French officials have denied reports suggesting that President Nicolas Sarkozy's office used its clout to try to help one of his sons win a grant for hip-hop music projects. Read More

Veterans saluted and mourners laid flowers on hearses as hundreds paid tribute Tuesday to six soldiers killed in Afghanistan _ including five shot to death by an Afghan police officer who turned against them. Read More

Former Liberian President Charles Taylor clashed with a war crimes trial attorney Tuesday just minutes after she began cross examining him about his repeated denials of responsibility for atrocities by rebels during Sierra Leone's brutal civil war. Read More

A badly damaged North Korean patrol ship retreated in flames Tuesday after a skirmish with a South Korean naval vessel along their disputed western coast, South Korean officials said. Read More

Political wrangling by Japan's new government over plans to move a major U.S. Marine base on Okinawa has opened a wide rift in Washington's most important Asian alliance ahead of President Barack Obama's visit later this week. Read More

A British Virgin Islands judge ruled Tuesday that a former Rhode Island dive shop owner must serve at least 25 years of a mandatory life sentence for killing his wife on a Caribbean scuba outing in 1999, rejecting his lawyers' bid for leniency. Read More

France's President Nicolas Sarkozy urged Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday to stay in power to keep hopes for Mideast peace alive. Read More

At least 10,000 Salvadorans are in urgent need of food aid after devastating floods and mudslides that damaged crops, destroyed homes and killed 130 people, the U.N. World Food Program said Tuesday. Read More

Saudi Arabia on Tuesday imposed a naval blockade on the Red Sea coast of northern Yemen to combat Shiite rebels along its border, an adviser to the government said, in the latest escalation of fighting in the southern Arabian peninsula. Read More

The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has significantly expanded its ability to strike deep into Israel with rockets that can now reach the Jewish state's largest cities, and now possesses tens of thousands of projectiles, Israel's army chief said Tuesday. Read More

A car bomb exploded outside a crowded market in northwestern Pakistan on Tuesday, killing at least 24 people in the latest attack by suspected militants apparently aimed at avenging an army offensive along the Afghan border. Read More

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Tuesday that his foreign policy chief, David Miliband, is not in line for a major European Union job. Read More

A new Russian research module is on its way to the International Space Station. Read More

A woman expelled for wearing a mini-dress that caused a near riot at a Brazilian college and made her an Internet sensation said all she wants is to go back to school. Well, she got her way. Read More

NATO leaders expect member states to commit more troops to train Afghanistan's expanding security forces at a meeting of alliance military representatives this month, officials said Tuesday. Read More

Iraq's prime minister on Tuesday denied reports he will form an alliance with the nation's leading Shiite parties ahead of national polls in January. Read More

China lashed out at the Dalai Lama's visit to a disputed border region in India on Tuesday, saying his trip to the area revealed the exiled Tibetan leader's separatist agenda. Read More

Colombia says at least nine soldiers have been killed and four wounded in combat with leftist rebels in a mountainous western region. Read More

Thailand's ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, whose political battle against his successors has left his country bitterly divided, received a warm welcome Tuesday in neighboring Cambodia, which shares his disdain for the current government in Bangkok. Read More

Lawyers say two Malawian opposition leaders have been convicted of sedition and inciting violence while campaigning. Read More