Our Great City

The crowd of thousands, gathered where a Saddam Hussein statue once stood, protests plans to keep American troops in Iraq through 2011.

At the same spot where U.S. forces helped Iraqis topple a statue of Saddam Hussein in 2003, protesters today tore down an effigy of President Bush and set it afire in a protest over plans to keep American troops in Iraq through 2011.

Officials say Mexico's former drug czar took $450,000 to leak information to a powerful cartel.

Officials say 19,000 students died in May's 7.9-magnitude quake, then immediately back away from that estimate.

Jiang Xujun felt the stab of his daughter's death all over again today when Chinese officials acknowledged for the first time that 19,000 students perished in May's deadly earthquake -- and then immediately backed off the estimate.

Reporting from Beijing — Jiang Xujun felt the stab of his daughter's death all over again Friday when Chinese officials acknowledged for the first time that 19,000 students perished in May's deadly earthquake and then immediately backed off the estimate.

For now, a cease-fire keeps fighters at bay, giving some respite to residents worn down by decades of natural and human catastrophes.

This might be the unluckiest city in the world, a onetime resort playground for the wealthy doomed by a string of human and natural disasters that recall biblical scourges.

American intelligence agencies predict that China and India will cut into U.S. clout over the next two decades. The report also sees an increase in terrorist violence.

A new assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies predicts that American influence in the world will decline over the next two decades as surging powers such as China and India, as well as independent entities including tribes and criminal networks, gain international clout.

The International Criminal Court prosecutor at The Hague requested arrest warrants for three Darfur rebel commanders, accusing them of storming an African Union camp and killing 12 peacekeepers.

Five federal and state police agents are killed in an ambush in Culiacan as drug gangs try to fight off a government crackdown. The day's toll is 10.

The fourth corpse pulled from the bullet-shattered pickup truck didn't have the benefit of a body bag. Only the face was covered (with a useless bulletproof vest). The victim's red shirt was even redder, soaked with blood. His bare arm hung limply from a gurney as he was lifted to a wagon from the morgue, the toes of his boots pointed skyward, at odd angles.

David Murcia Guzman, the founder of a failed financial services firm, is held in Panama and immediately sent back to Colombia.

The president of a failed Colombian financial services firm suspected of laundering drug profits and bilking thousands of mostly poor investors of millions of dollars has been arrested in Panama and deported, officials said Thursday.

Russians fear a return to financial chaos. The current economic uncertainty is seen as a test of Putin's authority in Russia.

In a nationally televised show of unruffled resolve, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin vowed Thursday to protect an increasingly anxious country from a return to economic chaos.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urges Israel to allow food aid trucks into the Gaza Strip. But top Israeli officials say Palestinian militants must first stop their rocket attacks.

For the second time this week, Israel on Thursday resisted a plea by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to ease its blockade of the Gaza Strip and urged the world to condemn Palestinian rocket attacks instead.

Egypt, which makes $5 billion a year in Suez Canal fees, holds talks in Cairo on how to stop Somali gunmen from hijacking tankers and other ships in the area.

Worried that piracy could scare ships away from the Suez Canal, Egypt on Thursday held emergency talks with nations bordering the Red Sea on how to stop brazen Somali gunmen from hijacking oil tankers and other vessels.

The government's case against five Algerian natives, accused of plotting with Al Qaeda, is weak, a federal judge in Washington says.

A federal judge ruled here for the first time Thursday that the Bush administration had no basis for holding several of its long-term prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and he ordered that five of the Algerian natives go free.

Reports of stepped-up patrols and increased troop presence come while Tibetan exiles gather in India. The Dalai Lama's supporters seek a new approach toward Beijing.

China has further tightened control in its ethnic Tibetan region in recent weeks, exile groups say, even as it was ostensibly negotiating in good faith with the Dalai Lama's envoys.

A spokesman says 137 bales were collected from the water after being dumped by a crew being pursued by the cutter Narwhal.

In one of the largest marijuana seizures in its history, a U.S. Coast Guard cutter scooped up more than 130 bales of marijuana thrown overboard by a speedboat off the coast of Baja California.

In a video, Ayman Zawahiri says the president-elect is 'the direct opposite of honorable black Americans' and says Obama, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice are 'house Negroes.'

Al Qaeda's No. 2 leader used a racial epithet to insult Barack Obama in a message posted Wednesday, describing the president-elect in demeaning terms that imply he does the bidding of whites.

A senior officer of the CIO, the nation's intelligence agency, discusses the waning loyalty to Zimbabwe's president.

The man is nervous. He's from the "President's Office," and that doesn't mean serving tea to Robert Mugabe. It's Zimbabwe's version of the KGB: the Central Intelligence Organization.

The investigation into the area bombed by Israel, near Dair Alzour, provides no conclusive answers but says the site appears to be similar to the layout of a nuclear reactor.

An investigation into a remote Syrian site bombed by Israel 14 months ago has provided no conclusive answers so far, but sparked speculation about the source of trace amounts of radioactive material found at the site.

Nations and shipping companies have different takes on how to battle piracy at sea.

The Saudis chose to negotiate. The Indian navy opened fire. The U.S. navy said shipping companies should do more to protect their vessels, and the ship owners said governments should guard the high seas.

The missile attack is the first allied assault beyond the tribal belt bordering Afghanistan. The Pakistani government denounces it as another 'great provocation.'

The U.S. military apparently struck at Islamic militants outside Pakistan's lawless tribal belt for the first time Wednesday, firing a missile that killed six suspected insurgents.