Europe News

LONDON - In the most sweeping inquiry by any nation involved in the Iraq war, a panel investigating Britain's role in the conflict begins questioning witnesses Tuesday in hearings that critics hope will humble former Prime Minister Tony Blair and expose alleged deception in the buildup to conflict.

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain has built the world's biggest DNA database without proper political debate and police routinely arrest people just to get their DNA profiles onto the system, the genetics watchdog said in a report on Tuesday.

HELSINKI (AFP) - Nokia, the world's biggest mobile phone maker, said on Tuesday it would cut around 220 jobs in Japan as part of its plans to streamline its vast research and development operations.

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.

LONDON (AFP) - Britain's partly-nationalised Lloyds Banking Group on Tuesday said it was offering shareholders new stock at a discount of almost 60 percent under the country's largest ever rights issue.

LONDON (AFP) - A long-awaited public inquiry into Britain's role in the Iraq war opens on Tuesday, with former civil servants first to appear in hearings set to climax with Tony Blair taking the stand.

LONDON (AFP) - Most of the public would support a tax on financial transactions if part of the money was directed to help those hit by the economic crisis here and abroad, a poll has shown.

LONDON (AFP) - The government will this week announce details of an inquiry into the alleged torture and murder of Iraqi detainees by British troops, a spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

NEW YORK (AFP) - Britain walked away with five International Emmy Awards on Monday, including for best performances, while Brazil joined the television elite for the first time at a gala ceremony in New York.

BRUSSELS - For 23 torturous years, Rom Houben says he lay trapped in his paralyzed body, aware of what was going on around him but unable to tell anyone or even cry out.

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.

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.