World News

DHAKA, Bangladesh -- The mother who gave up conjoined Bangladeshi newborn twins for adoption said Saturday she is overjoyed the toddlers have been successfully separated and wants them to grow up in Australia.

BEIJING (Reuters) - At least 31 miners were killed and 78 remain trapped 500 meters (yards) underground following a gas blast at a mine in China, state media said on Saturday.

SEOUL, South Korea -- South Korean Buddhist monks headed to North Korea on Saturday for a joint ceremony with monks there, showing the countries continue civil exchange despite a bloody naval skirmish earlier this month.

ROME -- A Vatican researcher has rekindled the age-old debate over the Shroud of Turin, saying that faint writing on the linen proves it was the burial cloth of Jesus. Experts say the historian may be reading too much into the markings, and they stand by carbon-dating that points to the shroud being...

LONDON (Reuters) - The Afghan government would quickly be overthrown if NATO troops pulled out of the country now, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said Friday.

TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Honduras's post-coup de facto leader said on Friday he would give up his presidential duties for a week, a step Washington welcomed as a way to help ease a five-month-old political crisis.

TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Honduras's post-coup de facto leader said on Friday he would give up his presidential duties for a week, a step Washington welcomed as a way to help ease a five-month-old political crisis.

HAVANA (Reuters) - The husband of Cuban dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez said he was attacked by government supporters as he waited on Friday to confront state security agents accused of detaining and beating his wife two weeks ago.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- An explosion struck the office of an aid organization in northwestern Pakistan near the Afghan border on Saturday, wounding a security guard, police said.

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia will not be provoked into armed conflict with Venezuela despite its neighbor's aggressive rhetoric and dynamiting of two border bridges, Colombia's defense minister said on Friday.

ROME -- Two fingers and a tooth removed from Galileo Galilei's corpse in a Florentine basilica in the 18th century and given up for lost have been found again and will soon be put on display, an Italian museum director said Friday.

HAVANA -- The husband of an acclaimed dissident Cuban blogger was punched and shouted down by a pro-government mob Friday after he challenged the presumed state agents who earlier roughed up his wife to a street corner debate.

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's top domestic security official said Friday that sectors of the general public have cooperated with drug cartels in the violent border city of Ciudad Juarez, and the government is about to launch new social programs there to combat gangs.

MELBOURNE, Australia -- The mother of recently separated conjoined Bangladeshi twins does not want custody of the daughters she gave up for adoption and wants them to have new lives in Australia, newspapers reported Saturday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A former U.S. State Department official and his wife pleaded guilty on Friday to charges that they spied for almost three decades for the Communist-led Cuban government.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A former U.S. State Department official and his wife pleaded guilty on Friday to charges that they spied for almost three decades for the Communist-led Cuban government.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- Valuing truth over the right to privacy, Argentina's Congress has authorized the forced extraction of DNA from people who may have been born to political prisoners slain a quarter-century ago - even when they don't want to know their birth parents.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chairman of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee, Representative Ike Skelton, cast doubt on Friday about the Obama administration's decision to try the September 11, 2001, conspirators in a U.S. criminal court.

TIRANA (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Albanian opposition Socialist Party supporters launched their latest protest Friday to demand the government either recount the vote in a controversial June 28 election or hold another.

COCKERMOUTH, England -- Raging floods engulfed northern England's picturesque Lake District on Friday following the heaviest rainfall ever recorded in Britain, killing a police officer and trapping dozens in their swamped homes.