Rosetta comet-chaser phones home

Rosetta, Europe's comet-chasing spacecraft, has woken from its slumber. A signal confirming its alert status was received by controllers in Darmstadt, Germany, at 18:17 GMT. Rosetta has spent the past 31 months in hibernation to conserve power as it arced beyond the orbit of Jupiter on a path that should take it to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in August. (BBC)

Turkish scandal highlights distance with EU as Erdogan visits

Rocked by a corruption scandal, Turkey looks further than ever from its goal of European Union membership as Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan visits Brussels this week in the midst of a crackdown on the judiciary and police. Erdogan has purged hundreds of police and sought tighter control of the courts since a corruption inquiry burst into the open last month, a scandal he has cast as an attempted "judicial coup" meant to undermine him ahead of elections. (Reuters)

Syria accused of systematic torture

There is clear evidence that Syria has systematically tortured and executed about 11,000 detainees since the start of the uprising, a report by three former war crimes prosecutors says. The investigators examined thousands of images of dead prisoners reportedly smuggled out of Syria by a defector. Damascus has denied claims of abuse. (BBC)

Top pope ally urges Vatican doctrine chief to loosen up

An influential aide to Pope Francis criticised the Vatican's doctrinal watchdog on Monday and urged the conservative prelate to be more flexible about reforms being discussed in the Roman Catholic Church. Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, the head of a "kitchen cabinet" the pope created to draw up reform proposals, said that Archbishop Gerhard Mueller - who has opposed any loosening of Church rules on divorce - was a classic German theology professor who thought too much in rigid black-and-white terms. (Reuters)

Japanese fishermen begin annual slaughter of hundreds of dolphins

Fishermen in Japan began slaughtering hundreds of bottlenose dolphins early on Tuesday morning, campaigners said, despite mounting international calls for the animals to be spared. The animals were last week corralled in a cove in the town, which drew international attention in 2009 with the release of the Oscar-winning documentary The Cove. In a rare public intervention by a US official, Washington’s ambassador to Tokyo, Caroline Kennedy, expressed “deep concern” over the dolphin hunt. (Guardian)