Most Emailed World News

CANOVANAS, Puerto Rico - For thoroughbred racehorses in Puerto Rico, success can be a matter of life and death. Many losers don't make it off the racetrack grounds alive.

MANILA, Philippines - At least eight bank employees and a security guard were lined up and shot dead in the head Friday in a bloody Philippine bank robbery, police said. Another employee was in critical condition at a hospital.

CAIRO, Egypt - Osama bin Laden said in a new audio recording released Friday that al-Qaida will continue its holy war against Israel and its allies until it liberates Palestine.

BEICHUAN, China - A strong aftershock sparked landslides Friday near the epicenter of this week's powerful earthquake, while some survivors were pulled from rubble after being buried for four days.

BALLA, India (Reuters) - Five armed men burst into the small room and courtyard at dawn, just as 21-year-old, 22-week pregnant, Sunita was drying her face on a towel.

BEIJING - First, the water level in a pond inexplicably plunged. Then, thousands of toads appeared on streets in a nearby province. Finally, just hours before China's worst earthquake in three decades, animals at a local zoo began acting strangely.

CARACAS, Venezuela - The United States and Colombia have long been wary of Venezuela's peacetime military buildup, suspecting the weapons could end up in the hands of drug-trafficking Colombian rebels.

DOHA, Qatar - More than a dozen rabbis, including two from Israel, were in attendance this week as this conservative Muslim sheikdom opened one of the Gulf's first scholarly centers dedicated to interfaith dialogue.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - All 11 remaining members of a Russian doomsday cult on Friday left the cave they had been living in since October, a regional official told local news agencies.

YANGON (Reuters) - Torrential tropical downpours lashed Myanmar's cyclone-hit Irrawaddy delta on Friday as thousands of destitute victims took to roadsides to beg for help to supplement the meager trickle of aid flowing in.

HARARE, Zimbabwe - An election runoff between President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai will be held June 27, the electoral commission said in an announcement published Friday.

TOKYO - A U.S. Marine accused of raping a 14-year-old Japanese girl was convicted of a lesser charge Friday during a court martial and sentenced to four years in prison in a case that inflamed public anger at the American military presence on Okinawa.

YANGON, Myanmar - The United Nations said Friday that severe restrictions by Myanmar's military junta have left aid agencies largely in the dark about the extent of survivors' suffering, two weeks after a killer cyclone left up to 2.5 million people destitute.

PARIS - Authorities in France, Germany and the Netherlands on Friday detained at least 10 people suspected of helping to fund al-Qaida-linked militants with roots in Uzbekistan, officials said.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - A bomb blast blamed on Tamil Tiger rebels killed six policemen and wounded 50 people, including civilians, in Sri Lanka's capital Colombo Friday, the military said.

BAGHDAD - Gunmen ambushed an Iranian Embassy convoy in Baghdad, wounding three Iranians, including two diplomats, and an Iraqi, a spokesman said Friday.

UNITED NATIONS - The U.N. says the world economy is "teetering on the brink" of a severe downturn and will grow by only 1.8 percent in 2008.

MELBOURNE (AFP) - Protesting pensioners brought traffic to a stand still in Australia's second largest city on Friday when some stripped to demand more money from the government.

BEIJING - The Sichuan government says the official death toll from this week's powerful earthquake in the Chinese province has risen to 21,000 people.

GENEVA - The international Red Cross says a lack of clean water will be the biggest killer in Myanmar in the coming days.

DUBAI (AFP) - Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden slammed Western leaders for taking part in Israel's 60th birthday celebrations and vowed that Muslims would fight and not give up "one inch of Palestine," in an audio message Friday.

MIANYANG, China (AFP) - Cries for help echoed from under the rubble of shattered communities Friday as China warned time was running out to save survivors of an earthquake that has claimed an estimated 50,000 lives.

LONDON (AFP) - A collection of poems by a Scottish bard dubbed the "world's worst poet" was to go under the hammer Friday, expected to sell for thousands of pounds.

LONDON (AFP) - British Airways said Friday that its annual net profit more than doubled as it cut costs to help offset record high fuel prices while the group offered its first dividend in seven years.

VATICAN CITY - Believing that the universe may contain alien life does not contradict a faith in God, the Vatican's chief astronomer said in an interview published Tuesday.