Wire World News

Germany and France are preparing to launch a drive to combat the problem of high European youth unemployment, which officials in Berlin say will center on trying to get business involved and make better use of already-pledged public money.

The World Health Organization says the Horn of Africa is experiencing an outbreak of polio with cases confirmed in Kenya and Somalia.

Police say a suicide bomber on foot has killed an anti-Taliban village elder and at least three other people in a busy marketplace in central Afghanistan.

Secretary of State John Kerry says the United States and its Arab and European allies will step up their support for Syria's opposition to help them "fight for the freedom of their country" if President Bashar Assad's regime doesn't engage in peace talks in good faith.

Syria's main opposition alliance on Wednesday urged fighters from around the country to reinforce a rebel-held town under attack by President Bashar Assad's troops and their allies from the Lebanese militant Hezbollah group.

Malawi's cost-cutting president is selling her predecessor's jet.

Pope Francis has issued his first appeal directed at Catholics in China, long the source of concern for his predecessor Benedict XVI.

A Russian drunk driver who sparked a nationwide debate after killing seven, including five orphan children, in a road accident last year has been sentenced to prison.

African nations this week mark the 50th year since the founding of a continentwide organization that spearheaded efforts to liberate Africa from colonial masters. Now leaders want to map out the next 50 years of political and economic integration.

An official for the city of Vienna says the Austrian capital has handed over nearly 6,000 valuable objects looted by the Nazis to their rightful owners or their heirs since it started taking inventory of them 14 years ago.

Ukrainian reporters on Wednesday disrupted a government session chaired by the prime minister, suggesting his family members could be the next victims of official inaction after police in Kiev stood by while pro-government activists attacked two journalists covering an opposition protest.

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe on Wednesday signed into law a new constitution and vowed to hold peaceful and clean elections later this year.

South Sudan is warning that it may stop exporting oil through Sudan's pipelines again.

Ethiopian authorities have carried out another wave of arrests that brings the number of people detained on suspicions of corruption to more than 50.

The Czech president says he will no longer block a university professorship for a gay rights activist who had been critical of him.

Iraq's prime minister has ordered a shake-up of his military command after a weeklong spike of militant attacks that has killed nearly 300 people, by far the highest toll since the U.S. withdrew its forces in late 2011, an official said Wednesday.

The European Union is reassessing whether to declare the Lebanese party Hezbollah's military wing a terrorist organization, a move it has long shied from despite pressure from the United States, officials said Wednesday.

An Italian judge has ordered the captain of the Costa Concordia cruise ship to stand trial for manslaughter in the vessel's shipwreck off the coast of Tuscany, which killed 32 people.

The International Monetary Fund has called on Britain to do more to support the economic recovery, urging the government Wednesday to speed up investment in infrastructure and come up with a plan to privatize its bailed out banks.

A mortar round exploded in Goma, a city in eastern Congo which has been in the crosshairs of this country's latest rebellion, officials said Wednesday, as the United Nations secretary-general arrived in Congo's capital for a two-day visit expected to take him to Goma.

Groups of youth have smashed shop windows, set cars ablaze and burnt down a cultural center as the riots that started in one Stockholm suburb after a fatal police shooting spread to other low-income areas of the Swedish capital.

The Vatican took another step Wednesday to show greater financial transparency by publishing the first annual report from its financial watchdog agency and announcing new regulations to fight money laundering and terror financing.

In France, there's a brewing debate over whether to speak anglais in universite.

Britain and Denmark proposed Wednesday to give hundreds of Afghan interpreters who worked alongside their troops the right to settle in the U.K. and Denmark in recognition of the risks they face if they stay in their war-battered homeland.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's signal that monetary policy will remain loose gave stocks another lift Wednesday, paving the way for many indexes to advance to new record highs.

The death toll from a massive blast at an explosives plant in eastern China has risen to 23 with 10 people still missing.

An imprisoned member of the punk band Pussy Riot says she is going on hunger strike after a judge refused to allow her to attend a court hearing where she was seeking release on parole.

British prosecutors have charged a 61-year-old Irishman with the Irish Republican Army bombing of the queen's cavalry in Hyde Park in 1982, a strike at a top London tourist attraction that killed four soldiers and seven horses.

Germany says it supports adding the military wing of the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah to the European Union's list of terrorist groups.

Kenya's president received a long-awaited Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission report that names the president and his deputy as being among those suspected of planning and financing Kenya's 2007-08 postelection violence in which more than 1,000 people died and 600,000 were evicted from their homes.

European Union leaders on Wednesday sought to advance their fight against tax fraud and close the loopholes for large corporations' tax avoidance schemes.

The U.N.'s atomic agency says Iran is moving ahead to update a program the West fears could be used to make nuclear weapons.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Wednesday that a decision by election overseers to disqualify his top aide from next month's presidential race is an act of "oppression" and that he will take the case to the country's supreme leader.

China's premier signed economic agreements and praised Pakistan in glowing terms as he began a two-day visit Wednesday, underscoring the importance of the longstanding alliance to the two Asian powers.

A mentally ill man attacked six primary school students and a woman with a cleaver in the latest of a string of attacks on Chinese schoolchildren, authorities said Wednesday.

Japan's nuclear watchdog on Wednesday endorsed a panel's conclusion that a seismic fault running underneath one of two reactors at an atomic plant in western Japan is active, making the reactor's restart virtually impossible.

Japan's parliament on Wednesday approved joining an international child custody treaty amid foreign pressure for Tokyo to address concerns that Japanese mothers can take children away from foreign fathers without recourse.

Hard-line Islamist students protested Wednesday in the Afghan capital demanding the repeal of a presidential decree for women's rights that they say is un-Islamic. It was the latest sign of a backlash against the legal protections passed in the 12 years since the toppling of the Taliban regime known for its harsh treatment of women.

An 80-year-old Japanese extreme skier who climbed Mount Everest five years ago, but just missed becoming the oldest man to reach the summit, was back on the mountain Wednesday to make another attempt at the title.

Along the northwestern Philippine coast, poor children with claw hammers clamber aboard an abandoned fishing vessel to pry loose and steal rusty nails from its deck. It's become a familiar sight in villages where some fishermen have been forced to give up their livelihoods since China took control of their fishing haven last year.

A steady decline in the yen is proving a godsend for exporters such as Toyota and has won solid support from Japan's main trading partners, who are betting the impact on their own currencies will be offset by gains from a recovery in the world's third-largest economy. It's not such good news for entrepreneurs like Thamonwan Thawornthaweewong, whose Angry Bird fish balls, squid rings and other products now cost more to sell in Japan.

The Israeli military has jailed a young man for six months for refusing to serve because of his opposition to Israel's occupation of the West Bank, focusing attention on the longstanding conflict between the country's universal military service and divided political beliefs.

The price of oil fell near $95 a barrel Wednesday as the nation's oil supply fell less than expected and demand for gasoline remained weak.

The parents of an American software engineer who believe their son was murdered last year in Singapore withdrew from the inquest Wednesday, saying they have no confidence in the city-state's legal process.

Pakistani cricket star-turned-politician Imran Khan left a hospital Wednesday, more than two weeks after he suffered serious back injuries in a fall from a forklift at a campaign event, a spokesman said.

Japan's government is looking into re-opening official talks with North Korea to resolve questions over the abductions of Japanese citizens decades ago, raising concerns among allies who fear Tokyo's focus on that issue might weaken efforts to rein in Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program.

A North Korean state media dispatch shows that leader Kim Jong Un has named a hardline general as his new military chief.

Japan's central bank says the world's third-biggest economy is "picking up" as demand recovers in other countries and remains resilient at home, though the trade deficit widened in April, for the tenth straight month.

Rescuers on Wednesday recovered the last of 28 miners killed last week when an underground room of a giant Indonesian gold and copper mine collapsed, the operator of the U.S.-owned facility said.