World News

Riot police using tear gas clashed Tuesday with several thousand protesters who barricaded Parliament while trying to block Thailand's new prime minister from delivering his first policy speech to lawmakers. Scores of protesters were injured.

A planned multibillion dollar U.S. arms sale to Taiwan threatens China's national security and has cast a pall over military relations between Beijing and Washington, the foreign ministry said Tuesday.

Scientists who have pursued dark matter, hunted for undiscovered planets and advanced nanotechnology were being touted Monday as candidates for the 2008 Nobel Prize in physics.

The United States will continue its troop presence in Kosovo until at least late next year, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said just before he arrived here Tuesday, reaffirming U.S. support for the newly declared nation in the face of stern opposition from Russia.

Tropical Storm Marco was closing in on Mexico's coast early Tuesday and threatened to hit with near-hurricane strength winds later in the day.

The United States and North Korea are being flexible in their effort to reach a compromise to resolve the dispute in the North's nuclear disarmament process, South Korea's foreign minister said Tuesday.

Police are pursuing DNA tests to identify the suicide bomber who wounded a lawmaker and killed 16 people in eastern Pakistan, an official said Tuesday.

An armed man in a jealous rage took 42 hostages in a Guatemala City call center on Monday and released them unharmed and turned himself to police after a five-hour standoff, police said.

China's Cabinet vowed a complete overhaul of the scandal-ridden dairy industry Monday, pledging to inspect every link from the farm to the dinner table to try to restore public trust in Chinese-made food products.

Individual European governments issued a flurry of deposit guarantees to shore up their banks but fell short of any coordinated action Monday to deal with the crisis sweeping financial markets, even as stock markets crashed and the euro sank to its lowest level for over a year.

South Korea's foreign minister played down on Tuesday the notion that North Korea delivered an ultimatum when it held talks last week with a visiting U.S. envoy who was trying to save a floundering nuclear disarmament deal.

Britain's military commander and ambassador in Afghanistan are being "defeatist" by thinking the war cannot be won, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, as Washington seeks more troops for the conflict that started exactly seven years ago.

Taiwan legislators wearing surgical masks and displaying skull-and-crossbones banners took over parliament's floor on Tuesday after the island's security chief accused China of starting the global SARS epidemic six years ago as part of a biological warfare campaign.

Two blasts struck outside Iraq's Foreign Ministry Tuesday as visiting U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte prepared to hold a press conference in the Green Zone compound nearby, Reuters reporters at the scene said.

Thai riot police clashed with protesters in the capital on Tuesday, injuring 69 people, as campaigners intensified their four-month bid to unseat the government.

The United States will keep troops in Kosovo until at least late 2009, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Tuesday, underlining support for the NATO peacekeeping operation.

Police used helicopters to spot armed mobs attacking Muslims in India's troubled northeast Tuesday, where clashes between indigenous tribesmen and settlers have left 47 people dead and tens of thousands homeless.

The death toll from a suicide attack on a Pakistani opposition politician's home rose to 17, police said Tuesday, a day after the bomber struck in the town of Bhakkar, deep in the central province of Punjab.

A man shot and wounded a security guard and held 40 people hostage at a call center on Monday demanding to see his ex wife's boyfriend, but surrendered to police after a five-hour siege.

China closed schools in Tibet's capital for safety reasons on Tuesday a day after a huge earthquake struck to the west and months after hundreds of classrooms were flattened in a devastating quake in Sichuan.