BRUSSELS — France, joining Britain, is urging its European Union partners to meet this month and end an arms embargo on Syria, to allow weapons to be sent to the opposition there.

PARIS — French warplanes bombed Islamist militant bases and depots deep into northern Mali to disrupt their supply routes, French officials said Monday, as secular Tuareg rebels in northern Mali said they had captured two Islamist commanders near the Algerian border.

PARIS — Vacation is over early this year in the eurozone, with Greece and its shaky future back on the table and Spain waiting in the wings to ask for help from European bailout funds.

PARIS — France and Greece vote Sunday in elections that will be closely watched for the future of the European Union and the euro. The votes will once again highlight the emerging crux of the euro crisis: Will democratic politics offer a solution to the economic crisis or just make it worse?

PARIS — The candidate — energetic, bold, indefatigable — is sure he will win, aides say, as he pulls energy from his big crowds.

PARIS — The French presidential election finally began to heat up on Thursday, less than three weeks before the first round of voting, with President Nicolas Sarkozy accusing his Socialist rival, Francois Hollande, of “promising a festival of new spending that no one knows how to pay for” and risking turning France into Greece or Spain.

LISBON — Sara Vale Lima, sales manager at Eical, a Portuguese textile company, feels suffocated by the euro. The common currency once meant flush banks and easy credit, but these days it has laid bare a cold reality: Portugal shares the high wages and prices of richer northern European neighbors, but not their competitiveness.

A specter is haunting Europe – the specter of socialism’s slow collapse.

After widespread criticism of its decision to cut off supplies of industrial diesel oil required to run a power station that serves Gaza City and its hospitals, Israel resumed fuel shipments on Tuesday on what it said would be a temporary basis.

Israel says Egypt is doing far too little to stop the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, from smuggling weapons, militants and cash into the area from Egypt, and is appealing to Cairo to do more.