Socialist Francois Hollande took over as France's President on Tuesday and jetted off to Berlin hours later for talks on Europe's debt crisis -- only to have his plane struck by lightning. No one was hurt.

As many as 56 per cent of Americans think incumbent Barack Obama will win the 2012 presidential election, compared with 36 per cent who think Mitt Romney will win, a poll said on Tuesday.

Almost 46 percent of Americans would prefer to vote for Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney, while 43 percent said they would support President Barack Obama, according to poll.

Rebekah Brooks, a close aide of media baron Rupert Murdoch and former chief executive of News International, will face charges of perjury in connection with the phone-hacking scandal, the Crown Prosecution Service Tuesday said.

Christians living in conflict-torn Syria are afraid their community would fall victim of religious extremism if President Bashar al-Assad's regime collapses and Islamists come to power.

Former telecommunications minister A. Raja was Tuesday granted bail in the 2G spectrum allocation case. He is the last of the 14 individuals charged in the case still in prison.

Former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak has been exaggerating the extent of his medical problems during recent court appearances, where he has been charged with killing hundreds of protesters during an uprising that ousted him from power, RIA Novosti reported.

The US Tuesday urged all people concerned to protect the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, in view of allegations of a Chinese plot to assassinate him.

The US has all the ingredients to be successful for the next 200 years, US President Barack Obama has said, hoping that he would get another chance to get the US back on track.

Francois Hollande will on Tuesday take oath as the next President of France only to face an immediate reminder of the extent to which his nation’s power is constrained by its ties to a debt-wracked Europe.