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Defence Secretary Liam Fox promised "closer co-operation" with the French today as military budgets face being squeezed on both sides of the Channel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned Friday from the resumption of Mideast negotiations in Washington to confront internal opposition to his peace moves, just as his Palestinian counterpart faced harsh criticism for agreeing to the talks at all.

Pro-government militiamen attacked the home of an Iranian opposition leader with homemade bombs and beat one of his bodyguards unconscious, an opposition website reported, in an apparent attempt to keep him from attending a key rally today.

She tells lies. She's a lousy tipper. She billed the Republican Party more than $3,000 for the underwear she bought during the last Presidential election, including dozens of Spanx girdles. Oh, and for all the cutesy charm that Sarah Palin projects in public, she's got a nasty habit of bullying staff, losing her temper with friends and family, and, when particularly upset, throwing tin cans at her husband, Todd.

She tells lies. She's a lousy tipper. She billed the Republican Party more than $3,000 for the underwear she bought during the last Presidential election, including dozens of Spanx girdles. Oh, and for all the cutesy charm that Sarah Palin projects in public, she's got a nasty habit of bullying staff, losing her temper with friends and family, and, when particularly upset, throwing tin cans at her husband, Todd.

The real-life romance behind the film could not have better advertised its subject matter: a Jewish American film director and son of a Zionist mother meets a Palestinian woman at an art exhibition, falls in love, reads about her traumatic childhood under Israeli occupation and brings her moving story to the screen.

The French actress Juliette Binoche, known for her sweetness on and off screen, has gently savaged the actor Gérard Depardieu for publicly questioning her talent. In an interview with an Austrian magazine, Mr Depardieu last week attacked the Oscar-winning Ms Binoche as "an absolute nothing".

Yaniv Mor, 30-year-old father of a one-month-old baby girl, and a settler was blunt: "We don't care about Washington. Nothing will come out of it, like always. This is a war of religions – we want everything, they want everything. There is no way there will ever be agreement. That is the reality."

Democrats are heading towards an even heavier defeat than previously forecast in November's midterm elections for Congress, political analysts say. Such an outcome promises big trouble not just for President Obama, but also for Republican leaders as they struggle to run what is likely to be an unruly majority on Capitol Hill.

Germany's central bank agreed to dismiss a controversial board member yesterday amid a growing public outcry over his vitriolic criticism of Muslims and Jews in a new bestselling book that has been widely condemned as racist.

The savings of more than 100,000 people in Benin have been lost in a pyramid scheme, prompting calls for the President of the tiny West African country to be impeached after he appeared to endorse the investment scam.

Europe's rarest seabird, the Zino's Petrel, found only in Madeira, has suffered potentially devastating losses from a forest fire which struck the birds' breeding area on the Atlantic island.

Survivors of a 1972 plane crash featured in the movie Alive will travel to Chile to comfort the families of 33 trapped miners as a way of repaying the country for help in their rescue.

A senior Pakistan diplomat has accused "powerful" figures of diverting floodwaters into unprotected areas to save their own land.

For more than a century, the Hotel Des Bains has loomed over Venice's seafront like an opulent ivory fortress, proudly housing the array of glittering international guests arriving at the city's annual film festival.

A mile-long oil sheen has spread from an offshore petroleum platform burning in the Gulf of Mexico off Louisiana, west of the site of BP's massive spill.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, yesterday opened the first face-to-face Middle East peace talks in two years by demanding an end to Jewish settlements in the West Bank. In response, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted that any agreement must assure Israel's security as a Jewish state.

Investors are bracing themselves for another grim snapshot of the US labour market today, when the government is expected to confirm that unemployment is again on the rise.

Spanish highway patrol officers who are issuing fewer speeding fines to protest a pay cut have been asked by their boss to "please, enforce the law".

South Africa's government is withdrawing the special status granted to illegal Zimbabwean immigrants who fled their country's economic meltdown and political violence, a spokesman said yesterday.