Silvio Berlusconi is an Italian politician, entrepreneur. He is the second longest-serving Prime Minister of the Italian Republic.

Mauritania’s military rulers and opposition leaders have signed an agreement to end a political crisis following a coup last August.
Under the deal, former junta leader General Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz is suspending his campaign in presidential polls that had been set for 6 June.
The vote is now due to take place in July, and the opposition is expected to contest it.

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.

France is bracing itself for a second nationwide strike in two months, by protestors urging the government to do more to protect jobs and wages.
Public and private sector workers are expected to join the marches and services in schools, hospitals and transport are likely to be disrupted.
President Nicolas Sarkozy says he understands the worries of the people.
But he insists there is nothing more his government can do to help those struggling in the financial crisis.

Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission (IEC) on Wednesday rejected President Hamid Karzai’s order of holding the presidential polls in April, months earlier than the date set by the commission.
The independent election authority has announced in January the election would be postponed to Aug. 20 because of logistical and security worries. But Karzai, who has declared his intention to run for a second term, suddenly issued a decree last week, ordering the commission to move the election forward to adhere to the Afghan constitution.
The President’s five-year office term will end on May …

PARIS: A nationwide protest against Nicolas Sarkozy’s economic policies drew more than one million demonstrators into the streets of France on Thursday, in the biggest popular challenge to the president since he took office in 2007.
Organizers hailed the demonstrations – meant to highlight unemployment and declining spending power in a time of crisis – as a great success.

Panelists speaking Wednesday at the University of Virginia critiqued the notion that President Barack Obama’s election is a fulfillment of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of racial equality.
“The political heir of King, Obama is not,” U.Va. assistant professor of history Claudrena Harold declared. “And to expect him to be is unfair.”
Harold was joined by former U.Va. faculty member Corey Walker, now an assistant professor of Africana studies at Brown University, and Andrea Y. Simpson, associate professor of political science at the University of Richmond.

Dhaka, Bangladesh (AHN) – The Awami League (AL)-led grand alliance is headed for a landslide victory in Monday’s parliament polls as its candidates were unofficially elected to over 151 seats out of 300. Begum Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its allies won just more than 20 seats to the AL-led grand alliance’s over 151 by the early hours of Tuesday morning in Dhaka.
“The Awami League is heading for a clear majority,” Election Commission Secretary Humayun Kabir told the Agence France-Presse.

LONDON — Within hours of the death of the authoritarian President Lansana Conté, a hitherto unknown military-led group said it seized power in the West African state of Guinea on Tuesday, suspending the Constitution and government, according to news reports.
A uniformed army officer said on state television and radio that a group calling itself the National Council for Democracy and Development was “taking charge of the destiny of the Guinean people,” the reports said.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Belgium’s King Albert consulted political leaders on Saturday after the government collapsed for the third time in a year following its botched attempt to bail out financial group Fortis.
Prime Minister Yves Leterme tendered his government’s resignation on Friday after a report by the Supreme Court found signs of political meddling to sway a court ruling on the future of the bank, a victim of the credit crunch.
The king, who under the constitution must decide whether to accept the resignation, held successive talks at the palace with the …