Wire World News

A businesswoman in southern China has been sentenced to death in the government's latest crackdown on underground lending that is widely used by entrepreneurs.

Hundreds of tons of frozen mutton, lamb and beef from New Zealand have been stranded on Chinese docks after China halted imports from the country due to a certification dispute.

Libya's deputy prime minister says an investigation has indicated that a deadly explosion in Benghazi last week was an accident and not an attack.

Federal agents have arrested the top enforcement officer for the U.S. Virgin Islands environment agency on drug trafficking charges after he was allegedly caught with a cache of cocaine on a government patrol boat.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's senior coalition partner says that reaching a final peace agreement with the Palestinians is unrealistic at the current time and the sides should instead pursue an interim arrangement.

Nigeria's military says its offensive against insurgents in the country's restive northeast has killed at least 14 suspected Islamic extremists and three soldiers.

An editor has accused Algeria's government of censorship after it blocked the publication of his two newspapers.

Pope Francis is calling for renewal in the Catholic church as he wrapped up two days of mass gatherings in St. Peter's Square aimed at energizing the faithful.

Seven men purported to be the members of Egypt's security forces kidnapped by suspected militants last week appeared in a video posted online Sunday and urged the government to secure their release by meeting their captors' demands.

The U.S. Embassy employee accused of spying in Moscow flew out of Russia on Sunday, five days after he was ordered to leave the country, NTV television reported.

Zimbabwe Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said Sunday his party will end years of bias and abuse by the police, military and intelligence services and will make sure the services uphold the country's new constitution which demands impartiality in their duties.

Israel on Sunday completed an investigation into a decade-old French TV report that claimed Israeli forces killed a Palestinian boy in a gunbattle with Palestinian militants, saying the video was misleading and unfairly blamed Israel.

Rescuers recovered five more bodies from a collapsed underground room at a giant U.S.-owned gold and copper mine in Indonesia, bringing the confirmed death toll to 14, police said Monday. Fourteen other workers were still missing and feared dead.

A Russian capsule carrying mice, lizards and other small animals returned to Earth on Sunday after spending a month in space for what scientists said was the longest experiment of its kind.

A rising star in Britain's Labour Party, described by some as the "British Barack Obama," Chuka Umunna urged the United Kingdom to more aggressively forge ties with West Africa's fast-growing economies.

Syrian troops pushed into a rebel-held town near the Lebanese border on Sunday, fighting house-to-house and bombing from the air as President Bashar Assad tried to strengthen his grip on a strategic strip of land running from the capital to the Mediterranean coast.

Police shot dead a couple suspected to be terrorists after they threw four grenades, wounding five officers in an overnight stand-off, a police official said Sunday.

The High Court in Bangladesh's capital asked authorities Sunday to prevent the owner of a garment factory where 112 people died in a fire last year from leaving the country, a lawyer said.

A Saudi newspaper says a vegetable seller who set himself on fire in Riyadh after police confiscated his goods for standing in an unauthorized area has died.

Around 11,000 police officers and soldiers blocked an annual conference Sunday at Tunisia's main religious center by a radical Islamist movement that has been implicated in attacks across the country, prompting clashes with angry youths that resulted in one death.

China says it is urging North Korea to release a Chinese fishing boat whose owner publicized the plight of its 16 crew in an online account saying they were seized by gun-wielding North Koreans earlier this month and held for ransom.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai will seek increased military aid from India during a three-day visit starting Monday and will discuss recent cross-border clashes with Pakistan, India's archrival, an aide said.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is holding out hope that an international conference to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the Syrian civil war will be held in early June.

A popular Vietnamese cable television provider has stopped providing CNN and BBC, saying the channels don't have the licenses needed under a law stipulating that much content on foreign channels must be translated into Vietnamese.

South Korea is analyzing whether projectiles North Korea fired into its eastern waters over the weekend are short-range missiles or a new type of artillery the country may be developing, officials said Monday.

A senior commander in Iran's Revolutionary Guard has warned that his forces will be on watch for possible unrest after next month's presidential election, calling the outcome "unpredictable" and sending the strongest message yet against any attempts to revive street protests, media reported Sunday.

Iran's state radio says authorities have executed two men convicted of spying for Israel's Mossad and the American CIA intelligence agency.

Just weeks after a tense border standoff, China's new premier visited India on Sunday on his first foreign trip as the neighboring giants look to speed up efforts to settle a decades-old boundary dispute and boost economic ties.

A judge on Saturday issued an order for the imprisonment of two waiters accused in the beating death of Malcolm Shabazz, grandson of civil rights activist Malcolm X, the Mexico City attorney general's office said.

Venezuelan authorities have released a dissident ex-general who was jailed on charges of inciting unrest after the country's disputed presidential election.

Cairo airport officials say baggage handlers have resumed work after a strike that left passengers on 20 international flights from Europe and Arab countries waiting several hours for luggage.

Pakistan is holding a repeat election in an upmarket area of the southern city of Karachi that was plagued with allegations of vote-rigging.

It was just about a day after Argentine strongman Jorge Rafael Videla had seized power in March of 1976, and the bloodletting was already beginning.

France will see its first gay weddings within days, after French President Francois Hollande signed a law Saturday authorizing marriage and adoption by same-sex couples and ending months of nationwide protests and wrenching debate.

Libyan officials say explosions went off in the capital Tripoli and the restive eastern city of Benghazi, but no casualties were reported.

In 1948, Suleiman Mamoudi fled by foot with his parents and other families from their village of Bir el-Sabae in Palestine. The 28-year-old and his family walked west for several hundred miles, crossing the Sinai Peninsula before settling in an area around 90 miles (145 kilometers) north of Cairo.

Part of an airliner carrying more than 130 people caught fire as it was landing in Moscow, and passengers evacuated the plane by jumping off one of its wings and shooting down an evacuation slide.

Russia's Sergey Karjakin won the (EURO)100,000 ($130,000) Norway chess championship on Saturday after drawing against Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria.

Three people have been killed and three others injured during a shooting at a gas station in Puerto Rico.

A militia leader accused of grave crimes during Ivory Coast's 2010-11 postelection violence was taken into custody Saturday not far from the national park where his forces had been illegally occupying in the country's volatile western region, officials said.

A union of Italian metal workers has led thousands of people in a march through the heart of Rome to press the new government for measures to spur job creation.

The body of a Congolese journalist was found on the bank of the Ngezi River near the provincial capital of Bunia in eastern Congo, the city's mayor said Saturday.

Brazil is using more than 20,000 troops along its borders with 10 South American nations to reinforce security ahead of the Confederations Cup soccer tournament in June.

Giant leatherback turtles, some weighing half as much as a small car, drag themselves out of the ocean and up the sloping shore on the northeastern coast of Trinidad while villagers await wearing dimmed headlamps in the dark. Their black carapaces glistening, the turtles inch along the moonlit beach, using their powerful front flippers to move their bulky frames onto the sand.

The former premier of the Cayman Islands who faces charges in a corruption probe is denying allegations that he donated $1 million to a Caribbean university to obtain an honorary PhD.

Even before the first drops flow, Uganda's oil sector is beset by bribery allegations against officials, tax-related cases abroad that cost the government millions in legal fees, and the alleged interference of a president whose firm control of the sector worries transparency campaigners.

Rescuers have pulled another body from a collapsed facility at a giant U.S.-owned gold and copper mine in Indonesia, bringing the death toll to six.

Trinidad's finance minister has appointed a new interim board to oversee Caribbean Airlines after announcing that the state-owned company posted losses of more than $70 million.

If you're American and want to do business in Myanmar, there's a list of people and companies you have to steer clear of by law. But it leaves off a former minister's son U.S. officials suspected of brokering arms deals with North Korea, and high-rolling relatives of the man who led the repressive military government for 19 years.