NY Times - World News

Canada’s formal head of state allowed the Parliament to be closed down until Jan. 26, granting an unprecedented request from Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The Mumbai police identified a second Pakistani terrorist as an engineer of the attacks, as gruesome new evidence emerged of mistreatment of hostages.

King Bhumibol Adulyadej did not appear on Thursday to deliver his traditional birthday address at a highly charged political moment.

The eviction of about 200 hard-line Jewish settlers was the first serious clash in what seems to be a spiraling confrontation between the government and defiant settlers.

Farm emissions are being discussed during international talks on a new treaty to combat global warming.

The nation’s health minister appealed for outside help a day after police attacked protesting medical workers.

Barack Obama, who vowed in the campaign to “end the war” in Iraq, is making clear that tens of thousands of troops will stay there.

Iraq’s presidential council approved a pact setting out a three-year timeframe for U.S. troops to leave, but the approval came as violence flared in Fallujah, Mosul and Baquba.

Iraq’s presidential council approved a pact setting out a three-year timeframe for U.S. troops to leave, the final step for the deal to replace a U.N. mandate that expires Dec. 31.

Two suicide truck bombs outside police stations killed at least 13 people, wounded 122 others and levelled six houses in western Iraq on Thursday, police said.

Evidence of links between the attacks and a Pakistani militant group raises the question of whether Pakistan’s government is able — or willing — to rein in militancy.

For the first time since 1973, no Palestinians from Gaza are making the pilgrimage to Mecca this year because of a power struggle over which Palestinian government is legitimate.

In a surprising reversal, the government of Afghanistan signed a treaty that the U.S. has rejected.

The NATO secretary-general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, strongly defended the alliance’s decision to begin “a conditional and graduated reengagement” with Moscow.

For the fourth time in less than two months, a batch of eggs imported to Hong Kong from China were found to be contaminated with illegal levels of melamine, officials said.

A judge in Milan on Wednesday suspended the trial of 26 Americans, most of them believed to work for the C.I.A., and several Italian intelligence agents accused of kidnapping a terrorism suspect.

Evidence seems to be growing that Rwanda is meddling again in Congo’s troubles.

The U.S. formally released the first part of a $400 million aid package, a sign of how much more involved the United States is becoming in Mexico’s brutal drug war.

The suspects were accused of taking part in a trans-Atlantic ring that routinely sneaked ivory out of Uganda, Ivory Coast and Cameroon and slipped it past customs.

The ceremony at which Queen Elizabeth formally opens Parliament was overshadowed by an angry dispute over a counterterrorism raid on an opposition member’s office.