Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin announced Thursday that Russia’s ban on grain exports would be extended well into next year because of continued uncertainty over production.

France’s Champagne industry is trying to cut the carbon dioxide it emits transporting billions of tiny bubbles around the world.

The country had refused in 2003 to let American troops pass through its borders on the way to Iraq.

The six-year trial involved charges of rape and abuse of 32 children and of running a pedophile ring at a state-run home for needy children in Lisbon.

Dozens of Italian cities have been pursuing policies to expel the Roma, dismantling camps and evicting residents.

Karel De Gucht, the European commissioner for trade, was accused on Friday of “outrageous anti-Semitism” after comments he made in an interview about Israel’s role in Middle East peace talks.

The foreign secretary rejects speculation that he had a relationship with an aide, and focuses instead on his relationship with his wife.

The United Nations panel is to examine documents from Turkey and Israel and deliver its first progress report in mid-September.

Labor Minister Éric Woerth conceded Thursday that he wrote a letter in 2007 to Nicolas Sarkozy pressing for a state award for his wife’s future employer.

“Valley of the Wolves: Palestine” is built around the unsuccessful attempt in May by a six-boat Turkish flotilla to breach Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza.

As Slovakia held a day of mourning Thursday to honor the victims of Monday's violent rampage in the Slovak capital, Bratislava, a picture began to emerge of the killer.

The former British prime minister Tony Blair said that despite the loss of life, he couldn’t see the war as a mistake.

Swedish authorities said they reopened an investigation of rape allegations against Julian Assange.

Cardinal Godfried Danneels is distancing himself from his colleague and friend, Roger Vangheluwe, the former bishop of Bruges who is accused of abusing his own nephew.

A European Commission report highlighted failings in France’s law and pointedly declined to endorse the government’s actions.

The body of a British spy, found dead in his apartment in London last month, had been padlocked into a gym bag and put in the bathtub, but how he died is not yet certain.

President Bronislaw Komorowski said Wednesday that the rising cost of the war in Afghanistan was hampering a program to modernize the military.

The Dutch authorities said that they had freed two Yemeni men held on suspicion of terrorism after no evidence of wrongdoing or traces of explosives were found.

A German citizen has been arrested by United States troops in Afghanistan, the German Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.

A dance squad from Ukraine, known as the Red Foxes, was pulled to avoid performing in front of Turkish government officials, but no one can agree as to why.

Officials said they thought it unlikely that two United States residents of Yemeni descent held in Amsterdam on Monday had any connection to terrorism.

The French government — amid wide criticism for deportation of hundreds of Roma — defended its actions on Tuesday and accused Romania of not doing enough to integrate members of its Roma minority.

The battle over Michelangelo’s masterpiece revealed other disputes over the way Italy’s cultural heritage is managed.

The guidelines are in response to hundreds of allegations of such abuse that earlier this year rocked the church in Germany, Pope Benedict XVI’s homeland.

Riot police officers hauled off opposition leaders and packed anyone caught waving political signs into buses.

The ban outlaws lighting up in all public indoor areas and prohibits most tobacco advertising. But how effective it will be is an open question.

The police said 14 people, almost all of them Brazilian, were arrested over recent weeks as part of an inquiry into a human trafficking network’s activities begun in February.

The Libyan leader returned to Rome to bring attention to a trade agreement and deliver another lecture about Islam to hundreds of women selected by a modeling agency.

A man armed with a submachine gun and two handguns killed six members of a Roma family in their apartment house in Bratislava.

In a compromise, the nation’s leaders appear ready to keep the requirement for a draft, but to end the actual practice.

Cardinal Godfried Danneels said he should not have suggested to a victim of serial sexual abuse that he say nothing publicly until after the retirement of the offending bishop.

A member of Germany’s central bank board, whose disparaging remarks about Jews and Muslims have created a public outcry, brushed aside calls for his dismissal.

Pakistan's top diplomat in Britain suggested on Thursday that three of his nation's cricket stars, accused of agreeing to take part in a betting scam, were "innocent" victims of a plot against them.

Julian Assange, the founder of the whistle-blowing Web site WikiLeaks, called Sweden's investigation of him for suspected sexual misconduct "some kind of legal circus."

Britain’s Channel 4 News has provided The Lede with a live stream of its televised debate among the candidates to be the next leader of Britain’s opposition Labour Party.

The literature of Hans Keilson, a doctor who escaped to the Netherlands from Nazi Germany, is getting new attention in America.

A detailed biography of the legendary Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal shows him to be a complicated hero, an angel with dirty wings.

Thilo Sarrazin, a former official who has been criticized as espousing racist views, has set off a discussion about Germany’s immigration policy.

Mr. Lally’s troupe has received international acclaim for its productions of works by Irish playwrights, especially J. M. Synge and Martin McDonagh.

Mr. Panikkar was a Roman Catholic whose embrace of Hindu scriptures and Buddhism made him an influential voice for promoting dialogue between the world’s religions.

A monument to those who died in the plane crash in April that killed Poland’s president has become a symbol in the country’s heated secular-religious divide.