The winter vomiting bug affected about 100,000 people over Christmas with the number of confirmed cases 72% higher than this time last year, Health Protection Agency figures indicate.

The dramatic rise was attributed in part to an early outbreak of the illness, caused by the norovirus, which closed dozens of hospital wards as it struck across Britain.

Laboratory-confirmed incidents of norovirus amounted to 3,877 cases recorded in England and Wales, a rise from the 2,255 tally of last year.

The Health Protection Agency (HPA) said that for every reported case an estimated 288 were not flagged up, meaning that about 1.12 million people could have contracted the illness this season.

The Archbishop of Westminster, head of Roman Catholics in England and Wales, has ordered that special fortnightly "Soho masses" for gay and lesbian churchgoers in central London are not appropriate and are to be axed.

The services, intended to be particularly welcoming to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered Catholics, had been held at Our Lady of the Assumption church in the West End for six years with the blessing of senior clergy but had attracted criticism from traditionalists.

The cancellation by Archbishop Vincent Nichols will be seen as a victory for those who lobbied for an end to what they see as an affront to church teachings.

The move comes as the Catholic church fights plans for same-sex marriage. Nichols has been one of the loudest voices opposing government plans to allow same-sex marriage, criticising them as "a shambles" and "Orwellian" in a BBC interview broadcast on Christmas Day.

Statisticians in Germany have said the number of employed people in the country has kept increasing despite the financial crisis. Over the past 12 months, more jobs have been available in many sectors of the economy.

2012 saw another rise in the number of employed people across Germany, the National Statistics Office (Destatis) said on Wednesday on the basis of preliminary calculations.

It said some 41.5 million people were employed in Germany last year, marking a 1.0-percent increase from 2011 levels and a rise for the sixth consecutive year.

Since 2005, the army of employed people in the country has swollen by 6.8 percent, or by 2.66 million people in absolute terms.

Solar energy is on the rise in Germany, with a record 1.3 million photovoltaic systems in 2012. The increase comes as new consumer taxes on energy are to take effect in the country.

The recent solar boom means the alternative form of energy now reaches 8 million homes in Germany, a 45 percent increase compared to 2011, the German Solar Industry Association (BSW) said on Tuesday.

"Germany is now reaping the fruits of its efforts in solar technology," said the BSW's chief executive, Carsten Körnig. "Its share of the power supply has quadrupled in just three years. At the same time, the price of a new solar power system installation has halved."

The new numbers come as a consumer tax increase on energy takes effect. Starting this month, taxes will increase on consumer power bills from 3.6 euro cents ($4.76 cents) to 5.3 cents per kilowatt hour in a bid to help finance the cost of the country's switch to renewable energy.

The Metropolitan police have made two further arrests in their Operation Yewtree investigation into alleged sexual offences by Jimmy Savile and others.

A 53-year-old man was arrested in Hampshire and a 59-year-old man held in west London on suspicion of sexual offences on Wednesday.

The suspects take the total number of people arrested under Operation Yewtree to nine.

The Met police said the two arrests fall under the "others" strand of the investigation, meaning the alleged offences are not connected to Savile.

A French satirical magazine, whose offices were fire-bombed after it published cartoons on the Prophet Muhammad last September, has published a 64-page special issue with cartoons on the life of Islam's founder.

The editor of Charlie Hebdo weekly insisted that the publication titled "The Life of Muhammad", which was published on Wednesday, was a properly researched and educational work prepared by a Franco-Tunisian sociologist.

Prior to publication, Stephane Charbonnier, who was also the illustrator of the book, said "I don't think higher Muslim minds could find anything inappropriate".

He told the AFP news agency last week that "It is a biography authorised by Islam since it was edited by Muslims."

On Monday a senior political advisor to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan denounced the work as a deliberate provocation.

"To transform the life of the prophet of Islam into a cartoon is in itself a mistake," Ibrahim Kalin wrote on his Twitter account.

Italian spreads fell to 283bp as markets react euphorically to the fiscal cliff deal, amid unbroken optimism about the eurozone; the latest Italian polls see a massive advantages for Pier Luigi Bersani's PD; Mario Monti's alliance scores between 10 and 12%, but could yet emerge as a king maker if the PD falls short of a majority in both chambers of parliament; Silvio Berlusconi says Monti was part of a criminal conspiracy of international banks to bring down his government; Monti said he keeps having difficulties following Berlusconi logic; the latest forecast show a massive rise in Italian unemployment, especially in the south; while the private sector suffers, the Italian public sector's revenues are increasing; Jonathan Hopkin says Berlusconi will not win the election, but he could still score a surprise; Gavin Jones says Monti's labour market reforms have so far failed to bring any benefits; the Greek general government had a primary surplus between January and November last year; finance minister says country will be within the agreed 2012 deficit target of 1.5% of GDP; the pressure is growing on a former Greek finance minister over allegations that he tampered with a list of tax refugees; the Spanish Socialists are proposing to turn the country into a federal state to counter the threat of regional separatism; the Spanish government is considering a number of measures to reduce SME's dependence on bank loans; a Spanish newspaper writes that the 2012 deficit will come in at 9% of GDP - completely busting the target; Portugal's president has referred the 2013 budget to the Constitutional Court; the eurozone's manufacturing sector purchasing managers' index continued to shrink further in December - while US manufacturing is slowly picking up; German employment reached a new record, despite the economic slowdown; car sales fell dramatically in Italy, Spain and France during 2012; an investors' survey shows that the risk of a eurozone breakdown has fallen dramatically; US money market funds are slowly returning to the eurozone - or rather to Germany - but overall funding levels are still low; Lex, meanwhile, warns that the eurozone crisis is far from over.

Universities will be told they should recruit more white, working-class boys in the wake of figures showing a massive slump in applications from men for courses.

The Universities minister David Willetts wants white, working-class teenage boys put in the same category as students from other disadvantaged communities and ethnic minorities - as groups that should be targeted for recruitment.

Promoting access for boys, particularly for working-class boys, seems pretty uncontroversial. But unless he has numbers indicating that white working-class boys have a lower rate of university access than non-white working-class boys, the introduction of the racial element is completely outrageous.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}

Documentary proof exists that France's former President Nicolas Sarkozy took more than €50m from the late Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, a French judge has been told.

The claim, leaked today, was made just before Christmas by a Lebanese-born businessman, Ziad Takieddine, who has been a fixer for legal - and allegedly illegal - dealings between France and the Middle East for 20 years.

Expanding on claims already made by one of Mr Gaddafi's sons and a French investigative website, Mr Takieddine told an investigative judge that he could show him written proof that Mr Sarkozy's first presidential campaign in 2006-7 was "abundantly" financed by Tripoli. The payments, he said, continued after Mr Sarkozy became President.

In total, he said, they exceeded the €50m in illegal payments to Mr Sarkozy claimed by Mr Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam just before the demise of the Libyan regime - thanks partly to French and British airstrikes - in 2011.

Mr Takieddine's claims were rejected today as "outrageous" and "self-interested" by sources close to Mr Sarkozy. Last year President Sarkozy denounced a similar claim by the investigative website Mediapart as "grotesque".