Over a decade since Dr Andrew Wakefield raised unfounded fears about the safety of the MMR vaccination, it emerges that many British parents are still denying their children the combined jab against measles, mumps and rubella.

ROME (Reuters) – Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's wife wants to file for divorce, Italian media reported on Sunday, just days after she publicly criticized his party's selection of young women to run in European elections.

from the BBC April 22, 2009 With less than six months to go until Norway's general election, increasing tensions over immigration and Islam appear likely to play a significant role in the vote.

Australia's Miss Universe contest, which bills itself as an event that promotes "healthy, proportioned bodies", has been accused of allowing a finalist who doctors complain is "skin and bones" and dangerously underweight.

Physicist Stephen Hawking, the author of "A Brief History of Time" who is almost completely paralyzed by motor neurone disease, has been urgently admitted to hospital, Cambridge University said on Monday.

Turkish Cypriot nationalists won a parliamentary election on Sunday, and their victory could stifle promising talks aimed at reuniting the ethnically divided island of Cyprus.

The most underreported story of the month must surely be the announcement by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner that he no longer supports the accession of Turkey as a full member of the European Union.

The Dutch foreign minister announced Sunday he is boycotting a U.N. anti-racism conference because some nations are using it as a platform to attack the West.

People confirm their identity by what they wear, eat and drive, so there is a common thread in these French news items.

April is the month in which the Armenian diaspora commemorates the bloody initiation, in 1915, of the Ottoman Empire's campaign to erase its Armenian population.

excerpt: The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States.

A little under 40 years ago, I spent a year on a hill in the northwest of South Vietnam, a helicopter ride (the road was not secure) from Tam Ky. The village below the hill was called Tien Phouc.

Examine any justice system and patterns emerge. For example, consider how Japan's policing system treats non-Japanese. Zeit Gist has discussed numerous times (July 8, 2008; Feb. 20 and Nov. 13, 2007; May 24, 2005; Jan. 13, 2004; Oct.

In the end, they were comments too outrageous to ignore. And that's why a Fox News host in the U.S. has officially issued an apology to Canadians for a panel's recent statements on this country's soldiers in Afghanistan.

British officials barred a far-right Dutch lawmaker from entering the country when he flew in Thursday, citing his anti-Islamic views in an order that has touched off a wide-ranging debate in the United Kingdom about the limits of free speech.

The director of Palestinian Media Watch, Itamar Marcus, met Wednesday with members of Parliament of the Christian Democratic Party and the Progress Party to whom he presented a new, detailed and sensational report about how Norwegian money is spent on the official hate propaganda …

Overall, Britain is languishing in the bottom half of the European happiness league table created for the first time by the New Economics Foundation, a think tank, by comparing social and personal well-being scores reported by individuals in the European Social Survey.

China has censored parts of the new US president's inauguration speech that have appeared on a number of websites. Live footage of the event on state television also cut away from Barack Obama when communism was mentioned.

Well that didn't last long, did it. The Hamas-declared ceasefire lasted for the whole of Monday. Yesterday, as Israel's troops tactfully departed Gaza so as not to rain on Obama's parade gunmen in Gaza fired at IDF patrols in two separate incidents.

The last Ethiopian troops in Somalia's capital have left Mogadishu and Islamist forces have taken over most of the bases they have left behind.

A new kind of silent hero has joined the fight against climate change.

Oxford city council confirmed the events in the city would be renamed 'Winter Light Festival' to make them more inclusive, provoking outrage among shoppers in the city who called for a return to tradition.

Kim Jong-il may be gravely ill, western officials suggested today, as the reclusive North Korean leader apparently failed to attend a military parade to mark the 60th anniversary of the country's founding.

Cremation is mandatory in most areas of Guangdong. Proper burials, traditionally an important sign of Confucian filial piety, were outlawed by the Communist Party in many areas in order to conserve farmland and avoid superstition.

Israel says it has carried out its last major airlift of Ethiopian Jews, ending a 30-year immigration scheme that has seen some 100,000 move there.

Don't blame Islam for the plight of women in the Middle East. Blame oil.

Russian troops remaining in Georgian territory are effectively preventing Georgians from returning to their homes, a U.N. representative said Saturday.

An ultra-lightweight plane built from carbon fiber and powered using paper-thin solar panels has broken the world record for longest-lasting unmanned flight, its manufacturer claimed Sunday.

By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent SUSIA, West Bank (Reuters) - In the stony hills south of Hebron, Palestinian shepherds complain of frequent attacks by militant Israeli settlers encroaching on their land. Israeli troops and police rarely...

FASCINATION with Carla Bruni has jumped the Atlantic: France's first lady graces the cover of September's Vanity Fair, which features a lengthy article on her life pre- and post-marriage to Nicolas Sarkozy.

First the fake fireworks used at the Olympic Opening Ceremony were revealed, then the lip syncing nine year old , and now a fake piano?

MOSCOW (AP) -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Prize-winning author whose books chronicled the horrors of the Soviet gulag system, has died of heart failure, his son said Monday. He was 89.

In December 1996, the Peruvian Marxist guerrilla group Tupac Amaru (MRTA) occupied the Japanese embassy in Lima, taking hostage a group assembled to celebrate the birthday of Emperor Akihito.

SHE'S one of America's hottest TV newswomen, now Lara Logan is making news for herself from Baghdad. She has been labelled a homewrecker for her trysts with an Aussie newsman and the husband of a US Embassy worker.

Several members of the Iraqi parliament called on President Jalal Talabani on Friday to apologize for shaking hands with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak at a conference in Greece this week.

The first regular, direct flight from mainland China to Taiwan for nearly 60 years has landed at Taipei's airport. China's top official on Taiwan affairs said the flight was "a new start" in exchanges between Taipei and Beijing.

Last May, a fax arrived at the London office of the Arabic newspaper Asharq Al Awsat from a shadowy figure in the radical Islamist movement who went by many names.

"MUSLIM girls should not be allowed to wear a headscarf in public schools, the two main opposition parties said last night. Labour's Ruairi Quinn said immigrants who come to Ireland need to conform to the culture of this country.

President Sarkozy's party called today for a change in French law after a judge annulled the marriage of a young Muslim couple because the bride was not the virgin that she claimed to be.

While the mainstream media continues to fawn over Christopher Hill's efforts in the Six Party talks, John McCain sets out his own views on North Korea (and Asia more generally) in the Asian Wall Street Journal.

WORKING-CLASS students have lower IQs than those from wealthier backgrounds and should not be expected to win places at top universities, an academic has claimed. Bruce Charlton, an evolutionary psychiatrist at Newcastle University, has written a paper asserting the reason why f …

A glance is often enough to tell the nationality of the groups of young tourists who throng the street outside our office on the Place de l'Opéra. You don't need to listen to the language or study the dress. The American kids are really wide.

France confirmed on Monday that it has had contacts with the leaders of Hamas for several months to try to better understand the positions of the radical Islamic group that is running Gaza.

The Indonesian Advocates Association has disbarred Todung Mulya Lubis. Todung is well-known as a champion for human rights and is considered one of the top lawyers in the country for his ethical stand on matters.

Made in Burma, the junta reflects Burmese characteristics that won't necessarily go away once it's removed. Consider the junta's seemingly laughable reliance on omens and lucky numbers to set government policy, whether it involved moving the capital or changing the currency.

Sixty-eight per cent of Italians, fuelled by often inflammatory attacks by the new rightwing government, want to see all of the country's 150,000 Gypsies, many of them Italian citizens, expelled, according to an opinion poll.

Justine Henin retired from tennis Wednesday, an abrupt ending to a short and successful career in which she won seven Grand Slam singles titles and leaves while ranked No. 1.

The International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation promised that more trade would help to eradicate poverty and hunger. Foodcrops? Self-sufficiency in food? They had a better idea. Local farms would be closed down or encouraged to concentrate on exports.

The Canadian Bar Association is urging Parliament to discard amendments to immigration legislation, calling them "a major step backwards in the evolution of Canadian immigration law."

Minor tragedies, rejections in love, trouble at work: The Web site Vie de Merde is allowing the French to express their daily frustrations -- and make each other laugh. "I got two text messages from my girlfriend. In the first she said it was all over.

"It doesn't make much sense to produce ethanol from corn," Goldemberg said. "What the United States needs to do if it wants to solve its energy problems is very simple. It needs to import ethanol from Brazil."

NEW YORK -- The U.N. Security Council voted to renew the peacekeeping mission to Western Sahara late last night, barely making the deadline to extend the mission to the disputed North African territory after sharp disagreements over the final text.

But despite the bravado, the reality is that today's IMF is not what it once was.

The leader of Hamas says his Palestinian militant group is offering Israel a 10-year truce if it withdraws from all lands it seized in the 1967 war.

Prince Harry has returned to the UK after being withdrawn 10 weeks into a front-line deployment in Afghanistan. ... Prince Harry's tour was cut short after a news blackout broke, leading to fears he would be targeted by the Taleban.

The Archbishop of Canterbury said today sharia law should be introduced in the UK for Muslims. Rowan Williams told BBC Radio 4's World at One the introduction of the controversial system of Islamic justice in the UK was "unavoidable".

Taiwan's opposition Nationalist Party appeared headed to a landslide victory in legislative elections Saturday, dealing a blow to the government's hardline China policies two months before a presidential poll.

Religious fanaticism has to a large extent coalesced with tribal identities and grievances and made for an explosive mix.

Kibaki, who had trailed in all the opinion polls and all but the final count yesterday, was given 4,584,721 votes to the 4,352,993 tally of the opposition leader Raila Odinga.

A checkpoint between Austria and Slovakia has been dismantled in a symbolic ceremony marking the enlargement of the Schengen area.

In Angola, tens of thousands of Chinese workers have come to rebuild a country devastated by a long civil war. Fernando Macedo of the Association for Justice Peace and Democracy, a Luanda based human rights group, accepts that because of the war a whole generation of Angolans ar …

A court in the ultra-conservative kingdom of Saudi Arabia is punishing a female victim of gang rape with 200 lashes and six months in jail, a newspaper reported on Thursday.

The French trade unions staging a series of strikes and protests against a pension-reform plan are following a well-established procedure. The government calls for urgent change and draws up a proposal; those affected paralyse much of the country; the plan is shelved.

"Poverty has increased both in absolute numbers and proportionally," SAIRR said in a statement, blaming the rise on unemployment and HIV/Aids. Despite good economic growth in recent years, unemployment has remained consistently high at about 26%.

During the closing session of the 12th Summit of Iberoamerican Leaders and Heads of State held in Chile King Juan Carlos caused a diplomatic incident when he lent over and said to Hugo Chavez "Por qué no te callas" (Why don't you shut up?) when the Venezuelan president kept tryi …

Masked gunmen opened fire on students returning from a march in which tens of thousands of Venezuelans denounced President Hugo Chavez's attempts to expand his power through constitutional changes.

In a series of internal musings and memos to his staff, then-Defense Secretary Donald H.

Iran's chief nuclear negotiator has resigned, after repeated disagreement with hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Ten years of Labour rule have failed to create a classless society, according to a Guardian/ICM poll published today. It shows that Britain remains a nation dominated by class division, with a huge majority certain that their social standing determines the way they are judged.

"An official announcement that the Sarkozys are to separate may come tomorrow. 'It is an open secret,' said Christophe Barbier, editor of weekly news magazine L'Express"

Two senior Israeli politicians, including the prime minister's closest ally, talked openly Monday about dividing Jerusalem, signaling a possible shift in Israeli opinion about one of the Mideast's most contentious issues.

British PM Gordon Brown, after being undecided for months on whether to call an early election, climbed down after private polling revealed that the recently-announced Tory inheritance tax cut is proving very popular among swing-seat constituents.

The Chinese appetite for rare delicacies is not only destroying the Cape's marine ecology, but more seriously, fueling a drug epidemic.

Hot on the heels of the Russian land grab in the Arctic, it emerges that when it comes to ruthless resource exploitation, the British (in the south Atlantic) and the French (in the Pacific) are no better.

The conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea is shaping up to be a repeat, on a smaller scale, of the Cold War: if one side takes the side in a third country's internal conflict, the other side would back the other side, heedless of longer-term impacts.