World News

BAGHDAD - Three car bombs exploded in quick succession Wednesday at the main market of a southern Shiite city, killing at least 41 people and wounding 150 others, police and local government officials said. It was the deadliest attack against Iraqi civilians in four months.

BEIRUT, Lebanon - A powerful car bombing Wednesday killed the likely next head of the army in the first such assassination targeting Lebanon's military, seen by many Lebanese as the only institution keeping the divided nation from breaking apart.

ALGIERS, Algeria - Rescuers in a shaken city on Wednesday extracted the living and the dead from the crumpled remains of U.N. offices in Algiers that were bombed by an al-Qaida affiliate. Victims included U.N. staff from around the world, police officers and law students.

JERUSALEM - The mayor of Sderot, a small town in Israel that has borne the brunt of rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip, announced Wednesday that he is stepping down, saying the situation there is "impossible."

JERUSALEM - Israeli army spotters have a new job: counting wild animals on both sides of the West Bank separation barrier to help naturalists assess the problems caused by the huge structure, an army publication reported.

PARIS (Reuters) - President Nicolas Sarkozy defended Muammar Gaddafi's visit to France on Wednesday, saying the Libyan leader was not considered a dictator in the Arab world.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A push by Russia for more talks over the future of Serbia's Kosovo province ran into immediate opposition on Wednesday in the U.N. Security Council from Western countries who say such talks would be pointless.

MOSCOW - Vladimir Putin could become the leader of a land even larger than Russia — a development that may hinge on talks beginning Thursday in neighboring Belarus.

ROME (AFP) - Sir Alex Ferguson was satisfied after his young Manchester United team played out an entertaining 1-1 draw with Roma here on Wednesday in an ultimately meaningless Champions League group F clash.

LONDON (AFP) - Arsenal were forced to settle for second place in Champions League Group H despite finishing with a 2-1 win against Steaua Bucharest on Wednesday.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Federal agents and local police launched raids in several Puerto Rican cities Wednesday with arrest warrants for 121 drug suspects, the FBI director for the U.S. Caribbean territory said.

SANTIAGO, Chile - A judge in southern Chile has sentenced a Catholic priest to recite seven psalms daily during three months as punishment for illegal parking.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - France honored Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer with the Legion of Honor Wednesday, days before his 100th birthday.

MEXICO CITY - Hundreds of thousands of people, some crawling on hands and knees, others carrying her image to be blessed, gathered Wednesday to honor the Mexico's beloved patron saint, the Virgin of Guadalupe.

SAO PAULO, Brazil - The U.S. couple suspected of sexually abusing minors in a nudist colony in southern Brazil ran an organization that gave free English lessons to local children, authorities said Wednesday.

PARIS (Reuters) - President Nicolas Sarkozy defended Muammar Gaddafi's visit to France on Wednesday, saying the Libyan leader was not considered a dictator in the Arab world.

ABUJA (AFP) - The former governor of Nigeria's oil rich Delta state, James Ibori, was arrested Wednesday on corruption and money-laundering charges, an official with the national anti-graft agency said.

MADRID, Spain - Algeria has seen more than its fair share of Islamist attacks, but Tuesday's carnage was different. Never before has such a prominent international site — U.N. offices — been struck with such deadly ferocity in the North African nation.

ABUJA, Nigeria - Nigeria's financial crimes agency on Wednesday arrested a former state governor in the country's oil-rich Niger Delta on allegations of corruption and money laundering, law enforcement officials said.

KIGALI (AFP) - Rwandan officials are interfering in the trial of the country's 1994 genocide suspects and even intimidating witnesses, the country's main genocide survivors' group said Wednesday.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States said Wednesday it expected North Korea to submit a full declaration of its nuclear activities around the end of the year despite some difficulties related to its highly enriched uranium program.

BALI, Indonesia - The United States insisted Wednesday it was taking steps to tackle rising temperatures and that many of its actions to promote energy efficiency and switch to cleaner technologies were going unnoticed by the rest of the world.

BEIJING - China's government has tempered this year's commemoration of Japan's notorious wartime massacre of civilians in the city of Nanjing, reflecting a drive to improve relations with Tokyo and avoid inflaming nationalist passions.

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (AFP) - Pakistan officials said Wednesday that dozens of militants were killed in various clashes in the country's restive northwest near the border with Afghanistan.

BEIJING (AFP) - A total of thirty-one people were killed and 11 injured in two separate fires in China on Wednesday, officials and state media said.

TORONTO (Reuters) - Pilots need clear rules and better training on how to properly handle a landing in severe weather, a Canadian safety agency concluded on Wednesday, following its investigation into the crash two years ago of an Air France jetliner in a heavy Toronto thunderstorm.

TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada's Royal Ontario Museum unveiled the skeleton of a massive dinosaur on Wednesday that had been lost for decades -- in its own collection.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - Canada's national police force was urged on Wednesday to reduce its use of Taser electric stun guns and get more information on the weapon's dangers and benefits.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An international arbitration tribunal said on Wednesday it expects to rule by the end of February on U.S. allegations that Canada has violated a bilateral trade pact on softwood lumber.

OTTAWA (Reuters) - The Canadian Parliament was set to overrule the country's nuclear watchdog on Wednesday and order a reactor that makes crucial radioisotopes for cancer tests be restarted immediately.

SYDNEY (AFP) - A passenger jet has made a historic landing on a new blue ice runway in Australia's Antarctic territory and regular flights are expected to start within a week, officials said Wednesday.

SYDNEY (AFP) - An Australian prosecutor who described nine males who gang-raped a 10-year-old Aboriginal girl as "naughty" was suspended from duty as outrage grew Wednesday over the fact they were not jailed.

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia's new government has begun talks on an apology to Aborigines for past injustices amid an outcry over the gang rape of a 10-year-old girl in a remote indigenous community in which her attackers escaped jail.

SYDNEY, Australia - In a Dec. 10 story about the failure of the welfare system in the sexual assault of a young girl in an Aboriginal community, The Associated Press misstated the year of the girl's rape. It was 2006, not 2005.

SYDNEY, Australia - Officials conceded Tuesday that Australia's welfare system failed a girl who was removed from a remote Aboriginal community after being sexually abused at age 7, then gang raped at age 10 when she was returned to live in the town.

BERLIN - A man nearly died from alcohol poisoning after quaffing two pints of vodka at an airport security check instead of handing it over to comply with new rules about carrying liquids aboard a plane, police said Wednesday.

AMARA, Iraq (AFP) - Four car bombs killed at least 33 people in Iraq on Wednesday, including 28 in the southern city of Amara, as Baghdad said it would retake control of Basra province from British forces on Sunday.

MADRID, Spain - Algeria has seen more than its fair share of Islamist attacks, but Tuesday's carnage was different. Never before has such a prominent international site — U.N. offices — been struck with such deadly ferocity in the North African nation.

BETHLEHEM, West Bank (Reuters) - Tawfiq Salsaa's olive wood nativity scene looks like thousands of others sold to pilgrims in Bethlehem at Christmas. Except in his version, a wall separates the baby Jesus from the three wise men.

TORONTO (Reuters) - A teenager who was said to have clashed with her father about whether she should wear a traditional Muslim head scarf died of injuries late on Monday, and her father told police he had killed her.