Browsing local store shelves offers a simple way to gauge the ethnic mix of any London neighborhood. With its eclectic range of East European and Middle Eastern fare, Bestco is typical for catering to the various nationalities that have recently flocked here to forge new lives.

Unscientific as they are, such snapshots reflect a more detailed picture that emerged last month when the government published the results of its first census in a decade. It was a moment in which Britain looked at itself in the mirror — and barely recognized what it saw.

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But the brutal gang rape of a 23-year-old woman on a bus in Delhi on Dec. 16 has now thrown the issue of women's safety in India into sharp relief.

The victim, who passed away Saturday from injuries sustained during the assault, had boarded a privately operated bus with a mansaid to be her fiance.

The BBC had reported the vehicle was a "white line" bus, one of several services run by private operators to supplement the city's public bus network.

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Now, with Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) likely to be confirmed as the next secretary of state, theUnited States will have a top diplomat who has been a frequent critic of America’s 50-year-old effort to force regime change in Havana.

In recent years, Kerry has been the Senate’s most prominent skeptic of US-funded pro-democracy efforts that give financial backing to dissident groups in Cuba and beam anti-Castro programming to the island through radio and television programs based in Miami.

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New details are emerging in the horrific gang rape that caused the death of a female student in Delhi, India.

The gang of assailants who allegedly brutally assaulted and raped the 23-year-old aboard a private bus would have run her over if her boyfriend had not pulled her out of the way just in time, reported Agence France-Presse.

The severely injured medical student, who has not been named, was airlifted after initial surgery in Delhi to a hospital in Singapore, where she died Saturday after extensive organ failure. Her boyfriend, whom friends say she was planning to marry, was also was beaten and thrown off the bus on which the two were traveling.

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American James Foley, 39, was last seen on Nov. 22 in Idlib Province. Idlib has been the scene of heavy fighting in recent months between Syrian rebels and government forces.

Richard Engel, the chief foreign affairs correspondent for NBC News, and three members of his team, went missing in the same region in December. They were freed after their captors ran into a checkpoint manned by Ahrar Al Sham, a Syrian rebel group. Engel said a firefight erupted and two captors were killed. The rebels then escorted Engel and his team to the border with Turkey.

Little is known about the group that kidnapped Engel and his team. And it remains unclear if the same group is responsible for taking James.

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They blasted the Delhi police for incompetence and insensitivity. And they cried out for the death penalty for six men accused of brutally gang-raping a 23-year-old woman aboard a private bus on Dec. 16. The woman succumbed to her injuries on Friday in Singapore, where she was being treated at a hospital, according to media reports.

In the story of India's battle against sexual assault, the honorable members ignored one important footnote: Every major political party has fielded and continues to field candidates facing criminal charges for rape, harassment and other crimes against women.

“We found that all these parties had given tickets to people of dubious backgrounds, involved in crimes against women,” said Anil Bairwal, national coordinator of the watchdog group National Election Watch. “It's the highest order of hypocrisy.”

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The new rules, issued on Friday, make it harder for businesses to protect commercial secrets and for individuals to access websites from abroad that the Chinese government believes are politically sensitive, The New York Times reported.

The estimated number of Internet users in China has grown to more than 500 million, about 40 percent of the population, the Bangkok Post reported.

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Bitter party rivals buried their grievances to give a non-elected, technocratic government time to convince financial markets that the world's 8th-largest economy isn’t headed for a Greek-style meltdown.

But all that changed over the Christmas break, when the country was suddenly plunged into an election campaign that's seen as crucial not only for Italy’s future, but for the entire euro zone.

The head of Germany’s central bank warned the country would be flirting with disaster if it allowed the elections to derail efforts to reform its economy and reduce the euro zone' second-highest government debt.

"It would be disastrous if they [the reforms] were called into question by the outcome of the elections," Jens Weidmann told the business magazine Wirtschaftswoche on Thursday. "If the reform process comes to a halt, Italy would again lose investors’ confidence."

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"Love in Paris" is a romance starring a young starlet, actress Michelle Zudith, whose character suffers from leukemia and is expected to die before 20 -- a plot device that affects her search for love.

Ayu Tria Desiani was a 9-year-old who suffered leukemia in real life. According to the Jakarta Globe, she frequently required treatment in hospitals. After experiencing a burst blood vessel, the Globe reports, she was rushed to an ICU ward yesterday.

Turns out the ward was filled with atypical guests: the perfectly healthy cast and crew shooting a scene for "Love in Paris."

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A psychiatric hospital in Australia is trying to figure out how it locked up the wrong man and injected him with a powerful cocktail of anti-psychotic drugs, mistakenly thinking he was a runaway patient, The West Australian reported.

The unidentified man was picked up Dec. 16 by police and brought to Graylands Hospital in Perth.

Police said he matched the description of a patient that had run away two days earlier, according to Gawker.

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Commissioned by Prime Minister David Cameron in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal at the Rupert Murdoch-owned News of the World tabloid, the independent judicial probe by Lord Justice Sir Brian Leveson had a multi-million dollar budget and an all-star cast with performances from the likes of Hugh Grant and Sienna Miller.

The investigation delivered its findings on Nov. 29. As with most modern movies, it was too long, featuring 378 separate testimonies. But it had a riveting plot with startling revelations about the pervasive influence of Britain's press, and witness performances that ranged from tear-jerking to hilarious.

Ultimately, just like the latest movie releases, it failed to deliver what it promised. Its inconclusive ending left audiences feeling dissatisfied and opened up the depressing possibility of a sequel.

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Classical music

Zakir Hussain — a former child prodigy who first toured the US in 1970 — has done for the tabla what Shankar did for the sitar. In 1992 and 2009, he collaborated with Mickey Hart, Sikiru Adepoju, and Giovanni Hidalgo on the Grammy-winning “Planet Drum” and “Global Drum Project” albums to introduce the world to Indian classical's curiously melodious drum. In earlier years, Hussain played with John McLaughlin's Shakti — one of the first efforts to fuse the rhythms and melodies of classical Indian ragas with the improvisations of Western jazz — touring extensively in the late 1970s. He worked on the soundtracks of Francis Ford Coppola's “Apocalypse Now” and Bernardo Bertolucci's “Little Buddha.” And he's capitalized on the growing crossover audience for Indian films, and films made by the Indian diaspora, with acting cameos and soundtrack work for movies such as Aparna Sen's “Mr. and Mrs. Iyer” and Ismail Merchant's “The Mystic Masseur.”

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At once, he is both Egypt’s first-ever democratically elected leader and a divisive figure with unprecedented powers. He swiftly ended, in one simple stroke in August, six decades of military rule. And he has since plunged the country into its deepest political crisis in years.

As an energetic, street-led opposition forms against Morsi’s recent moves — including a decree that granted him wide authority and the hurried passage of a controversial draft constitution — the former Muslim Brotherhood leader has lurched through the crisis with a series of mercurial and sometimes contradictory statements that have done little to temper the unrest.

His erratic leadership style, heavily influenced by the Brotherhood, is now in the spotlight as the future of Egypt hangs in the balance.

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Hillary Clinton announced when she was nominated for secretary of state that she would serve only one term. The ugly and divisive battle over her replacement has kept analysts busy for weeks.

Now that issue, at least, has been settled. On Friday President Barack Obama nominated Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) for the top job at Foggy Bottom, a post Kerry reportedly has long coveted.

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America's next chief diplomat will have a whole deck of world problems to deal with, but Senator Kerry in that role should use his influence early to persuade his boss to resume efforts towards a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.

Having been out bluffed on Jewish settlements in the West Bank by Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu early in the first term, Obama will be tempted to put Palestine on hold during his second. He shouldn’t.

President Obama might say to his new secretary: John, the Palestinians had no role in the Arab Spring, and the entire region is in trouble. Syria is on the boil, Egypt’s future is in doubt, Iraq is unstable. The whole house of cards could collapse. You are one of the few people I have who can talk to President Karzai, and Afghanistan’s going to be our king-sized problem in the next four years. And the stakes could be even higher in Iran. The Palestinians are hopelessly divided. Netanyahu has the aces, and will never go for a two-state solution. The West Bank is quiet. Why can’t we just leave those Palestinian deuces face down?

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A reporter for the Bogota daily El Tiempo recently toured an elaborate underground bunker built by a businessman in the South American country's central Antioquia department.

The structure features iron and concrete walls 20 inches thick that are coated with copper (to protect those inside from radiation). Inside are bunk-beds, a kitchen and a pantry filled with gas masks, tanks of oxygen and water, and a two-year stock of instant and canned food. Other supplies include winter clothes and seeds to reforest a barren, post-apocalypse planet.

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As newspapers, magazines, and websites rush to beat each other to the finish line on breaking news, thorough source-checking has been known to lose out. Perhaps that's why a number of these fake news stories were promoted a bit longer than they ought to have been.

However, these egregious mistakes — ranging from sexy North Korean leaders to all-inclusive "abortionplexes" — sure do make for great comedy. Here are some 2012 examples of fake news in the real world.

1. Kim Jong Un is the Sexiest Man in the World

Kim Jong Un, the current Dear Leader of North Korea and heir to Kim Jong Il, is something of a cipher at the moment, as he attempts to fill the large (and eccentric) shoes voided by his father and grandfather. One thing is for sure: The moon-faced 27-year-old is not often referred to as sexy in polite company.

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The leaders of an independent panel issued the scathing assessment in a review that, according to Reuters, found "leadership and management" deficiencies in the department and "real confusion" in Washington and in the field over who could — and should — have made decisions involving security.

The findings of the Accountability Review Board, some of which are classified and will only be heard behind closed doors before the House and Senate foreign affairs committees, may taint the four-year tenure of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Reuters wrote.

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The whole world, that is, except two small, seemingly random villages. Since some believe they possess high levels of “positive energy,” Sirince in Turkey and Bugarach in France will be spared the Armageddon.

For Sirince, a town of just 650 people, such beliefs are good for business.

“It’s a big event for Sirince. We could make it a tradition,” said a cheerful Ahmet Kocak, the owner of a boutique hotel here, as he sat on the hotel terrace overlooking the village’s historic Greek cottages.

For the first time ever in the history of his hotel, all of his rooms were booked eight months ahead of time — all by Americans.

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Amid that horror, Chinese netizens gave an outpouring of condolences for Americans affected by the Newtown tragedy. Throughout the weekend, thousands of Chinese shared online images of lit candles and heartfelt expressions of sympathy for the 20 children and seven adults who were killed in Newtown, Conn.

“Today is a sad day for the entire world,” wrote Weibo-user Zheng Yuanjie, one of many who linked the Connecticut attack to China’s own tragedy.

On Monday, the hashtag “Honoring Ordinary Heroes” stayed at or near the top of the most popular topics on Sina Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter, with many users praising the teacher Victoria Soto, who died saving her students from the gunman. Little gloating or schadenfreude over America's loss was anywhere to be found.

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