Italy's former leader Silvio Berlusconi Monday gave a strong hint that he would return to politics, declaring he would "never leave his party in the lurch" as rumors swirled of an imminent comeback.

In an interview in Germany's mass circulation daily Bild, Berlusconi said he was "often and persistently" asked if he would put his name forward to lead his PDL party into parliamentary elections planned for April.

Authorities in the West German region of North Rhine-Westphalia have bought data on German clients of a Swiss bank suspected of tax evasion, a report said on Saturday.

Tax authorities had acquired a computer disc with data concerning around 1,000 German clients of the private Coutts Bank, a subsidiary of the Royal Bank of Scotland, the report in the Financial Times Deutschland said in its online edition.

A German court decision branding the Muslim and Jewish rite of circumcising baby boys a criminal act has left disbelief, outrage and serious legal questions in its wake.

A cartoon in Sunday's edition of Berlin daily Tagesspiegel cast the dispute over the ruling published last month as a high-stakes struggle between religious beliefs and European secular values.

France and Germany marked 50 years of reconciliation, their leaders stressing the ties that unite the two countries and condemning news of the desecration of dozens of German war graves.

The vandalism of more than 40 graves of German soldiers killed during World War I came on the eve of the highly symbolic meeting in Reims in northern France, a region scarred by centuries of war with Germany.

France and Germany marked 50 years of reconciliation Sunday but the desecration of German war graves marred a meeting of their leaders that could ease tensions on tackling the euro debt crisis.

The vandalism of the graves of 51 German soldiers killed during World War I on the eve of the highly symbolic meeting cast a shadow over the ceremony in Reims in northern France, a region scarred from centuries of war with Germany.

The gravestones of 40 German soldiers from World War I have been desecrated at a military cemetery in the Ardennes region of northern France, the interior ministry said Saturday.

The announcement came on the eve of the 50th anniversary of renewed Franco-German relations after World War II.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle called Friday for a non-military U.N. resolution and tough sanctions as a way of piling pressure on the Syrian regime to stop a deadly crackdown on opposition.

At a meeting in Paris seeking to coordinate Western and Arab efforts to stop the violence, he stressed that a peaceful and democratic transition "excludes a political role for (President Bashar) Assad."

Prime Minister Najib Miqati noted on Friday that the March 14 camp’s demand for the resignation of the government is not new, saying that they have been making this demand since its formation in 2011.

He said: “There are constitutional means to topple the government and we will continue our work until they are provided.”

A heavily-armed man who shot dead four hostages and then himself in an hours-long siege at a German apartment over his imminent eviction was French, police said Thursday.

"I know that he is French and that he is from Alsace," a police spokesman told Agence France Presse, a day after the man barricaded himself and four people inside the flat in the southwestern city of Karlsruhe, 70 kilometers (40 miles) from the French border.

Russia on Thursday confirmed receiving requests from its Western partners to help end the conflict in Syria by offering President Bashar Assad asylum, but said it had dismissed the idea as a joke.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the idea was first raised by German Chancellor Angela Merkel in her June meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin during his first trip to Europe since his election to a third term.