Most Viewed World News

ON BOARD FLIGHT SQ380 - The world's largest jetliner made aviation history Thursday, completing its first commercial flight from Singapore to Sydney with 455 passengers, some of them ensconced in luxury suites and double beds.

CAIRO, Egypt - Commercial satellite images show construction in Syria that resembles the early stages of a small North Korean-model nuclear reactor, a report said Wednesday, speculating that it was the site hit last month by an Israeli airstrike.

CIZRE, Turkey - Turkish warplanes and helicopter gunships reportedly pounded Kurdish rebel positions along the Turkey-Iraq border Wednesday, broadening military operations against insurgents amid persistent fears Turkey will launch a major offensive inside Iraq.

LONDON (Reuters) - Human rights violations in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank have become widespread since fighting in June between the Palestinian factions saw Hamas seize control of Gaza, Amnesty International said on Wednesday.

DERISHKIT, Iraq - Two Turkish jet fighters streaked across the mountain peaks near this border village Wednesday as part of an expanding military force gathered to pressure Kurdish rebels to abandon their hideouts in northern Iraq.

ROME - Iranian negotiators said Wednesday that progress could be made on resolving the standoff over Tehran's nuclear program, even as their president vowed to keep enriching uranium and dismissed U.N. Security Council resolutions imposing sanctions as "worthless papers."

BAGHDAD - The Iraqi government remains determined to expel the Blackwater USA security company and is searching for legal remedies to overturn an American-imposed decree that exempts all foreign bodyguards from prosecution under local laws, officials said Wednesday.

HAVANA - Fidel Castro is accusing President Bush of threatening the world with nuclear war and famine — an attack on Washington that comes as the White House is set to announce new plans to draw Cuba away from communism.

KARACHI, Pakistan - The detective leading Pakistan's inquiry into the suicide attack on Benazir Bhutto withdrew from the case Wednesday after the former prime minister accused him of involvement in the torture of her husband in 1999, a senior official said.

JERUSALEM - Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Thursday played down expectations for an upcoming U.S.-sponsored peace summit, saying the gathering would not produce a binding peace agreement with the Palestinians and might not even take place.

PARIS - The Normandy museum only wanted to do what was right: It offered to return a preserved, tattooed Maori head to New Zealand, an attempt to restore dignity to human remains that were long put on display as an exotic curiosity.

DAHUK, Iraq/CIZRE, Turkey (Reuters) - Turkish warplanes attacked a village in northern Iraq on Wednesday, an Iraqi Kurdish security official said, but Turkey said it wanted to hold back from a major incursion to give diplomacy a chance.

MEXICO CITY - At least 18 oil workers were killed when a drilling rig hit an oil platform in stormy weather, spilling gas and oil into the Gulf of Mexico, the state-owned oil company said Wednesday. Seven workers were still missing.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. forces hope to hand over half of Baghdad to Iraqi security control by the end of 2008, after violence in Iraq dropped to its lowest level since January 2006, the No. 2 U.S. general in Iraq said on Wednesday.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - One Saudi woman ignored the cancer growing in her breast for fear of seeing a male doctor. Another was summarily divorced on the mere suspicion she had the disease, while a third was dragged away from a mammogram machine — the technicians were men.

HANOI, Vietnam - Vietnam is having a Paris Hilton moment.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admitted on Wednesday the United States had mishandled the case of a Canadian who was deported to Syria and tortured, but she stopped short of an apology.

BAGHDAD (AFP) - The Iraqi government announced on Wednesday that it has decided to formally revoke the immunity from prosecution granted to private security companies operating in the war-ravaged country.

YANGON, Myanmar - Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest for 12 of the last 18 years, left her home Thursday afternoon to meet with a Myanmar government official, a diplomat said.

Istanbul, Turkey - As Turkey sends military convoys to its southeast border with Iraq, diplomatic efforts are intensifying to head off a cross-border incursion aimed at crushing the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

HAVANA - Cuba on Wednesday accused President Bush of threatening to take over the communist island by force in response to the U.S. leader's call for change in the country.

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Lebanese troops opened fire Thursday on Israeli warplanes flying low over southern Lebanon but no hits were reported, Lebanese officials said.

It was about 9 am when I reached one of the most crowded areas near one of the main bus stations in Baghdad. Our mini bus was stuck in the crazy traffic jam.

SYDNEY (AFP) - Footage apparently showing the man tipped to become Australia's next prime minister eating his own ear wax has proved a hit on Internet video sharing website YouTube.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council demanded on Wednesday that Sudan's government and Darfur rebels attend peace talks starting over the weekend and threatened action against anyone impeding the negotiations.