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.

NEW ORLEANS - Hurricane Ida, the first Atlantic hurricane to target the United States this year, plodded early Monday toward the Gulf Coast with 105 mph winds, bringing the threat of flooding and storm surges.

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

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.

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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.

SHARM EL-SHEIK, Egypt - China's premier on Sunday pledged $10 billion in new low interest loans to African nations over three years, offering the beleaguered continent sorely needed cash while dismissing criticism that Beijing's motives in Africa are far from altruistic.

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.

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.

SAO PAULO - A Brazilian woman whose short, pink dress caused a near riot at a private college and led to her expulsion will be allowed to return to class.

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.

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.

KABUL - Afghan and international troops killed more than 130 insurgents in six days of fighting in a once-stable area of northern Afghanistan that has seen a recent spike in Taliban attacks, NATO said Monday. It was some of the heaviest fighting in the north this year.

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.

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.

NAIROBI, Kenya - Somali pirates attacked an oil tanker and fired automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades Monday farther out at sea than any previous assault, suggesting that pirate capabilities are growing as they increase activity off East Africa.

TAWANG, India - Indian officials clamped down Monday on journalists covering the Dalai Lama's trip to a disputed border area in an apparent effort to minimize tensions with neighboring China.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - A suicide bomber in a rickshaw detonated his explosives near a group of policemen in northwest Pakistan's main city of Peshawar on Monday, killing three people, police said.

LONDON - Queen Elizabeth II led Britain's annual ceremony for the country's war dead Sunday, honoring them with a moment of silence as the military reported that more than 200 British soldiers have been killed in combat in Afghanistan.

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.

BEIJING - Days after coming to power in September, Japan's new prime minister broached forming a new East Asian trading bloc with rival China — one that would exclude the United States.

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.

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 - Harald Jaeger was a loyal East German border guard — respected and trusted to command a crossing point to the west on Berlin's Bornholmer Strasse.

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SAN'A, Yemen - Saudi Arabian forces seized a strategic mountain straddling the border with Yemen and cleared it of Shiite rebels after five days of fighting that have left three Saudi soldiers dead, a Saudi defense official said Sunday.

TEHRAN, Iran - A senior Iranian lawmaker warned Russia that its delay in delivering an anti-aircraft missile defense system to Tehran could harm relations between the two countries, state television reported Sunday.

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.

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.

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.