"What do I think of Matteo Renzi? I don't trust his face," said Danielle Barrese, 23, a trainee chef from Calabria.

In every revolution, a moment comes when the beleaguered leader loses control and a metaphorical trapdoor opens beneath his feet.

This weekend the fates of President Viktor Yanukovych and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko once again took dramatically opposite turns.

The southwestern state of Arizona has passed a law allowing businesses to refuse to serve gay people if homosexuality is against their religious beliefs.

Former prime minister Helen Clark, whose Labour government froze relations with Israel in 2004, now hopes to strengthen United Nations-Israel ties.

Proposed new rules concerning international tax will increase information sharing between tax authorities and add to the growing compliance burden on multinationals, writes Diana Maitland.

Australian voters appear to be finally warming to the Government they elected in September, but not because they like Tony Abbott any better, according to an opinion poll published yesterday.

Italy's head of state, President Giorgio Napolitano, has set in train his third prime ministerial appointment in less than three years.

Australia's faltering relations with Indonesia have been dealt another blow by secret documents showing the nation's electronic spy agency passed on to the United States confidential legal communications.

The fate of dozens of men detained by the Syrian security forces as they left the besieged city of Homs is continuing to cause international concern.

Tony Abbott, on a matter that transcends conventional politics, becomes an interesting politician.

New papers reveal Hillary Clinton believed her husband's affair with Monica Lewinsky was merely a' lapse', dismissing the White House intern as a 'narcissistic loony toon'.

Prime Minister John Key has called Labour leader David Cunliffe an "idiot" over his comments about Kiwis' entitlements in Australia.

Labor has survived in former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's Brisbane seat of Griffith with the help of Greens' preferences.

A buy-Australian campaign in two Australian supermarket chains is a sobering lesson for the Green Party and anyone else in NZ who advocates the same thing here.

Francois Hollande heads to Washington today hoping that a touch of Yankee glitz will fix a presidential image badly damaged at home by his handling of France's economy.

When Tony Abbott picked up one of Australia's major daily newspapers on Monday he would have seen his youngest sister on the front page passionately kissing another woman.

Prime Minister John Key does not expect much progress in his talks with Australian counterpart Tony Abbott today in the key issues of discrimination against expatriate Kiwis and the major supermarkets' move to shed New Zealand products.

Expat Kiwi advocates have launched another bid to win support from Australia's human rights watchdogs in their campaign to end discrimination against NZers.

Soaring defence budgets in China and Russia mean that global military spending is growing for the first time in five years, according to forecasts.

Al-Qaeda has disavowed its offshoot in Syria, seeking to distance itself from a group too extreme even for the organisation founded by Osama bin Laden.

The son of Benazir Bhutto opened a new front in the war against extremism in Pakistan, with a glittering gala of music and fireworks set against the illuminated ruins of a Bronze Age city.

The US Secretary of State was accused of supporting anti-Semitic interests yesterday after warning that Israel faced an economic boycott.

Hamid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan, admitted he has not spoken to President Barack Obama for seven months.

National calls for debt relief as mounting toll of big dry ruins businesses and suicides rise among farmers.

Areas where voting blocked mean result will almost certainly be inconclusive.