Beleaguered by Labor Party plotters hoping to unseat him and by the prospect of disastrous local election results for Labor that are expected on Friday morning, Prime Minister Gordon Brown chose on Thursday to send out aides avowing to reporters, anonymously, that there was “no chance” he would resign.
The prime minister’s move, reported by the BBC and the Web sites of several British newspapers, surprised nobody, given Mr. Brown’s trademark as a political pit bull. He has a reputation for fighting his corner with a tenacity born of the decade …

Dutch voters gave a populist, anti-immigrant party its first four seats ever in the European Parliament, sending a warning to incumbent European governments, according to exit polls.
The triumph for the Party for Freedom and its leader Geert Wilders kicked off four days of European Union-wide elections involving more than 12,000 candidates competing for more than 730 seats.
Mr. Wilders’s party was expected to win four of the 25 seats allocated to the Netherlands, according to exit polls by Dutch news agency ANP.

WOULD YOU buy a second-hand car from this man? Or, more precisely, would you want this man to educate your children? The man is media tycoon and Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and the man asking the second question is Dario Franceschini, leader of the main opposition party, the Democratic Party (PD).
On Thursday Berlusconi issued yet another denial of involvement with an 18-year-old model, telling reporters in Rome that if someone asked whether he had “a relationship, let’s say steamy or more than steamy, with an underage girl”, his …

Italians are always scornful about the obsession of the “Anglo-Saxon” media with the private lives of the rich and famous, but for the past month the Italian newspapers have been preoccupied with one subject and one subject only: the relationship between Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and a young woman from Naples called Noemi Letizia.
Mr Berlusconi has been caught out telling numerous lies about the relationship and refuses to explain them. And with important elections pending, his popularity, at an all-time high only six weeks ago, may be eroding.

Voters in Mongolia are electing a new president, a year after vote-rigging claims in parliamentary polls triggered deadly riots in the country.
Current President Nambaryn Enkhbayar of the former Communist party is being challenged by Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj of the main opposition Democratic Party.
Polls opened at 2300 GMT on Saturday are due to close at 1400 GMT on Sunday.

Iran has blocked its citizens from accessing the social networking site Facebook to allegedly prevent campaigning before June’s presidential poll for a leading opposition candidate.
The local ILNA news agency reported on Saturday the prohibition of use of the site for several days.
The elections are on June 12.
The ministry of communications and information technology had announced the decision, according to one internet service provider employee, although this has not been confirmed by authorities.

About 150 opposition activists from South Ossetia have held an unapproved protest in front the Russian Duma in Moscow, RFE/RL’s Russian Service reports.
The protesters object to the policies of South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity.
Alan Gassiev, a member of the political council of the opposition People’s Party, told RFE/RL that Kokoity is implementing “antidemocratic politics.”