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Pope Francis said the European Union risks losing the trust of citizens by ignoring the social costs of the financial crisis.

In the first papal address to the European Parliament since 1988, the year before communisms collapse in eastern Europe, Francis warned about the excesses of free markets.

There are certain rather selfish lifestyles, marked by an opulence which is no longer sustainable and frequently indifferent to the world around us, and especially to the poorest, Francis told the 28-nation EU assembly today in Strasbourg, France. To our dismay, we see technical and economic questions dominating political debate.

The popes remarks coincide with growing EU concerns about the social and political consequences of economic sluggishness. The euro area is seeking to counter the risk of deflation, bolster economic growth and reduce 12 percent unemployment after five years of German-fashioned budget austerity prescribed to overcome the sovereign-debt crisis that threatened to break up the single currency.

The economic malaise has fueled the rise of protest parties across the EU, where a decades-long consensus about the benefits of greater European integration is being challenged. A symbol of this trend is the EU Parliament itself, where euro-skeptic groups boosted their share of seats in elections in May to about 30 percent from 20 percent.

There has been a growing mistrust on the part of citizens toward institutions considered to be aloof, engaged in laying down rules which they perceive as insensitive to individual peoples concerns, if not actually harmful, Francis said. The great ideas which once inspired Europe seem to have lost their power of attraction and been replaced by the bureaucratic technicalities of Europes institutions.

The two biggest parties in the 751-seat EU Parliament remain the Christian Democrats and the Socialists, which are stressing the importance of a 300 billion-euro ($373 billion) investment program that European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker intends to unveil tomorrow.

Francis, dubbed The Peoples Pope by Time Magazine for his preaching of humility and defense of the poor, said jobs must be an EU priority.

Its time to promote policies which create employment, he said. Speaking in Italian interpreted into English and other EU languages, the Pope said this implies finding new ways of combining market flexibility and the need for the stability and security of workers.

Francis also weighed into the politically sensitive issue of migration to the EU via the Mediterranean Sea, urging the bloc to forge a united response.

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Pope Warns EU of Voter Disillusionment After Debt Crisis

Rubiks cube, a multicolored puzzle thats kept small and big hands busy since the 1970s, won the right to European Union trademark protection, fending off a challenge from a German toy maker.

The cubes distinctive surface is eligible for the EU-wide right, the EU General Court in Luxembourg ruled today, rejecting claims by Simba Toys GmbH, which argued that it performed a purely technical function.

The black lines and, more generally, the grid structure on each surface of the cube in question do not perform, or are not even suggestive of, any technical function, the EU court said. The EU trademark is granted for three-dimensional puzzles of the same shape with the same grid structure, without blocking other toy makers from creating differently shaped puzzles that rotate in a similar way, the court said.

Hungarian inventor Erno Rubik in 1974 created a solid cube with colored stickers that twisted and turned without falling apart.

Todays ruling is crucial for us because trademark protection is significant for Rubiks cube because the main patent lapsed a few years ago, said Seven Towns, a U.K.-based company that manages the intellectual property rights for the puzzle.

The objective that was not supposed to be possible, according to the official Rubiks website. Rubik himself took one month to work out the solution. There are 43 quintillion ways to align all the sides in an evenly colored manner, according to the website.

A spokeswoman at Simba Toys in Fuerth, Germany, couldnt immediately be reached by phone.

The case is: T-450/09, Simba Toys v. OHMI - Seven Towns (Forme dun cube avec des faces ayant une structure en grille).

To contact the reporter on this story: Stephanie Bodoni in Luxembourg at sbodoni@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net Peter Chapman

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Rubiks Cube Wins Trademark Toy Story at EU Court

Ebola: Together we can stop it
The Ebola disease has caused the deaths of over 5000 people throughout West Africa and affected over 14000 people. The EU has committed over 1.1 billion to help people suffering and affected...

By: European Union Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection

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Ebola: Together we can stop it - Video

Britain #39;s anti-EU UKIP takes second seat in parliament
Britain #39;s anti-European Union UK Independence Party (UKIP) wins its second seat in parliament, in a by-election that could signal upheaval in a general election in six months #39; time. Duration: 00:53.

By: AFP news agency

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Britain's anti-EU UKIP takes second seat in parliament - Video

SPECIAL REPORT: Anal Cunt isnt an everyday sort of band name. Even in underground metal circles, it still inspires a pause, despite the fact that the defunct American grindcore group got its start in 1988. That didnt stop its display, on a large video screen, at the 2014 European Union Prize for Literature award ceremony, from being a big surprise.

Embedded in an English-language excerpt from Jelgava 94, a Latvian novel about teenage metal fans in the Baltic state, in the years immediately following independence from the USSR, its soft-spoken author read the relevant passage from the work, in his native language, like he was still a teenage music fan.

The elegantly dressed, distinctly non-metal audience drank Janis Jonevs up, as though he were a refreshing drink in an otherwise dry literary space. One of this years thirteen award winners, Jonevs novel could not stand out more.

Equal parts bildungsroman, and a portrait of the cultural chaos that reigned in former communist states during the 1990s, the book serves as a stark reminder of what has been left behind over the last year, as Cold War style tensions resumed between Moscow and the West, and border countries such as Latvia, grew increasingly concerned about their independence.

The freedom to transgress, to misbehave, to be heavy metal kids, may have been a hard-won freedom, despite the fact that anti-establishment subcultures, as in the West, often flourished behind the Iron Curtain. Still, the release that Jonevs recounts is indelibly linked to its historic context, one which, in retrospect, is not just a middle aged exercise in in remembering ones carefree youth.

The book is also, despite its intense specificity, about being part of a larger world, linked by underground music, and its influence on young persons lives. Featuring a protagonist with the nickname Death, namedropping American indie bands like Anglo kids, the characters in the book are harbingers of the global youth culture that fully emerged with the mainstreaming of the Internet in the early '00s. Theres nothing about them, at least culturally, that couldnt mark them as British, German, or Americans. Except, perhaps, how metal fits into their local lives, and structures their relations.

In literary awards ceremonies like this years EUPL event, its oftentimes hard to connect with authors so immediately, particularly when there are so many to choose from. At least in this reporters case. A former music journalist and punk zine editor, in the 1990s, Janis Jonevs work was an especially easy sell. Though the rest of the award recipients produced equally topical, deserving works, Jelgava 94 spoke to me, most personally.

Though not a patron of underground culture like I used to be, I remain as interested in it as I was in my twenties. I just have less time to seek it out, as the old mediums for discovering it record stores, fanzines have largely disappeared, in favor of the largely anonymous online space, where there is little distinction between alternative and mainstream, independent and major label. Just try searching for a record in the iTunes store, and youll see. It takes more work, ironically, to find things to connect to.

Hence, my surprise, to discover the literary equivalent of a great metal record of its day, in the form of a novel, at a European Union sponsored literary awards ceremony, in Brussels. It may be stereotypically adult to discover it that way, but the context, in terms of encountering it within a specific community setting, was not. That the funding for the awards comes from governments, of course, is a far cry from the DIY ethos of the underground. But money is money. What matters is the culture we sponsor with it. Theres always something worthy.

Reading through the selection of translations of this years European Union Prize for Literature winners, Im sure that other attendees of the Wednesday ceremony had the same sort of experience, albeit with different authors. Im equally certain that if I set myself to it, I might find similar, albeit less intense connections, as well. Practically everything Ive read (that I could translate) seems worthwhile, on one level or another. When full English translations become available, Ill gladly buy them all.

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Heavy metal Brussels: The 2014 European Union Prize for Literature award ceremony