World News

China is suffering another natural disaster -- this time, the worst drought in half a century. The land is parched and the irrigation dams have dried up. Crops and livestock are dying.

Since November northern and central China has had little rain. Many places have not had rainfall for more than 100 days.

"The extent of drought is quite extensive, the impact is quite great," forecaster Zhang Peiqun said in an interview with state television CCTV. "Rainfall on average has been 50 to 80 percent less than that of last year."

A former French minister said he felt guilty and regretful for voting in favor of a law that recognized the 1915 incidents as "genocide" in 2001. His remarks incited fierce reactions among the Armenian diaspora in France.

The issue of the 1915 incidents is highly sensitive for Turkey as well as Armenia. Around 300,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks, died in civil strife that emerged when Armenians took up arms, backed by Russia, for independence in eastern Anatolia.

As U.S. navy ships looked on, Somalian pirates sped away Thursday with US$3.2 million in ransom after releasing an arms-laden Ukrainian freighter, ending a four-month standoff that focused world attention on piracy off Somalia's lawless coast.

The Pentagon's senior judge overseeing terror trials at Guantanamo Bay dropped charges Thursday against an al-Qaida suspect in the 2000 USS Cole bombing, upholding President Barack Obama's order to freeze military tribunals there. The charges against suspected al-Qaida bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri marked the last active Guantanamo war crimes case.

A Russian-led bloc of post-Soviet nations has agreed to establish a rapid-reaction military force to combat terrorists and respond to regional emergencies, Russian media reported Wednesday.

On Wednesday, the Collective Security Treaty Organization -- made up of Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan -- decided on the rapid-reaction force at a Kremlin summit, the Russian news agency RIA-Novosti reported.

Israel’s ambassador to Sweden, Benny Dagan, had a shoe thrown at him, while giving a lecture at the University of Stockholm, APA quotes the international news agencies. A 35-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman threw the running shoes “Nike” and two books at the ambassador and used offensive words against him. Both were apprehended by local police and were released after giving the testimony.

Despite the increasing chatter about the threat of trade protectionism, many foreign businesses are gearing up to win a piece of the stimulus package. Some are hiring staff in the United States. Others — from Japan, Germany, France and South Korea — are building American factories to make solar cells, lithium batteries, turbines or subway trains.

The world's most wanted Nazi criminal, Aribert Ferdinand Heim, died in 1992 in Cairo, Egypt, according to reports from both the New York Times and Germany's ZDF television.

Suspected militant recruiter Samira Jassim reportedly calls herself "the Mother of Believers".

Detained in January by Iraqi security forces, the mother of six is accused of converting dozens of vulnerable women into suicide attackers.

In an apparent video confession, the middle-aged woman described how she identified potential bombers, helped supply them with explosives and led them to their targets.

UK ministers must answer allegations that Britain was complicit in torture, a senior Conservative MP has said.

David Davis said a High Court ruling on Wednesday alleged that Binyam Mohamed, a UK resident held in the Guantanamo Bay camp in Cuba, had been tortured.

The Vatican has ordered an ultra-traditionalist bishop to publicly recant his views denying the Holocaust.

A statement said Bishop Richard Williamson must "unequivocally" distance himself from his statements to serve in the Roman Catholic Church.

Iran insisted on Wednesday that the launch of its first home-built satellite has no military aims, despite deep concerns in the West about the development.

Iran insists satellite has no military aim, world powers meet in Germany

"This is a scientific and technical achievement and has no military aims," foreign ministry spokesman Hassan Ghashghavi was quoted by AFP as telling reporters.

Turkey needs the Nabucco pipeline and the project needs Turkey, Reinhard Mitschek, managing director of the project, said on Wednesday, adding that the pipeline could not be realized if Turkey withdraws.

A report from a Chinese daily newspaper indicates that a man has been killed when his cell phone battery exploded, severing an artery in his neck.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict must be resolved based on UN Security Council resolutions calling for the withdrawal of Armenian troops from Azerbaijani lands, the Azertaj state news agency quoted President Ilham Aliyev as saying in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

“We are not deploying troops in Georgia”, The Pentagon Spokesperson, Elizabeth Hibner told APA U.S bureau.

“Department of Defense’s European command, which deals directly with Georgia as far as they send any training teams or assessment teams, or anything like that. But I can’t confirm whether there are any small teams in Georgia right now doing that,” she added.

Ms. Hibner mentioned that on January 9th Secretary Rice signed the USA-Georgia charter on strategic partnership.

Sri Lanka's president predicted Wednesday the total defeat of Tamil Tiger rebels within a few days, as the United Nations reported 52 civilians had been killed in a single shell attack.

Islamist militants blew up a bridge in northwestern Pakistan on Tuesday, cutting a major supply line for Western troops in Afghanistan in the latest in a series of attacks on the Khyber Pass by insurgents seeking to hamper the U.S.-led mission against the Taliban.

"Russian powers have committed a planned and well prepared aggression against Georgia", said former adviser of President Putin on economic issues Andrei Illarionov.

He considers that the analysis of a great many of facts, allows to draw a conclusion that one of the most important goals of the working Russian leadership was attainment of a political control over Georgia and in case this goal is not reaches - its disintegration.

Libyan ruler Moammar Gadhafi took over the chairmanship of the African Union on Monday, vowing to create a continental government despite strong opposition among other heads of state.