World News

BAGHDAD - The U.S. Embassy on Thursday launched an expanded immigration program that provides 5,000 more visas each year for Iraqis who have put themselves at risk by working for the U.S. government.

JERUSALEM - A key committee has approved construction of the first new Jewish settlement in the West Bank in a decade, an Israeli official said Thursday. The news infuriated Palestinians, who said the decision could cripple peace efforts.

NABLUS, West Bank - Palestinian security says more than 20 Jewish settlers have attacked a Palestinian village in the West Bank, smashing cars and windows and cutting electricity wires.

BELGRADE, Serbia - Radovan Karadzic was preparing his false identity during the autocratic rule of his mentor, an official said Thursday, promising to track down the people who helped the Bosnian Serb warlord stay on the run from genocide charges.

TRIPOLI (AFP) - Libya on Thursday said it will halt fuel supplies to key oil client Switzerland, in the latest reprisal for last week's brief detention in Geneva of Hannibal, a son of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi.

BIRMINGHAM, England (AFP) - Aston Villa manager Martin O'Neill has warned Gareth Barry that he won't protect the unsettled England midfielder from the hate-mob in Saturday's Intertoto Cup clash with Odense.

MEXICO CITY - Mexico's transportation secretary says it has grounded two airlines for lacking proof they paid for fly rights in the country's air space.

QUITO, Ecuador - A proposed new constitution grants Ecuador's leftist President Rafael Correa broad powers including the ability to dissolve Congress and set monetary policy, and would let him stay in office through 2017.

MATAMOROS, Mexico - Hurricane Dolly toppled trees and sent billboards flying Wednesday in the Mexican city of Matamoros, and authorities south of the U.S. border warned of possible flooding.

EL GENEINA, Sudan (AFP) - A dancing Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir paraded as a man of peace on Thursday during a heavily protected tour of Darfur defying accusations that he masterminded genocide in the region.

LAGOS (AFP) - Nigeria's oil workers' union NUPENG has threatened to resume a suspended strike over the high cost of diesel and kerosene in the oil-rich west African country, its leader said Thursday.

PRETORIA (AFP) - Talks began in earnest Thursday on resolving Zimbabwe's political crisis after President Robert Mugabe gave his senior lieutenants the final go-ahead to negotiate power-sharing with the opposition.

KABUL (AFP) - Afghan troops killed at least 34 Taliban rebels in a firefight after the militants ambushed an army convoy in the south of the country on Thursday, a defence ministry spokesman said.

ANKARA (AFP) - Turkish warplanes bombed Kurdish rebel hideouts in northern Iraq overnight in the latest air raid in the region since mid-December, the military said Thursday.

KABUL (AFP) - Seven policemen were killed in new attacks in Afghanistan, while a joint NATO-Afghan operation to take back a district captured by Taliban left 15 militants dead, authorities said Thursday.

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadians are getting more accepting of the idea of a federal election, opposition leader Stephane Dion said on Wednesday, but he refused to suggest he was ready to topple the minority Conservative government any time soon.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey said on Wednesday he had rejected a request from lawmakers that an outside special counsel investigate the case of a Canadian taken off a plane in New York and sent to Syria, where he says he was tortured.

TORONTO (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co. has told 350 new hires at its Oakville, Ontario, plant that their jobs have been put on hold indefinitely because the U.S. market for new cars and trucks had soured, a company official said on Wednesday.

CANBERRA, Australia - Australia's prime minister, who has won applause for apologizing to Aborigines for past wrongs, has revived plans for a constitutional revision to recognize the country's indigenous people.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - A family court judge in New Zealand has had enough with parents giving their children bizarre names here, and did something about it.

SINGAPORE - An Australian TV journalist has been released on bail on drug charges in Singapore, his employer reported Tuesday.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - A family court judge in New Zealand has had enough with parents giving their children bizarre names here, and did something about it.

HACHINOHE, Japan (Reuters) - A strong earthquake jolted northern Japan early on Thursday, injuring more than 100 people, trapping hundreds in halted trains and affecting production at some high-tech factories.

TOKYO - Japanese and Mongolian scientists have successfully recovered the complete skeleton of a 70-million-year-old young dinosaur, a nature museum announced Thursday.