ALL RECENT AP STORIES

China announced plans Thursday to drastically boost its energy efficiency as part of its contribution to the fight against global warming.

The State Council announcement ahead of next month's Copenhagen climate summit pledges that China will cut carbon dioxide emissions per unit of gross domestic product by 40 to 45 percent by 2020 compared with levels in 2005.

The State Council, or Cabinet, said it "is a voluntary action taken by the Chinese government based on its own national conditions

Israel's foreign minister said Thursday it is up to the Palestinians to decide whether to resume Mideast peace talks now that Israel has announced a settlement freeze.

Avigdor Lieberman told Israel's Army Radio that the "ball is in the Palestinian court."

His comments came a day after Israel proposed a 10-month halt in West Bank settlement construction, which the Palestinians swiftly rejected because it did not include east Jerusalem.

The Obama administration has been urging

Black-clad commandos rappelled down a building and Mumbai's police showed off their new gear Thursday in what was intended as a reassuring display of force a year after a terror attack across the city killed 166 people.

Activists fear the security upgrades are not enough to prevent a repeat of the attack that laid siege to luxury hotels, turned a train station into a scene of carnage and paralyzed India's commercial heart for 60 hours.

The anniversary of the attack was commemorated

Thanksgiving Day for soldiers in this valley ringed by towering snowy peaks began with a 6-mile (10-kilometer) slog to aid village schools without desks and windows, and promises to end with five, once scrawny local turkeys soldiers have been fattening up for the past month.

"Just another day, another mission," several soldiers said as a 25-man patrol from Able Troop, 3-71 Cavalry Squadron, 10th Mountain Division, set out on a cold morning under brilliantly blue skies.

Others let

Who killed Victor Jara?

The notorious murder of the popular folk singer _ who became a symbol of resistance after he was tortured and shot to death in the chaotic first days of Chile's 1973 coup _ has never been solved.

The soldiers involved were ordered long ago to carry their secrets to their graves or face a similar fate. Jara's brutal death _ his hands were smashed, head beaten and body pumped with at least 44 bullets _ was meant as a warning to anyone who challenged Gen. Augusto

State authorities plan to corral about 6,000 wild camels with helicopters and gun them down after they overran a small town in Australia's Outback in search of water, trampling fences, smashing tanks and contaminating supplies.

The Northern Territory government announced its plan Wednesday for Docker River, a town of 350 residents where thirsty camels have been arriving daily for weeks because of drought conditions in the region.

"The community of Docker River is under siege by 6,000

A daily newspaper in Taiwan has been fined for illustrating news stories involving crime and violence in vivid animation on its Web site, an official said Thursday.

The Apple Daily was fined 500,000 New Taiwan dollars ($15,500) Wednesday for using motion graphics to reconstruct and illustrate stories of rape, sexual assault and violence that appeared in the newspaper, said Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin.

"We respect news freedom, but news media must not air improper content with no restraint

Mexican President Felipe Calderon said in an interview that crime gangs and drug cartels were "taking over Mexico" before he launched his offensive against them, and said the crackdown had achieved uneven results.

Calderon's comments were taped prior to his statement Wednesday that reducing poverty is now "the first priority" for his administration. But in a previously-recorded interview with the news network Televisa, Calderon made it clear he wasn't abandoning the war on drugs.

"Here

Mexican President Felipe Calderon said Wednesday that the top priority in the second half of his term will be reducing poverty, after the war against drug cartels took center stage in the first three years of his administration.

Calderon launched a major offensive against drug cartels shortly after taking office in December 2006, and as recently as June of this year said that "our most important objective as a government is crime, and organized crime."

But with the offensive bogged

A scion of a powerful clan suspected in the massacre of 57 people in an election caravan in the southern Philippines turned himself in Thursday amid mounting pressure on the government to crack down on lawlessness and warlords.

The dead from Monday's massacre include the wife, family and dozens of journalists and supporters of a gubernatorial candidate who wanted to challenge the rival Ampatuan clan, which has ruled Maguindanao province unopposed for years.

Andal Ampatuan Jr., a town

State authorities plan to corral about 6,000 wild camels with helicopters and gun them down after they overran a small town in Australia's Outback in search of water, trampling fences, smashing tanks and contaminating supplies.

The Northern Territory government announced its plan Wednesday for Docker River, a town of 350 residents where thirsty camels have been arriving daily for weeks.

"The community of Docker River is under siege by 6,000 marauding, wild camels," local government

Israel on Wednesday proposed a 10-month halt to new construction in West Bank settlements as a step toward restarting Mideast peace negotiations. Washington welcomed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's offer, but the Palestinians swiftly rejected it because it did not include a building freeze in Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem, the mainly Arab sector of the city they want as the capital of a future state.

The Obama administration welcomed the Israeli decision, but coolly.

Secretary

Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sought to expand Tehran's influence in Latin America and deepen his alliance with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez on Wednesday in a visit that gave him a platform to defend his country's nuclear program.

Both leaders roundly denounced U.S. "imperialism," and Chavez also called Israel "a murderous arm of the Yankee empire."

Chavez rebuked Israeli President Shimon Peres for his recent prediction that the people of Venezuela and Iran will soon make their leaders

One of Africa's most brutal rebel movements relies on a vast, international network of supporters in at least 25 countries, including the United States and some in Europe, a United Nations report said.

The U.N. findings show that the network of people help rebels in Congo buy arms and transfer money. The findings were slated to be discussed by the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday and are a scathing indictment of how little the international community has done to cut off logistical support

A helicopter belonging to an international military contractor has gone missing in Afghanistan, officials said Thursday.

The helicopter for Supreme Global Service Solutions has been missing since late Tuesday, said NATO spokesman Maj. Steven Coll. A Kabul representative for the Virginia-based company declined to comment and press officers elsewhere could not be immediately reached. Supreme supplies food and logistics services military bases across Afghanistan.

Police and international

A roadside bomb targeting a police officer exploded in the main northwestern city of Peshawar on Thursday, injuring three people in the latest of a wave of attacks to strike the area since the army launched a major anti-Taliban offensive last month.

The bomb was detonated by remote control as Riaz Ulislam, the head of a police station in Peshawar, was passing by in his vehicle in a residential area of Peshawar near a school, said Hakim Khan, a police officer at the scene of the attack.

The

The prison chief being tried for running a Khmer Rouge torture center apologized but said he was only following orders and couldn't stop the abuse and the thousands of killings there, as prosecutors sought a 40-year prison sentence.

Defense attorneys in Cambodia's first genocide tribunal continued their closing arguments Thursday. Kaing Guek Eav, 67, is charged with crimes against humanity, war crimes, murder and torture, which carry a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

Some

It read like a muckraking expose: A magazine revealed a system of secret detention centers in Beijing where Chinese citizens are forcibly held and sometimes beaten to prevent them from lodging formal complaints with the central government.

But the report appeared in the state-run magazine Liaowang (Outlook), which is written for the government elite and published by China's official Xinhua News Agency.

For some activist groups, the two state-sanctioned articles published Tuesday signal

Alejandro "Bong" Reblando, a veteran Filipino journalist and former Associated Press stringer, was among at least 18 reporters killed in an attack on an election caravan, authorities said. He was 53.

The attack Monday left 57 dead in the Philippines' worst election massacre.

Reblando and the other journalists were accompanying relatives and supporters of a gubernatorial candidate in Maguindanao province when they were ambushed and shot dead.

Media groups say it was the highest

Thousands of people marched through Puerto Rico's capital on Wednesday, celebrating the life of a gay teenager whose dismembered, burned body was found dumped along a road in a small mountain town.

The crowd, many of them carrying candles as a breezy dusk settled over San Juan, were also demanding that authorities invoke a law for the first time covering crimes based on sexual orientation in the U.S. territory.

"We're gay people, straight people, young people, old people. It is Puerto

One of eight women on an Antarctic ski trek to the South Pole has been forced to quit the adventure after suffering frostbite just three days into the 40-day journey, the team announced on its Web site.

Kim-Marie Spence, 30, from Kingston, Jamaica, said she was flying out of Antarctica on medical advice after frostbite blackened several of her fingers.

"I have frostbite which goes to show what kind of place Antarctica is _ it's really tough and I have the blackened fingers to prove

A Colombian court has convicted a retired army general of murder and sentenced him to 40 years in prison for his role in a notorious 1997 massacre by far-right militias.

The sentence of ex-Gen. Jaime Humberto Uscategui is the most severe imposed on a senior Colombian officer in a case of collusion with right-wing death squads.

A paramilitary force murdered at least 49 suspected guerrilla sympathizers in the village of Mapiripan from July 15-20, 1997. At the time, Uscategui was a brigade

China will seek binding pollution targets for developed countries and reject similar requirements for itself at an international climate summit next month, China's top climate envoy said Wednesday.

Yu Qingtai said it is unfair that all countries be required to play a role combating global warming since most of the environmental damage was caused by developed nations during their industrialization over the last 100 to 200 years.

"Developed countries should not make requirements of

Officials say flooding from heavy rains has killed 12 people in three South American nations and forced more than 20,000 to flee their homes.

Most of the dead are in southern Brazil _ including eight in Rio Grande do Sul, according to the state's Civil Defense Department.

Sustained stormy weather has saturated the region and caused the river between Uruguay and Argentina to overflow its banks.

Government agencies report that 10,000 people have been evacuated in Brazil, along

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.

The dead included a couple and two daughters, and two brothers of the husband, according to a police officer in Tarmiyah, 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of the capital. The throats of two women were slit, while the other four people were shot execution-style; two of the couple's other children were not harmed.

A

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.

Mullah Omar's message ahead of Eid comes a week after President Hamid Karzai reached out to the Taliban during his inauguration speech, saying it was important to include in the government former Taliban who were ready to renounce terrorism.

The message was posted on a Web site used by the Taliban, and was also

With cutting-edge anti-missile systems and two new submarines that can carry nuclear weapons, Israel is readying a new generation of armaments designed to defend itself against distant Iran as well as Tehran's proxy armies on its borders.

Having failed to crush Hamas' firepower in its Gaza offensive last winter, or Hezbollah's in its 2006 war in Lebanon, Israel is turning to an increasingly sophisticated mix of defensive technology.

A system that can unleash a metallic cloud to shoot

Top Israeli diplomats have made a rare visit to the Persian Gulf state of Oman this week to discuss Middle East peace efforts, said a senior Omani official Wednesday.

The official said Yossi Gal, director general of Israel's Foreign Ministry, headed the Israeli team in discussions with their Omani counteraparts.

He said Oman supports "any effort that would help to resume the peace talks." The meeting was held Sunday, he said, on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized

Helped by a therapist, Rom Houben's outstretched finger tapped with surprising speed on a computer touchscreen, spelling out how he felt "alone, lonely, frustrated" in the 23 years he was trapped inside a paralyzed body.

After a doctor found he was wrongly diagnosed as being in a vegetative state, and worked out a way for him to communicate, Houben said he now feels reborn.

"And just like with a baby, it happens with a lot of stumbling," the 46-year-old Belgian wrote, tapping out

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

Kaing Guek Eav commanded the notorious S-21 prison, where those accused of disloyalty to the xenophobic communist regime were held. He oversaw the torture and execution of about 16,000 men, women and children during the Khmer Rouge's 1975-79 rule.

Some 1.7 million Cambodians

A few miles (kilometers) off the main highway, on a remote hilltop covered with waist-high grass, bodies lay with twisted hands reaching in the air. They had been shot point-blank.

Nearby, bodies were being laid out under banana leaves Tuesday as police _ their faces covered against the stench _ unearthed a mass grave containing 22 victims from Monday's ambush on an election caravan. The discovery brought the death toll to 46 _ an unprecedented act of violence at the outset of the country's

The number of dead in China's worst mining accident in two years rose to 106 Wednesday after two more bodies were pulled out of the coal mine, state media said.

The state-run Xinhua News Agency cited local authorities as saying the bodies of two workers were retrieved Wednesday morning. The report said the search continued for the last two people missing under ground at the state-run Xinxing mine in Hegang city, Heilongjiang province.

China's mine safety authorities have blamed crowded

Helped by a therapist, Rom Houben's outstretched finger tapped with surprising speed on a computer touchscreen, spelling out how he felt "alone, lonely, frustrated" in the 23 years he was trapped inside a paralyzed body.

After a doctor found he was wrongly diagnosed as being in a vegetative state, and worked out a way for him to communicate, Houben said he now feels reborn.

"And just like with a baby, it happens with a lot of stumbling," the 46-year-old Belgian wrote, tapping out

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.

The cheeky primates have learned how to open car doors and jump through windows in pursuit of tasty sandwiches and snacks.

City officials are battling to control the increasingly aggressive troupes and there are fears the problem will only worsen with the influx of visitors to Cape

Rio de Janeiro's posh beach neighborhoods lost power for hours in sweltering summer weather Tuesday, prompting restaurants to toss out spoiled food and business owners to send employees home.

The outage came two weeks after a massive blackout left more than 60 million people in the dark and raised questions about the nation's ability to host the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio.

Light SA, which supplies electricity to the city of 6 million, said only 12,000 clients

Formerly conjoined twin sisters Trishna and Krishna are enjoying a favorite DVD and trying new foods as they continue their recovery from marathon separation surgery, doctors said.

Royal Children's Hospital chief of surgery Leo Donnan said Tuesday that Trishna is now sampling bread and fruit for the first time in her life, as she previously got her nutrition from her sister. The twins turn 3 next month.

Krishna is happily watching DVDs of "The Wiggles," famous Australian children's

Two suspected Irish Republican Army dissidents have been charged with attempting to kill an off-duty police officer near the province's border with the Republic of Ireland last week, police said Tuesday.

The pair, 26 and 32, were among three suspects arrested after gunmen tried to ambush the officer in Garrison, a lakeside border village in the westernmost corner of Northern Ireland on Saturday.

The botched attack came the same day Irish Republican Army dissidents left a 400-pound

A NASA astronaut says he wants to help Mexican officials start the country's first space agency.

Astronaut Jose Hernandez says he has no plans to leave his job at NASA, but hopes to help Mexico's program get off the ground.

Hernandez, the U.S.-born son of Mexican migrant farm workers who spent much of his childhood moving between Mexico and the U.S., lobbied for a space program in meetings with Mexican lawmakers Tuesday.

He says officials must invest more money in science, technology

President Barack Obama's top military adviser attended the latest talks with Russia to replace an expiring Cold War-era arms control agreement, the U.S. said Tuesday.

Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with Russian officials from Sunday to Tuesday, U.S. spokesman in Geneva Michael Parmly said.

Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev want to conclude a new treaty by Dec. 5, when the 1991 START I accord cutting U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals expires.

Mullen

Police say a jaguar prowling the lush jungles of Guyana killed a gold and diamond miner as he fetched water from a creek.

A police statement says fellow miners found 43-year-old Kurt Rodrigues after the mauling. He died while en route to a hospital.

Rupununi Region vice chairwoman Claire Singh said Tuesday it's unusual for jaguars to attack people.

But Guyanese cattle and poultry farmers often complain that jaguars and ocelots maul their livestock.

Monday's attack occurred

British authorities say they're searching for a leather-bound notebook Charles Darwin used in developing his theory of natural selection.

English Heritage made the appeal Tuesday _ the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin's "On the Origin of Species." English Heritage says thieves stole the notes in the 1970s or 1980s.

Darwin used the journal on a 1835 visit to the Galapagos Islands. It contains handwritten notes later developed into Darwin's book, the basis for the modern

Three Afghan Cabinet officials and 12 former ministers are under investigation for alleged corruption, the attorney general's office said Tuesday, announcing cases that could signal whether the government is serious about fighting graft in its ranks.

President Hamid Karzai pledged in his second inaugural address last week to support the arrests of anyone involved in corruption. International leaders, who have threatened to hold back troops and development money unless Karzai tackles the

An Indian government investigation released Tuesday into the 1992 demolition of a mosque by a raging mob reportedly accused top Hindu nationalist politicians of complicity in the attack that sparked nationwide ethnic riots, leaving 2,000 people dead.

The scathing report, handed to parliament 17 years after the attack, exposed the painful religious divide plaguing a nation that prides itself as a model of a multiethnic, secular democracy.

The report, a copy of which was posted by NDTV

A convicted Mafia boss who got out of jail by faking paralysis and anorexia has been arrested at a restaurant after more than two months on the run, police in Sicily said Tuesday.

Officers arrested Carmelo Di Stefano on Monday as he dined at a seaside village near the Sicilian city of Catania, which he had reached at the wheel of a sports car.

Police official Giovanni Signer said when officers asked him why he was not in a wheelchair, Di Stefano answered: "It's a miracle!"

Di

A 6.8-magnitude earthquake struck off the Pacific island nation of Tonga, sending panicked residents into the streets at night, but there were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

Residents in the capital, Nuku'alofa, 120 miles (195 kilometers) southwest of the epicenter, said their homes rattled, and the tremors set off frantic barking of dogs.

"There's no indication of damage right now in this area," said Faleo Vico, the duty Weather Office staffer in Nuku'alofa.

In

Five Pakistani army officers have been detained for questioning over possible links to two U.S. terror suspects accused of plotting an armed attack on a Danish newspaper, intelligence officials said Tuesday.

The detentions underscore long-standing allegations that elements in Pakistan support a militant group known as Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is devoted to fighting the country's arch enemy, India.

The group is blamed for last year's terror attacks in Mumbai and other strikes in India

A remote-controlled bomb planted in a water station exploded in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday, killing six members of a family, including four children, authorities and a relative said.

The victims were caught in the blast as they traveled in a car on a shopping trip ahead of the Muslim holiday of Eid this weekend, relative Qimat Khan told Associated Press Television at the scene in the eastern province of Khost.

Taher Khan Sabari, deputy provincial governor, said the dead included

Renowned Chinese literature translator Yang Xianyi has died, China's official Xinhua News Agency said Tuesday. He was 94.

Together with his British wife, Gladys Taylor, Yang translated classics such as the 18th century "A Dream of Red Mansions" as well as more modern works by 20th century writers such Lu Xun.

Born in the northern port of Tianjin in 1915, Yang was sent by his wealthy family to study classics at Oxford University in 1936, where he met Taylor.

Returning to China

Israel's military says it has carried out three airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, targeting a weapons-manufacturing facility and weapons smuggling tunnels.

The military says the aerial assaults early Tuesday came in response to two rockets Palestinian militants fired at southern Israel from Gaza a day earlier. No one was injured by the rocket fire.

The rocket attacks violated an agreement over the weekend by militant factions in Gaza to halt them.

Separately, Gaza's Islamic Hamas

Prosecutors in the genocide trial of a former Khmer Rouge prison chief demanded a lengthy jail term Tuesday, calling him the personification of ruthless efficiency in the killing of thousands of Cambodian prisoners.

Kaing Guek Eav commanded the notorious S-21 prison, where those accused of disloyalty to the xenophobic communist regime were held. He oversaw the torture and execution of about 16,000 men, women and children during the Khmer Rouge's 1975-79 rule.

If the U.N.-assisted

Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has declared a state of emergency in two southern provinces after gunmen killed at least 24 people in an attack on an election caravan.

Arroyo spokesman Serge Remonde says Tuesday's order will enable the military and police to restore order and prevent lawless violence. The measures include checkpoints and random searches by the authorities, but details have not yet been released.

Officials have promised to make arrests in the country's

Australia's government took a key step toward passing legislation to curb greenhouse gas emissions by negotiating a compromise deal with the opposition Liberal Party, and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd urged lawmakers Tuesday to support the bill.

The Senate rejected similar legislation in a vote in August with only the governing Labor Party's 32 senators supporting the bills in the 76-seat senate.

The government on Tuesday released details of a compromise deal negotiated with the main

Renowned Chinese literature translator Yang Xianyi has died at the age of 94, China's official Xinhua News Agency said Tuesday.

Together with his British wife, Gladys Taylor, Yang translated classics such as the 18th century "A Dream of Red Mansions" as well as more modern works by 20th century writers such Lu Xun.

Born in the northern treaty port of Tianjin in 1915, Yang was sent by his wealthy family to study classics at Oxford University in 1936, where he met Taylor.

Returning

The mayor of a wealthy suburb of this northern industrial city said Monday that he has sent his family to the United States for their own safety as he pursues his campaign against extortion and kidnapping gangs.

Mayor Mauricio Fernandez of San Pedro Garza Garcia, who drew questions a few weeks ago when he announced during a speech that a kidnapping gang leader was dead before police found the body, said some of his relatives have been targeted by kidnap plots and he himself has received

Honduran President Manuel Zelaya said Monday the United States has weakened efforts to reverse the coup that ousted him, while a U.S. envoy says his country has clearly opposed the ouster and will examine upcoming elections closely for fairness.

Zelaya told the Radio Globo station that the Nov. 29 presidential elections are an attempt to legitimize his ouster, and said "whoever is elected will be as illegitimate as (Roberto) Micheletti," the interim president who replaced him.

In

Ships in the south Pacific Ocean have been alerted that groups of icebergs believed to have split off Antarctic ice shelves are drifting north toward New Zealand, officials said Tuesday.

The alert comes three years after cold weather and favorable ocean currents saw dozens of icebergs float close to New Zealand's southern shores for the first time in 75 years.

Rodney Russ, expedition leader on the tourist ship Spirit of Enderby, spotted one iceberg Monday, 57 miles (92 kilometers)

China will send two giant pandas to an Australian zoo this Friday as part of a joint research program.

Four-year-old male Wang Wang and 3-year-old female Fu Ni will be loaned to Australia for 10 years, according to Zhang Hemin, head of the Wolong Nature Reserve Administration, the official Xinhua News Agency said Tuesday. The two pandas are heading to Adelaide Zoo.

China's President Hu Jintao offered the pandas as a goodwill gesture during a 2007 visit to Australia.

China often

For 23 torturous years, Rom Houben says he lay trapped in his paralyzed body, aware of what was going on around him but unable to tell anyone or even cry out.

The car-crash victim had been diagnosed as being in a vegetative state but appears to have been conscious the whole time. An expert using a specialized type of brain scan that was not available in the 1980s finally realized it, and unlocked Houben's mind again.

The 46-year-old Houben is now communicating with one finger and

A kangaroo startled by a man walking his dog attacked the pair, pinning the pet underwater and slashing the owner in the abdomen with its hind legs. The Australian, Chris Rickard, was in stable condition Monday after the attack, which ended when the 49-year-old elbowed the kangaroo in the throat.

Rickard said he was walking his blue heeler, Rocky, on Sunday morning when they surprised a sleeping kangaroo in Arthur's Creek northeast of Melbourne. The dog chased the animal into a pond, when

The world's largest atom smasher made another leap forward Monday by circulating beams of protons in opposite directions at the same time and causing the first particle collisions in the $10 billion machine after more than a year of repairs, organizers said.

The true test of the Large Hadron Collider will come in the first two months of 2010, when scientists plan to start deliberately crashing protons into each other to see what they can discover about the makeup of the universe and

Israel TV reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is proposing a 10-month freeze in construction in Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

The TV report said the freeze would not apply to Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem. Palestinians claim that part of the city as their capital.

Israeli and Palestinian officials were not available for comment late Monday. The report quoted unnamed Israeli officials.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has demanded a total freeze

Argentina's president says Israel and the United States should do more to push for peace in the Middle East.

Cristina Fernandez said while hosting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday that every participant needs to comply with international agreements.

But she singled out the U.S. in particular, saying it can do more than it has. Last week, Fernandez urged visiting Israeli President Shimon Peres to recognize a Palestinian state.

For his part, Abbas urged President

Rescuers plucked a woman from choppy waters Monday, some 25 hours after she jumped from a crowded ferry that sank in a storm off Indonesia's Sumatra island. At least 29 people drowned, and 20 others were missing.

A total of 255 survivors have been pulled from the sea since Sunday when the Dumai Express 10 was hit by towering waves and sank about 90 minutes into an inter-island trip from Batam to Dumai in Riau, a province off Sumatra island in western Indonesia. A second ferry ran aground

The U.S. on Monday agreed to hand out millions of dollars in development aid to provinces in Afghanistan that have eliminated or reduced the production of opium poppies, the raw ingredient in making heroin.

The poppy crop in Afghanistan, which produces 90 percent of the world's supply of opium, is linked to corruption, addiction and a drug trade that bankrolls the Taliban insurgency.

Curbing the cultivation of poppies is the goal of a U.S. program that has doled out $80 million (54

Russia's Defense Ministry says eight military personnel were killed when a truckload of ammunition exploded as they cleaned up after a huge conflagration at a munitions depot earlier this month.

Ministry spokesman Alexei Kuznetsov said two others were injured in Monday's accident at the arsenal in Ulyanovsk, 720 kilometers (430 miles) east of Moscow.

Kuznetsov said a shell detonated when military personnel were loading ammunition onto a truck to be taken away and destroyed. That set

Nearly half of Europe's unemployed stay out of work for at least a year, a European Union report said Monday, far more than in the U.S.

Some 4 million people have lost their jobs since last year's financial crisis triggered an economic downturn across the 27-nation bloc, which is not expected to fully recover until 2011.

The EU's executive commission said long-term unemployment in the region is a serious threat because "close to 45 percent of all unemployment spells last longer than

Gunfire hit the home of two American lecturers in Indonesia's western province of Aceh on Monday, but no one was injured.

It is the third time this month foreigners have been targeted in Aceh, a poor province on Indonesia's westernmost tip, where a massive reconstruction effort has been under way since the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

Gunmen shot at the house of two English teachers before dawn Monday, said Col. Bambang Soetjahjo, a local police official. He said the motive

A man who blames the Church of Scientology for his brother's suicide added his voice Monday to calls for an Australia Senate inquiry into the religion.

Belfast-born Stephen McBride, 35, flew from the west coast city of Perth to Canberra on Monday to support a senator's call for an inquiry into the church.

The Senate could vote as early as Tuesday on Sen. Nick Xenophon's motion to hold a wide-reaching inquiry into the church that was founded in 1953 by the late U.S. science fiction

Sri Lanka's president signed a decree Monday calling for early elections, hoping to take advantage of his popularity after ending the country's 25-year civil war to win a new six-year term.

However, President Mahinda Rajapaksa could face a strong challenge from another war hero, former army chief Gen. Sarath Fonseka.

Fonseka, who accused the government of sidelining him after the war, is expected to lead a coalition of opposition parties in the election.

Rajapaksa met with leaders

Residents of flood-battered northern England are struggling back to work, school and homes after swollen rivers inundated roads and caused several bridges to collapse.

Police said residents and business owners in the hardest-hit town, Cockermouth, would be allowed to return to their properties Monday.

Some of the heaviest rainfall ever recorded in Britain triggered floods in the mountainous Lake District last week.

More than 1,000 homes were flooded and people had to be rescued

Philippine police searched for an American who escaped after allegedly killing a government official's son in a road-rage shooting _ the second homicide case against him, officials said Monday.

Jason Ivler, 28, from Hawaii, was identified by witnesses as a driver involved in a traffic accident in Manila on Wednesday. It led to a heated argument during which Ivler allegedly chased and shot to death another driver, Renato Victor Ebarle Jr., said police Chief Superintendent Elmo G. San Diego.

Ebarle's

A U.S. Navy serviceman was found not guilty Monday of sexually assaulting a prostitute at a brothel while on shore leave in Australia's biggest city.

A New South Wales District Court jury cleared Petty Officer Timothy Davis, 25, of a charge of sexual intercourse without consent, with the aggravating factor of causing the woman actual bodily harm. The charge carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

Davis was one of 3,000 Marines and Navy personnel on shore leave in Sydney after

Eight women set out Monday from their base camp on Antarctica to ski to the South Pole in a trek to mark the 60th anniversary of the Commonwealth grouping of 53 former British colonies.

Skiing six to 10 hours a day, they expect to travel 500 miles (800 kilometers) across the frozen southern continent to the pole in about 40 days. Each is towing a sledge with food and gear weighing some 175 pounds (80 kilograms).

The Commonwealth Women's Antarctic Expedition will face blinding blizzards,

Grieving miners' families demanded answers Monday from mining officials about the underground gas explosion that left at least 104 men dead in northeastern China.

The massive blast Saturday in Hegang city in frigid Heilongjiang province erupted at night when some 500 miners were working below ground. Most escaped, but 104 were confirmed dead and an additional four were missing and feared dead, the official Xinhua news agency reported Monday.

The explosion at the Xinxing coal mine,

Mirna Torres salsas with a gray-bearded man for $1.50 a dance in the Barba Azul, a dark yet garish cabaret decorated like an erotic carnival fun house.

The place is nearly empty, looking as neglected as its bas-reliefs of voluptuous naked women, some with broken nipples and missing feet.

Once the bohemian underbelly of a legendary nightlife that saw Fidel Castro plot his revolution and Pancho Villa fire a bullet in a bar, dance-for-peso clubs like the Barba Azul are dying.

The

Iran on Sunday began large-scale air defense war games aimed at protecting its nuclear facilities from attack, state TV reported, as an air force commander boasted the country could deter any military strike by Israel.

It said the five-day drill will cover an area a third of the size of Iran and spread across the central, western and southern parts of the country.

Gen. Ahmad Mighani, head of an air force unit in charge of responding to threats to Iran's air space, said Saturday

The U.S. military says an American soldier has been killed in action in Iraq.

A military statement said the soldier from the Multi-National Division _ South died on Sunday.

No further details were immediately available.

The soldier's name is being withheld until family members can be notified.

The death raises to at least 4,364 the number of U.S. military personnel who have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

Angry soccer fans rampaged through a posh diplomatic neighborhood in Cairo over the weekend, smashing shop windows and shouting obscenities in a frenzy fed by venomous headlines that portrayed Algerians as barbaric terrorists with a history of violence.

Egyptians were infuriated by media reports alleging their fans were brutalized by their Algerian rivals after Algeria won a playoff match Wednesday in Khartoum, Sudan, to qualify for the 2010 World Cup.

Egypt's government _ often bemoaned

A Canadian woman on long-term sick leave for depression says she lost her benefits because her insurance agent found photos of her on Facebook in which she appeared to be having fun.

Nathalie Blanchard has been on leave from her job at IBM in Bromont, Quebec, for the last year.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported Saturday she was diagnosed with major depression and was receiving monthly sick-leave benefits from insurance giant Manulife.

But the payments dried up this fall

Iran released a former vice president on a $700,000 bail Sunday after his lawyer said he had been sentenced to six years in prison in the mass trial of opposition figures accused of fomenting the post-election unrest.

Mohammad Ali Abtahi, who served under former President Mohammad Khatami in his two terms from 1997-2005, is the most senior former official among more than 100 people on trial since August. After his arrest, he made televised confessions saying he had provoked people to riot.

Israeli aircraft attacked two suspected weapons-making factories and a smuggling tunnel in the Gaza Strip early Sunday in what the military said was retaliation for Palestinian rocket fire into southern Israel.

The airstrikes, which wounded at least seven people _ including one seriously _ came despite an announcement by Gaza's Hamas rulers that the territory's military factions had all agreed to stop firing rockets. The Hamas announcement came late Saturday, after the rocket attack.

Hamas'

Pakistani troops killed nearly 40 suspected militants Sunday in a series of operations in northwestern tribal areas near the Afghan border, officials said.

The army launched an offensive against the Taliban in South Waziristan in mid-October, but many militants fled north to escape the fighting. Sunday's attacks, which could not immediately be confirmed, appeared to be targeting areas to which they escaped.

The deadliest strike was in Shahukhel, a town in the tribal area of Orakzai,

Irish Republican Army dissidents left a 400-pound (180-kilogram) car bomb outside police reform headquarters in Belfast but the homemade device failed to detonate, Northern Ireland's police commander said Sunday.

As politicians warned of a rising threat from IRA diehards, four other suspected IRA dissidents were arrested Sunday following a gun attack on police.

Chief Constable Matt Baggott said Saturday night's attempted bombing of the Northern Ireland Policing Board office in Belfast's

Hundreds of people jammed into a Monrovia church to mourn a Liberian United Nations worker killed in an October attack by Taliban gunmen in Afghanistan's capital.

Mourners wept late Saturday as a blue U.N. flag was laid over the casket of Yah Lydia Wonyene. U.N. workers at the funeral said the 47-year-old election worker was one of five U.N. staffers killed Oct. 28 attack in Kabul. She is survived by a son.

Eleven people, including three of the attackers, died during the attack, when

A roadside bomb killed five Afghan border security guards traveling on a heavily used road in southern Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan on Sunday.

Gen. Abdul Raziq, a border security commander, said the bombing occurred before dawn in the Spin Boldak district of Kandahar province. The Ministry of Interior said the explosive struck an Afghan National Police vehicle, killing the five.

The attack comes amid reports that nearly a dozen militants suspected of having ties to high-ranking

Suspected militants set off two bombs outside a police station in India's restive northeast on Sunday, killing seven people and wounding more than 50, police said.

Five people died instantly after two blasts went off within minutes of each other outside the station in Nalbari town near the Assam state capital, Gauhati, a local police official said. Two people died later in a hospital, he said.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity as he is not authorized to speak to the

The walls that the rockets blew out have not been repaired, and the plaster is a dense scattershot of bullet holes. Dozens of holes, blasted by grenades, pockmark the linoleum floors.

One year after the terror attack that left 166 people dead, the Chabad House _ a once-popular site with Jewish travelers where six foreigners were killed _ remains scarred, still, and quiet.

In part, that silence is a symptom of how much remains unchanged since 10 militants with assault rifles fanned

The walls that the rockets blew out have not been repaired, and the plaster is a dense scattershot of bullet holes. Dozens of holes, blasted by grenades, pockmark the linoleum floors.

One year after the terror attack that left 166 people dead, the Chabad House _ a once-popular site with Jewish travelers where six foreigners were killed _ remains scarred, still, and quiet.

In part, that silence is a symptom of how much remains unchanged since 10 militants with assault rifles fanned

Khalid Khan stares through the dusty window pane, down across the rooftops of the capital, and wonders if they really know where he lives.

Once on the front lines of the international effort to rebuild Afghanistan, the black-bearded contractor now sits idle _ cross-legged and quiet on the floor of the small hilltop home he shares with another family after he had to sell his own.

"They called again this morning," he says of the kidnappers who once held him hostage at the bottom of

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is inviting his mentor Fidel Castro to visit Venezuela during the coming months.

Chavez read aloud a letter to the 83-year-old former Cuban leader during a televised speech Saturday night, saying "Venezuela awaits you." Chavez proposed that Castro visit at some point between now and April, during a congress of his socialist party.

The 83-year-old Castro has not been seen in public since undergoing a series of emergency intestinal surgeries in July

U.S. Sen. John McCain said Saturday that he enjoyed reading running mate Sarah Palin's new memoir and downplayed any tension between their campaign aides as "no big deal."

"I enjoyed the book and she and I are dear friends. I talked to her on the phone yesterday. We got along fine," said McCain in an interview Saturday with The Associated Press on the sidelines of the Halifax International Security Forum.

In "Going Rogue," Palin confirms reports of discord between her aides and those

Sen. John McCain says he has no doubt that "political correctness" played a role in preventing concerns about the alleged Fort Hood gunman from reaching the right people.

The Arizona senator says it remains to be determined how big a role it may have had in causing military authorities to ignore warning signals about the shooting suspect.

Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is accused of killing 13 and wounding more than 30 on Nov. 5 at the Army post in Texas. Colleagues reportedly viewed

Venezuelan authorities have captured a former Colombian official wanted for collaborating with outlawed right-wing paramilitary fighters.

Magally Moreno, 39, is wanted by Colombian authorities on charges of aggravated homicide and Interpol had called for her arrest, Justice Minister Tareck El Aissami said Saturday.

He said police captured Moreno in the western city of Maracaibo on Thursday. She held an important role for the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, and also had links

A top drug cartel suspect who turned state's evidence has been found dead in an apparent suicide, while a body found in Guerrero state was identified as a rebel leader who accused the state governor of drug ties, Mexican law enforcement said Saturday.

Jesus Zambada Reyes, identified as the nephew of drug lord Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, was found dead of asphyxiation at a house in Mexico City, the attorney general's office said in a statement.

He was found hung with a shoelace Friday.

Zambada

Iran will begin large-scale air defense war games Sunday aimed at protecting its nuclear facilities from possible attack, a senior military commander said Saturday, reflecting the country's concern that Israel could make good on threats to strike militarily.

The drill comes as a top clerical official renewed his threat to target "the heart of Tel Aviv" should Israel attack Iran.

The five-day drill will involve Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard and the regular army and will cover 230,000

Hamas announced Saturday evening that it has reached an agreement with other militant groups in Gaza to stop firing rockets at southern Israeli towns to prevent retaliatory attacks.

Hamas has mostly refrained from firing rockets since January when Israel ended a three week offensive in Gaza aimed at stopping almost daily militant attacks.

Other Gaza militant groups have since continued with rocket attacks, but on a much smaller scale than before.

About 1,400 Palestinians were

Sri Lanka will release next month the remaining 136,000 Tamil refugees still in the squalid and overrun government camps where they've been detained since the country's civil war ended six months ago, a top official said Saturday.

Some 300,000 war refugees were forced into the camps after fleeing the final months of the government's decades-long war with the separatist Tamil Tiger rebels, which ended in May.

The ethnic-minority Tamils are being held against their will. More than half

A rocket hit outside the luxury Serena Hotel in Afghanistan's capital late Saturday, wounding two people, the Interior Ministry said.

The heavily guarded Serena regularly houses visiting diplomats, officials and international workers. It has been the target of attacks before, most recently in late October when a rocket slammed into a courtyard.

In Saturday's attack, a rocket hit low on the outside of a compound wall that rings the hotel, just behind a guardhouse, according to an Associated

Famed 101-year-old Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer is reportedly back at work just weeks after surgery for gallstones and an intestinal tumor.

The daily newspaper O Globo reports that Niemeyer is working on a collection of buildings in the city of Niteroi, outside of Rio de Janeiro.

Niemeyer designed much of the futuristic Brazilian capital of Brasilia and Rio's Sambadrome, home of the annual carnival parade. He also helped design the United Nations building in New York City.

Niemeyer