UNITED KINGDOM

Prime Minister Gordon Brown plans to detail a sale of government assets on Monday aimed at raising 3 billion pounds, a draft of a speech provided by his office showed on Sunday.

Sometimes, much weirder things happen at the MTV Video Music Awards than Kanye West interrupting an acceptance speech.

Boyzone singer Stephen Gately, 33, who caused a sensation in the pop world 10 years ago by announcing he was gay, died while on holiday in Mallorca, Spain, the Irish pop group's official website said on Sunday.

Comments by U.S Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben Bernanke relating to interest rates and inflation kept a lid on the Aussie dollar heading into the weekend and it opens this morning relatively unchanged from Friday''s Asian close at 0.9035.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Sunday that international powers would not wait forever for Iran to prove it was not developing nuclear bombs.

Airbus is confident its delayed A400M military transport plane will fly by the end of the year but dismissed a magazine report that its maiden flight could come as soon as November 30 as fantasy.

The American whiskey market may be back on a roll. The industry which produces Jack Daniel's and Jim Beam is seeing sales flatten in its domestic market but overseas business is booming and driving overall growth.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski signed the European Union's reform treaty into law on Saturday, leaving the Czech Republic as the only country still to ratify the document.

Canadian hedge funds may lose more than 20 percent of their business if the European Union approves a proposed directive restricting foreigners' ability to sell into the EU, a top fund manager said on Thursday.

Germany's Economy Minister sought to shore up support for his government's rescue plans for Opel amid signs of growing opposition at home and abroad to the Berlin-brokered deal with Canadian automotive firm Magna (MGa.TO).

Germany sought to shore up its rescue plans for carmaker Opel as Spain and Britain fought to safeguard their own Opel plants and domestic critics laid into the Berlin-brokered deal with Canadian automotive firm Magna.

Iran and Afghanistan will dominate talks by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton next week on a trip to Britain and Russia that could also spur progress on a new nuclear arms reduction treaty with Moscow.

Iran would blow up the heart of Israel if it was attacked by the Jewish state or the United States, a Revolutionary Guards official was quoted Friday as saying.

More lucrative British incentives to produce energy from rotting and gasified waste are driving a push to biogas, following a wider European trend.

A British UFO eccentric, wanted in the United States for breaking into NASA and Pentagon computers in the biggest military hack of all time, lost his latest battle to avoid extradition on Friday.

Britain's top shares were down 0.1 percent around midday on Friday, with falls in mining stocks just outweighing modest gains in oil majors and drugmakers during a largely directionless session.

The United States slipped from first to third place after the U.K. and Australia in a ranking of financial development released by the World Economic Forum on Thursday, as the global financial crisis badly hurt bank stability in developed countries.

A lower reading in the Unemployment Rate for September yesterday saw the Australian Dollar rally hard in local trade.

A German-brokered deal to rescue Opel will not collapse due to a lack of support from other European countries hosting the carmaker's plants, Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman was quoted as saying on Thursday.

Czech President Vaclav Klaus raised a new obstacle to the European Union's Lisbon reform treaty on Thursday, telling EU president Sweden he wants a footnote added to the document before signing it into force.

A German-brokered deal to rescue Opel will not collapse due to a lack of support from other European countries hosting the carmaker's plants, Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman was quoted as saying on Thursday.