News

SUKHUMI, GEORGIA Residents in Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia fired into the air, opened bottles of champagne and wept on Tuesday after Russia recognized it and a second breakaway region as independent. In Sukhumi, Abkhazia's palm tree-lined capital on the ... [full story]

SOCHI, RUSSIA Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned ex-Soviet Moldova on Monday against repeating Georgia's mistake of trying to use force to seize back control of a breakaway region. Russia sent peacekeepers to Moldova in the early 1990s to end a ... [full story]

KABUL Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday condemned a U.S-led coalition air strike his government says killed 76 civilians, most of them women and children. Civilian casualties are an emotive issue for Afghans, many of whom feel foreign forces ... [full story]

DUBAI Al Qaeda's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri appeared in a videotape posted on the Internet on Friday, the second recording since he was reported to have been killed or wounded in Pakistan last month. The video posted on a Web site ... [full story]

WASHINGTON An epilepsy drug being tested for use in treating addiction can help obese rats shed weight, US government researchers said on Wednesday. Their findings point not only to an easy treatment for obesity, but show it is similar ... [full story]

JERUSALEM Israel's chief negotiator said on Thursday a Palestinian uprising could reignite if the international community piled too much pressure on the sides to paper over differences and rush into an agreement on statehood. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni sounded ... [full story]

WASHINGTON In a sharp turnaround, Republican John McCain has opened a 5-point lead on Democrat Barack Obama in the US presidential race and is seen as a stronger manager of the economy, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on ... [full story]

MIAMI Tropical Storm Fay moved ashore over southwest Florida on Tuesday without strengthening into a hurricane, bringing heavy rains to the south of the peninsula, the US National Hurricane Center said. By Tuesday 5 a.m. EDT, the eye of ... [full story]

KURSK/GORI Russian President Dmitry Medvedev promised on Monday a "crushing response" to any attack on its citizens as Georgia waited for concrete signs of a promised Russian military pullout. Medvedev was speaking shortly before Russian military authorities announced that the ... [full story]

LOS ANGELES US and Mexican states are considering charging a fee for border crossings to raise money for infrastructure improvements that would reduce congestion at border posts, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said on Friday. The news came after governors ... [full story]