The Vatican denounces what it calls aggressive attempts to drag Pope Benedict XVI into the spreading scandals of pedophile priests in his German homeland.

From Ireland to Germany, Europe's many victims of child abuse in the Roman Catholic church are finally breaking social taboos and confronting the clergy to face its demons.

Israel's relationship with the U.S., a defining feature of the troubled Middle East, is under severe strain with diplomats trying to save newborn peace talks with the Palestinians.

A series of suicide bombings in Kandahar leave at least 30 people dead and dozens injured.

This border city and others near the eastern end of the U.S. border escaped the worst of Mexico's bloody drug war for years, but now the bodies are piling up, several journalists are reportedly missing or dead and once-busy streets are empty after dark.

A powerful drug cartel is buying off journalists in northern Mexico to work as spies and smother coverage of a spike in killings on the U.S. border in the latest attack on the media in Mexico.

Authorities in Ireland are investigating whether a second American woman was involved in a plot to kill a Swedish cartoonist.

Officials say at least 10 people were killed at a security checkpoint by a suicide bomber in a rickshaw in the latest of a series of attacks.

A suspect has been arrested in connection with a daring $331,000 raid on a poker tournament, according to German media reports.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's political coalition took an early vote lead Saturday in the election's all-important battleground of Baghdad, pulling away from its two closest rivals in the latest indication that Iraqis want a moderate government instead of Shiite religious hard-liners leading the postwar nation.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is hospitalized after complaining of stomach pains, according to reports.

A 92-year-old woman is charged with murder following the discovery of her 98-year-old husband's body at their home in Australia, police say.

Sri Lanka's main ethnic Tamil party on Friday dropped its demand for an independent state and said it is ready to accept regional self-rule, following the defeat of separatist Tamil Tiger rebels in a 25-year civil war.

Gunmen burst into a party in western Mexico and killed eight youths and left another person wounded on Friday.

Thousands of red-shirted, anti-government demonstrators converge on the Thai capital, vowing to oust the government in a mass display of muscle.

The death toll from a massive flood that devastated a village in southern Kazakhstan has risen to 30, officials said Saturday.

With torrential rains expected any day, authorities are not even close to providing the shelter they promised for tens of thousands of Haitians left homeless by January's earthquake.