Most Emailed World News

MADRID - A Spanish woman who deceived a U.S. fertility clinic about her age and become the oldest woman to give birth has died at 69, leaving behind 2-year-old twins, newspapers reported Wednesday.

TEHRAN, Iran - A Russian-made Iranian passenger plane carrying 168 people crashed shortly after takeoff Wednesday, nose-diving into a field northwest of the capital and shattering into flaming pieces. All on board were killed in Iran's worst air disaster in six years, officials said.

JERUSALEM - Israeli soldiers who fought in last winter's Gaza War say the military used Palestinians as human shields, improperly fired incendiary white phosphorous shells over civilian areas and used overwhelming firepower that caused needless deaths and destruction, according to a report released Wednesday.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - A 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck off New Zealand's western coast Wednesday generating a small tsunami. No injuries or major damage were reported.

CAIRO - Al-Qaida's deputy leader called on Pakistanis to join his group's holy war against the United States in Pakistan and Afghanistan and warned they could face the destruction of both countries and provoke God's wrath if they don't.

SYDNEY (Reuters) - A British backpacker was found alive Wednesday after being lost for 12 days in rugged bushland west of Sydney.

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea's barrage of missile tests and a recent underground nuclear blast have unnerved many South Koreans. Yet for all the scaremongering on the Korean peninsula, an all-out attack by either side is unlikely.

PARIS - French legislators have approved a divisive bill that allows more stores to stay open — and more people to work — on Sundays.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - The Palestinian government shut down the West Bank operations of the Arabic satellite channel Al-Jazeera on Wednesday, a day after a guest on the station accused the Palestinian president of involvement in Yasser Arafat's death.

MOSCOW - A well-known Russian rights activist was found slain execution-style on Wednesday, hours after being kidnapped in Chechnya — the latest in a series of brazen murders targeting critics of the Kremlin's violent policies in the war-torn North Caucasus.

WARSAW, Poland - Britney Spears' "Circus" won't be coming to Warsaw following a dispute between her international and Polish organizers.

KABUL (Reuters) - The death toll for foreign troops in Afghanistan halfway through July equaled the highest for any month of the eight-year-old war, tallies showed on Wednesday, as a U.S. escalation has met unprecedented violence.

ABUJA, Nigeria - Nigerian militants called a halt Wednesday to their campaign of attacking oil installations and kidnapping foreigners, then said military gunboats and troops were heading toward a rebel camp in a move that could upend the deal.

BOGOTA - The United States and Colombia are nearing agreement on expanding the U.S. military's presence in this conflict-torn nation, potentially basing hundreds of Americans in a central valley to support Air Force drug interdiction missions.

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (AFP) - More than 50 heads of state from the developing world met Wednesday in Egypt to tackle the fallout from the global economic meltdown, with calls for a "new world order" to prevent a repeat of the crisis.

MOSCOW - Russian engineers broke a red wax seal and six men emerged from a metal hatch after 105 days of isolation in a mock spacecraft, still smiling after testing the stresses that space travelers may face on the journey to Mars.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Pirate attacks worldwide more than doubled in the first half of 2009 amid a surge of raids on vessels in the Gulf of Aden and the east coast of Somalia, an international maritime watchdog said Wednesday.

JERUSALEM — Israeli combat soldiers have acknowledged that they forced Palestinian civilians to serve as human shields, needlessly killed unarmed Gazans and improperly used white phosphorus shells to burn down buildings as part of Israel's three-week military offensive in the Gaza Strip last winter.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands - The American CIA and Libya's leader Moammar Gadhafi both had a hand in Charles Taylor's rise to power as Cold War politics and pan-African struggles helped propel him to the presidency in Liberia, according to his testimony Wednesday at his war crimes trial.

LONDON (AFP) - Cats coax their owners into giving them what they want with a special purr that blends their normal soft, low sound with a high-pitched element that is hard to ignore, researchers said on Tuesday.