Ships are on alert and maritime authorities are monitoring the movements of hundreds of menacing icebergs drifting toward New Zealand in the southern Pacific Ocean, officials said. Read More

The Taliban's reclusive leader has ruled out talks with President Hamid Karzai and called on Afghans to break off relations with his "stooge" administration. Read More

A Swiss adventurer went down in the Atlantic on Wednesday while trying to fly from Morocco to Spain with jet-powered wings strapped to his back. A rescue helicopter pulled him from the water and he appeared unhurt. Read More

Saddam Hussein's regime was not Britain's main security concern in the years before the invasion of Iraq, Foreign Office officials testified Wednesday at an inquiry probing Britain's role in the war. Read More

Israel's prime minister on Wednesday proposed a 10-month freeze on West Bank settlement construction in what he said was an attempt to jumpstart Mideast peace talks. Read More

Assailants broke into a house and killed six family members before dawn Wednesday in an area north of Baghdad that was once a stronghold of al-Qaida in Iraq, Iraqi officials said. Read More

A wedding was called off because international troops killed the groom. A suicide bomber blew himself up in front of a police patrol. An old woman was beaten by the Taliban after she tried to stop them from taking her son. Read More

Pakistan charged seven men on Wednesday in last year's Mumbai terror attacks, its first indictments in a case watched closely by India and the United States to see if Islamabad makes good on promises to punish those responsible. Read More

Judges at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal have ordered the resumption of a Serb nationalist's trial almost a year after it was suspended amid claims of witness intimidation, the court announced Wednesday. Read More

A rare Siberian tiger fitted by Vladimir Putin with a radio-tracking collar has vanished, a Russian environmentalist said Wednesday, dramatizing the plight of a species some conservationists fear may be approaching extinction. Read More

China has detected eight cases of swine flu mutation, a health official said Wednesday, amid longstanding concerns among scientists that the virus could change into a more dangerous form. Read More

A United Nations report leaked to The Associated Press confirms that one of Africa's most brutal rebel movements relies on a vast, international network of supporters in at least 25 countries including in the United States and Europe who facilitate arms trafficking, money transfers and day-to-day operational support. Read More

Visitors to South Africa's premier holiday destination who are worried about becoming victims of the country's high crime rate could find themselves instead robbed by a more furry kind of felon: baboons. Read More

Saudi Arabia should overturn a death sentence imposed on a Lebanese national convicted of practicing witchcraft during a visit to the conservative kingdom, an international human rights group said in a report late Tuesday. Read More

An Iranian cleric says religious authorities have started taking control of schools, part of a wider ideological drive by hard-liners to wage what authorities call a "soft war" against Western influence. Read More

Prosecutors in the genocide trial of a former Khmer Rouge prison chief demanded a 40-year jail sentence Wednesday for a man they described as responsible for snuffing out innocent lives and spreading terror across Cambodia. Read More

Witnesses testifying against two Congolese warlords at the International Criminal Court have been threatened and the court does not have the resources to fully protect them, a senior investigator testified Wednesday. Read More

The Great Debate gets under way Wednesday, led off with a grand question: "For you, what does it mean to be French?" Read More

The Taliban's reclusive leader has issued a Muslim holiday message calling on Afghans to break off relations with the government, which he calls a "stooge" administration. Read More

The virus that causes AIDS is now spreading fastest in China through heterosexual sex, a trend demanding new strategies to stave off a rebound in the epidemic after years of progress in containing it, a United Nations report said. Read More