Europe News

ROME - The prostitute at the center of Premier Silvio Berlusconi's sex scandal claims in a new book that she slept with him on the understanding he would help her set up a countryside inn but she got "nothing" in return.

LONDON (AFP) - A long-awaited public inquiry into Britain's role in the Iraq war opened on Tuesday, as its chairman vowed not to "shy away from criticism" of individuals or institutions over the controversial conflict.

BRATISLAVA (AFP) - German car giant Volkswagen said Tuesday the production of a new line of small family cars in its Slovak plant would create 1,500 direct and 7,000 indirect jobs as of 2011.

WARSAW, Poland - A Warsaw court on Tuesday began hearing a lawsuit filed by Lech Walesa in which the Solidarity founder is demanding damages from Polish President Lech Kaczynski for having called Walesa a communist-era agent.

LONDON - In the most sweeping inquiry on the Iraq war, a panel investigating Britain's role in the conflict began questioning witnesses Tuesday in hearings that critics hope will humble ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair and expose alleged deception in the buildup to fighting.

LONDON - Britain's defense ministry says it will formally order a public inquiry this week into the alleged abuse and killing of Iraqi civilians by British soldiers.

LONDON (AFP) - England midfielder David Beckham has suffered from asthma since he was a boy, but it does not affect his performance, his agent was quoted as saying Tuesday.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands - Two Congolese militia leaders sent child soldiers and other fighters to wipe out a village in a revenge attack that left more than 200 men, women and children dead, a prosecutor told judges Tuesday at the International Criminal Court.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A police investigator and a court bailiff were found beheaded in a car trunk in Russia's mainly Muslim region of Kabardino-Balkaria, Interfax said on Tuesday, underscoring spreading violence on Russia's southern flank.

PARIS - France's foreign minister has praised the courage of a journalist who has led a fight against a law in Sudan allowing for women to be flogged for wearing pants.

BRUSSELS - For 23 torturous years, Rom Houben says he lay trapped in his paralyzed body, aware of what was going on around him but unable to tell anyone or even cry out.

GENEVA - The world's largest atom smasher made another leap forward Monday by circulating beams of protons in opposite directions at the same time and causing the first particle collisions in the $10 billion machine after more than a year of repairs, organizers said.

LONDON - Former British leader Margaret Thatcher returned to London's Downing Street Monday as she unveiled her own portrait, which has been installed in the official residence of Britain's prime minister.

LONDON - A convicted murdered who once served as the personal assistant to the duchess of York has escaped from a low-security prison in southern England, British officials said Monday.

LONDON - Four British lawmakers could face criminal charges over the expenses they claimed from taxpayers, prosecutors said Monday, marking the latest twist in a scandal over lavish spending by elected officials.

BUCHAREST, Romania - The third-place candidate in Romania's presidential election threw his support Monday behind the Western-backed socialist who faces the centrist president in a runoff seen as key to the country's emergence from political and economic crisis.

PARIS - Albert Camus' children are torn about whether to allow the Nobel Prize-winning author's remains to be moved from southern France to Paris' Pantheon, the final resting place of other French greats like Voltaire and Victor Hugo.

LONDON - British police have reached a compensation deal with the family of a Brazilian man who was shot dead by police after he was mistaken for a terrorist.

BERLIN - A German newspaper is reporting that Adolf Hitler's original Mercedes has been sold to an unidentified Russian billionaire for several million euros.

MOSCOW - Russia's Defense Ministry says eight military personnel were killed when a truckload of ammunition exploded as they cleaned up after a huge conflagration at a munitions depot earlier this month.

BRUSSELS - Nearly half of Europe's unemployed stay out of work for at least a year, a European Union report said Monday, far more than in the U.S.

LONDON - Residents of flood-battered northern England are struggling back to work, school and homes after swollen rivers inundated roads and caused several bridges to collapse.

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia - A French navy ship of the type that Russia hopes to buy arrived Monday for a visit to St. Petersburg, fueling concern in Georgia and other ex-Soviet nations that it may be used to intimidate its neighbors.

LONDON - A leading climate change scientist says the leak of documents stolen from a British research institute may be aimed at undermining talks at next month's Copenhagen global climate summit.

LONDON - Leaked British government documents call into question ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair's public statements on the buildup to the Iraq war and show plans for the U.S.-led 2003 invasion were being made more than a year earlier, a newspaper reported Sunday.

MOSCOW - Russian spaceship designer Konstantin Feoktistov, the only non-Communist space traveler in the history of the Soviet space program, has died at the age of 83.

DUBLIN - Irish Republican Army dissidents left a 400-pound (180-kilogram) car bomb outside police reform headquarters in Belfast but the homemade device failed to detonate, Northern Ireland's police commander said Sunday.