World News Archives

In the United States, the issue of war injuries has revolved almost entirely around the care received by the 30,000 wounded American veterans. But Iraqi soldiers and police officers have been wounded in greater numbers, health workers say, and have been treated far worse by their government.

The Mexican government is building a wall on their side of the border.

No, it's not to keep Americans out. It's to help the U.S. Border Patrol catch would-be illegal immigrants.

And instead of being made of brick and mortar, like the proposed American wall, this one is made of trees.

Three Iraqis and a Jordanian filed federal lawsuits Monday alleging they were tortured by U.S. defense contractors while detained at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003 and 2004.

Iraq opened its giant oilfields to foreign firms on Monday, putting British and U.S. companies in pole position five years after U.S.-led troops invaded the country to oust Saddam Hussein.

The move to invite bids for the development of Iraq's largest producing fields should mark the return of the oil majors, whose cash and expertise Iraq needs to restore its oil infrastructure that has been hard hit by sanctions and war.

The number of civilians killed in fighting between insurgents and security forces in Afghanistan has soared by two-thirds in the first half of this year, to almost 700 people, a senior U.N. official said Sunday.

An international rights group says supporters of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe used batons and sticks to beat people who couldn't prove they voted in the country's presidential runoff.

Protesters fought riot police early Sunday at a rally opposing the resumption of American beef imports to South Korea, hours after the chief U.S. diplomat vouched for the health of U.S. cattle.

The bimonthly US international affairs journal Foreign Policy has just published a survey of the world’s top 20 public intellectuals and the first 10 are all Muslims.

The International Whaling Commission on Thursday rejected a request by indigenous Greenland fishermen to kill 10 humpback whales a year. The fishermen had offered to swap rights to eight fin whales for the humpbacks.

The recent “fragile but real” steps forward in the Middle East peace process will not turn into real progress unless Israeli and Palestinian negotiators can find common ground on the core issues, a senior United Nations political official told the Security Council today.

Many Zimbabweans boycotted their one candidate-election on Friday, but witnesses and monitors said government militias forced people to vote for 84-year-old President Robert Mugabe in some areas.

Victor de la Paz was riding back from school on a January evening with a friend, just three blocks from home, when uniformed men emerged from the darkness and motioned for them to stop.

Zimbabweans began voting in a one-sided presidential run-off on Friday after President Robert Mugabe defied mounting world condemnation and calls to postpone an election which the opposition says is a farce.

It seems unimaginable, but it is possible that for the first time in recorded history the North Pole will be free of ice this summer, according to a published report Friday.

Gordon Brown waited for more than a decade to be prime minister. After a dismal first year on the job, many wonder how long he'll last.

North Korea took a big step toward re-integration into the world community by submitting the nuclear declaration. In response, the White House said that it would remove it from a list of terrorism sponsors.

Nelson Mandela said Wednesday there had been a tragic failure of leadership in Zimbabwe in his first public comments about the country's political crisis.

The U.S. military's treatment of a Canadian teen detained at Guantanamo Bay violated international laws against torture, the Federal Court has ruled.

Mexico has agreed to extradite a reputed leader of a Tijuana-based drug cartel to the U.S.

The government has dismissed a Mexican judge's recommendation that Benjamin Arellano Felix not be extradited because he should not be tried twice on the same charges.

Residents of a northwestern Pakistani town captured by Taliban militants this week said on Wednesday they had found the bodies of 22 men the militants had abducted.

The first ad out the gate for Heinz's new ad agency AMV BBDO (since it won the £10m-a-year U.K. business last year) wasn't too well received. The ad, which featured two men sharing a kiss has been withdrawn - and Heinz has apologized. The ad for their Deli Mayo product ran for less than a week.

An Israeli police officer fatally shot himself Tuesday at an airport departure ceremony for French President Nicolas Sarkozy, sparking fear of an assassination attempt and prompting bodyguards to whisk away Sarkozy and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, officials said.

A Palestinian rocket was fired into southern Israel on Tuesday, the first such attack since a cease-fire took effect last week.

The fate of the world's whales and the future of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) hang in the balance as delegates from 81 nations gather for the 60th annual meeting of the IWC. The commission has been deadlocked in recent years as the last three nations engaged in whaling for commercial purposes - Japan, Iceland and Norway - have fought to block conservation measures in the forum.

Japan and China have agreed on a gas exploration deal in the East China Sea, striking a compromise over a long-running bilateral row, news reports said Monday.Kyodo News, citing sources close to Japan-China ...

The Dutch Foreign Ministry said that Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has sought refuge in the Dutch embassy in Harare.

U.N. nuclear sleuths looking into allegations that Syria is hiding secret atomic activities expressed hope Sunday that a fact-gathering trip to Damascus will be the start of a thorough investigation.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner today branded Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe as "nothing but a crook and a murderer" after the opposition pulled out of an election run-off.

"This man, and I am speaking of Mr Mugabe, who believes he has been designated by God ... is nothing but a crook and a murderer," he said in Jerusalem on the sidelines of a visit by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

More than 700 people were missing and many feared dead after a ferry capsized as Typhoon Fengshen continued to batter the Philippines, hampering rescue efforts.

Iran is pressing on with uranium enrichment "non-stop," its envoy to the U.N. nuclear agency was quoted as saying on Saturday, despite a world powers' offer of economic incentives to coax Tehran into halting such activities.

With the right technology and policies, India could help feed the world. Instead, it can barely feed itself.

Nearly four decades after the four biggest Western oil companies were expelled from Iraq by Saddam Hussein, they are negotiating their return. By the end of the month, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Exxon Mobil and Total will sign agreements with the Baghdad government, Iraq's first with big Western oil firms since the US-led invasion in 2003.

A sharp drop in attacks on pipelines has enabled Iraq to increase oil exports from northern oil fields and profit from the rise in world energy prices, the country's oil minister said Friday.

Afghan and NATO troops backed by warplanes drove Taliban militants from villages within striking distance of southern Afghanistan's main city on Thursday, killing 56 of them, Afghan officials said.

Vietnam, the world's second-biggest shipper of rice, will allow more exports as the country expects a bigger crop, helping ease a global food shortage.

The European Union on Thursday agreed to lift its diplomatic sanctions against Cuba, but imposed tough conditions on the communist island to maintain sanction-free relations, officials said.

After decades of denials, the Chinese have acknowledged burying an American prisoner of war in China, telling the U.S. that a teenage soldier captured in the Korean War died a week after he "became mentally ...

South Africa has called on Robert Mugabe to cancel next week's presidential election and forge a unity government amid a campaign of violence that today claimed the lives of four more opposition activists.

Iraqi troops fanned out across the Shiite militia stronghold of Amarah Thursday and gunmen tossed their weapons onto the streets or into canals as the government officially launched a military crackdown on the ...

NHA TRANG, Vietnam - Cindy McCain ranged far afield from the U.S. presidential campaign trail Thursday to showcase her charity work helping Vietnamese kids born with facial deformities.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice defended U.S. diplomacy toward North Korea on Wednesday, saying a deal with Pyongyang to scrap its nuclear ambitions made Asia and the United States safer and that the ...

Two new columns of smoke erupted from the Chaiten volcano in Chile, breaking a calm that had held since late May.

By Jeffrey Heller

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel said on Wednesday it accepted an Egyptian-brokered truce with Hamas Islamists ruling the Gaza Strip but voiced skepticism the ceasefire involving all Palestinian militant groups in the territory would hold.

Western officials said Israel, which has sharply cut supplies to the Gaza Strip since the Hamas takeover last June, planned to allow in a slightly higher number of truckloads of goods starting on Sunday, provided the truce was still in place.

Afghan and Canadian forces moved into a series of villages outside of southern Afghanistan's largest city on Wednesday to root out any Taliban who have infiltrated the area, and four British troops were killed by an explosion in Helmand province.

Troops exchanged fire with militants during "a few minor contacts" but there were no immediate reports of casualties, NATO spokesman Mark Laity said. Helicopters patrolled the skies and smoke rose from fields after exchanges of fire.

"As of this morning we've expanded operations into Arghandab," Laity said. "Canadian troops are in support" of the Afghan National Army.

A car bomb set to explode during the busiest time of day killed at least 51 people and wounded 75 Tuesday evening as shoppers were strolling through a Shiite neighborhood market in Baghdad.

The biggest ever fund set up to battle deforestation was launched today, targeting the vast Congo basin rainforest in central Africa.

Police arrested 70 Sikh protesters after the MTV music channel's office in western India was vandalized over posters showing a Sikh girl massaging a man, officials said Tuesday.

Gaza's Hamas rulers on Tuesday said they have reached a long-awaited cease-fire with Israel meant to end months of Palestinian assaults on Israeli border towns and bruising Israeli retaliation.

There is no doubt that with all that's going on in the world, particularly with the Middle East and China, the situation in Darfur is not seen as a priority. International failure in responding to genocide in Darfur should be occasion for the deepest shame. Inaction has already cost hundreds of thousands of lives and caused untold human suffering. The example of Darfur should prompt considerable reflection on whether the world community feels any “responsibility to protect” civilians endangered because of inaction, or indeed deliberate actions, on the part of their own governments and regimes. Have we reached the point in confronting atrocity crimes at which we put civilian lives ahead of expedient claims of national sovereignty?

Today, those in Congress are hearing the outrage of Americans across the nation about the profits of oil companies and rising gas prices. But the next president, along with Congress, will have a new set of Global challenges: Preventing Civil wars over oil. Today, oil-producing states make up a growing fraction of the world's conflict-ridden countries. They now host about a third of the world's civil wars, both large and small, up from one-fifth in 1992. The number of oil-producer-based conflicts is likely to grow in the future as stratospheric prices of crude oil push more countries in the developing world to produce oil and gas.

There is no doubt that Al Gore is the point man in America and around the world when it comes to bringing attention to the world's responsibility of reducing Greenhouse Gasses. Mr. Gore has been critical of the United States lack of enthusiasm regarding Global Warming but silent on China's new leading role on being the leading emitter of climate-warming gases. In order for Al Gore to be considered a true unbiased champion of the environment, he must now call China to the carpet and ask them to comply with the Kyoto agreement.

OSHAN, China - Weeks of rain pushed rivers over their banks in southern China, displacing more than 1.27 million people and forcing some to huddle on rooftops today as the region braced for more downpours.

Kosovo's first constitution as an independent state came into force on Sunday, giving ethnic Albanians the right to executive powers held by the United Nations mission that has run the territory since 1999.

Pakistan has pledged it will defend its territorial sovereignty, after Afghanistan's leader said cross-border attacks on militants were justified.

BUJUMBURA, Burundi : The hills around town do not ring with gunfire anymore. Terrified civilians have stopped trudging down muddy paths seeking shelter.

A suspected Tamil Tiger suicide bomber on a motorbike blew himself up today near a police building in a northern Sri Lankan town, killing 12 police officers and wounding 23 other people.

European Union leaders will press Ireland this week on ways to overcome its rejection of an EU reform treaty, but Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen said the bloc must also contribute to a solution.

Cuba proved to be no refuge for an American fugitive who was deported Friday to face federal charges in California of sexually abusing a Costa Rican girl and possessing child pornography.

Japan and China have agreed on a gas exploration deal in the East China Sea, striking a compromise over a long-running bilateral row, news reports said Monday.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari sternly rebuked Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's latest threats, Sunday.

Zebari said that al-Sadr's Friday claim that he is establishing a new fighting force to battle U.S. troops in Iraq "unacceptable."

The residents of thirteen Village Development Committee of Nawalparasi district, Nepal, who have been staging a sit-in protest, have threatened to demolish the Gandak Dam.

Deep in the mechanic's pit, 12-year-old Jihad Robin found refuge, secretly smoking cigarettes on a break from his job in a car repair shop.

He left school at age 9 when teachers told him that since he couldn't read, he would have to fall back two grades. His parents, unable to make ends meet, forced him to go to work.

Does anyone remember Elian Gonzalez? He was six when relatives in Miami lost their battle to keep him in the U.S. It was incredibly high-profile news. A well-known, striking image from the affair (in fact, Alan Diaz's Pulitzer Prize winning photograph) is shown above.

The leaders of Mexico and Spain on Thursday called for the easing of international sanctions against Cuba, highlighting the recent reforms by the island's communist government.

A three-month standoff between Argentina's government and farmers over a tax hike turned violent on Saturday when military police in riot gear used batons to try to clear roadblocks on a main highway.

Rescue squads and military helicopters raced to find 11 people missing after an earthquake in mountainous northern Japan sent hillsides crashing down Saturday, killing at least six other people and injuring more than 140.

Hundreds of Taliban fighters captured over the past six years escaped late Friday after militants attacked the main prison in Afghanistan's Kandahar province, authorities said.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, is planning to increase its output next month by about a half-million barrels a day, according to analysts and oil traders who have been briefed by Saudi officials.

A powerful 6.9-magnitude earthquake rocked northern Japan early Saturday, killing at least two people and forcing authorities to close highways and stop high-speed trains.

President Robert Mugabe's regime struck at his rivals Thursday only two weeks before Zimbabwe's presidential runoff, twice detaining his challenger and jailing the No. 2 opposition leader to face treason charges.

Taiwan and China signed a formal agreement Friday to expand charter flights and tourism, a step towards restoring transport links severed 59 years ago.

A blast flattened the house of a militant commander in the Gaza Strip Thursday, killing four people, wounding 40 and burying an unknown number of others, Palestinian officials said.

Racism is always deemed to be exclusively a phenomena that occurred only in America. The fact is, there are many nations around the world that have very low opinions about people of African descent (well, the dark-skinned ones)and were active participants in the slave trade . Will Obama be openly accepted by European nations? Have Colin Powell and Condi Rice paved the way for African Americans to be respected when they hold positions of power? This remains to seen and may present a challenge on the world stage for Obama if he is elected President of the United States.

Kerstin Fritzl, the 19-year-old who was born in a dungeon prison and whose father held her captive, along with two siblings and her mother, has woken up from her medically induced coma and has been reunited with her mother, Elisabeth, and her siblings.

Auto plants in Spain were paralysed and Portugal's main airport banned planes from refueling Wednesday as a third day of strikes by thousands of truckers caused heightened chaos and shortages.

The operation in the private clinic off the Champs-Élysées involved one semicircular cut, 10 dissolving stitches and a discounted fee of $2,900. But for the patient, a 23-year-old French student of Moroccan descent from Montpellier, the 30-minute procedure represented the key to a new life: the illusion of virginity.

Two lorry drivers were killed on picket lines in Spain and Portugal on Tuesday as strikes by thousands of truckers over soaring fuel prices turned deadly.

A airliner has exploded into fire after landing at Khartoum's airport. About 200 passengers were thought to have been aboard, but it is unclear if any were killed or injured.

BRUSSELS: The European Union and the United States are ready to go beyond agreed United Nations sanctions if Iran shuns demands that it suspend sensitive nuclear work.

The World Bank on Tuesday put the blame for rising food prices in South Asia on export controls by India and others, while the US has severely criticised New Delhi's handling of the crisis, stating the trade bans have rattled international markets.

A bomb exploded on Monday at a bus station in a town east of Algiers, killing 20 people, a security source said.

Leading energy-consuming nations urged oil producers Saturday to boost their output to counter soaring prices threatening the world economy, while they pledged to develop clean energy technologies and improve efficiency.

A powerful coalition of drug gangs led by Mexico's most-wanted man is collapsing, meaning the surge in bloodshed and police killings will get worse, a senior U.S. counternarcotics official said.

In a joint statement, energy ministers from the Group of Eight countries, joined by China, India and South Korea, also urged oil producers to boost output, which has stalled at about 85 million barrels a day ...

Ruling party militants prevented the opposition from holding a rally in a Harare suburb Sunday, while police attacked supporters in Bulawayo and prevented them from putting up election campaign posters, party ...

A mother who decided to abort her son because he may have inherited a life-threatening kidney condition is overjoyed that he survived the procedure.

The article quotes Israeli Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz as issuing an unusually blunt warning to Iran: " If Iran continues its nuclear weapons programme, we will attack it."

U.S. Pentagon chief Robert Gates was wrong to accuse Burma’s military rulers of being deaf and dumb, when not allowing U.S. warships full access to distribute aid in Burma’s delta region. Others have accused the junta of being xenophobic due to Burma’s colonial past.

Thousands of people have gathered in Hong Kong for the city's annual candlelight vigil to mark the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing.

A strong aftershock struck China's quake-battered Sichuan province Thursday, as rising water levels in a lake caused by landslides in the massive May 12 temblor forced evacuations from downstream areas.

A Web posting late Wednesday purportedly by al-Qaida claimed responsibility for the suicide attack against Denmark's Embassy in Pakistan that left six people dead.

The statement said Monday's bombing in Islamabad was carried out to fulfill the promise of terror mastermind Osama bin Laden to exact revenge over the reprinting in Danish papers of a cartoon of Islam's Prophet Muhammad.

Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader called on Muslims to launch a holy war to break Israel's economic blockade of the Gaza Strip, in an audio recording posted Wednesday on an Islamic militant Internet site.In the 11-minute ...

Beneath the dusty soil south of Baghdad, villagers and soldiers discover a mass grave with at least 13