Top of the campaign agenda is how to counter the cuts from central government with pressure mounting on the council's large reserves.

BBC: Leicestershire election 2013: Parties prepare for battle

By next year even he could be forced to rely upon the central government to guarantee the floundering city's mounting debts.

ECONOMIST: Japan

Investors also expressed concern over rising borrowing costs for Spain and Italy, just as signs are mounting that the effects of the European Central Bank's low-cost loans to banks are wearing off.

WSJ: Stocks' Drop Is 2012 Worst

Over the past few months, India's consumer inflation has bucked a downtrend in wholesale inflation, constraining the central bank from lowering interest rates aggressively despite facing mounting pressure to make corporate borrowings cheaper and help stimulate an economy growing at its weakest pace in a decade.

WSJ: India Consumer Inflation Slows

After mounting pressure from the new government, the central bank raised its inflation target to 2% last month.

BBC: Haruhiko Kuroda

Meanwhile, pressure is mounting on the Germans to allow the European Central Bank to become the lender of last resort.

BBC: The euro �C what next?

In recent years, the Neanderthals - who lived across Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia in Pleistocene times - have come to be rehabilitated amid mounting evidence that their abilities had been underestimated.

BBC: Neanderthals used feathers as 'personal ornaments'

Gnanawathie, a migrant to Colombo from central Sri Lanka, where the army has recruited heavily, laments the mounting number of dead youths from her village.

ECONOMIST: The feared carnage comes to pass