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The Italian Foreign Ministry says that four Italian journalists have been detained in Syria.

A member of an Iraq Shiite militant group was killed in Syria, an official with the group said Saturday, highlighting how the increasingly sectarian conflict there is drawing in its fragile neighbors that already experience unrest among religious sects.

Clashes between Egyptian Muslims and Christians erupted early Saturday in a town near Cairo, leaving at least five people dead, security officials said.

Pope Francis on Saturday named a Spanish Franciscan to be the No. 2 at the Vatican's office for religious orders, his first appointment to the Vatican bureaucracy badly in need of a shakeup.

A home that once belonged to a former United Nations secretary-general, the late U Thant, is being restored and will open as a new museum in Yangon, Myanmar's largest city.

The operator of Japan's crippled nuclear plant said Saturday that it was moving tons of highly radioactive water from a temporary storage tank to another after detecting signs of leakage, in a blow to the plant's struggles with tight storage space.

A suicide bomber blew himself up Saturday at a lunch hosted by a Sunni candidate in Iraq's upcoming regional elections, killing 20 people, officials said.

Ikea says it has withdrawn 17,000 portions of moose lasagna from its home furnishings stores in Europe after traces of pork were found in a batch tested in Belgium.

Hundreds of thousands of members of a hardline Muslim group rallied in Bangladesh's capital on Saturday to demand authorities enact anti-blasphemy laws to punish people who insult Islam.

The British government says it believes terrorists are in the final stages of planning attacks in Somalia and urged U.K. nationals to leave the country.

Activists say Syrian government troops are clashing with rebels in a town outside Damascus, part of a belt of communities around the capital that have seen near-daily fighting in recent months.

Police arrested two builders as rescue workers on Saturday finished a two-day search for survivors in the collapse of a residential building being constructed illegally in India's financial capital. At least 72 people were killed in the accident, the worst house collapse in the country in recent decades.

Militants killed six Americans, including a young female diplomat, and an Afghan doctor Saturday in a pair of attacks in Afghanistan on Saturday. It was the deadliest day for the United States in the war in eight months.

A powerful 7.1 magnitude earthquake hit a remote part of eastern Indonesia on Saturday, causing residents to run outside in panic, but there were no immediate reports of damage or injuries, an official said.

Venezuela's animated campaign ahead of its April 14 presidential election has seen its share of shake-your-head remarks by both candidates: Interim President Nicolas Maduro of the ruling party, and opposition candidate Henrique Capriles. Here's a sampling:

The death toll in the collapse of a residential building being constructed illegally in India's financial capital rose to 72 Saturday amid diminishing hopes of finding any survivors alive, police said.

A weekend visit to Afghanistan by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is aimed at assessing the type and level of additional training that U.S. troops could provide to Afghan defense forces after 2014.

The death toll in the collapse of a residential building being constructed illegally in India's financial capital rose to 68 Saturday amid diminishing hopes of finding any survivors alive, police said.

The death toll in the collapse of a residential building being constructed illegally in India's financial capital rose to 68 Saturday amid diminishing hopes of finding any survivors alive, police said.

The North Korean factory park that is the last vestige of cooperation with the South moved closer to paralysis Saturday as nearly 100 South Korean workers went home across a border that Pyongyang has closed in the return direction.

A leading Cuban cultural official said Friday that he has been demoted nearly two weeks after he published an opinion piece in the New York Times that criticized "blatant racism" on the island.

Hundreds of federal police forced protesting teachers off the main highway between Mexico City and Acapulco Friday after the demonstrators blocked the roadway for hours, causing a huge traffic backup.

Mexico is looking to penetrate the Chinese market after a new report suggested that Mexican labor costs have fallen below those of China.

Abdulrahman al Shabati, his parents say, never had any connection to al Qaida. Instead, they insist, his decade-long detention at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is little more than a case of terrible luck.

An official says at least 36 people have been killed in a bus crash in which a gasoline tanker exploded in southwest Nigeria.

A Syrian government airstrike on a heavily contested neighborhood in the northern city of Aleppo on Saturday killed at least 15 people, including nine children, activists said.

A Cairo court on Saturday dismissed a lawsuit filed by an Islamist lawyer demanding that a popular Egyptian satirist's TV show be banned for allegedly insulting the president and containing excessive sexual innuendo.

In a story April 5, The Associated Press reported erroneously that al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb denied in a statement France's claim of having killed senior commander Abou Zeid. AQIM did not name Abou Zeid as the commander they were discussing. Washington-based SITE Intelligence said it seemed the group was referring to the commander as Abou Zeid in the English-language translation of the AQIM statement.

A new report on American aid to Haiti in the wake of that country's devastating earthquake finds much of the money went to U.S.-based companies and organizations.

Venezuela's opposition presidential candidate says he'll cut off subsidized oil to Cuba, distance his country from nations that disrespect human rights and shore up the South American country's own troubled economy with the billions it now sends abroad to socialist friends.

Spanish authorities say a rockfall has derailed a train, injuring 11 passengers after the first carriage partially plunged into a river just west of the northern city of Santander.

A British-educated lawmaker from a prominent political family was named Lebanon's new prime minister Saturday, and vowed to work toward ending divisions in the nation and preventing the civil war in neighboring Syria from spilling over into the country.

Mexico, a country suffering the turmoil of a drug war, can't agree on how to honor the victims of a six-year assault on organized crime that has taken as many as 70,000 lives.

The state environment minister has called on a Brazilian steel company to immediately move around 750 people living near its plant in a Rio de Janeiro suburb. Soil there was found to contain up to 90 times the legal limit of toxic and potentially carcinogenic substances including lead and cadmium.

A U.S. military spokesman says there's been a small increase in the number of Guantanamo Bay prisoners taking part in a hunger strike to protest their confinement at the U.S. base in Cuba.

An American contractor detained in a contract dispute in Afghanistan was released Friday and three U.S. congressmen who complained about his detention said he had been seized without charges and beaten.

Argentines and Uruguayans had a great time joking about their leaders on Friday after Uruguayan President Jose Mujica was caught making insulting comments about his supposedly close friend and ally, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez.

A new report on American aid to Haiti in the wake of that country's devastating earthquake finds most of the money went to U.S.-based operations.

A knife-wielding man entered a German day care facility for children and took its director hostage before police freed the captive hours later.

Italy's president on Friday pardoned a U.S. Air Force colonel convicted in absentia by Italian courts in the CIA-conducted abduction of an Egyptian terror suspect from a Milan street in a move he hoped would keep American-Italian relations strong, especially on security matters.

Dozens of Cubans crowded around R&B diva Beyoncé and husband-rapper Jay-Z as they toured Old Havana on Thursday after celebrating their fifth wedding anniversary with island staples like daiquiris, and rice and black beans.

It's a data leak involving tens of thousands of offshore bank accounts, naming dozens of prominent figures around the world. And new details are being released by the day - raising the prospect that accounts based on promises of secrecy and tax shelter could someday offer neither.

Lithuanian veterinarians and animal activists fought Friday to save the lives of 122 horses found without adequate food or shelter on a farm near Vilnius, the nation's capital.

Aslam Khan Khattak passed his first - and perhaps most curious - test this week in his quest to become a member of Pakistan's parliament: He correctly named the first person to walk on the moon.

President Vladimir Putin said the civil war in Syria has become "a massacre" that must be stopped through peace talks between the government and the opposition, and repeated Russia's firm rejection of calls for Syrian President Bashar Assad's ouster.

Iran and six world powers failed to reach agreement Saturday on an approach to reducing fears that Tehran might use its nuclear technology to make weapons, with the EU's foreign policy chief declaring that the two sides "remain far apart on substance."

The fugitive African warlord Joseph Kony is jettisoning women and children in a possible desperate bid to keep his weakened group lean and mobile, an expert said Friday, after three women freed by the Lord's Resistance Army arrived home in Uganda after spending years in the bush.

In order to assess the strength of Afghan government forces, the U.S. should wait until summer or later before deciding how many troops to keep in Afghanistan after the combat mission ends in December 2014, the U.S. military's top officer said Friday.

A man shot dead another man at a day care center in Quebec then killed himself, and the 53 children present were evacuated unharmed. Police said some may have watched the killings.

Israeli archaeologists say they have unearthed a 1,500-year-old lantern decorated with crosses and a wine press that shed light on life in the Byzantine period.

The United Nations is predicting that the number of Syrian refugees in neighboring Jordan will more than double to 1.2 million by the end of this year.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said Friday he was deeply concerned by a recent upsurge in sectarian violence in Myanmar, saying the unrest could damage the nation's democratic gains.

The United Nations' top human rights official pressed the U.S. on Friday to close the Guantanamo Bay prison, strongly criticizing the indefinite detention of inmates at the facility.

Retired Cuban leader Fidel Castro published his first column in nearly nine months on Friday, urging both friends and foes to use restraint amid tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

A prominent Russian opposition leader who made his name exposing official corruption says he hopes to win the next presidential election so he has the power to crack down on Russia's "current government of thieves."

An Indian investigative agency has filed a murder case against two Italian marines accused of killing two Indian fishermen last year, news reports said Friday.

North Korea's bellicose rhetoric and threats, while worrisome, appear to fit a decadeslong pattern of provocation followed by uneasy peace, the top U.S. military officer said Friday.

A group of hardline Islamists angered by the Egyptian government's push to improve ties with Tehran threw rocks and tried to storm the residence of Iran's top diplomat in Cairo on Friday.

Pakistani military officials say four soldiers and 14 militants were killed as the army launched a ground offensive in a restive valley in the northwest.

Tanzania's government is preparing to kick Maasai tribesmen off cattle-grazing land near the country's most famous wildlife park and will instead allow a hunting company from the United Arab Emirates to take control of it, groups and community members trying to raise awareness on the issue said Friday.

A man accused in the fatal gang rape of a woman on a New Delhi bus in December was beaten so badly in jail that his arm was broken, a defense lawyer said Friday.

North Korea has warned diplomats in Pyongyang that it can't guarantee the safety of embassies in the event of a conflict and suggested they may want to evacuate their staff, Russia's top diplomat said Friday.

Will tourists soon see flocks of baaing sheep at the Eiffel Tower and bleating ewes by Notre Dame cathedral?

The imprisoned brother-in-law of Tunisia's ousted dictator has died after attempts to operate on a brain tumor, a prison official said Friday.

Pope Francis directed the Vatican on Friday to act decisively on clergy sex abuse cases and punish pedophile priests, saying the Catholic Church's "credibility" was on the line. The announcement was quickly dismissed by some victims' advocates as just more talk, while others lobbying for reform in the church held out hope the new pontiff might challenge the Vatican's bureaucratic culture seen as fostering a cover-up mentality.

A Sumatran tiger has died at Indonesia's problem-plagued largest zoo.

Several prominent lawyers in China have signed a letter urging a court to explain its detention of a rights lawyer after he defended a practitioner of the banned Falun Gong movement.

A road accident in Iran has killed 18 people after a truck smuggling fuel slammed into a sedan packed with Afghans who were being brought illegally into the country.

Japan and the U.S. said Friday that they have agreed on plans for returning to Japan land near Kadena Air Base on the southern island of Okinawa that is now used by U.S. troops, in an effort to balance local concerns with support for the countries' military alliance.

One of the American military's most seasoned combat leaders took charge Friday of U.S. Africa Command, whose No. 1 mission is to work with allies to neutralize the continent's widening web of Islamic extremist groups, including those affiliated with al-Qaida.

A series of bombs exploded Friday in Iraq, killing eight people in attacks that targeted members of both Sunni and Shiite Muslim sects, police said.

A Dutch judge has blocked the extradition of a terror suspect to the United States until American authorities guarantee he will receive the same treatment there for post-traumatic stress disorder as he is getting in a Dutch jail.

A roadside bombing Friday in Thailand's insurgency-plagued south killed two provincial officials, including a deputy governor who became the highest-ranking civilian official to die in the insurgency in nearly a decade.

U.S. authorities operating at sea have arrested a former navy chief of the small West African nation of Guinea-Bissau who is suspected of being a kingpin in the international drug trade, a law enforcement official said Friday.

South Sudan provided logistical, financial and political support - but not weapons - to rebels fighting Sudanese government forces, according to a report from the Small Arms Survey, an independent Swiss research group.

C.J. Urquico has lived on Guam for 19 years so he's used to a military backdrop to everyday life. Navy ships visit, Air Force jets fly overhead and war games are played off the Pacific island's shores.

A man wounded in a February shooting at a wood-processing company in central Switzerland has died - bringing the death toll to five including the suspected attacker.

Six nations and Iran worked Friday to find common ground at negotiations that would satisfy both Tehran's demands for international recognition of its right to advanced nuclear technology and world concerns that the Islamic Republic wants to misuse that expertise to make atomic arms.

A court sentenced a family of four Vietnamese fish farmers to between two and five years in prison on Friday after finding them guilty of attempted murder for fighting back against a state eviction squad with homemade guns and land mines.

Power was restored Friday to a cooling system at a tsunami-damaged nuclear plant in Japan that failed for the second time in a month after an outage caused by construction work to keep out rats suspected of setting off the earlier blackout.

A newspaper op-ed piece by an Israeli writer has revived an emotional debate surrounding Israel's 45-year rule over the West Bank and east Jerusalem: Do Palestinians who throw rocks at Israelis exercise a "birthright" of resisting military occupation, as the author argued? Or is stone-throwing an indefensible act of violence?

Sectarian and ethnic tensions running high in Myanmar boiled over far outside the country's borders Friday, when Buddhist fishermen and Muslim asylum seekers from the country brawled with knives and rocks at an Indonesian immigration detention center, leaving eight dead and another 15 injured.

The death toll in the collapse of a residential building being constructed illegally in India's financial capital rose to 62 Saturday amid diminishing hopes of finding any survivors alive, police said.

Parts of southern and central Mexico have been rattled by a 5.4-magnitude earthquake, but there were no immediate reports of damages or injuries.

A man who prosecutors accused of masterminding the killing of two Amazon activists in northern Brazil in 2011 was acquitted by a jury on Thursday.

The man known as Colombia's "emerald czar" survived at least two assassination attempts and avoided criminal conviction despite being prosecuted for allegedly forming far-right militias.

Senators approved a bill Thursday to overhaul Puerto Rico's crumbling pension system after days of heated debate with hundreds of irate public employees protesting outside the U.S. territory's seaside Capitol building.

New Zealand has withdrawn its small contingent of troops from Afghanistan.

A former soldier implicated Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina in civil war atrocities on Thursday during the trial of former U.S.-backed military strongman Efrain Rios Montt, proceedings that have heard witnesses recount a litany of horrors.

Mexican prosecutors said Thursday they have broken up a plot by an armed gang to assassinate two federal legislators in Mexico City.

Interim President Nicolas Maduro on Thursday charged that allies of Venezuela's opposition are sabotaging the country's power grid ahead of this month's presidential election.

When Cyprus’ banking system imploded last month, dooming the country to economic contraction and years of depression, Turkish Cypriots who dominate the northern part of the island had a distinctly more upbeat reaction than the Greek Cypriots who dominate the south.

Syrian President Bashar Assad warned in comments broadcast Friday that the fall of his regime or the breakup of his nation will cause a "domino effect" that will fuel Middle East instability for years, in his sharpest warning yet about the potential fallout of his country's civil war on neighboring states.

Argentine police and soldiers searched house to house, in creeks and culverts and even in trees for bodies on Thursday after floods killed at least 57 people in the province and city of Buenos Aires.

The leader of the Palestinian group Hamas says there is broad cooperation between his group and Egypt's security government, dismissing reports that Hamas is endangering Egypt's national security.

Egypt's president began a two-day visit to Sudan on Thursday aimed at boosting cooperation after deteriorating relations between the two nations under ousted leader Hosni Mubarak.

The Commission for Human Rights and Minorities of the lower house of Brazil's Congress has banned the presence of outsiders from its sessions to keep out protesters demanding the resignation of its president, evangelical pastor Marco Feliciano.

The pig farmer was not in a good mood. Standing in front of barns that hold more than 500 pigs, the man with muck-splattered boots said he’s been losing money as the price of pork falls and the cost of feed and other supplies climb.

The United Nations says it is shuttering all its food distribution centers in the Gaza Strip after dozens of people stormed one of its compounds to protest the suspension of cash assistance to thousands of families.

Afghanistan accused Pakistan on Thursday of placing unacceptable conditions on efforts to bring peace to the country after nearly 12 years of war, the latest in a series of barbed exchanges that has sunk relations between the two neighbors to a new low.