World

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Israel widened its deadliest-ever air offensive against Gaza’s Hamas rulers Sunday, pounding smuggling tunnels and a central prison, sending more tanks and artillery toward the Gaza border and approving a reserves callup for a possible ground invasion.

GUADALAJARA, Mexico – A Mexican beauty queen detained on suspicion of drug and weapons violations has been stripped of her crown in the Hispanoamerican Queen pageant, contest organizers said Saturday.

KABUL, Afghanistan – A single-file line of school children walked past a military checkpoint Sunday as a bomb-loaded truck veered toward them and exploded, ending the lives of 14 young Afghans in a heartbreaking flash captured by a U.S. military security camera.

  Israeli warplanes retaliating for rocket fire from the Gaza Strip pounded dozens of security compounds across the Hamas-ruled territory in unprecedented waves of airstrikes Saturday, killing more than 200 people and wounding nearly 400 in the single bloodiest day of fighting in years.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave Channel 4’s annual alternative Xmas message this year. In the video he congratulated Barack Obama for becoming the 44th President of the USA and urged Muslims and Christians to work together for brotherhood and unity.

Merry Christmas, “bullying, ill-tempered and expansionist powers.” Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will deliver a Christmas Day broadcast on Britain’s Channel 4 television, occupying a slot used to provide an often controversial counterpoint to Queen Elizabeth II’s traditional annual message, the station said Wednesday.

At overflowing garbage dumps in Zimbabwe’s capital, desperate vagrants pounced on trash bags and fought over chicken bones and scraps of discarded food. Sewage clogged streets and most shopkeepers didn’t even bother with holiday decorations.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu said Wednesday that the international community must use the threat of force to oust Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe from office.

Reuters has a new report in which they say the UNICEF has estimated that there are 6,000 child soldiers in Darfur, either fighting with the government or with rebels.

A pair of 4,300-year-old pharaonic tombs discovered at Saqqara indicate that the sprawling necropolis south of Cairo is even larger than previously thought, Egypt‘s top archaeologist said Monday.

The Pope has used his Christmas message to say that “saving” humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour is as important as protecting the rainforests.

President George W. Bush‘s foreign policies may be unpopular in the Middle East, but Arab leaders showered his top diplomat with jewelry worth far more than a quarter of a million dollars last year.