Hans van Loon, the secretary general of The Hague regulatory body, highlights Guatemala, once the source of 5, 000 annual adoptions, mainly to America.

ECONOMIST: International adoption

At the 1997 general election Labour had 418 MPs, William Hague's Tories had 165 and Charles Kennedy's Liberal Democrats had 46.

BBC: Labour romps home again

The Belgians will have angered Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is about to call a General Election in which his Conservative opponent William Hague will insist that too much has been given away already to an increasingly federal Europe.

CNN: Belgium stirs up tax levy debate