World News

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Five people were killed when an explosive device detonated at a restaurant in the Syrian capital Damascus on Tuesday, Syrian state media and activists said. The northern... more

Lawmakers say a broad alliance of political opponents of the Iraqi prime minister has failed to persuade the country's president to take a first step toward unseating the premier.Nouri al-Maliki's... more

Freed French journalist Romeo Langlois appears and speaks to reporters in Colombia. more

The U.S. Embassy in Benin says an American citizen has been kidnapped in the West African nation.The embassy statement, posted on its website Tuesday, provided no details on the case, except to... more

US Embassy: American kidnapped in West African nation of Benin. more

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin named seven former cabinet ministers as aides on Tuesday, in a move expected to weaken Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's new government and shift... more

By Jessica Donati LONDON (Reuters) - Egypt's military rulers plan to spend close to $1 billion on diesel this summer, a spike in imports as they brace for a first free presidential election... more

VIENNA (Reuters) - Austrian Finance Minister Maria Fekter dismissed as "nonsense" French President Francois Hollande's approach to resolving the euro zone debt crisis and insisted, in a newspaper... more

U.N. observers have discovered 13 bound corpses in eastern Syria, many of them apparently shot execution-style, the monitoring mission said Wednesday.The announcement comes days after a massacre... more

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Five people were killed on Tuesday when an explosive device detonated in the Damascus neighborhood of Qaboun, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. ... more

Israel's Attorney General has announced it will indict a journalist who published classified documents provided by a military whistleblower.The Justice Ministry said in a statement Wednesday that... more

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - New Zealand is to ban the use of foreign-flagged fishing boats in its waters to improve working conditions for crews and monitoring of catches, the government said on... more

Commandeered buses blocked off the main bridge linking Nigeria's largest city Wednesday, stranding thousands of commuters as protesters took over the 12-kilometer (7 1/2-mile) span to demonstrate... more

A delegation has arrived at a remote hamlet in Colombia to receive a French journalist who has been held captive by rebels.It includes French diplomat Jean-Baptiste Chauvin and former Colombian... more

Former Liberian President Charles Taylor was sentenced to 50 years imprisonment Wednesday for arming and supporting murderous rebels in Sierra Leone in return for "blood diamonds," a landmark... more

Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, on her first foreign trip in nearly a quarter-century, offered encouragement Wednesday to impoverished migrants whose flight from their homeland is... more

The U.N.'s top human rights body will hold a special session Friday on the deteriorating situation in Syria and last week's massacre of more than 100 Syrian villagers, officials said.The U.N.... more

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt will face a second trial on genocide charges after a judge ruled on Monday he could be prosecuted for ordering a 1982... more

Britain's Supreme Court has endorsed the extradition of WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange to Sweden, bringing the secret-spilling Internet activist a big step closer to prosecution in a Scandinavian... more

Bono will present Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi with Amnesty International's highest honor when she visits Dublin next month as part of her first international tour in 24 years, the... more

A U.S. university professor has been appointed director of the International Tracing Service's Holocaust-era archive in the German town of Bad Arolsen.The ITS said Wednesday its 11-member... more

Negotiations between two rebel groups in Mali's north, who signed an initial agreement to merge and create a new Islamic state in the region, have run into problems over the imposition of Shariah... more

Thailand's politics heated up Wednesday over a bill that could herald the return of divisive ex-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, while his former top lieutenants prepared to re-enter the... more

(Reuters) - A moderately strong 5.8 magnitude earthquake struck Bulgaria on Tuesday at a relatively shallow depth of 5.7 miles, only 14 miles west-northwest of the capital Sofia, the U.S.... more

Dutch prosecutors say police have arrested 33 suspected child molesters worldwide, including 8 in the United States, using information gathered from the computers of a pedophile in Amsterdam who... more