Posted: 8:41 AM Don't worry, one popular argument goes, we've seen this before. Just ignore Pyongyang's unlikely threats of nuclear holocaust as you would, say, a child throwing a tantrum.

Posted: 8:19 AM After a day of festivities to mark the 101st birthday of its first leader, North Korea on Tuesday offered prickly new rhetoric against the United States and South Korea.

Posted: 8:18 AM The decline is most noticeable in Kabul, the capital, where women began joining the work force and adopting Western dress soon after the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that ousted the puritanical Taliban.

Posted: 8:13 AM A European court has blocked Britain from extraditing a mentally ill suspect accused of trying to set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon.

Updated: 8:01 AM Press TV gave no further details on the extent of damage in the sparsely populated areas. But the quake shook buildings as far away as New Delhi and Gulf cities of Dubai and Bahrain.

Posted: 8:44 AM In advance of Wednesday's funeral at St. Paul's Cathedral a flag-draped coffin was carried by horse-drawn carriage Monday to the famous domed cathedral in central London.

Posted: 8:42 AM Hugo Chavez's hand-picked successor, Nicolas Maduro, has won Venezuela's presidential election by a stunningly narrow margin that highlights rising discontent over problems ranging from crime to power blackouts.

Updated: 8:44 AM Insurgents launched what appeared to be a highly coordinated string of attacks in several parts of Iraq on Monday morning, killing at least 31 and wounding more than 200, according to officials.

Posted: 8:15 AM U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters in Tokyo that North Korea would find "ready partners" in the United States if it began abandoning its nuclear program.

Posted: 6:45 AM Two more people have died in China from a new strain of bird flu, raising the death toll from the virus to 13, state media reported Sunday.

Posted: 6:34 AM A Chinese vessel that ran into a protected coral reef in the southwestern Philippines held evidence of even more environmental destruction inside: more than 22,000 pounds of meat from a protected species

Posted: 2:01 PM The festivities leading up to Kim's birthday come amid fears that North Korea may be planning to test launch a new missile in retaliation for what it claims are provocative war games by U.S. and South Korean troops

Posted: 1:59 PM In a chaotic auction repeatedly interrupted by protests, dozens of Native American tribal masks were sold Friday after a French court rejected the objections of the Hopi tribe and the U.S. government.

Posted: 1:58 PM Syrian forces battled rebels in the central province of Homs near the border with Lebanon on Friday as part of a counteroffensive aimed at regaining control of territory around the country and along strategic border areas.

Posted: 1:54 PM China emits more of the greenhouse gas than the next two biggest carbon polluters — the U.S. and India — combined. And its emissions keep soaring by about 10 percent per year.

Posted: 1:50 PM The BBC came up with an awkward compromise Friday over "Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead," a song that is zooming up the music charts in a posthumous protest against Margaret Thatcher.

Posted: 1:46 PM Officials trying to right Tunisia's ailing economy shouldn't count on an estimated $20 billion still to be recovered from the family of the deposed dictator, a prominent Tunisian economist said Friday.

Posted: 10:53 AM North Korea delivered a fresh round of rhetoric with claims it had "powerful striking means" on standby for a launch, while Seoul and Washington speculated that the country is preparing to test a medium-range missile

Posted: 10:51 AM Two decades ago, Kim Il Sung, the late founder of the still-ruling Kim dynasty, reportedly shook with rage while talking about the drills with a visiting U.S. congressman.

Posted: 10:50 AM A U.S.-based rights group on Thursday accused Syria of war crimes by indiscriminate and sometimes deliberate airstrikes against civilians, killing at least 4,300 people since last summer.

Posted: 10:46 AM Israeli police on Thursday detained five women at a Jerusalem holy site for performing religious rituals there that ultra-Orthodox Jews say are reserved for men.

Posted: 10:45 AM Invitations to Margaret Thatcher's funeral are going out to more than 2,000 celebrities, dignitaries, colleagues and friends of the late British leader — from former U.S. presidents to composer Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Posted: 8:19 AM Forty years after it became the first U.S. orchestra to visit China, the Philadelphia Orchestra is planning to go back with a new tour and new program.

Updated: 8:42 AM After a new and lethal strain of bird flu emerged in Shanghai two weeks ago, the government of China's bustling financial capital responded with live updates on a Twitter-like microblog.

Posted: 3:02 PM As the world braced for a provocative missile launch by North Korea, with newscasts worldwide playing up tensions on the Korean Peninsula, the center of the storm was strangely calm.