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

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

SEOUL, South Korea - The two Koreas briefly exchanged naval fire Tuesday along their disputed western sea border, with a North Korean ship suffering heavy damage before retreating, South Korean military officials said.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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