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News Corp Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch and his son James face questions from parliament on Tuesday in a phone-hacking scandal that has rocked Britain's establishment right up to Prime Minister David Cameron.

Rupert Murdoch's dream of controlling a British broadcasting behemoth turned to ashes Wednesday as he withdrew his bid for BSkyB — the latest, biggest casualty of what Prime Minister David Cameron called the hacking "firestorm" sweeping through British politics, media and police.

Former British prime minister Gordon Brown charged Tuesday that Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers hired “known criminals” to obtain information about him, and a senior police official said he was sure his own phone was hacked, as a mounting scandal threatened to further damage Murdoch’s media empire.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi tried on Tuesday to calm fears that Italy could be swept into a full-scale financial crisis and the opposition pledged to smooth the passage through parliament of tough debt-cutting measures.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said Saturday it will take decades to clean up and decommission the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant after the world's worst atomic accident since Chernobyl.

Prime Minister David Cameron on Tuesday condemned the alleged hacking of a slain teenage girl’s cell phone by a British tabloid. Nearly all of Britain’s papers reported Tuesday — citing unnamed sources — that a private investigator hacked into the cellphone of 13-year-old Milly Dowler in 2002 after she was reported missing. The investigator reportedly worked for News of the World, Britain’s biggest-selling Sunday tabloid.

Many hope today's election will bring an end to years of unrest between two political factions whose differences led to deadly protests last year.

Personal details about Tony Blair that appear online were apparently not hacked from the former British prime minister's computer systems, but from the email account of a former staffer.

Greece has secured a second bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, and it too will be on the order of €110 billion, Prime Minister George Papandreou said.

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou sacrificed his finance minister on Friday and put his main socialist party rival into the job in a bid to force through an unpopular austerity plan and avert bankruptcy.