Most Emailed World News

BERLIN - Ulrich Sauff and his wife stared at the mammoth domino pieces marking the path where the Berlin Wall once stood and reminisced about life in the barrier's shadow.

Kenya launches an unprecedented campaign to survey the country's gay population about their sexual behaviors -- taking on a subject long met with hostility in the country.

'Tear Down This Wall': Reagan's Speech That Ended the Cold War

BEIJING - China has executed nine men, including eight from the Muslim Uighur minority, for crimes committed during July riots that killed 200 people in far western Xinjiang region. The men are the first to be put to death for the country's worst ethnic violence in decades.

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran accused three detained Americans of spying Monday, signaling Tehran intends to put them on trial. It drew a sharp U.S. response that the charges are baseless because the hikers strayed across the border from Iraq.

PARIS - The city of romance got a lesson in love's hard knocks Sunday, as thousands flocked to the French capital's first divorce fair.

CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez on Sunday ordered Venezuela's military to prepare for a possible armed conflict with Colombia, saying his country's soldiers should be ready if the United States attempts to provoke a war between the South American neighbors.

GULF SHORES, Ala. - Weather-hardened Gulf Coast residents refused to retreat from a rare late-season tropical storm that weakened as it crept toward shore Tuesday, bringing heavy rain, stiff winds and some flooding.

SAO PAULO - A woman expelled for wearing a mini-dress that caused a near riot at a Brazilian college and made her an Internet sensation said all she wants is to go back to school. Well, she got her way.

SEOUL, South Korea - A badly damaged North Korean patrol ship retreated in flames Tuesday after a skirmish with a South Korean naval vessel along their disputed western coast, the first such clash in seven years, South Korean officials said.

VERAPAZ, El Salvador - Tears streamed down Elsy Portillo's badly bruised face Monday as she walked behind coffins carrying her mother and only child in this town buried by a landslide, one in a series that killed at least 130 people in El Salvador.

BERLIN - With concerts and memorials on Monday, Germans will celebrate the day the Berlin Wall came crashing down 20 years ago.

MONTERREY, Mexico - When soldiers tried to halt a suspicious-looking SUV that was being escorted through Monterrey by a state policeman, the officer radioed for backup. In minutes, police from 40 patrol cars surrounded the troops, drawing their guns and sending the soldiers diving for cover in an hour-long standoff.

MOGADISHU, Somalia - Pirates have hijacked a Panamanian-flagged ship with 18 crew off the east coast of Africa, the latest in an increasing number of attacks, a Somali businessman said Tuesday.

COMBAT OUTPOST ROCCO, Afghanistan - Shortly before nightfall, an Afghan farmer slipped into this NATO outpost with a bag of ammunition and gear he'd collected from nearby Taliban positions. It turned out not to be much: pieces of 82-millimeter mortar guns and some combat food rations.

BOGOTA - After notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar was killed, the son who many thought would succeed him fled Colombia, assumed a new identity and lived a low-profile life as an architect in Argentina.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri formed a new unity government on Monday that includes two ministers from Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hezbollah.

BAGHDAD - After weeks of hard-nosed negotiations, analysts say the election law passed by Iraq's parliament allowing national polls to go forward in January extends compromises to all sides but with key concessions to the Kurds.

Essay: China's Africa Gambit

JAKARTA, Indonesia - Torrential rains triggered a series of landslides on Indonesia's Sulawesi island, killing at least 14 residents and burying many more, a local official said Monday.

KABUL - Television footage broadcast Tuesday showed insurgents handling what appears to be U.S. ammunition in a remote area of eastern Afghanistan that American forces left last month following a deadly firefight that killed eight troops.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. General Assembly declared on Monday that Afghanistan's presidential election was both credible and sound, despite allegations of widespread fraud that led critics to question the vote's legitimacy.

BERLIN - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton congratulated Germans on the 20-year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall at a meeting Monday with Angela Merkel, Germany's first chancellor from the former communist East.

BERLIN (Reuters) - World leaders hailed the ordinary people who helped bring down the Berlin Wall and said the historic events of 20 years ago showed nations were capable of rising to new challenges, from terrorism to climate change.

NEW DELHI - A landslide triggered by torrential seasonal rains swept through a hilly region in southern India, killing at least 42 people, an official said Tuesday.

VATICAN CITY - The Vatican on Monday confirmed that opening the door to married Anglican priests doesn't mean the Roman Catholic church is easing the requirement for celibacy for its clergy.

Feeling "cheated" by Washington, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas says he won't run again. His departure would derail U.S. peace efforts, but then again, the poll from which he's withdrawing won't happen

HUAMPAMI, Peru - In his first year at San Marcos University, Hermenegildo Espejo barely spoke, and certainly not in class.

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Somali pirates have seized a United Arab Emirates-flagged cargo ship loaded with weapons bound for the anarchic Horn of Africa nation in contravention of a U.N. arms embargo, maritime experts said Monday.

MEXICO CITY - Gunmen shoot a priest and two seminary students in the back. Federal police storm a Mass to capture a suspected drug kingpin. Priests pray with the families of murdered men, then face killers in the confessional.