Thousands of people protested in Rome on Saturday against austerity policies and high unemployment, urging new Prime Minister Enrico Letta to focus on creating jobs to help pull the country out of recession.

France on Saturday became the 14th country to legalize same-sex marriage after President Francois Hollande signed the measure into law following months of bitter political debate.

France's first lady Valerie Trierweiler said at the end of a 48-hour tour of war-torn Mali on Friday that the experience had brought up “huge” feelings in her.

Thousands of people protested in Rome on Saturday against austerity policies and high unemployment, urging new Prime Minister Enrico Letta to focus on creating jobs to help pull the country out of recession.

French actor and newly minted Russian citizen Gerard Depardieu on Saturday compared President Vladimir Putin to the late Pope John Paul II and said the ex-KGB agent was what Russia needed as a leader.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel met Pope Francis on Saturday and, apparently responding to his criticism of a heartless “dictatorship of the economy,” called for stronger regulation of financial markets.

The Moroccan woman at the center of a sex scandal involving former Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi testified Friday in court for the first time, describing how a young woman attending one of Berlusconi's “bunga bunga” parties dressed up like a nun, danced provocatively and stripped down to her underwear for the premier.

Turkish police have detained a man they believe to be one of the main perpetrators of car bombings that killed more than 50 people near the Syrian border, officials said on Friday.

The European Central Bank will keep its loose and growth-supportive monetary policy stance in place for “quite a long time,” ECB executive board members said on Friday.

Economic losses from disasters since 2000 are in the range of US$2.5 trillion, a figure at least 50 percent higher than previous international estimates, according to a U.N. report released Wednesday.