Europe News

Raging floods engulfed northern England's picturesque Lake District on Friday following the heaviest rainfall ever recorded in Britain, killing a police officer and trapping dozens in their swamped homes.

Ballot boxes at the Kosovo election commission counting centre in Pristina, Kosovo, November 16 2009.

EUROPEa s top jobs were filled in record time at a summit of EU leaders in Brussels last night, but the initial reaction was one of disappointment.

"We are, eagerly probably as you all are, waiting for the president's speech and ... waiting for the new concept, the new strategic ideas from our American friends," German Minister of Defense Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg said following meetings at the Pentagon on Thursday.

The austere building stands in the middle of a remote, thick forest surrounded by a high fence and numerous surveillance cameras.

EU leaders are braced for a showdown over who leads Europe, after the failure of behind-the-scenes talks to select a "President" and "High Representative for Foreign Affairs". The two new key posts are created by the Lisbon Treaty, but there was no clear consensus on who should be appointed to either job just hours ahead of the Thursday night ...

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has urged Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to change an agreement on supplies of Russian natural gas whose terms he said were too onerous for the Ukrainian economy.

Hundreds of thousands of people joined a somber funeral procession Thursday for Patriarch Pavle, the leader of the Serbian Orthodox Church through its post-Communist revival and the Balkans' bloody ethnic conflicts in the 1990s.

The group behind a controversial atheist bus-poster campaign is urging parents not to label their children with their own religious faith.

A 2-year-old panda who charmed his way into the hearts of Austrians is headed to China.

The head of a U.N. food agency expressed regret Wednesday that an anti-hunger summit failed to result in precise promises of funding, and critics said the meeting had only thrown crumbs to the world's 1 billion people without enough to eat.

The European Union is about to pick its very first president, a post conjured up after years of tortuous political machination to give the bloc a unified voice on the world stage.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's government will extend Germany's mission to Afghanistan for another year, but not increase the number of troops, a source close to the government said Wednesday.

Queen Elizabeth II leaves Buckingham Palace in a carriage for the Houses of Parliament before the... Queen Elizabeth II leaves Buckingham Palace in a carriage for the Houses of Parliament before the State Opening of Parliament on November 18, 2009 in London.

Slovakia pledged about 250 extra soldiers to the NATO-led force in Afghanistan Tuesday, the first of what British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said would be a series of international reinforcements.

A British man has denied disrupting a transatlantic flight after he was hauled off a plane for refusing to move his injured arm.

Serbian President Boris Tadic faces a fine for allegedly drinking champagne at a stadium with his sports minister and the head of the soccer federation.

Pirates freed 36 crew members from a Spanish trawler Tuesday after holding them for more than six weeks.

In Ukraine, swine flu is causing electoral fever. In a hard-fought presidential campaign, critics of Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko accuse her of stirring up panic to grab the spotlight from rivals by closing all schools and banning mass gatherings to combat what experts say is a relatively moderate outbreak of the disease.

World leaders at a United Nations food summit in Rome today agreed a strategy to help the world's one billion starving people by increasing aid to farmers in developing countries - but failed to pledge the specific funds the UN had hoped for.