Europe, Scandal | featured news

France's top rabbi has taken leave from his post after becoming ensnared in a scandal over alleged plagiarism and lies about his educational background. Richard Prasquier, the head of a leading French Jewish group, said Rabbi Gilles Bernheim asked for the leave at an emergency meeting Thursday of leaders of the Central Consistory of France. On Tuesday, Bernheim acknowledged making "mistakes" in an interview with Radio Shalom.

An Italian court on Thursday sentenced former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi to a one-year jail term for making public the taped contents of a confidential phone call in a case related to a 2005 banking scandal.

For Britons worried last week's beef lasagne was in fact a helping of horse, peace of mind that such a meal will never reach dining tables again may come at a price.

Rupert Murdoch protégé Rebekah Brooks was charged Tuesday with conspiracy over alleged illegal payments to a Ministry of Defence employee, London's Metropolitan Police said Tuesday.

... Lawyers for the former Conservative politician, Lord Alistair McAlpine, who was wrongly implicated in connection with sex abuse claims by a BBC show, have vowed to end the so-called trial by Twitter. They said they were looking at a "very long list" of users who wrongly repeated the allegations regarding Lord McAlpine with a view to taking legal action in the British courts. Simply deleting the messages would not be enough, the lawyers told The Guardian newspaper.

Few seem to be enjoying the management meltdown at the venerable BBC more than Rupert Murdoch, the News Corp. chief whose rival British newspapers have been caught up in their own lengthy, embarrassing and expensive phone-hacking scandal....

Jimmy Savile was one of the best-known faces on British television. So how was he able to become one of the country's worst child sex predators without ever being caught?...

The British government warned the BBC on Wednesday that a growing sex abuse scandal was raising "very real concerns" about public trust in the broadcaster. The BBC has been thrown into disarray by accusations that it helped cover up sexual abuse by one of its former presenters, Jimmy Savile, and has struggled to explain why one of its own programs dropped an investigation into Savile last year.

The prince has no clothes - but British newspapers aren't running the pictures. The country's scandal-loving tabloids devoted many pages Thursday to the story of Prince Harry's naked romp in a Las Vegas hotel suite. But all heeded a warning from royal officials that printing the images, already seen by millions on the Internet, would infringe on the prince's privacy.

The Bank of England confirmed on Friday it had received U.S. recommendations to overhaul the Libor benchmark at the heart of a global rate-rigging scandal, saying it had passed them on to the banking group responsible for the rate... The Bank of England confirmed on Friday it had received U.S. recommendations to overhaul the Libor benchmark at the heart of a global rate-rigging scandal, saying it had passed them on to the banking group responsible for the rate.