Europe News

He's been depicted as Darth Vader in the Russian press and described as "the scariest person on Earth." Igor Sechin's official title is deputy prime minister, but within Russia, many consider him the most powerful individual in the country after Vladimir Putin. (Yes--that means he's more influential than the president.

Stopping well short of triumphalism and choosing to introspect instead on how to build on the lessons of the past, Berlin led the world in celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall in a two-and-a-half-hour spectacle that was suffused as much with a sense of history as with hope for the future.

Three days ago, rock band U2 played a free mini-concert in Berlin. On Monday, the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall ? an event that led to the unification of Germany ? Berlin is dancing to the music of time.

Sunand Prasad, a distinguished architect and former director of the prestigious Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), prefers to work like any ordinary individual, allowing his work to speak for itself.

Relations between Fiji's military government and its biggest South Pacific neighbours Australia and New Zealand were poised to worsen on Wednesday after the island state expelled their senior diplomats.

Former French President Jacques Chirac will be tried for abuse of public funds in an affair dating from 1983 to 1995, when he was mayor of Paris, French media reported on Friday.

BELOW ZERO One embryo as good as multiples for pregnancy Women who receive just one embryo during in-vitro fertilization are as likely to produce a child as those implanted with two, suggests a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

President Pratibha Patil on Wednesday held extensive talks with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on bilateral, regional and international issues, including the current situation in Pakistan.

When David Swain was led out of a British Virgin Islands court and into an armoured car on Tuesday evening, it closed a chapter in a mystery that began in March 1999 when his wife's body was found floating in the turquoise waters off the British Virgin Islands.

It isn?t often that Queen Elizabeth invites foreign dignitaries to her residential palace, the imposing Windsor Castle. But she did it for President Pratibha Patil whose three-day state visit to the UK began on Tuesday with the boom of the 21-gun salute, the roll of drums and a spectacular display of pomp and pageantry that emphasised the growing importance Britain attaches to India.

The latest international winemaker to fly to Mumbai to promote his wines is Chef Rolando Ruiz Beramendi, social director of Allegrini wines. Allegrini is a 70 hectare family-run wine estate in the lush, hilly Veneto region of north Italy, the country?s most famous wine-growing area.

Switzerland on Monday hinted it would be willing to share information with India about the bank accounts of tax defaulters after the two sides revise the existing treaty on double taxation in December.

Shobana Jeyasingh and her dance company have blurred the boundaries between East and West. She has created a new form of dance ? a seamless integration between Bharatnatyam and modern western classical dance.

Among the activists who scaled the roof of the British Parliament building on Sunday to protest the world's indifference to climate change was a 29-year-old Mumbai youth, Brikesh Singh.

Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh said on Saturday that India will come to Copenhagen in December as an ?interested party? and a ?deal maker, not a deal breaker?.

France's Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand appeared to have saved his job on Friday after an emotional television appearance in which he admitted paying for sex with men but angrily rejected paedophilia charges.

A French police union said on Thursday it will ask the Paris public prosecutor to open an investigation of Culture Minister Frederic Mitterand on possible charges of soliciting a minor.

The International star has topped Forbes.com?s latest Best Actresses for the Buck list after proving movie bosses can make the most money from her.

Rescue workers reported on Saturday that entire villages had been sucked under the earth after the the devastating earthquake that hammered western Sumatra, estimating that at last 600 people had lost their lives in the countryside surrounding Pandang.

London, Oct. 1 -- British defence firm BAE Systems could face corruption charges over allegations it spent millions in bribes to obtain lucrative foreign arms deals, the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) in London confirmed on Thursday.