LONDON (Reuters) - Aston Villa have named Frenchman Gerard Houllier as their new manager, the Premier League club said on their website (avfc.co.uk) on Wednesday.

MIAMI (Reuters) - An obscure U.S. Christian pastor whose plan to burn copies of the Koran on September 11 has sparked an international outcry said on Wednesday he will still go ahead with the event despite U.S. official warnings it will endanger American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

LONDON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A BP Plc investigation of the Gulf of Mexico disaster played down its own role in the world's worst offshore oil spill and pointed the finger at what it said were failures by contractors.

PARIS (Reuters) - French trade unions called another strike over unpopular pension reform after President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Wednesday he would not retreat on plans to raise the retirement age.

LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister David Cameron's father died on Wednesday after falling ill during a holiday in the south of France.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Primates, including mankind's closest relatives -- chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos and orangutans -- have gained new protection after the European Parliament backed a clampdown on animal testing.

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain said on Wednesday it would review its extradition laws after criticism that treaty arrangements with other nations, in particular the United States, make it too easy to transfer suspects for trial there.

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan security forces used batons on unruly customers scrambling to withdraw their savings on Wednesday from a branch of the graft-hit Kabulbank, the country's biggest private financial institution.

LONDON (Reuters) - Some British universities may have to abandon research and become purely teaching institutions after imminent cuts in state funding for science to curb a record budget deficit, the business minister said on Wednesday.

ROME (Reuters) - The Vatican added to world condemnation of plans by a Florida church to commemorate the September 11 attacks on the United States by burning a Koran, calling it an "outrageous" act.