British Foreign Minister William Hague called Monday for "ever-increasing" international pressure, rather than military intervention, to end the violent repression in Syria.

"I don't think the answer to (the repression) now or subsequently would be a military intervention from outside," Hague told reporters in Strasbourg after a meeting of Council of Europe ministers.

Loulou de la Falaise, who created jewelry and hats for fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent, died Saturday at the age of 63, the Yves Saint Laurent-Pierre Berge Foundation announced.

Born in Britain, Louise Vava Lucia Henriette de la Falaise was the daughter of an Irish mother, Maxime Birley, who modeled for Elsa Schiaparelli, and a French father, Alain de la Falaise.

Wireless earpiece maker Jawbone is once again blending fashion and technology to help people make healthier choices with a little help from their beloved Apple gadgets.

The company this week unveiled UP, a smartly engineered wristband that synchs with software for iPhones, iPads and iPod touch devices to steer users toward better habits when it comes to eating, sleeping, and being active.

At least seven people were killed and 51 injured, police said Saturday, in one of the biggest British motorway crashes in decades, with an inferno burning vehicles to cinders.

The 34-vehicle pile-up at 8:25 pm (20:25 GMT) Friday on the M5 near Taunton, southwest England, sparked explosions and a fireball, with lines of cars and trucks engulfed in flames.

Leading scientists from around the world are meeting in Britain from Thursday to consider a proposal that could eventually see Greenwich Mean Time relegated to a footnote in history.

For more than 120 years GMT has been the international standard for timekeeping, but it is now under threat from a new definition of time itself based not on the rotation of the Earth, but on atomic clocks.

A British man who allegedly faked his own death and made off with the life insurance payout has been arrested in Australia, police said Thursday.

Hugo Jose Sanchez, 47, also known as Alfredo, was taken into Australian Federal Police custody overnight in Sydney, the force said, ending a six-year manhunt.

Britain's state-rescued Lloyds Banking Group said on Wednesday its chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio had temporarily stepped down due to illness and was being replaced by its chief financial officer.

Horta-Osorio, 47, who became chief executive in March, is understood to be suffering from fatigue, according to sources.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Wednesday lost a bitter legal battle to block his extradition from Britain to Sweden to face questioning over allegations of rape and sexual assault.

Two judges at the High Court in London rejected arguments by the 40-year-old Australian, whose anti-secrecy website has enraged governments around the world, that his extradition would be unlawful.

A pair of ample bloomers once owned by Britain's Queen Victoria sold for more than £9,000 ($14,330, 10,500 euros) at an Edinburgh auction on Tuesday, more than three times the original estimate.

An anonymous buyer paid £9,375 for the white silk undergarments during an auction of items from London's Old Battersea House -- the London home of the Forbes family, the American publishing dynasty.

It will be the world's most literary mortuary.

Ten leading crime writers are competing for the honor of having a morgue named after them.