France, Germany | featured news

An air of cautious optimism hung over Almaty, Kazakstan, on Friday as Western and Iranian negotiators began another round of nuclear talks. The six powers – the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany – met Iranian officials with the aim of settling a decade-long tussle over Tehran's nuclear program.

Even as the euro zone periphery starts to spy some glimmers of hope, concern is mounting that Germany is drifting apart from other countries at the core of the single currency bloc, notably France.

The euro zone's two largest economies avoided shrinking between April and June, but the resilience of Germany and France wasn't enough to prevent the currency bloc's economy as a whole from falling back into contraction.

Germany dismissed a French-led call for euro zone nations to issue common bonds, a day before a European Union leaders' summit which investors are looking to for new measures to counter the bloc's debt crisis.

Investors nervous about the changing political winds in Europe initially drove down the euro and sent stock markets falling across the region Monday morning, though markets were bouncing back later in the day following renewed signs of strength in the German economy.

There has been a great deal of austerity-bashing -- that is to say Germany-bashing -- this French election season. Buoyed by his success in the first round, Socialist candidate Francois Hollande declared last Thursday: "It is not for Germany to decide for the rest of Europe." Vowing to reset Europe on a growth path, he said, "we're not just any country, we can change the situation."

Germany and France clashed on Wednesday over whether the ECB should take bolder steps to stem the euro zone debt crisis, with Chancellor Angela Merkel issuing one of her starkest warnings yet against fiddling with the central bank's strict inflation-fighting mandate.

The leaders of Germany and France, the eurozone's two biggest economies, say they have reached agreement on strengthening Europe's shaky banking sector.

After a series of positive announcement from Greek FinMin Venizelos, rumors that Moody's would downgrade French banks and Germany was preparing for a Greece to default send equities tanking, particularly French banks.

European health officials have cautiously identified contaminated fenugreek seeds as a probable common link between the large outbreak in Germany and a smaller one in France.