Heavily armed Australian police stormed a Sydney cafe early on Tuesday morning and freed a number of hostages being held there at gunpoint, in a dramatic end to a 16-hour siege in which three people including the attacker were killed.
When word of an EU ban on high-power vacuum cleaners hit Eurosceptic British tabloids in August, "Hoovergate" brought home a dilemma for the bloc that goes well beyond house-proud devotees of deep-pile English carpet.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said before talks on Monday with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry he would defy any U.N. move to "dictate" a timeframe for withdrawal from land Palestinians seek for a state.
Three months after he took office with a mission to unite his broken, warring country, Iraq's new prime minister has swept away the divisive legacy of his predecessor with a burst of rapid and dramatic measures.
