Silvio Berlusconi’s increasingly close relationship with Col Gaddafi is becoming a source of embarrassment for the Italian prime minister, according to opposition MPs and even members of the government.
On Monday, the Libyan leader recruited the women through a modelling agency to join him and Mr Berlusconi, in viewing a photography exhibition at a Rome cultural institute which traced historical links between the two countries.
T
elling them that Islam was the “ultimate religion”, Gaddafi insisted that “if you want to believe in a single faith then it must be that of Mohammed,” …

The victims have died after falling into rocky crevasses and gorges or from similar physical mishaps, rather than from inadvertently eating poisonous fungi.
Authorities said an early and bountiful mushroom harvest in the Alpine valleys of northern Italy had attracted more people than usual to scour the woods and forests in search of succulent funghi to bring to the dinner table.
Many of them were unfit and ill-equipped, venturing into remote areas without proper footwear or rainproof clothing, and without checking weather forecasts.
Collecting wild mushrooms as autumn approaches is an extremely popular …

Seven U.S. troops have died in weekend attacks in Afghanistan’s embattled southern and eastern regions, while officials found the bodies Sunday of five kidnapped campaign aides working for a female candidate in the western province of Herat.
Two servicemen died in bombings Sunday in southern Afghanistan, while two others were killed in a bomb attack in the south on Saturday, and three in fighting in the east the same day, NATO said. Their identities and other details were being withheld until relatives could be notified.
The latest deaths bring to 42 the …

A $40 million prison sits in the desert north of Baghdad, empty. A $165 million children’s hospital goes unused in the south. A $100 million waste water treatment system in Fallujah has cost three times more than projected, yet sewage still runs through the streets.
As the U.S. draws down in Iraq, it is leaving behind hundreds of abandoned or incomplete projects. More than $5 billion in American taxpayer funds has been wasted — more than 10 percent of the some $50 billion the U.S. has spent on reconstruction in Iraq, …

Hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis were fleeing a southern district Friday after the bloated Indus River crushed a levee and flooded news areas, officials said. The U.N. said as many as 1 million people have been displaced in the south since mid-week.
The latest evacuations were ordered in Thatta district of Sindh province, the site of many historic graves, tombs and other sites linked to the Mughal Empire that once ruled the subcontinent.
In the city of Thatta, around 175,000 people — around 70 percent of the city’s population — were believed …