Gordon Brown is preparing to call the general election this coming Tuesday, 6 April, making way for a month-long campaign culimating in polling day on May 6, Newstatesman.com has learned from several sources.

Confirmation that the announcement will come two days after Easter contradicts speculation that rail strikes planned for that day -- which Government insiders now expect to be delayed -- would cause a delay in the announcement, possibly until as late as the week after next.

Cabinet ministers who will feature prominently in the campaign from the outset include David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, and Ed Miliband, the Climate Change and Energy Secretary who is devising the party's manifesto.

Boris Johnson's disgraced former fire chief Bertha Joseph will no longer be a candidate for the Conservative Party one of her colleagues said today.
Senior Brent Tory John Detre told me that Bertha had been a "hard working councillor" who was "hounded out by the Labour Party."
However, when asked whether she would stand for them again, he replied:

"No she will not stand as a Conservative."

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been forced to admit he misused immigration figures after being criticised by the statistics watchdog.

In a podcast on Friday, Mr Brown said net migration into the UK fell from 237,000 in 2007 to 163,000 in 2008 and provisionally 147,000 in 2009.

But the head of UK Statistics Authority agreed with a Tory complaint that he had made inaccurate comparisons.

Downing Street said it accepted the statistics had been "unclear".

But it insisted that Mr Brown had since corrected them.

A Belgian parliamentary committee has voted to ban face-covering Islamic veils from being worn in public.

The home affairs committee voted unanimously to endorse the move, which must be approved by parliament for it to become law.

Such a vote could be held within weeks, correspondents say, meaning that Belgium could become the first European country to implement a ban.

France is also considering restricting face-covering veils.

There are several types of headscarves and veils for Muslim women - those that cover the face being the niqab and the burka.

Roman Catholic bishops in Switzerland have admitted that they underestimated the extent of sexual abuse committed by priests, and have offered an apology.

The Swiss Bishops' Conference said it was "ashamed" and suggested victims should consider pressing criminal charges against the perpetrators.

The bishops did not, however, support the publication of a list of priests who have been found guilty of abuse.

An estimated 60 cases of abuse are now under investigation by the authorities.

It seems that gloomy days could be coming for Poland's Kaczynski brothers and their Law and Justice party (PiS), the UK Conservatives' ally from their European Conservatives and Reformists group. The looming marginalisation of the Kaczynskis on the Polish political scene could have grave consequences for the Tories' alliance of Eurosceptics as well.

In 2007, after two years of governing shoulder to shoulder with far-right and populist parties,PiS was ousted from power by the centre-right Civic Platform (PO), ending Jaroslaw Kaczynski's premiership. All the same, his brother Lech has remained Poland's president, emerging as a rock-solid opposition to the new government. Now it appears that the president's days in office could be over quite soon.

Last Saturday, the ruling centre-right chose its presidential candidate, parliament speaker Bronislaw Komorowski, who will run against Kaczynski this autumn. The latest polls indicate that in the first round voters would favour Komorowski over Kaczynski by 38-21%. Third-party candidates garner no more than 5% of the vote, therefore their endorsement of any of the candidates is of little importance. In the runoff, the result would be even more devastating for the current president, as over 60% of Poles would vote for Komorowski, while only 27% would back Kaczynski. The parallel 24% support for the president's Law and Justice party is enough in order to remain a muscular opposition, but it is no match to the Civic Platform's 50%.

(March 30) -- To many, the charismatic Pope John Paul II represented much that is lacking in the dour, scholarly Pope Benedict XVI, who was once nicknamed "the Rottweiler" and is under worldwide siege for the child sex abuse scandals sweeping the Roman Catholic Church.

But even as more questions swirl around Benedict and his alleged role in the cover-ups of pedophile priests, John Paul's stellar reputation is suddenly taking a subtle beating.

A miracle ascribed to John Paul that is a prerequisite for his canonization has been questioned, and one of church's highest-ranking officials has said that John Paul ignored Benedict's pleas to mount a full investigation into sex abuse accusations against the archbishop of Vienna.