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ALMATY (Reuters) - Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, who uses a boorish, sexist and racist Kazakh alter ego called Borat to poke fun at interviewees has responded to a legal threat from the Kazakh authorities by satirically welcoming the move. Cohen, who plays the spoof Kazakh television reporter in his "Da Ali G Show", incurred the wrath of Kazakhstan's Foreign Ministry this month after appearing as Borat at the annual MTV Europe Music Awards. He described shooting dogs for fun and said his wife co ...

LONDON (Reuters) - Manchester United's Portuguese football star Cristiano Ronaldo will not face charges over allegations in October that he was involved in the rape of a woman in a London hotel, police said on Friday. Scotland Yard said the Crown Prosecution Service decided there was insufficient evidence to proceed. "The two men arrested during the course of this investigation will face no further action by police in connection with this matter," a police spokesman said. Ronaldo's agent Jorg ...

By Fiona Shaikh LONDON (Reuters) - Interest rates need to come down very early in the New Year, according to the head of the Confederation of British Industry. While Bank of England policymakers have made it clear they are not about to repeat their quarter-point August interest rate cut soon, CBI boss Digby Jones told Reuters business needs lower borrowing costs now. Speaking ahead of the CBI's annual conference on November 28, Jones said lacklustre growth in key export markets like Germany a ...

LONDON (Reuters) - The government will buy fewer maritime patrol planes and missiles under defence spending plans that have cut budgeted costs by 699 million pounds, the National Audit Office (NAO) reported on Friday. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) also trimmed budget overruns through bookkeeping exercises such as removing a 368 million-pound provision that had been set aside for the purchase of combat jet weapons in the future, an annual report from the NAO showed. "The decreases in forecast c ...

LONDON (Reuters) - Murdered policewoman Sharon Beshenivsky will be remembered by a two-minute silence on Friday in Bradford, the city were she was gunned down as she answered an emergency call about an armed robbery. The Bishop of Bradford, the Right Reverend David James will lead a memorial service and, as the City Hall bell chimes at 3:30 p.m., silence is expected to descend on the city centre. Beshenivsky, 38, a mother of three children and two step-children, was killed a week ago after she ...

LONDON (Reuters) - London began looking for a new transport supremo on Friday after Bob Kiley, the ex CIA man who oversaw the introduction of congestion charging and extra buses, quit unexpectedly. The Transport for London (TfL) Commissioner gave no reasons as to why he was leaving the high profile job although several newspapers said his early departure was because of a row. "It has been a privilege to serve...TfL has more than proved it can deliver since it was formed five years ago," Kiley  ...

By Nguyen Van Vinh HO CHI MINH CITY (Reuters) - Rocker Gary Glitter faces up to 12 years in a Vietnamese jail if convicted on child molestation charges to be filed on Saturday, an official said. "Gary will be charged with engaging in 'perverse activities with children'," the Ba Ria Vung Tau province official said. Glitter was due to be formally charged on Friday, but the official, who declined to be named, said it was delayed owing to administrative procedures. Glitter, whose real name is Pa ...

By Guo Shipeng and Benjamin Kang Lim BEIJING (Reuters) - Environmental protection officials discharged water from a reservoir into a river in northeast China in an attempt to dilute a toxic spill but decided not to warn the public about it, a newspaper said on Friday. It was not for another week that the nine million people of Harbin, further down the Songhua River, learnt that a huge slick of highly hazardous chemicals was heading their way, and that all mains water supplies were being cut of ...

By Matthew Jones LONDON (Reuters) - Former football superstar George Best clung onto life overnight, but the gravely ill one-time Manchester United winger is not expected to last the day, his doctor said on Friday. "I will see him later this morning, but I really can't see him surviving the day ... I may be wrong but the complications he has had, make recovery impossible," Professor Roger Williams told BBC radio. He said Best, 59, was receiving basic medical care to ensure he was as comfortab ...

TOKYO (AP) -- Japan's space agency said Wednesday that a space probe had successfully touched down on an asteroid despite an initial announcement of a failed attempt. JAXA officials had said Sunday that the Hayabusa probe, on a mission to briefly land on the asteroid, collect material, then bring it back to Earth, failed to touch down after maneuvering within meters (yards) to the surface of the asteroid Itokawa. However, the agency said in a release Wednesday that data confirmed Hayabusa land ...