Europe, Scandal | featured news

A French prosecutor on Monday opened a preliminary investigation into allegations of rape in a Washington hotel by former IMF chief and one-time French presidential hopeful Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

Rebekah Brooks, a former top executive with Rupert Murdoch’s News International, was among six people arrested Tuesday in one of the largest police sweeps yet in the long-running phone-hacking scandal, British news media reported.

James Murdoch, the executive at the epicenter of the phone hacking scandal at his father's British newspapers, is stepping down as executive chairman of News Corp.'s U.K. newspaper arm, the company announced Wednesday.

The Vatican was shaken by a corruption scandal Thursday after an Italian television investigation said a former top official had been transferred against his will after complaining about irregularities in awarding contracts.

A British lawmaker said Thursday that he and 17 others have been awarded payouts over phone hacking by the News of the World newspaper.

Cleared of sex assault charges, Dominique Strauss-Kahn could be back in France within days but may not get a hero's welcome, if sober newspaper editorials and cautious statements by his Socialist allies are anything to go by.

A high-profile parliamentary panel investigating phone hacking at Rupert Murdoch’s now-defunct News of the World tabloid released embarrassing new evidence Tuesday that the practice of intercepting voice mail had been widely discussed at the newspaper, contradicting assertions by its owners and editors.

Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn sexually assaulted a housekeeper in a "violent and sadistic attack" in his hotel suite in Manhattan in May, a civil lawsuit filed on Monday alleges.

DUBLIN, Aug 2 (Reuters) - A gay senator who was the front-runner to win Ireland's figurehead presidency quit the race on Tuesday after admitting he used his office to plead for clemency for a friend convicted of having sex with a minor.

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.