Gina Doggett

Global warming is ''inextricably linked'' to food security, Seychelles President James Michel said at the UN hunger summit on Monday.

An Italian judge convicted 23 United States and two Italian secret agents for the CIA's kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in 2003.

Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday backed the beatification of his controversial World War II predecessor Pius XII.

United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon warned on Wednesday that failure was not an option in addressing the global food price crisis, and said an extra -billion to -billion per year would be needed to help avoid disaster.

Self-made billionaire Silvio Berslusconi looked set to secure a third term as Italian prime minister on Monday, with exit polls predicting a narrow win for his conservative coalition in general elections. The exit polls, which came moments after voting ended, predicted the 71-year-old media magnate's centre-right coalition would win.

I'm Not There, a biopic of folk icon Bob Dylan in which he is conspicuously absent but omnipresent, should ''wash over you like a dream'', the film's director, Todd Haynes, said on Tuesday. Viewers should not ''get too bogged down in the literal connections to Dylan and let it take you somewhere'', Haynes told reporters.

Visiting Pope Benedict XVI's pronouncements in favour of sexual abstinence and against abortion are falling on deaf ears in Brazil, whose government hands out free condoms to schoolboys as part of a drive to curb HIV/Aids and teenage pregnancy.

The late pope John Paul II will move a step closer to sainthood next week when the Vatican receives proof of his miraculous intercession to cure a French nun of Parkinson's disease, diocesan officials said on Tuesday. The ''miracle'' will qualify the charismatic Polish pope for beatification, the main stepping stone to becoming a saint.

Pope Benedict XVI met with the head of the Greek Orthodox Church on Wednesday to pursue a key goal of his papacy: healing a rift between the two feuding branches of Christianity that dates back nearly a millennium. Benedict XVI and Bartholomew I prayed together at the patriarchal church of St George before holding private talks.

Pope Benedict XVI began a delicate mission to Turkey on Tuesday, trading conciliatory gestures with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as both sought to calm the storm unleashed when the pontiff appeared to link Islam to violence. The pope, in a striking reversal of opinion, said he backed Turkey's bid to join the European Union.

Italy nursed a post-election hangover on Wednesday, distressed that centre-left leader Romano Prodi failed to pull off a more emphatic victory and irritated by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's refusal to go quietly. Giancarlo Traverso, an activist for the centre-left Union coalition, said that their camp was ''convinced'' that Prodi would be declared the winner in the end.

The United Nations war crimes tribunal was expected on Friday to reveal findings of a forensic analysis carried out to determine whether any poisons were present in Slobodan Milosevic's body when he died in its custody. The development is eagerly awaited by many of his supporters, who have voiced suspicions that his heart attack was the result of poisoning.