Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders appealed for freedom of expression Monday as he went on trial for alleged hate speech at a time when his popularity and influence in the Netherlands are near all-time highs. Prosecutors say Wilders has incited hate against Muslims, pointing to a litany of quotes and remarks he has made in recent years. In one opinion piece he wrote “I’ve had enough... 

Voters would witness something unusual during the run-up to the Oct. 3 presidential elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). On Tuesday a crowd of estimated 10,000 crammed the central square of the northeast Bosnian town of Tuzla, demonstrating support for Fahrudin Radoncic, one of the few new personalities to emerge during an election campaign that otherwise could be a replay of so many previous... 

Russian company Orbital Technologies has announced it will have a space hotel in orbit possibly by the end of 2015. This will be the first hotel of its kind, revolutionising tourism and launching the massive commercialisation of space travel, another first for Russia’s eternally pioneering space program. Russia was the first nation to conquer space, was the first to orbit the Earth and the Moon,... 

The Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany. Germany will finally pay off the last of its debts from World War One this Sunday, on the 20th anniversary of German reunification. Germany’s federal office for central services and unresolved property issues (BADV) said on Tuesday a bond issued to pay remaining debts stemming from the conflict would mature on October 3, two decades after West and East... 

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev stepped out of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s shadow long enough on Tuesday to fire Moscow’s larger-than-life mayor, rattling a political establishment that until now has accepted Putin as the nation’s undisputed authority. The mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, has ruled Russia’s biggest and wealthiest city since 1992 with an authority that would have... 

A French soldier patrols at the Eiffel Tower in Paris. President Nicolas Sarkozy's government has gone out of its way in recent days to warn repeatedly that terrorists may be planning a new attack in France. When an unclaimed package was spotted in a busy Paris subway station Monday, police immediately diverted trains, ordered thousands of frustrated travelers into the street and dispatched a bomb... 

Tourists were asked to leave the Eiffel Tower on Tuesday after a bomb threat. The Eiffel Tower and the surrounding Champs de Mars park were briefly evacuated on Tuesday because of a bomb alert, the fourth in the Paris region in as many weeks, but a search turned up nothing, police said. The decision to evacuate came after the fire service received a call from a public telephone saying there was a suspect... 

A suicide bomber has blown himself up in the republic of Dagestan, injuring at least 42 people, including several police officers, according to media reports Saturday. The bomber broke through a police cordon in the capital, Makhachkala, where security officers were battling militia fighters. At least two Islamist rebels were killed in that incident. On Friday at least five suspected Islamist terrorists,... 

Liam Fox is welcomed to the Penagon by US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates Britain has warned the United States that the military will not be able to fight another war like Afghanistan. Liam Fox, the Defence Secretary, told his counterparts in the US that the Armed Forces would only be able to provide the manpower for medium-scale conflicts or for support in large conflicts where others took a greater... 

Unidentified assailants gunned down a school principal in her home in Russia’s troubled Dagestan province on Friday, while separate shoot-outs killed eight people across the North Caucasus. An Islamist insurgency is raging in the mainly Muslim North Caucasus region, where rebels angry about poverty and fuelled by the ideology of global jihad want to carve out an independent state governed by... 

Two Croatian MiG-21 fighter jets crashed Thursday during an exercise, but both pilots ejected safely, the defence ministry said. A person on the ground was wounded by a flying object. The two planes “had an accident in the air and both fell down,” the ministry said without specifying whether they collided. Minister Branko Vukelic said an investigation into the cause of the accident is... 

'Lax attitude': Black pupils are held back by parents and peers, not teachers, says Dr Tony Sewell. Black children fail at school because they do not concentrate, not because they are the victims of ‘institutional racism’, a leading black academic claims today. Tony Sewell, the son of Caribbean migrants, attacks the view that black pupils are held back by teachers who see them as ‘miniature... 

Two Russian scientists are being held in a high-security Moscow prison while being investigated on suspicion of spying for China, a lawyer for one of the scientists said Wednesday. The two men, Svyatoslav Bobyshev and Yevgeny Afanasyev, who are both university academics, are being held in Lefortovo jail while being investigated for “high treason and espionage”, Bobyshev’s lawyer... 

Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Germans have failed to grasp how Muslim immigration has transformed their country and will have to come to terms with more mosques than churches throughout the countryside, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily. “Our country continues to change, and integration is also the task for society to deal with immigrants,” Ms. Merkel told the daily newspaper.... 

Fredrik Reinfeldt Prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt becomes first non-socialist to win re-election since the late 1970s. Sweden’s ruling centre-right coalition beat the Social Democrat opposition in yesterday’s election but failed to win an outright majority and the far-right Sweden Democrats won seats in parliament for the first time. Early results showed Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt’s...