Category: blog

Oakland City Hall is set to reopen after municipal employees worked to clean up damage they said was caused over the weekend by Occupy protesters, about 400 of whom have been arrested following clashes with police in this Northern California city.

European shares are falling, dragged down by banks after Greece and its private creditors failed to come up with an agreement on a debt swap before the start of a European summit focused on growth and the region’s debt crisis.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says economy still faces big challenges to repair damage of financial crisis.

An explosives-packed car slams into a funeral procession in a Shiite neighborhood, the latest in a wave of attacks on Shiites across Iraq since the withdrawal of American troops last month.

Passengers on the wrecked Costa Concordia cruise ship are expected to receive a compensation lump sum of 11,000 euros each. Sixteen are confirmed dead, and 16 others still missing from the roughly 4,200 people aboard the cruise liner when it crashed.

DEVELOPING – AP reporting that the Iranian President has declared his country’s readiness to negotiate with the West over Iran’s nuclear program.

At least 100 people have died after taking what officials suspect may have been tainted heart medicine in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore.

Australian PM Julia Gillard and leader of the opposition Tony Abbott have been rescued by the police after becoming trapped by an angry mob of protesters in Canberra.

Jean-Claude Mas, the founder of the French firm that produced the faulty breast implants at the centre of a global health scare, has been arrested in the south of France.

President Barack Obama didn’t turn his State of the Union speech into an overt pitch for his reelection, but he did push back against his Republican rivals in his address. Politico reads between the lines.

Theo Angelopoulos, the Greek filmmaker who won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1998, has died in a road accident while working on his latest movie near Athens.

Thousands of Egyptians are gathering in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to mark one year since the start of the uprising which toppled President Hosni Mubarak.

Mitt Romney’s campaign has released details of his federal tax returns, showing that he will most likely pay $6.2 million in taxes on $45 million in income over the two tax years of 2010 and 2011.

Turkey has warned the French president against signing a law that makes it a crime to deny that the killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks nearly a century ago constituted genocide, saying it will implement retaliatory measures against France.

Four car bombs have exploded in mainly Shi’ite Muslim areas of Baghdad, killing at least 13 people and wounding 75, underlining a political crisis that threatens to revive sectarian strife in Iraq.

Four years after New York stunned previously undefeated New England in the Arizona desert, the Patriots and Giants are going at it again at the Super Bowl — this time in Indianapolis.

The founder of the shuttered file-sharing site Megaupload appeared in a New Zealand court Monday, as the U.S. Department of Justice seeks to extradite him and other company officials on criminal charges.

The EU has agreed to ban Iranian crude oil imports as the Western world turns up the pressure on Tehran to halt its nuclear activities.

General Motors back as the world’s top-selling automaker from Japanese rival Toyota Motor Corp, less than three years after the US carmaker filed for bankruptcy.

Four French troops have been killed in northern Afghanistan after a soldier from the Afghan National Army opened fire. President Nicolas Sarkozy said France was suspending its training programs in Afghanistan following the attack.

British author cancels appearance at the Jaipur literary festival in India following warnings of threats to his life from what he called “the Mumbai underworld.”

Eastman Kodak says that it files for bankruptcy protection, as the 131-year-old film pioneer struggles to adapt to an increasingly digital world.

Argentine leaders have reacted with fury after UK Prime Minister David Cameron accused Argentina of “colonialism” for continuing to claim sovereignty over the Falkland Islands.

The Bangladesh military says it has foiled a bid by mutinous officers to overthrow the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

A “smoking object” was thrown over the White House fence late Tuesday. Authorities have closed the north gate of the residence while the object is being investigated.

Official figures show that Britain’s unemployment rate spiked to 8.4 percent in November, its highest level since 1995.

Five foreign tourists have been killed in Ethiopia in an attack by unknown gunmen in the northern Afar region.

Lawyers for the ousted Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, have begun arguing the case for the defense, after his trail reopened in Cairo.

A handful of large websites, including Wikipedia and Reddit, have confirmed they will go dark on Wednesday to protest the SOPA anti-piracy bill that critics say will wreck the Internet as we know it.

Italian naval divers have blasted holes in the hull of a cruise ship grounded off a Tuscan island to speed the search for 29 missing people while seas are still calm.

At least six people have died after a cruise ship ran aground off the coast of Tuscany. The owners of the cruise ship say there may have been significant human error on the part of the ship’s captain, an allegation he denies.

Labor leaders have rejected the Nigerian government’s concession to drop fuel prices after a nationwide strike paralyzed the country last week.

GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman has decided to drop out of the race and endorse Mitt Romney.

The US embassy in Thailand has alerted its citizens to possible terrorist attacks on tourist locations in Bangkok.

Some of the most important Burmese political dissidents have been freed. It is another sign that top officials in the long repressive Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, are softening their stance toward the opposition.

Obama administration officials say they are relying on a secret channel of communication to warn Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that closing the Strait of Hormuz is a “red line” that would provoke an American response.

A video showing what appear to be American forces urinating on dead Taliban fighters has prompted anger in Afghanistan and promises of a U.S. investigation, but the insurgent group has said it would not harm nascent efforts to broker peace talks.

North Korea has announced it will enshrine Kim Jong Il’s body in the palace housing his father, the national founder, deepening its veneration of the Kim dynasty as the country transfers power to a third generation of the family.

Myanmar’s government has signed a cease-fire agreement with ethnic Karen rebels in a major step toward ending one of the world’s longest-running insurgencies and meeting a key condition for better ties with the West.

Spanish airline Iberia says it has canceled 104 flights during a one-day strike by pilots protesting the company’s planned new budget carrier.