Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is to stand trial over alleged fraud - the latest in a string of corruption-related allegations. BBC News website looks at the case.

What are the charges?

Mr Berlusconi is to stand trial on charges of false accounting, embezzlement and tax fraud in relation to transactions carried out by Mediaset in the 1990s.

Prosecutors suspect two offshore firms controlled by a Berlusconi family holding, Fininvest, bought television and cinema rights from a US firm.

The companies, it is alleged, then sold the rights on at inflated prices to Mediaset, also controlled by Fininvest, to avoid Italian taxes and create a slush fund.

Mr Berlusconi denies any wrongdoing.

In total, 14 people are to stand trial in connection to the Mediaset rights purchases.

How long has the case been going on?

Preliminary hearings began in October 2005 into the findings of a four-year investigation by Milan prosecutors into the allegations involving Mediaset.

Ahead of his trip to the G8 summit in St. Petersburg later this month, US President George Bush has warned against publicly criticizing his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on contentious issues.

Bush still considers Putin a friend despite ongoing US-Russian tensions, the US leader said in a recent television with news channel CNN. At the same time, he said admonishing the Russian president in public on matters of concern such as democracy and human rights would be counterproductive.

"No leader likes to be scolded publicly," Bush said according to the Associated Press. "The people I deal with, you know, share the same emotions that you would share if somebody were to scold you and then say, I'm going to come and now I want to sit down and talk to you."

Bush will meet with Putin on July 15-16 for a Group of Eight (G8) gathering of the world's leading industrial nations in the Russian leader's hometown St. Petersburg, Russia. The summit comes at a time of harsh exchanges between US and Russian officials, including US Vice President Dick Cheney's comments in May that Putin was bullying Russia's neighbors with energy sources and hurting the domestic development of democracy.

More recently, Russia has opposed a UN Security Council resolution backed by the United States that would impose sanctions on North Korea for its missile tests. But Bush said he has a good relationship with Putin despite all of the disagreements. "I don't understand some of the decisions he's made, but my relationship is such that I'm able to express that concern and listen carefully as to why he does what he does," he said in the CNN interview.

Poland is on course to have identical twin brothers occupying its two most powerful political posts, after tensions inside the ruling right-wing party exploded last night, prompting the resignation of the Prime Minister.

Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz quit unexpectedly, after less than a year as Polish premier, and the dominant Law and Justice Party said that he would be replaced by the party leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski. He is the twin brother of President Lech Kaczynski.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski promised last year that he would not be a candidate for the post of Prime Minister in order to help his twin's campaign to be elected President. That pledge was given amid fears that such a concentration of power in the hands of one family could undermine faith in Polish democracy.

The Kaczynskis also accepted that the public would find it confusing to be led by two men who are almost indistinguishable.

Last night all that went by the board as Mr Marcinkiewicz walked out of the government. Originally from a different, more moderate wing of the party, Mr Marcinkiewicz had won growing popularity in Poland and was taking an increasingly independent stance. In recent months he had been at odds with the Kaczynskis over appointments to various state posts.

Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders to meet face to face tomorrow - UN envoy

The Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders will hold face-to-face talks tomorrow in the presence of the top United Nations political officer to discuss how to resolve the decades-old inter-communal conflict on the Mediterranean island.

"The idea is to really find ways of moving forward so that we can begin to start some of these processes, perhaps at a technical level, but also (to) address some of the substantive issues," Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Ibrahim Gambari said in announcing that the Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders, H.E Tassos Papadopoulos and H.E Mehmet Ali Talat, had accepted his invitation to the meeting.

"The status quo is not sustainable and is not desirable," Mr. Gambari told reporters. "The Secretary-General remains committed to do the best he can in the remaining time that is available to him as Secretary-General of the United Nations to try to make this process move forward."

Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who leaves office on 31 December, had led earlier talks seeking a comprehensive settlement but these failed in April 2004 when 65 per cent of Turkish Cypriots voted in favour of the plan but 76 per cent of Greek Cypriots voted against it.

Mr. Gambari conferred with the two leaders separately yesterday. Tomorrow's meeting is scheduled to take place at the residence of Mr. Annan's Special Representative in Cyprus, Michael Moller.

KIEV, July 7 (RIA Novosti) - Ukraine's pro-Russian Party of Regions on Friday formed a parliament coalition with two other leftist parties and had its leader nominated as prime minister.

The Party of Regions, which won the largest number of votes in a March election, but not enough to form a government on its own, teamed up with the Communist Party and the Socialists following the breakup of an alliance led by the pro-presidential Our Ukraine party.

If his candidacy is approved by President Viktor Yushchenko, Viktor Yanukovych will become Ukraine's next prime minister. Ironically, he was the incumbent president's main challenger in 2004 polls, but lost in a rerun following mass-scale protests against vote rigging, which went down in history as the "orange revolution." He also served as premier under Yushchenko's predecessor, Leonid Kuchma.

The Ukrainian parliament has been locked in talks on a coalition government for more than three months now. Our Ukraine's coalition with the liberal Yulia Tymoshenko bloc and the Socialists collapsed Thursday over the surprise election of Socialist Oleksandr Moroz as parliamentary speaker. President Yushchenko then called for another coalition to be formed so that he would not have to dissolve the assembly.

VALENCIA, Spain (Reuters) - Thousands of pilgrims from around the world crowded into Valencia to welcome Pope Benedict to a family fiesta on Saturday but the mood was torn between celebration and sadness after this week's train crash.

As soon as the Pope arrives in the seaside city he will visit the site of the underground accident which killed 41 people, before moving on to a program of walkabouts among the faithful and meetings with Spanish leaders.

All eyes are on an audience the 79-year-old pontiff will have with Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero who was heavily criticized by the Catholic Church for legalizing gay marriages, unions the Vatican has called an "eclipse of God".

"Family values are disintegrating worldwide, especially in Europe," said Chijioke Ugwuoke, a Nigerian visiting Valencia with his wife Patriera.

MADRID, Spain (AP) - A Spanish judge has charged two former Guatemalan dictators with genocide and issued international warrants for their arrest.

National Court Judge Santiago Pedraz issued warrants on charges of genocide, torture, terrorism and illegal detention against Gen. Efrain Rios Montt, Gen. Oscar Humberto Mejia Victores and six other men, according to a court statement.

The case stems from charges of genocide, torture and murder filed in Spanish courts in 1999 by Guatemalan Nobel Peace Prize-winner Rigoberta Menchu.

Human rights groups say Rios Montt and Meijia are responsible for some of the worst atrocities of Guatemala's 36-year civil war, which left 200,000 people dead before peace accords in December 1996.

The others named in the statement were senior military officials also accused of involvement in atrocities. The whereabouts of most of the men were not immediately known.

Pedraz was forced to return empty-handed from a fact-finding trip to Guatemala in June, and one of the reasons cited for the warrants Friday was the ``obstructionism'' and lack of cooperation of those accused of atrocities.

A decade after the Pentagon declared a zero-tolerance policy for racist hate groups, recruiting shortfalls caused by the war in Iraq have allowed "large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists" to infiltrate the military, according to a watchdog organization.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist and right-wing militia groups, estimated that the numbers could run into the thousands, citing interviews with Defense Department investigators and reports and postings on racist Web sites and magazines.
"We've got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad," the group quoted a Defense Department investigator as saying in a report to be posted today on its Web site, www.splcenter.org. "That's a problem."
....
The report said that neo-Nazi groups like the National Alliance, whose founder, William Pierce, wrote "The Turner Diaries," the novel that was the inspiration and blueprint for Timothy J. McVeigh's bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, sought to enroll followers in the Army to get training for a race war.

The groups are being abetted, the report said, by pressure on recruiters, particularly for the Army, to meet quotas that are more difficult to reach because of the growing unpopularity of the war in Iraq.
The report quotes Scott Barfield, a Defense Department investigator, saying, "Recruiters are knowingly allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists to join the armed forces, and commanders don't remove them from the military even after we positively identify them as extremists or gang members."

FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. - Less than 50 miles from Key West, below the waters of the North Cuban Basin, are potentially billions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas.

It's an opportunity Cuba can't pass up. So late last year, Fidel Castro's government started contracting out 59 lots in Cuban waters for exploratory drilling.

That, in turn, has tapped into a gusher of controversy in the United States - especially since in nearby American waters, the federal government maintains a moratorium on any oil drilling.

China, Canada, Spain, and India are among the countries that have snapped up Cuba's lots, while the US oil industry has stood by unhappily, abiding by America's decades-old trade embargo with the communist nation. This comes on top of the industry's frustration with the US offshore drilling moratorium - though legislation passed by the House last week is a controversial first step toward lifting the ban.

Environmental groups, meanwhile, are concerned that even if the US moratorium stays intact, drilling in Cuban waters will have a noticeable effect on Florida's 663 miles of beaches.

Also pressing against any oil-industry deals with Cuba is the influential Cuban-American voting lobby in Florida, which is steadfastly opposed to the US conducting business with their former homeland while Mr. Castro is in charge.

"Guantanamo ought to be closed immediately," Powell said. He said the value of holding prisoners there was unclear, but the price we were paying around the world for doing so was obvious. He said we should not release the prisoners and dismissed the objection there was no other alternative. "We have ways of dealing with this population" that do not require Gitmo, he said.

Testimony by an Algerian national caught up in the CIA's extraordinary rendition programme, held for 16 months in secret prisons and later released without charge, has revealed how he was chained by the wrists and ankles and left hanging from the roof of a torture chamber for hours on end.

Laid Saidi said he was rendered by US officials from Tanzania to Afghanistan in May 2003 and kept in a prison outside Kabul for more than a year before being returned to Algeria via Tunisia.

In an interview with The New York Times, Mr Saidi, 43, told how he was kept in a cell "not even suitable for animals" and regularly tortured by guards, some of whom spoke English, which he understands slightly. "They beat me and threw cold water on me, spat at me and sometimes gave me dirty water to drink," he said.

The revelations will add to pressure on the United States to explain its use of rendition, which has been condemned by human rights groups as "torture by proxy" and strained relations between America and its allies.

MEXICO CITY -- The ballots have been cast and counted. But Felipe Calderon isn't Mexico's president-elect until the nation's highest electoral court says so.

The independent agency that ran Sunday's election added up more than 41 million votes and declared that Calderon won the most: 240,000 more than rival Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

But this agency has no legal authority to declare a winner.

Under Mexico's complex election laws, Calderon won't have won until the Federal Electoral Tribunal certifies the count. And that's not a sure thing: the widely respected tribunal has overturned two gubernatorial races in recent years, both for meddling by the ruling party.

Disgruntled candidates have gone to court to dispute election results in many countries - the U.S. presidential race won by George W. Bush in 2000 is a famous example.

But Mexico, where electoral disputes are almost a tradition, makes the courts part of the process right from the start. It's part of an elaborate system designed to eliminate the fraud that was once nearly universal. Once the votes are officially counted, each party has four days to file challenges with the Electoral Tribunal.

WASHINGTON - America's appetite for organic food is so strong that supply just can't keep up with demand. Organic products still have only a tiny slice, about 2.5 percent, of the nation's food market. But the slice is expanding at a feverish pace.

Growth in sales of organic food has been 15 percent to 21 percent each year, compared with 2 percent to 4 percent for total food sales.

Organic means food is grown without bug killer, fertilizer, hormones, antibiotics or biotechnology.
Mainstream supermarkets, eyeing the success of organic retailers such as Whole Foods, have rushed to meet demand. The Kroger Co., Safeway Inc. and SuperValu Inc., which owns Albertson's LLC, are among those selling their own organic brands. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said earlier this year it would double its organic offerings.

The number of organic farms -- an estimated 10,000 -- is also increasing, but not fast enough. As a result, organic manufacturers are looking for ingredients outside the United States in places like Europe, Bolivia, Venezuela and South Africa.

That is no surprise, said Barbara Robinson, head of the Agriculture Department's National Organic Program. The program provides the round, green "USDA Organic" seal for certified products.

A vast chunk of Europe's most ill-famed mountain threatens to break loose and crash down in the next few days, a geologist monitoring the situation told the Guardian yesterday.

Hans-Rudolf Keusen said 2m cubic metres of the Eiger in the Bernese Alps, Switzerland - twice the volume of the Empire State Building - was rapidly working its way loose.

He said the mountain appeared to have cracked open as an indirect result of global warming.

There was no danger to people in the area. "There aren't any houses underneath, so no one is going to end up getting a rock on the head," Mr Keusen said. But he added that the debris could settle on glaciers, blocking the outflow and affecting water supplies to neighbouring towns.

It was not yet clear whether the part of the mountain at risk would fall all at once or by stages.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Some questions even stump Stephen Hawking.

The famed British astrophysicist and best-selling author has turned to Yahoo Answers, a new feature in which anyone can pose a question for fellow Internet users to try to answer. By Friday afternoon, nearly 17,000 Yahoo Inc. users had responded.

Hawking's question: ''In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years?''

Some of the answers were short -- ''get rid of nuclear weapons'' -- and others vague -- ''Somehow we will.'' Many were doubtful: ''I don't think it is possible unless we expand into space,'' one user wrote.

A number of people suggested thinking differently, ending bickering or fostering cooperation.

Officials at the University of Cambridge, where Hawking is a mathematics professor, confirmed that Hawking wrote the message but said he would have no further comment.

Hawking's groundbreaking research on black holes and the origins of the universe has made him one of the best-known theoretical physicists of his generation. Author of the global best seller ''A Brief History of Time,'' Hawking is known for proposing that space and time have no beginning and no end.

Lately, he's been pondering about the fate of humans.

What's in a grape name? Shiraz, once banned from French wine labels to avoid confusion with its Rhône Valley namesake syrah, has made a triumphant return as the marketing name of choice everywhere from the South of France to Franschhoek. California's successful promotion of its own zinfandel has added such value to the grape variety that southern Italian producers have successfully lobbied to use the name on their labels instead of its Italian namesake, primitivo. Conversely, merlot's status as the "red chardonnay" has been undermined by the more glamorous pinot noir grape, due in part, no doubt, to its starring role in Alexander Payne's hit film Sideways.

What's hot is hot and what's not is not. Take chardonnay, a grape so popular that it became the choice of a million Bridget Joneses and spawned a fictional footballer's wife. Where once chardonnay was a synonym for wet, white and wine, now pinot grigio has become the latest shorthand for another bland and vacuous style of dry white - the preferred form of medication for Bree van de Kamp, the supermum from Desperate Housewives.

Pinot grigio appears to be threatening chardonnay's position as the dry white brand of choice with not just Italy, but California, Australia, Argentina, Hungary, Germany, Moldova and even France among nations now dumping its French namesake - pinot gris - in favour of the more fulsome-sounding Italian version. Even Germany's Blue Nun has flashed an ankle with the launch of its own pinot grigio. Pinot grigio may be a synonym for the tokay pinot gris of Alsace, yet only producers in Oregon and New Zealand have held out and stayed faithful to the original classification of pinot gris, using it on their labels. And it's no coincidence that these two producers are the most authentic purveyors of the true, full-bodied Alsace style.

LONDON - A 62-year-old child psychiatrist has become the country's oldest mother after undergoing fertility treatment abroad, a newspaper reported today.

The Daily Mail said that Patti Farrant, a mother to three grown-up children from a previous marriage, gave birth to a boy by caesarean on Wednesday.

It said the baby, who weighed in at 6 pounds 10-1/2 ounces (about 3 kg), was born at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton, southern England, although hospital officials could not immediately confirm the news.

Farrant, known professionally as Patricia Rashbrook, becomes the country's oldest mother and one of the oldest in the world.

"He is adorable and seeing him for the first time was beyond words," Farrant said in an interview with the Daily Mail.

Farrant gave birth to the baby, nicknamed "JJ", after having in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment overseas using a donated egg so she could fulfil her 60-year-old husband John's dream of becoming a father, the newspaper said.

Remember the good old days when newspapers didn't just unquestioning print what the powerful tell them? (Okay, maybe they never existed.) Anyhow, a Times article this morning reports that Petrobras, the Brazilian energy company, has invested $50 billion in Bolivia.

How does the Times know how much Petrobras has invested in Bolivia? Did their reporter go around and price out the various wells and pipelines that the firm has constructed over years? Maybe the reporter talked to an expert who gave his/her estimate of the amount invested. While both of these are possibilities, the article doesn't tell us the source of the $50 billion figure, leaving open the possibility that the Times just printed what the company told them.

This matters because, as the article reports, Petrobras is currently engaged in a dispute with the Bolivian government over its efforts to renegotiate royalty agreements. Petrobras' moral, if not legal, claim is improved, insofar as it has invested heavily in developing Bolivia's resources.

One reason for viewing the Petrobras claim with skepticism is that Bolivia's GDP is currently $9.7 billion. This means that Petrobras is claiming to have invested a sum that is more than 5 times Bolivia's current GDP (that would be more $65 trillion in the U.S.). Such claims should at least come with a source.

Addendum: The reporter apparently did not get the $50 billion figure from Petrobras, or at least not from its website. The website gives a somewhat more plausible figure of $1.5 billion. (Thanks to my CEPR colleague Ben Zipperer.)