Europe News

LONDON (AFP) - Former prime minister Margaret Thatcher returned to her old offices in Downing Street on Monday for the unveiling of a new portrait of the "Iron Lady" at a reception hosted by Gordon Brown.

OSLO (Reuters) - The people of Bergen rolled out the cookie dough Monday as local police tried to sniff out vandals who destroyed the Norwegian city's traditional Christmas decoration -- a town of gingerbread houses.

BELFAST (AFP) - Northern Ireland's leaders closed ranks Monday to denounce weekend attacks including a huge car bomb which only just failed to go off, in a new threat to the long-troubled province's fragile peace process.

LONDON (AFP) - More than half of Britons would support a tax on financial transactions if part of the money was directed to help people hit by the economic crisis here and abroad, a poll showed Monday.

LONDON (AFP) - Rafael Nadal was beaten in straight sets by Robin Soderling in his opening match at the ATP World Tour Finals on Monday, the Swede repeating his shock French Open win over the Spaniard.

LONDON - A panel investigating Britain's role in the Iraq war begins questioning witnesses this week in an inquiry that critics hope will humble former Prime Minister Tony Blair and expose alleged deception in the buildup to conflict.

GENEVA - The world's largest atom smasher made another leap forward Monday by circulating beams of protons in opposite directions at the same time 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.

PERUGIA, Italy - Prosecutors on Saturday requested life in prison for an American student and her ex-boyfriend accused in the fatal stabbing of her British roommate during a drug-fueled sex game — charges the U.S. woman dismissed as "pure fantasy."

BERN, Switzerland - A bear has attacked a man who entered its enclosure at a new park in Switzerland, and a policeman opened fire on the animal to defend the intruder.