A new parliament has convened in Venezuela. It's the first in five years to have substantial opposition representation. But opposition politicians say their influence has been curtailed by the powers given to the Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez by the outgoing parliament, which allow him to pass some laws without the support of lawmakers. The BBC's Sarah Grainger is in Caracas.
The new president of the parliament, Fernando Soto Rojas, swore in 165 new deputies, more than a third of them opposition representatives, making it harder for President Chavez to get reforms passed by the parliament. But that won't trouble the president too much. He was recently granted the power to rule by decree for the next 18 months. He says the measure will help him to respond to devastating floods in many parts of the country. The opposition sees it as a means to bypass the new assembly.
A food scandal in Germany, involving the possible contamination of a huge number of eggs with the poisonous chemical dioxin, appears to have widened. The government has said that up to 3,000 tonnes of contaminated fatty acids from eggs were sold to animal feed manufacturers. The German agriculture ministry said it had collected acid samples for testing in November, but the samples weren't tested until late December.
Members of one of Britain's biggest cocaine trafficking rings who laundered about $100m in drugs money have been jailed. Among those convicted was a firefighter commended for his heroism in the aftermath of the 2005 attacks on the London transport network.