World Politics News

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.

UNITED NATIONS - Development officials say almost half the world's population lacks modern fuels to cook or heat or any electricity, and insist negotiators must address that "energy poverty" as part of any global climate pact next month in Denmark.

UNITED NATIONS - The U.N. humanitarian chief says Sri Lanka's decision to release Tamil refugees confined to government camps is good news but the United Nations is concerned about how they are being returned home.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Khartoum's U.N. envoy, rejecting a bleak U.N. assessment of the situation in Sudan's conflict-torn western Darfur region, said on Monday it was time for international peacekeepers to prepare to leave.

UNITED NATIONS - The remains of British hostage Alec Collett, who disappeared in 1985 during Lebanon's civil war while working for the United Nations, have been positively identified, the U.N. announced Monday.

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.

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.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States will announce a target for reducing its greenhouse gas emissions before the UN climate conference in Copenhagen, removing a major obstacle to a deal, a senior official said Monday.

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 (AFP) - Prime Minister Gordon Brown warned fellow world leaders on Sunday that they "cannot afford to fail" to strike a substantial deal on climate change in Copenhagen next month.

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.

BUCHAREST (AFP) - Romania's incumbent president and his Social-Democrat rival will face a run-off after Sunday's first round election, exit polls showed, as the country aims to recover from a political crisis and a deep recession.

MONROVIA, Liberia - Hundreds of people jammed into a Monrovia church to mourn a Liberian United Nations worker killed in an October attack by Taliban gunmen in Afghanistan's capital.

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.

VATICAN CITY - After offering a home in his church to disaffected Anglicans, Pope Benedict XVI assured the archbishop of Canterbury on Saturday that he is still committed to seeking closer relations between Catholics and Anglicans.

BRUSSELS (AFP) - The hunt began in earnest Saturday for a new Belgian prime minister after Herman Van Rompuy was chosen as the EU first president, with his predecessor Yves Leterme appearing in pole position.

ROME - Italian police on Saturday arrested a Pakistani father and son who allegedly spent just over $200 to set up a reliable and untraceable phone network that was used by the militants who carried out last year's terror attacks in Mumbai, India.