BEIJING – Chinese authorities say five people have been sickened with pneumonic plague in Tibet and that the deadly disease has killed one of them

ASHDOD, Israel (Reuters) – The Israeli navy boarded a yacht in the Mediterranean Tuesday to prevent 10 Jewish activists sailing to Gaza to protest against Israel's blockade of the Palestinian enclave.

The grand gathering of North Korea's party faithful that was supposed to have been held earlier this month in Pyongyang - and then, mysteriously, wasn't - finally got under way on Tuesday. Whether it was like a Broadway show that had to work out its kinks in the North Korean equivalent of New Haven before heading to the (not so) bright ...

BEIJING – China spent tens of billions of dollars on a dazzling 2008 Olympics. It has sent astronauts into space. It recently became the world's second largest economy. Yet it gets more than $2.5 billion a year in foreign government aid — and taxpayers and lawmakers in donor countries are increasingly asking why.

While American women celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Pill this month, women in India are embracing a different method of contraception. By the end of the day, more than 100 million will have taken a birth control pill, but its acceptance in the world's second most populous nation has been dismally low. According to the 2005-2006 National Family Health Survey, ...

Since the day they were delivered more than two years ago, twin toddlers Nikolas and Leonard Balaz have been stateless and stranded in India. Their parents are German nationals, but the woman to whom the babies were born is a 20-something Indian surrogate from Gujarat.  

Sharda, a 17-year-old mother, gave birth to her first child in February in a village in Noida, just a few hours' drive outside New Delhi. Though her son was born premature and weak, he received no treatment. In many parts of India, particularly in poor and marginalized communities, a woman is considered impure for a fortnight after giving birth.   ...

UNITED NATIONS – Kenya's foreign minister said Saturday the millions being spent to fight pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia should be spent instead on helping the country become a functioning state.

Half a century of police pressure and court convictions has left the Basque separatist group ETA shrunken, battered and shaken by infighting, with the group's political representatives wrestling its militants for leadership of the movement. This internal division was highlighted most recently on Sept. 12, when ETA's fighters called for international mediation to help bring a close to their campaign of ...

BEIJING (AFP) – Twelve finalists in a worldwide contest to be a panda keeper in China for one month have begun their training, learning to feed and study the endangered animals, organisers said on Friday.

NEW DELHI – With athletes trickling into New Delhi on Saturday and cleaning crews rushing to scour their rooms, the Commonwealth Games chief said India was working hard to ensure it is prepared to host the beleaguered sporting event — though much remains to be done.

JERUSALEM – Israeli settlers have hauled bulldozers, cement mixers and other construction equipment into a Jewish settlement deep inside the West Bank, Israeli and Palestinian officials said Saturday, a day before the end of a government-mandated halt to settlement building.

STOCKHOLM – Swedish police evacuated 273 people from a Pakistan International Airlines jet diverted to Stockholm due to a bomb alert Saturday and briefly detained a passenger on suspicion of preparing aircraft sabotage, officials said.

SORRISO/NOVO HAMBURGO, Brazil (Reuters) – Even among emerging market powerhouses, Brazil and China stand out. With enviably strong growth rates, the largest economies in Latin America and Asia have come to represent the shift in global clout from developed to developing economies.

LONDON – Even a monarch needs a little help from time to time — especially when the cost of heating those drafty old palaces spirals past $1.5 million a year.

LAGOS, Nigeria – Nigerian authorities opened the gates at two swollen dams in the country's rain-soaked north, sending a flood into a neighboring state that has displaced 2 million people, officials said Friday.

MONTERREY, Mexico – Gunmen killed a town mayor near the drug-plagued industrial city of Monterrey, authorities said Friday, the fourth mayor in northern Mexico to be murdered in little more than a month.

When Somalia's President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed took office in January 2009, hopes were high that here, finally, was the man who might stand a chance of pulling his country from the ruin it had fallen into after 20 years of near-perpetual war.

BEIJING – An American-born panda gave birth to her eighth cub in southwest China, a rare accomplishment for the endangered species known for being poor breeders

AMSTERDAM – Dutch police on Sunday arrested a British man of Somali ancestry at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport for possible links to a terrorist group, a spokesman for the Dutch prosecutors said.