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.

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 – A mad rush to the playground turned into a stampede that left dozens of elementary school children hurt and seven severely injured in western China on Monday, state media and officials said.

SWIEBODZIN, Poland – A gigantic statue of Jesus that Poles claim is the world's largest rose majestically above a small town on Saturday, as the grandiose dream of a local priest finally came to pass.

SARGODHA, Pakistan (Reuters) – Pakistani police submitted on Tuesday charges of plotting terrorism against five young Americans detained last year, a lawyer said. The students, in their 20s and from the U.S. state of Virginia, were detained in December in the town of Sargodha, 190 km (120 miles) southeast of Islamabad, and accused of contacting militants over the Internet and plotting ...

CAIRO – Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden called for the creation of a new relief body to help Muslims in an audiotape released Friday, seeking to exploit discontent following this summer's devastating floods in Pakistan by depicting the region's governments as uncaring.

JAKARTA, Indonesia – A top-ranked Southeast Asian militant wanted for planning the 2002 Bali bombings may have been killed in a shootout with police at an Internet cafe Tuesday moments after sitting at a terminal, authorities said. DNA tests were under way to confirm his identity.

Peru's court system continued its ping-pong treatment of Lori Berenson late Friday afternoon, once again granting the New York native parole on her 20-year sentence on terrorism charges. Berenson, hands clasped in her lap and flanked by two prison guards, sat motionless during the 75-minutes it took to read Judge Jessica Leon's verdict.  

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Haitians are piling bodies along the devastated streets of their capital after a powerful earthquake flattened the president's palace and the main prison, the cathedral, hospitals, schools and thousands of homes. Untold numbers are still trapped. President Rene Preval says he believes thousands of people are dead. His prime minister, Jean-Max Bellerive, tells CNN: "I believe we are ...

SAN SALVADOR (AFP) – A fire on Wednesday tore through a detention center housing young gang members in El Salvador, killing at least 16 people and injuring 22, according to police and rescue personnel

BARCELONA, Spain – Monstrous waves that smashed into a Mediterranean cruise ship flooded people's cabins, broke windows in a restaurant and sent terrified travelers screaming for doctors, passengers said Thursday.

PARIS – The French Senate on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed a bill banning the burqa-style Islamic veil on public streets and other places, a measure that effects less than 2,000 women but that has been widely seen as a symbolic defense of French values.

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.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark – A man suspected of setting off a small explosion in a Copenhagen hotel won't reveal his true name to investigators and even removed the serial number of his prosthetic leg to keep from being identified, Danish police said Monday

BAGHDAD – Powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr backed Iraq's prime minister to retain power Friday in a move that could speed an end to the country's seven-month political impasse but could also hand al-Sadr's anti-American bloc considerable influence in the next government

BEIJING – China's plans to vaccinate 100 million children and come a step closer to eradicating measles has set off a popular outcry that highlights widening public distrust of the authoritarian government after repeated health scandals

Paris – A new survey in Germany shows that 13 percent of its citizens would welcome a “Führer” – a German word for leader that is explicitly associated with Adolf Hitler – to run the country “with a firm hand.” The findings signal that Europe’s largest nation, freed from cold-war strictures, is not immune from the extreme and often right-wing politics ...

JOHANNESBURG – A California church wants to get back to helping AIDS orphans in Africa, once it resolves questions over licensing that led to the arrests of six of its workers in impoverished Zimbabwe, a minister said Sunday.

JOS, Nigeria – The U.S. government and human rights activists called Tuesday for Nigeria to investigate and prosecute those responsible for the deaths of more than 200 unarmed people in renewed violence between Christians and Muslims.

LONDON – Experts say there is nothing unusual about the latest spate of earthquakes in Haiti, Chile and now Turkey, but their devastation illustrates how growing construction along the world's fault lines can lead to massive casualties.