
9 hours ago - By Ibrahim Barzak, Associated Press Writers
Tiny bodies lying side by side wrapped in white burial shrouds. The cherubic face of a dead preschooler sticking up from the rubble of her home. A man cradling a wounded boy in a chaotic emergency room after Israel shelled a U.N. school.

8 hours ago - By ALEXANDRA OLSON, Associated Press Writer
Ana Maria Calvo has fought unsuccessfully for seven months to correct her husband's name on her child's birth certificate.
9 hours ago - By Associated Press
The official Moroccan news agency says an Islamist convicted in the deadly 2003 Casablanca bombings who escaped from prison has been caught in neighboring Algeria and returned home.
8 hours ago - By Harold Heckle, Associated Press Writer
A convicted Colombian drug baron with links to two major smuggling cartels was shot dead in a Madrid hospital Thursday, officials said.
10 hours ago - By Associated Press
Rebels and aid workers say government airplanes have dropped bombs along a northern strip in Darfur. It's the first such report of violence in weeks.
9 hours ago - By Associated Press
The head of the U.N. Development Program, which promotes anti-poverty efforts around the globe, is resigning, the United Nations announced Thursday.

10 hours ago - By Douglas Birch, Associated Press Writer
Five months after Russia crushed the Georgian army in the foothills of the Caucasus, Moscow is once again embroiled in a conflict with a former Soviet neighbor: waging an economic war with Ukraine that has disrupted natural gas delivery across Europe.
9 hours ago - By Associated Press
The long-running hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay has grown to 30 prisoners, the highest number in months.
11 hours ago - By Marianela Jimenez, Associated Press Writer
A strong earthquake shook Costa Rica on Thursday, killing at least three people and sending frightened residents running into the streets of the capital as windows shattered and walls cracked.
11 hours ago - By Llazar Semini, Associated Press Writer
An Albanian civil rights group said Thursday it had sued the government to force it to divulge information on an alleged CIA abduction five years ago.

11 hours ago - By Alfred de Montesquiou, Associated Press Writer
Hundreds of people lined streets in Algeria's capital Thursday to donate blood for wounded Palestinians in Gaza in a government-sponsored solidarity effort, amid fears Algerian outrage over the violence could spill over at home.

11 hours ago - By Associated Press
Gaston Lenotre, considered one of France's best-ever pastry-makers, died Thursday. He was 88.
13 hours ago - By Ali Akbar Dareini, Associated Press Writer
Iran's top leader banned hardline Iranian volunteers on Thursday from leaving the country to carry out suicide bombings against Israel, but warned that Iran would assist the militant group Hamas in other ways.

12 hours ago - By Elaine Ganley, Associated Press Writer
She's out of the maternity ward and into a Cabinet meeting, dressed in elegant black and stiletto heels — five days after giving birth at age 43. Justice Minister Rachida Dati, single and guarding the daddy's name like a state secret, doesn't stop surprising the French.
13 hours ago - By Associated Press
An American man wanted in Texas on child sex abuse charges was arrested Thursday in Thailand and could be sent to the U.S. within days, the district attorney's office in Houston said.
13 hours ago - By Bradley Brooks, Associated Press Writer
Hundreds of passengers on a Swiss-owned cruise ship were stricken with severe vomiting and diarrhea caused by a mysterious ailment, Brazilian health officials said Thursday.

13 hours ago - By William Foreman, Associated Press Writer
Some hefted their luggage on bamboo shoulder poles. Others carried their things in plastic buckets. All were migrant workers hurrying to get home Thursday before China's Lunar New Year festival — a holiday that triggers one of the world's biggest annual migrations of humans.