World News

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says "unacceptable levels of violence and abuses" are taking place daily in Syria in violation of a U.N.-backed peace plan and he is putting much of the blame on the Syrian government.

A group of Lebanese Shiites who were kidnapped in Syria were released in good health, three days after gunmen abducted the men as they returned from a religious pilgrimage. 

Security officials say the blast killed supporters of Shiite rebels gathering near a school in al-Hazm, the capital of al-Jawf province.

Silvio Berlusconi, who has been Italy's prime minister three times, says his party will propose a constitutional amendment to allow Italians to directly elect presidents, as France does.

President Dilma Rousseff used her line-item veto powers on a congressional bill that weakened the nation's benchmark environmental law protecting the Amazon.

Officials say emergency workers who needed to take an obese teenager from her home to a hospital in Wales had to break through a wall of the residence to get her out and into an ambulance.  

Bosnia's war crimes court has sentenced two to at least 30 years each in prison for crimes against Muslims in the eastern town of Srebrenica during Bosnia's 1992-95 war. 

An African Union official says both countries have agreed to resume talks over issues that brought them to the brink of war: sharing oil wealth and establishing their border.

The International Committee of the Red Cross says a new rebellion has spread to remote and difficult-to-reach areas, causing the humanitarian situation to deteriorate significantly.

Spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi says church leaders have identified someone illegally holding secret documents as it tries to get to the bottom of an embarrassing leaking scandal.