry found his way there.

When Futorian — who'd teach at two Freedom Schools that summer — met with a group of black teenage boys, she asked them who were the richest blacks in town, how they earned their living, were they involved in the civil rights movement and if not, why not?

"Roy was the only one who knew the answers," she recalls.

DeBerry says this was his first interaction with a white person "on a social level."

Through donated books, Futorian introduced him to James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright and other "subversive" black authors. They shared sandwiches at Modena's Cafe in the "colored" section of town. They worked on voter registration — though separately.

They were well aware of the risks they were taking even before Aug. 4, when searchers dug the bodies of the three missing civil rights workers from an earthen dam.

Freedom Summer was lurching toward a bitter close.

___

By fall, most of the Northern volunteers had returned home. Aviva Futorian remained.

She worked as a field organizer for SNCC and held a college preparatory study group for a few particularly promising students, including DeBerry.

She returned to Chicago after a year and a half, and decided to pursue justice as a lawyer.

With her help, DeBerry was accepted at her alma mater, Brandeis University. He helped found a black student association there.

That summer brought the beginnings of change in Mississippi and beyond. Systematic resistance to integration began fading in the state. Congress passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which became law July 2.

And though fewer than one-tenth of the 17,000 black residents who attempted to register succeeded, the effort helped create momentum for the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Some believe this activism planted the seeds for history-making events generations later. "If it hadn't been for the veterans of Freedom Summer, there would be no Barack Obama," longtime Georgia congressman John Lewis, then a coordinator for SNCC, wrote in a memoir.

Rita Bender, Michael Schwerner's widow, is less optimistic.

She says a refusal by some to recognize past inequities is partly to blame for today's social ills. Now an attorney in Seattle, she's dismayed at recent developments — a Supreme Court decision that nullified portions of the Voting Rights Act, voter identification laws, "stand-your-ground" laws. The country, she says, is "moving backward."

___

Back in Chicago, Futorian and DeBerry chat about that sweltering season 50 years ago — and the legacy they share.

If not for Freedom Summer, DeBerry says he probably would have left Mississippi permanently. Instead, he returned and worked in higher education and government.

Mississippi led Futorian to a legal career, focusing in recent decades on death row inmates and a successful campaign to abolish capital punishment in Illinois.

Following a 1995 SNCC reunion in Holly Springs, the former teacher and student began collecting oral histories of those who'd lived under Jim Crow in two Mississippi counties. In 2004, they formally launched the Hill Country Project, which has since grown to include education support and economic development.

Through all the change over the last five decades, there has been one constant for DeBerry and Futorian — their friendship.

President Barack Obama on Saturday forced union workers in Philadelphia's commuter rail strike to return to the job, granting Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett's request to create a presidential emergency board to mediate the contract dispute.

Members of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen union and members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) wave to motorist while walking a picket line outside the Roberts Avenue rail yard in Philadelphia on Saturday, June 14, 2014, after the two unions went on strike at midnight Friday. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett asked President Barack Obama on Saturday to intervene the dispute between the Southeast Pennsylvania Transportation Authority and its engineers and electricians unions.

Obama ordered the establishment of the three-member board effective at 12:01 a.m. Sunday. He called for "a swift and smooth resolution" of the dispute between the Southeast Pennsylvania Transportation Authority and its engineers and electricians unions.

Workers will have to return to the job when the board goes into effect after midnight, however SEPTA said rail service wouldn't be up and running until around 6 a.m. Sunday. They don't have to resume direct talks with each other, but they do have to participate with the board's process, which typically involves written submissions and hearings.

Obama is giving the board 30 days to deliver a report recommending how the dispute should be resolved.

More than 400 workers went on strike at midnight Saturday.

"As long as these workers show up for their regularly scheduled Sunday shifts, Regional Rail service will restored to full Sunday operations in the morning, starting with the first scheduled service trains runs on all of our 13 commuter rail lines," said SEPTA spokeswoman Jerri Williams. First trains on Sundays start running at around 6 a.m., she said.

Stephen Bruno, vice president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, said his union's members will comply with the order and be back on duty at 12:01 a.m.

The move shut down train lines that carry commuters from Philadelphia to the suburbs, Philadelphia International Airport and New Jersey. The agency's subways, trolleys and buses continued to run.

Terry Gallagher, president and local chairman of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said the presidential intervention was "what we were waiting for."

"We have been five years without an agreement, trying to get to this point and we're happy we're here now," he said. Gallagher said employees will be notified to report to their next scheduled shifts.

"The people of Philadelphia and the surrounding region expect and deserve a safe and efficient rail system to get them to work, medical appointments, school and recreation," Corbett, a Republican, said in a statement. "I call on both parties to work together, find common ground and place the riders at the forefront of mind in their discussions."

The unions said the strike was designed to force SEPTA to agree to their demands or accept binding arbitration. Workers are seeking raises of at least 14.5 percent over five years — or about 3 percentage points more than SEPTA has offered.

"My head's going to hurt by the end of this day," said volunteer Rusty Schwendeman of the Traveler's Aid Society, who had helped reroute about two dozen rail travelers Saturday morning at 30th Street Station.

They often involved several connections, longer routes or a significantly higher fare on Amtrak.

Carolyn Tola, of Hamilton Square, New Jersey, and three friends paid $40 apiece to take Amtrak from central New Jersey to Philadelphia to see the Pennsylvania Ballet instead of $9 on Septa.

"We're here," Tola said, noting that the ballet tickets were nonrefundable. "We're going to relax and enjoy it."

The strike began after negotiations between the transit agency and two unions failed to reach a new contract deal Friday. The last regional rail strike, in 1983, lasted more than three months.

The labor conflict came to a head this week after SEPTA announced it would impose a deal beginning Sunday. Terms include raising electrical workers' pay immediately by an average of about $3 per hour; the top wage rate for locomotive engineers would rise by $2.64 per hour.

Commuter rail trains sit parked at the Roberts Avenue rail yard in Philadelphia on Saturday June 14, 2014, after members of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen union went on strike at 12:01 a.m. Saturday.

The strike added to the commuting headaches in the region, where major construction projects are making it more difficult than usual to get around.

Drexel University dance team members Beverly and Angela Tomita, 18-year-old twins, had planned to take the airport line for a 2 p.m. flight home to Laguna Beach, California, for the summer.

"That's so not convenient!" Angela Tomita said when she found the region rail entrance closed at 30th Street Station. Schwendeman soon directed them to a subway-and-bus route.

"They're not the best answers, but they're the best answers I can come up with," Schwendeman told another teenager about her three-bus route home to suburban Blue Bell. "I don't want to send anybody to the middle of nowhere, either."

Like many soldiers, Lt. Col. Patrick Harkins has a veteran father who knows firsthand the stress of wartime deployments. One big difference is that Harkins' dad led the very same unit of paratroopers known as the Iron Rakkasans into combat decades earlier.

Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Harkins poses for a photo on May 19, 2014, at Fort Campbell, Ky. Harkins has followed in his dad’s footsteps. His dad, retired Col. Bob Harkins led the "Rakkasans," the 187th Infantry Division, 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell into combat at the Battle of Hamburger Hill in May 1969 in Vietnam. Four decades later, his son, Lt. Col. Patrick Harkins led the unit into combat in Afghanistan.

While the military has long had family legacies — and featured them prominently in Father's Day celebrations — the Harkins' achievements stand out. Capt. Charles Emmons, a spokesman for the brigade, said it appears to be the first time a father and son have commanded the same unit decades apart.

Patrick Harkins, 41, has led the 3rd Battalion of the 187th Infantry Regiment into combat in Iraq and Afghanistan four times since Sept. 11, 2001. His father, retired Col. Bob Harkins, led the same regiment four decades ago in Vietnam during Operation Apache Snow, more commonly known as the Battle of Hamburger Hill.

"It's a really unique situation," Emmons said.

The family legacy reaches back to World War II. Patrick Harkins' grandfather, Sgt. Clyde Patrick Harkins, served with the 279th Combat Engineers and was attached to the 101st Airborne Division, which also contains the Rakkasans. He was wounded in the Battle of the Bulge and later died of his injuries. Patrick Harkins' brother, Army Lt. Col. Gregory Harkins, 43, is stationed in Italy.

Bob Harkins, 71, is proud that his sons followed in his footsteps, but that doesn't mean he doesn't worry about the pair, who requested that they not serve together.

"I told them if they ever got hurt, I'd kick their butts," Bob Harkins said. "Do I worry about them? Absolutely."

Bob Harkins was commissioned as an Army lieutenant upon graduating from Ohio State University in 1965. He lobbied to be deployed to Vietnam because he didn't want to wait.

"I figured I might as well get serving," Bob Harkins said.

For Patrick Harkins, the military seemed like a natural fit after seeing his father spend decades as a soldier and "the fun side" of the Army that "looked cool as a kid," such as seeing his dad in uniform and shooting large weapons during training exercises.

The family moved eight times from military post to military post by Patrick Harkins' 18th birthday, which he saw as an adventure.

"It would be two years and I'd be like, 'Isn't it time for a yard sale?'" Patrick Harkins said.

Patrick Harkins, who said he wouldn't require his own children to join the military, said his father told him and his brother that they needed to engage in some kind of public service, but it didn't have to be the Army.

"I think it was just a natural progression," said Patrick Harkins, while sitting in his office, which is decorated with blue-and-white flags and commendations from the Rakkasans.

The unit earned its nickname from a Japanese translator after World War II who couldn't immediately come up with the word for airborne unit so used called them "rakkasan," or "falling down umbrella men." Paratroopers drop into areas not easily accessible by land or to avoid enemy fortifications, sometimes in advance of land forces also fighting in the battle.

The Rakkasans have received multiple unit citations for their service in every war since World War II.

After the initial overseas tour, Patrick Harkins returned stateside to help run several training regimens for soldiers and worked his way up to leading the Iron Rakkasans at Fort Campbell, the sprawling military post on the Kentucky-Tennessee state line.

When Bob Harkins first found out Patrick Harkins would lead the Rakkasans into a combat zone, he was both proud and worried.

"I was very proud of him when he took them into combat," said Bob Harkins, who observed his sons' careers from the sidelines in retirement. "You never want to see your son go into combat, but he was ready."

The younger Harkins' posts around the globe have included a stint at a military adviser in northeastern Iraq near the borders with Syria and Turkey and work with the 25th Infantry working on rebuilding the Golden Mosque, which had been destroyed by insurgents in Samarra, Iraq.

Since then, father and son have worked together to organize reunions of the soldiers who fought at Hamburger Hill and use the Vietnam veterans to assist current soldiers in dealing with the stresses of military life and time in combat.

It's their way of extending the military family idea to soldiers who may need someone who can relate to their experiences.

It's a task he juggles while preparing for another deployment later this year.

"This is a proud, proud unit," Patrick Harkins says as his father nods in agreement. "One should be proud, but one should never be satisfied. I expect more tomorrow."

It's not a good sign when the leader of a G7 nation feels the need to state his country still matters.

The Eiffel tower is pictured during sunset as warm and sunny weather continues in France

That is precisely what French President Francois Hollande did at a meeting of European Union leaders last month after his Socialist party's humiliating defeat by the hard right National Front in European Parliament elections.

"France is not weakened ... It's a great country. It's the country that matters in Europe together with Germany," Hollande, the most unpopular French leader since opinion polling began, told reporters.

An array of diplomats and officials involved in EU policymaking told Reuters France's influence, sapped by its persistent economic problems, has been hit further by the election, in which the Socialists came a distant third behind Marine Le Pen's far-right and the opposition conservatives.

"Hollande is a devalued currency," a former European affairs minister from one member state said. "If we need something, we go to the Germans. Before, we used to go to the French as a way of bringing the Germans around. Now France is mostly absent."

Paris was at the forefront of European integration from the creation of the European coal and steel community in the early 1950s to the establishment of a single currency in the 1990s as an ally and counterweight to Berlin.

But its clout has diminished in the last decade due to the bloc's eastward enlargement, the French rejection of a proposed EU constitution in a 2005 referendum and the country's economic stagnation and loss of competitiveness compared to Germany.

Since his election in 2012, Hollande has repeatedly said he wants to "reorient" the 28-nation union away from fiscal austerity to focus on promoting growth and employment.

Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said this week that Paris was preparing proposals for when EU leaders meet later this month to set the bloc's priorities for the next five years.

Yet diplomats say it is Berlin and Rome that are most likely to shape any new policy bargain, since German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's center-left were the big winners of the European elections.

REPEAT OFFENDER

Renzi, like Hollande, wants a greater focus on growth, but he is committed to a program of economic and political reforms that seems more ambitious than the French plan, and he intends swifter implementation.

"People are looking to Renzi now in the way they looked briefly to Hollande in 2012 to stand up to Merkel," the former Europe minister said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

France has narrowed its public deficit and remains an important military power with a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council. Its borrowing costs are very close to record lows because bond markets assume French debt has an implicit German guarantee.

But EU officials and diplomats say its status as a repeat offender against EU fiscal rules, its big trade deficit and reticence to open up its economy to more competition put it high on their worry list.

The European Commission expects France to miss its target of bringing the deficit down to 3 percent of GDP next year unless it changes course. But measures recommended by Brussels to ease hiring and firing rules, prune a generous welfare state and curb pension and health costs seem improbable given Hollande's dwindling political standing.

While unemployment is stubbornly high at over 10 percent, Hollande faces resistance from the left and trade unions to his plans to rein in public spending and ease the tax burden on business.

France irked Berlin when new Prime Minister Manuel Valls led a campaign urging the European Central Bank to weaken the euro to help revive the European economy. Germany staunchly defends the ECB's independence.

Outspoken Economy Minister Arnaud Montebourg misses no opportunity to attack the Commission over the way it applies EU competition rules limiting government aid to business and state intervention to promote national industrial champions.

POWER GAME

European officials say they need a strong France alongside Germany to drive Europe forward.

"The situation in France is a cause for worry, on the economic front and, following the EU elections, on the political front," said Anne Houtman, the European Commission's representative in Paris.

"France can be a driving force for the EU but member states are also well aware that if France sinks, there is a risk for the whole euro zone. No one has any interest in weakening it. Everybody, including Germany, wants it to get stronger."

Even some French officials acknowledge a weakening of Paris' involvement in the EU power game.

A presidential aide said Paris was staying out of the current battle over who should head the executive European Commission over the next five years, succeeding Jose Manuel Barroso in the most powerful EU position.

"We are not involved in that fight. We'll leave the Germans and the British to sort that out among themselves," the adviser said.

In the past, such key appointments were nearly always the result of Franco-German deals.

Likewise, France played a backseat role in last year's battle over the EU's seven-year budget plan, once it had secured its own agricultural interests, leaving Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron to force a reduction in spending.

Hollande responds to France's critics by saying that the 2-trillion-euro economy is still the euro zone's second biggest and French officials point to Paris' role in shaping responses the euro zone crisis including rules to deal with failing banks.

"If Greece did not leave the euro zone it's thanks to us," a French diplomat said, hinting that Hollande had worked behind the scenes to convince Merkel of perils of a "Grexit".

France had also been a driving force behind a European banking union despite German opposition to any mutualization of liabilities for failing institutions, he said.

But he acknowledged: "On some issues, our economic situation does diminish our influence."

Other EU diplomats involved in the crisis talks say while France did indeed play a role, it did not tilt the balance.

"Yes, France did push in the direction of a closer banking union," one said. "But look at the result, Germany got it diluted."

Another Brussels diplomat said: "France's role in Europe has considerably weakened over the past few years ... It continues to lecture others and try to sell its economic model but it's getting harder and harder to do so."

That is partly because the state-driven French approach to economic development is at odds with the dominant free-market orientation of the EU, even in countries governed by the center-left.

But a French official involved in European policy said it was also due to the president's emollient style - a stark contrast with his conservative predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, who irritated many EU partners but at least ensured France got attention.

"Hollande was always weak in the European Council (summits). He doesn't like conflict," the official said.

"He was always accompanying compromises, not making them. He never gave the impression he would be willing to block a big decision, contrary to Merkel and Cameron."

Hundreds of young Iraqi men gripped by religious and nationalistic fervor streamed into volunteer centers Saturday across Baghdad, answering a call by the country's top Shiite cleric to join the fight against Sunni militants advancing in the north.



Dozens climbed into the back of army trucks, chanting Shiite slogans and hoisting assault rifles, pledging to battle the Sunni group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which has launched a lightning advance across the country.

"By God's will, we will be victorious." said one volunteer, Ali Saleh Aziz. "We will not be stopped by the ISIL or any other terrorists."

The massive response to the call by the Iranian-born Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, issued via his representative Friday, comes as sectarian tensions are threatening to push the country back toward civil war in the worst crisis since U.S. forces withdrew at the end of 2011.

Fighters from the al-Qaida splinter group, drawing support from former Saddam Hussein-era figures and other disaffected Sunnis, have made dramatic gains in the Sunni heartland north of Baghdad after overrunning Iraq's second-largest city of Mosul on Tuesday. Soldiers and policemen have melted away in the face of the lightning advance, and thousands have fled to the self-rule Kurdish region in northern Iraq.

On Saturday, insurgents seized the small town of Adeim in Diyala province after Iraqi security forces pulled out, said the head of the municipal council, Mohammed Dhifan. Adeim is about 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of Baghdad. There was no official confirmation of the loss of the town.

Jawad al-Bolani, a lawmaker and former Cabinet minister close to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said a military offensive was underway Saturday to drive the insurgents from Tikrit, Saddam's hometown north of Baghdad, although fighting in the area could not be confirmed.

AP Television News footage showed Kurdish fighters, known as peshmerga, driving out militants who had taken over an army outpost some 24 kilometers (15 miles) west of the oil city of Kirkuk. The position had earlier been abandoned by Iraqi army troops. Long coveted by the Kurds who have a self-rule region in northern Iraq, Kirkuk fell under the control of the peshmerga this week after Iraqi army forces left.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Saturday his Shiite nation is ready to help Iraq if asked, adding that it has "no option but to confront terrorism." Addressing a news conference, he suggested the Sunni militants in northern Iraq are linked to Iraqi politicians who lost in parliamentary elections held in April.

"We will study if there is a demand for help from Iraq. Until today, no specific request for help has been demanded. But we are ready to help within international law," he said. "Entry of our forces (into Iraq) to carry out operations has not been raised so far. It's unlikely that such conditions will emerge."

Iran has built close political and economic ties with Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam's Sunni-led regime and many influential Iraqi Shiites, including al-Maliki, have spent years in exile in the Islamic Republic.

The fast-moving rebellion has emerged as the biggest threat to Iraq's stability since even before the Americans left.

Long-simmering Sunni-Shiite tensions boiled over after the U.S.-led invasion ousted Saddam in 2003, leading to vicious fighting between the two Muslim sects. But the bloodshed ebbed in 2008 after a so-called U.S. surge, a revolt by moderate Sunnis against al-Qaida in Iraq and a Shiite militia cease-fire.

The latest bout of fighting, stoked by the civil war in neighboring Syria, has pushed the nation even closer to a precipice that could partition it into Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish zones.

Shiite cleric and political leader Ammar al-Hakim was shown on television networks donning a camouflaged military fatigue as he spoke to volunteers from his party, although he still wore his clerical black turban that designates him as a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad.

State-run television also aired a constant flow of nationalist songs, clips of soldiers marching or singing, flying aircraft, brief interviews with troops vowing to crush the militants and archival clips of the nation's top Shiite clerics.

Extensive clips of al-Maliki's visit on Friday to the city of Samarra, home to a much revered Shiite shrine that was bombed in 2006, also were broadcast.

The footage seemed clearly aimed at rehabilitating his reputation in the eyes of Shiites, with a dour-faced al-Maliki seen praying at the Shiite shrine — an apparent reminder of his commitment to his faith and the protection of its followers. He also declared that Samarra would be the assembly point for the march farther north to drive out the militants, another decision with a religious slant to win over Shiites.

In an address to military commanders in Samarra, he warned that army deserters could face the death penalty if they don't report back to their units. But he insisted the crisis had a silver lining.

"This is our chance to clean and purge the army from these elements that only want to make gains from being in the army and the police," he said. "They thought that this is the beginning of the end but, in fact, we say that this is the beginning of their end and defeat."

Also Saturday, the Iraqi government's counterterrorism department said the son of Saddam's vice president, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, was killed in an air raid by the Iraqi air force in Tikrit. It said Ahmed al-Douri was killed with some 50 other Saddam loyalists and ISIL fighters on Friday. The report could not be immediately verified.

Iraqi Shiite tribal fighters deploy with their weapons while chanting slogans against the al-Qaida-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, to help the military, which defends the capital in Baghdad's Sadr City, Iraq, June 13.