The 4 September bombing of two oil tankers in the northern Afghan town of Kunduz caused carnage, and was the deadliest incident involving German troops since the Second World War. At first the German Nato forces, which had ordered the attack, claimed that all those killed in the incident were insurgents, although later the government in Berlin expressed regrets if innocent people had been among the victims.

Yesterday General Schneiderhan, the highest ranking official in the Germany armed ( Read more... )
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The report revealed that four consecutive Archbishops of Dublin had effectively colluded for more than a quarter of a century in ensuring that the activities of paedophile priests did not reach the public gaze.

It is the latest in a series of hugely damaging reports on the church and children, all of which have concluded that it routinely placed its own image before the protection of the vulnerable. The conclusion of this report, produced by a Commission of Investigation after years of ( Read more... )
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Michele Catalano, 48, is said to be an important sidekick of Salvatore Lo Piccolo, the man who took over the running of Cosa Nostra after the arrest of Bernardo Provenzano in April 2006. Provenzano became "boss of bosses" after the arrest of Riina in 1993.

Operating from the San Filippo Neri quarter of Palermo, Catalano's alleged speciality was running illegal gambling dens.

Capo di Capi, screened by Mediaset's Channel 5, owned by the Berlusconi family, has been a huge success but ( Read more... )
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In a television news report last week, bailiffs in Udmurtia boasted of a new scheme. They had set up a fake online account of a young blonde woman, and sent flirty messages offering meetings to men who had defaulted on debt repayments.

When the men arrived at the meeting, they were met not by the saucy blonde they thought they had a date with, but by bailiffs demanding repayment. According to the bailiffs, the scheme had worked a treat, and three debtors had been forced to return sums totalling ( Read more... )
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An atmosphere of anxiety, or "morbid expectation of an accident," had gripped the small, élite team of Air France Concorde crew before Tuesday's disaster in Paris, according to one pilot.

Speaking anonymously to Le Parisien newspaper, he said there had been feeling among the 36-strong team of pilots, co-pilots and flight engineers that some kind of crash was due.

"I had this sense that we were going to bump into the scenery," he said. "The atmosphere on the Concorde team for ( Read more... )
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What did he mean, I asked (although I knew exactly what he meant). My neighbour mumbled something about not liking the team because they didn't sing the Marseillaise before matches (something that has not been true for more than a decade). What he really meant was that there were too many non-white faces in the line-up (seven out of 11). I pointed out that every single France player in the now infamous main de Dieu World Cup qualifying team was born in France and mostly in Greater Paris. He looked ( Read more... )
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The French first lady is portrayed as a sex-mad vamp. Her husband has only a brief appearance in which he answers the telephone at the Elysée Palace by saying: "You're getting cosy with Sarkozy."

Although little commented on when it aired in the US on 15 November, extracts from the episode, called "The Devil Wears Nada", have become a must-see for French internauts.

Homer Simpson and his boss Carl Carlson visit Paris and meet a yellow-faced Bruni, wearing a long purple dress, at ( Read more... )
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After just over two years, Vélib, which offers bikes for hire on almost every large street corner in Paris, remains a free-wheeling, popular success. The help-yourself, electronic racks of sturdy bicycles have been copied worldwide and are due to reach London by next May.

However, vandalism and theft remain so rampant that Paris city authorities were obliged yesterday to come to the aid of the private company which runs the scheme. In less than two-and-a-half years, 8,000 bicycles have ( Read more... )
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Father Sysoyev was a controversial figure, even within the Orthodox Church. He was an active missionary, attempting to convert Muslims to Orthodoxy, and authored a number of books, including one warning Russian women against marrying Muslim men. He also posted a series of online sermons on YouTube dissecting the Islamic faith and making several incendiary claims about the religion.

Late last Thursday night, after the evening service, an intruder burst into Father Sysoyev's small church, ( Read more... )
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Both emerged as dynamic leaders when Italian democracy was tying itself in knots. Both enjoyed vast popularity almost amounting to fan-worship, which endured for years and appeared immune to scandal. Both were short and sturdy, of classic peasant physique.

And both, it emerges, had gargantuan sexual appetites.

Exactly how gargantuan became clear this week with the publication of a memoir by Patrizia D'Addario, the prostitute who claims to have spent two nights ( Read more... )
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On Thursday night, a bunch of seasonal flowers was thrust into her hand and she found herself pawed by the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy and Javier Solana, the EU's current foreign affairs chief.

Was it Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, doing it for the sisterhood? An Anglo-French stitch-up to ensure the French got an economic brief? A Franco-German stitch-up to ensure no one towered over President Sarkozy? Or ? and let's face it, this was probably the main reason ? no one in Europe ( Read more... )
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The celebrations in Prague last Tuesday were especially poignant. It was the 20th anniversary of those dizzying few days when a combination of people power on the streets, and clever politicking behind the scenes by the opposition, brought Czechs freedom. The people who took part in the revolution are middle aged or older now ? and young people take a free market, free movement around Europe, and free voting for granted. They never knew what living under Communism and Soviet occupation was like. ( Read more... )
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Ten months after the case opened in a court in the historic Umbrian city of Perugia, the prosecutor Giuliano Mignini finally arrived at the logical conclusion to his closing address: a plea for the defendants to be given Italy's harshest sentence, life imprisonment. At these words, Ms Knox, a Seattle student whose erratic behaviour has in turn beguiled, infuriated and appalled onlookers, took a deep intake of breath. She then addressed the court, saying the accusations against her were "pure fantasy", ( Read more... )
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Jean-Pierre Treiber, suspected of the murder of two women in 2004, slipped out of prison on 8 September by shutting himself into a box that he had made in a prison workshop.

The box was loaded on to a delivery van that took him away from prison. He eluded police for more than two months, writing to the media to proclaim his innocence and sending accounts of his days in a woodland hideout to a woman friend. He was arrested yesterday in Melun, near Paris, along with three ( Read more... )
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The US President, Barack Obama, said that he "looked forward to working closely" with both the new European Council President, Herman van Rompuy, and the EU's first foreign minister, Baroness Ashton. He said the "two new positions" would make the European Union an "even stronger partner to the United States".

It was noticeable, however, that President Obama also declared that he intended to "work closely" with the European Commission President, Jose Manuel Barroso ( Read more... )
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The pair will hold a private meeting at the Vatican at a delicate time for relations between the churches. Last month, Pope Benedict unveiled a special structure to allow traditionalist Anglican ministers, including married ones, and lay people to join the Catholic Church. The decree, for the first time in history, allows the creation of "personal ordinariates" in which Anglo-Catholics can preserve their traditions but in communion with the Pope. Anglo-Catholic leaders have ( Read more... )
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Close friends of the former prime minister said he was "entirely happy" with his current roles ? lucrative public speaking engagements, working as the international Middle East peace envoy, bringing democracy to Africa, tackling climate change, and heading an inter-faith foundation and sports charity.

They said Mr Blair had cooled on the idea of becoming President of the European Council after it became clear that the 27 EU leaders were looking for a chairman rather ( Read more... )
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Her appointment as the EU High Commissioner would satisfy calls for a woman to hold one of the EU's two top jobs.

"We have to have a woman on board," said one EU diplomat. "And there's a growing consensus that we can't have a stronger European foreign policy without having the British in pole position. It would be like having created the Euro without the German Deutschmark."

Baroness Ashton worked in the public sector before switching to politics. She was director of Business in the ( Read more... )
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But it's all true. After shaking off ? so far ? a 10-year addiction to the morphine which Belgian doctors gave her during 29 excruciatingly painful operations on her leg, Maité is now a young mother with a year and a half old baby and, incredibly, a total disinterest in the war that almost killed her. Only an hour before I met Maité, I was listening to the "Last Post" at the Menin Gate, 15 miles away in Ypres. "I know nothing about it," she says to me with indifference. "I've read nothing about ( Read more... )
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Following a trade-off that managed to juggle the competing demands from Europe's left and right political blocs, from the region's big and small states and from those calling for a gender-balanced ticket, the victorious couple were formally anointed at a dinner of the European Union's 27 leaders.

Lady Ashton ? the Labour peer who was first identified as a candidate by The Independent last month ? won a spectacular promotion from Trade Commissioner to become the most powerful woman ever to ( Read more... )
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