Most Emailed World News

BAGHDAD - Hundreds of terrified Christian families have fled Mosul to escape extremist attacks that have increased despite months of U.S. and Iraqi military operations to secure the northern Iraqi city, political and religious officials said Saturday.

BAGHDAD — Christians in Mosul are fleeing their homes after a spate of killings this week that left 12 Christians dead in one of the largest Christian communities in Iraq.

OL PEJETA, Kenya - The text message from the elephant flashed across Richard Lesowapir's screen: Kimani was heading for neighboring farms.

ST. JOHN, U.S. Virgin Islands - A strong earthquake jolted people awake Saturday in the U.S. and British Virgin Islands and nearby Puerto Rico. There were no immediate reports of damages.

PUERTO SAN CARLOS, Mexico - Hurricane Norbert slammed into Mexico's southern Baja California peninsula on Saturday with torrential rains and screaming winds, forcing scores of people to flee flooded homes.

QUITO, Ecuador - In a matter of weeks, a Russian naval squadron will arrive in the waters off Latin America for the first time since the Cold War. It is already getting a warm welcome from some in a region where the influence of the United States is in decline.

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan - A suspected U.S. missile strike killed three people late Saturday in a town near the Afghan border, the latest in a series of attacks in a region where top al-Qaida leaders are believed to be living, two intelligence officials said.

VIENNA, Austria - Joerg Haider, who catapulted his rightist anti-immigration party into a powerful force with sharp attacks on rivals and provocative praise of the Nazi era, died Saturday in a car accident. He was 58.

MURMANSK, Russia (Reuters) - Russia for the first time test-launched a strategic missile to the equatorial part of the Pacific Ocean on Saturday, a navy spokesman said.

KATMANDU, Nepal - Hindu and Buddhist priests chanted sacred hymns and cascaded flowers and grains of rice over a 3-year-old girl who was appointed a living goddess in Nepal on Tuesday.

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - Militants blew up three empty Christian homes on Saturday in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, where more than 800 Christian families have fled in the past two days, a Christian member of parliament said.

LONDON (AFP) - James Bond actor Daniel Craig has had cosmetic surgery after being injured on the set of the latest Bond movie, he revealed in a new magazine interview.

It took Ellen Arnstein the better part of two years to win the trust of the people of Camargo, a farming town of 5,000 in southeastern Bolivia.

GENEVA - The U.N. health agency says it is investigating a mystery disease that killed three people in the South African city of Johannesburg.

ACRE, Israel (Reuters) - Rioters clashed for a fourth straight night on Saturday in northern Israel, police said, raising tensions in a city once a rare bastion of peaceful relations between Arabs and Jews.

DUJAIL, Iraq (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein was hanged for killing 148 Shi'ite men and boys in Dujail in 1982. But today, some people in this town on the Tigris say they miss life under the Iraqi dictator because they felt more secure.

JAKARTA, Indonesia - When Indonesia's health minister stopped sending bird flu viruses to a research laboratory in the U.S. for fear Washington could use them to make biological weapons, Defense Secretary Robert Gates laughed and called it "the nuttiest thing" he'd ever heard.

KOHAT, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani tribesmen exchanged fire with Taliban militants and destroyed their houses in a northwestern tribal region after a suicide attack killed at least 50 people, residents and officials said on Saturday.

HARARE, Zimbabwe - Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, locked in a standoff with the opposition in power-sharing talks, went ahead Saturday and laid claim to all key ministries as he tries to retain his iron grip on the struggling southern African nation.

LONDON (AFP) - Prime Minister Gordon Brown sent a get well message Saturday to the have-a-go hero who "set about" a fleeing suicide bomber suspect last year, as he lay on a ventilator in intensive care.

MOSCOW - Russian officials say a submarine-launched ballistic missile has made a record flight, hitting a target in the middle of the Pacific Ocean for the first time.

MUNICH, Germany - Leonardo Patterson made his first archaeological find at age 7 in a yam field in his native Costa Rica — a piece of clay pottery his cousin said could be thousands of years old.

KHARTOUM (AFP) - The US embassy in Khartoum has warned that an Al-Qaeda group had threatened Americans in Sudan and the US government, following the double murder of two staff on New Year's Day.