Preliminary results show that Albania's left-wing Socialist party is heading for a new governing mandate in crucial elections in the country's bid to launch membership negotiations with the European Union.

West Ham manager Sam Allardyce has today accepted substantial undisclosed damages over a claim by former Blackburn Rovers boss Steve Kean that Allardyce was sacked from Rovers because he was "a crook".

A human rights watchdog said today that new evidence has emerged to warrant an investigation into claims that ethnic Albanian guerrillas in Kosovo killed Serbs and sold their organs at the end of the war in Kosovo.

BRITISH police chiefs yesterday defended a decision to excuse a Muslim police officer from guarding the Israeli embassy.