World News

Russia said Saturday that U.S. military plans to shoot down a damaged spy satellite may be a veiled test of America's missile defense system.

A state of emergency has been declared in Paraguay due to the first outbreak of yellow fever in more than 30 years.

Health authorities say one man has died and almost 10 others may have contracted the disease.

Lebanese army troops intervened to restore order as pro-government and opposition supporters engaged in fist fights and beat each other with sticks in Ras el-Nabaa, a Muslim neighborhood of Beirut late Saturday, police and TV stations reported.

Kosovo was braced for a showdown with its former Serbian masters in Belgrade this weekend after Hashim Thaci, prime minister of the breakaway province, announced yesterday that it would declare independence "in the coming hours".

Sources within the Serbian government gave warning that they would begin implementing an "action plan" against Kosovo as soon as it seceded.

Ongoing clashes in the capital left nearly 300 Somalis dead and hundreds more wounded last month, a local human rights group said Saturday.

North Korea wants promised energy aid and removal from U.S. terrorism and sanctions blacklists before it will provide a complete declaration of its nuclear programs, American researchers said Saturday after a trip to the North.

Builders began restoring a revered Shiite Muslim shrine in northern Iraq two years after it was badly damaged in a bombing that unleashed a wave of bitter sectarian violence.

Danish flags have been burnt at demonstrations in the Muslim world Danish MPs have cancelled a trip to Iran after Tehran demanded they apologise for the republication of cartoons deemed offensive to Islam.

A homemade bomb that killed one person and wounded two near Mexico City's police headquarters was likely the work of organized crime and not leftist rebels, police said.

Three Iraqi policemen are killed when U.S. helicopters opened fire on a local police unit south of Baghdad.

The U.S. military said helicopters opened fire with rockets after coming under small-arms fire early on Friday at Jurf al-Sakhar, 85 km (53 miles) south of Baghdad.

A suicide bomber rammed a car packed with explosives into an independent parliament candidate's election office in northwest Pakistan Saturday, killing 37 people and wounding more than 90 days before a crucial vote, government officials said.

The United States hopes Pakistan's upcoming election will be free and fair and bring an end to domestic violence so that Islamabad can focus on the "war on terror." But it may not get what it wants.

Hezbollah’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, told 10,000 mourners on Thursday at the funeral of a senior commander killed in Syria that Hezbollah was ready to retaliate “anywhere” against Israel, which it blames for the death.

An Islamic militant who helped carry out the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto wanted to avenge the death of a friend in the military attack against the Red Mosque in Islamabad last year, a senior police officer said Wednesday.

A senior Hezbollah military commander who was one of America’s most wanted men, accused of involvement in a string of bombings, hijackings and kidnappings during the 1980s and 1990s, has been killed, the Shiite Muslim group said in a statement Wednesday.

Three of Denmark's largest newspapers plan to reprint a cartoon tomorrow that depicts the Prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban.

The announcement follows the arrests of three people suspected of plotting to kill Kurt Westergaard, who drew one of 12 Muhammad caricatures.

Two Tunisians and a Dane were arrested in Denmark on Tuesday to prevent what the Danish police said would have been “a terror-related assassination” of one of 12 cartoonists behind caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad published in 2005 that provoked fury across the Muslim world.

Venezuela's state oil company said Tuesday that it has stopped selling crude to Exxon Mobil Corp. and suspended commercial relations with the U.S.-based oil company.

“He's a very simple man ... a man of the people and sometimes you pay a price for that.”

East Timor's president was in "extremely serious" but stable condition at an Australian hospital Tuesday after surgeons worked through the night to remove bullet fragments he suffered in a failed coup attempt, ... via The South Mississippi Sun Herald

Venezuela says it has taken the first steps towards securing the release of three hostages held by Colombian Marxist rebel group, the Farc.