Rome (CNN) -- Italy's new prime minister presented lawmakers with his proposal for €30 billion ($41 billion) in new taxes and spending cuts Monday, saying the "painful measures" would end the country's budget crisis. "We are aware that the measures mean sacrifices. But not making the sacrifices today would mean making more painful ones in a few weeks, maybe even in a few days," Prime Minister Mario Monti to ...

(CNN) -- BP is accusing Halliburton of having "intentionally destroyed evidence" related to the explosion aboard an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico that led to the worst oil spill in U.S. history. The accusation comes in court papers filed by BP Monday in federal court in New Orleans as part of a lawsuit aimed at having sanctions imposed on Halliburton Energy Services Inc., which was a contractor for BP on th ...

(CNN) -- Syria agreed Monday to Arab League demands that it allow observers into the country, but on the condition that the group immediately drop sanctions and agree to amendments that league officials have previously rejected. The league's deadline for Syria to respond to its demands to admit observers or face additional sanctions expired at midnight Sunday. Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem sent a letter ...

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran has released 11 hardline protesters detained for storming the British Embassy and diplomatic compounds in Tehran this week, the semi-official Fars news agency said Thursday. Fars said 11 people, described as students, were set free late on Wednesday, a day after they were arrested for storming and ransacking the embassy and British diplomatic compounds in Tehran. There was no immedi ...

Tens of thousands of HIV-affected households in Asia are facing "irreversible poverty" because of the cost of living with the disease, with women and children hardest hit, a UN report said Thursday. Catastrophic healthcare costs and the loss of employment opportunities due to widespread discrimination mean that many HIV-positive households across the region are in "rapid socio-economic decline," the report ...

Editor's note: Pete Cashmore is founder and CEO of Mashable, a popular blog about tech news and digital culture. He writes regular columns about social media and tech for CNN.com (CNN) -- Reports have surfaced again in the past week that Facebook is working on a phone. The latest news on the long-rumored project is that Facebook has abandoned its plan to work on both the hardware and software, as Apple does ...

What does this place mean to you?’ I ask the lady at the Wartburg – the immense castle that crouches over the crest of the mountain above the town of Eisenach. She doesn’t hesitate: ‘To me? To Germans? One thousand years of positive German history.’ Related slideshow: The quiet land of Thuringia The stress she put on it is understandable. Against her statement, the cacophony and catastrophe of a couple of d ...

Cairo (CNN) -- Initial results of Egypt's first parliamentary elections since the fall of President Hosni Mubarak are due as early as Thursday. Both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Al Noor Salafi Muslim Party have claimed a lead in ballot counting, but election officials have been tight-lipped. Voting took place Monday and Tuesday, the first in a multi-step process to pick members of the lower house of parli ...

Kazakhstan is fast emerging as the key player in Eurasia. It has come a long way since its independence in 1991. It has emerged as one of the fastest developing countries in the entire region and its per capita income is far head of Russia. Kazakhstan is the fourth largest proven reserve of uranium and is going to play a vital role in the world energy security in the coming years. Mr Doulat Kuanyshev, the A ...

She is a journalist to the core. Having studied International Relations from The American University, she worked in the United States until the home beckoned her. She chose working as a journalist in India over the American citizenship. She is now the foreign affairs editor with The Statesman newspaper. Journalist and Author, Simran Sodhi speaks to mediakhabar. Thank you for taking time off your schedule an ...