Silvia Aloisi

<i>Faust</i> is the final instalment in Alexander Sokurov's series on corrupting power, and won praise for conjuring up a world of squalor and chaos.

President Blaise Compaore appointed a former ambassador to France as the new prime minister, hoping to restore stability after violent protests.

At least 40 civilians have been killed in air strikes by Western forces on Tripoli, the top Vatican official in the Libyan capital said on Thursday.

Prosecutors will request on Wednesday an immediate trial for Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who is accused of paying for sex with an underage girl.

A UN world food summit next week is likely to make little headway in the fight against hunger, with leaders simply pledging to boost agricultural aid.

Italy's top court rules this week on whether a law granting immunity to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi violates the Constitution.

Tens of thousands of Italians demonstrated in Rome on Saturday against Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's grip on the media.

John Lasseter, the creator of Toy Story, hopes more animation movies will be considered for the Oscar best picture.

Britain criticised as obscene the presence of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe at this week's global food summit in Rome, saying he had inflicted shortages on millions of his own people by his ''profound misrule''. Mugabe flew into Rome late on Sunday, making his first official trip abroad since elections condemned by Western leaders as fraudulent.

Italy's president will hold crisis talks with political leaders on Friday to see whether he can avoid calling snap elections after a no confidence vote forced Prime Minister Romano Prodi's government to resign. Prodi stepped down late on Thursday after losing, as expected, the vote in the Senate.

Two very different movies about the Iraq war are among the favourites for awards at this year's Venice film festival as it passes the halfway stage, and an unusually high number of male leads have stood out. For pure shock value, Brian De Palma's Redacted wins hands down, stunning audiences with an uncompromising reconstruction of the real-life rape of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl.

Actors Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes were married in a medieval castle near Rome on Saturday in a Scientology ceremony attended by a galaxy of Hollywood stars. With torches burning from the battlements of the 15th-century castle, the couple exchanged vows out of sight of the thousands of onlookers and paparazzi camped outside or perched on window ledges and balconies.