LONDON - Britain’s Prince Harry urged support for wounded veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars during an awards dinner Monday night in Washington, D.C.
 
The 27-year-old prince received a humanitarian award from the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based foreign policy research group, for his work with a foundation that trains injured British veterans and helps them […]

PARIS - Francois Hollande, the former leader of France’s Socialist Party, has been elected president of France, defeating incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy.
Despite being one of France’s best known politicians, the 57-year-old Hollande has never held a position in the national government.
 
Dominique Moisi, senior adviser to the French Institute of International Affairs in Paris, notes that Mr. […]

PARIS - French President Nicolas Sarkozy says more suspected Muslim extremists will be rounded up, following a series of arrests Friday in operations around the country. The arrests are part of a larger crackdown against radical Islam following a string of killings by an al-Qaida-inspired gunman.
Interviewed on France’s Europe 1 radio Friday, President Nicolas Sarkozy […]

ATHENS - Greece says the majority of the country’s private lenders, including financial institutions, have agreed to a bond swap deal to help the country eliminate a $142-billion debt and avoid a default on its financial obligations.
 
Greece intends to use legislation to force the remaining holdouts to sign on to the agreement.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy […]

MOSCOW - Prominent Russian activist Alexei Navalny is promising a campaign of civil disobedience against what he says was a stolen presidential election by Vladimir Putin.
 
Navalny says tens of thousands of people will turn out for street protests in Russian cities and will keep up the protests until their demands are met.
 
Police arrested Navalny and […]

MOSCOW - Russian opposition leaders plan to rally near the Kremlin Monday to protest Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency.
With nearly all the votes counted, Russian officials say Putin won Sunday’s presidential election by a landslide with 64 percent of the vote. His closest rival, Community Party chief Gennady Zyuganov, was far behind with 17 […]

ATHENS - The Fitch financial services company is again downgrading the credit rating of Greece, saying that the debt-ridden country is “highly likely” to default on its financial obligations even after securing a new bailout from its European neighbors.
Fitch said Wednesday it has cut Greece two notches (from CCC to C), pushing the credit standing […]

PARIS - After talks that lasted through the night, eurozone finance ministers finally struck a $172-billion bailout agreement for Greece early Tuesday. The deal averts a debt default by Athens, but also demands Greeks to shoulder more austerity measures.
 
After 13 hours of negotiations, Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker announced success at a news conference early […]

ATHENS - Thousands of Greeks have taken to the streets of Athens to protest severe austerity measures as eurozone ministers prepare to vote on a new $171 billion bailout for the debt-crippled nation.
As the demonstrators marched, Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos left for Brussels where he was to hold talks with officials ahead of Monday’s […]

ATHENS - Greek police say armed robbers have stolen about 60 ancient artifacts from a museum in Olympia.
 
The city’s mayor, Efthimios Kotzas, told reporters that two masked assailants overpowered a museum guard Friday and seized valuable bronze and pottery artifacts from the museum dedicated to the ancient Olympic games.
“Two armed assailants went in during the […]

ATHENS - Greek lawmakers say they have reached an accord on austerity measures demanded by international lenders so the country can secure another bailout and avoid defaulting next month on its financial obligations.
 
After an all-night negotiating session that ended early Thursday, Greek political leaders remained deadlocked on the extent of pension cuts for retirees, while […]

ATHENS - Greek police clashed Tuesday with some of the thousands of striking workers in Athens protesting the latest austerity measures the government is seeking to impose to meet the demands of the country’s international creditors.
Some demonstrators charged the steps of parliament and threw rocks at police, who fired tear gas at the protesters and […]

LONDON - Britain’s Queen Elizabeth marks a major milestone Monday, kicking off diamond jubilee festivities celebrating her 60 years on the throne.
 
The 85-year-old queen begins the jubilee Monday with a set of low-key visits to eastern England that will culminate with major celebrations over four days in June, including a pageant involving a flotilla of […]

WASHINGTON - Severe winter weather continues to dominate in many European countries with air and road travel disrupted and gas supples running low.
The hardest hit country is Ukraine, where temperatures as low as minus 32 degrees Celsius have left at least 122 people dead.  Oleksandr Heits, head of a rescue unit in Kiev, said many […]

PARIS - Standard & Poor’s Friday downgraded the credit ratings of nine European countries caught up in the eurozone crisis. This includes France, which has Europe’s second-largest economy.
S&P’s downgrade of France’s credit rating has been expected for weeks. French Finance Minister Francois Baroin called it only “half a surprise,” as he confirmed on TV Friday […]

MOSCOW - Gevork Vartanian, a former Soviet intelligence agent who helped derail a Nazi plot to assassinate allied leaders during World War Two, has died. He was 87 years old.
 
Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service made the announcement Wednesday, saying Vartanian died Tuesday in Moscow.
 
Vartanian, whose father was a Soviet agent of Armenian descent based in Iran, […]

BRUSSELS - European Union governments have agreed to ban imports of Iranian oil as part of a Western campaign to pressure Iran over its controversial nuclear program.
EU diplomats said Wednesday the governments of the 27-nation bloc agreed in principle on an Iranian oil embargo but need more time to discuss when to implement the measure. […]

MADRID - Spain is getting ready to start the new year with a new round of austerity measures, hoping to contain a growing deficit.
The country’s new government announced $11.5 billion in fresh spending cuts Friday, saying the budget was in worse shape than the previous government had acknowledged.  It also announced a freeze on pay […]

MOSCOW - When Russia’s protest movement started three weeks ago, many in the Kremlin calculated that winter would kill it off. Saturday’s rally to protest alleged fraud in the December 4 parliamentary elections, however, was bigger than the first large protest on December 10.
The protesters shouted “New Elections, New Elections,” and organizers say their densely […]

LONDON - Queen Elizabeth on Saturday visited her husband in a British hospital, where he is recovering after undergoing heart surgery.
 
Buckingham Palace says Prince Philip, had a “good night” in Cambridge’s Papworth Hospital following a procedure Friday for a blocked artery in his heart that is said to have caused him chest pains.
Doctors Friday inserted […]

WASHINGTON - Former Czech President Vaclav Havel, the dissident playwright who led the peaceful revolution that toppled communism in the former Czechoslovakia, has died. He was 75.
 
A spokeswoman said Mr. Havel died in his sleep early Sunday at his weekend house in the northern Czech Republic with his wife and a nun at his side. […]

MOSCOW - Russia’s most popular social network has rejected a call by the country’s domestic security agency to block opposition groups from using its website to organize post-election protests.
 
The network, VKontakte, said Thursday that the Federal Security Service asked it to deactivate the accounts of groups that posted calls for riots and a revolution. Spokesman […]

BRUSSELS - The 27 members of European Union have failed to agree on a change to the EU treaty that would impose tighter rules on national fiscal policy.
Officials say an agreement involving all 27 members fell through Friday at the summit in Brussels after British Prime Minister David Cameron demanded concessions that Germany and France […]

MOSCOW - Russia’s protest movement continues to move from the Internet to the streets and protesters have won an unexpected ally, the last leader of the Soviet Union. 
Mikhail Gorbachev says Russia’s elections on Sunday were unfair, and he is calling on authorities to hold new ones.
Mr. Gorbachev told Russia’s Interfax news agency, “The leadership of […]