The supreme leader of Iran issued a blunt warning Friday that war would be detrimental to the United States.

Children have been "killed, arrested, and tortured," according to a Human Rights Watch report. The group asked the U.N. to help stop the abuse.

Two American tourists have been kidnapped in the southern part of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, a security official said Friday.

Some 246 survivors have been rescued in the aftermath the sinking of a passenger ferry off the east coast of Papua New Guinea, authorities said Friday.

Images beamed around the world last week of unruly and provocative protests by indigenous Australians projected a portrait of an angry and disenfranchised group.

The United States accused Sudan of targeting civilians in recent airstrikes, including one that destroyed a Bible school in South Kordofan, an oil-rich Sudanese province that borders the newly-created independent country of South Sudan.

Cambodia's war crimes court is to rule Friday on an appeal by a man who ran a notorious torture prison where more than 14,000 people died under the Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s.

Gay rights advocates in South Africa hailed a judge's sentencing of four men to 18 years each in prison for brutally slaying a 19-year-old lesbian.

The search of underwater areas of the wrecked cruise ship Costa Concordia has been suspended for safety reasons, the head of Italy's civil protection agency said Thursday.

Egyptians clashed with police, leaving two dead in the city of Suez and at least 900 injured near the Interior Ministry headquarters in Cairo, officials said Friday.

Even a watered-down U.N. Security Council resolution will put pressure on the Syrian government, Arab League Secretary General Nabil el-Araby told CNN Thursday, ahead of renewed talks at the United Nations.

Daniel Treisman says Russia has strategic, business and political reasons for blocking U.N. action against Syria

Pakistan's Supreme Court summoned Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to appear February 13 to be charged with contempt of court, his lawyer said Thursday.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi called the visit by top International Atomic Energy Agency official "a positive forward step," the semiofficial Fars News Agency reported.

The United States and NATO want to end their combat mission in Afghanistan next year, transitioning primarily to a training role in which Afghan security forces will take the lead, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Wednesday.

Horrified eyewitnesses describe how Egyptian police officers stood by Wednesday as violent clashes between rival soccer fans left scores dead in the northeastern city of Port Said.

The special court investigating the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri announced Wednesday it will try the four accused killers in absentia.

The Australian authorities said Thursday that they were helping Papua New Guinea with rescue efforts for a passenger boat that was reported to have sunk with as many as 350 people on board.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's extradition fight goes to Britain's Supreme Court on Wednesday for two days of hearings on whether he should be sent back to Sweden to face allegations of rape and sexual assault.

The Taliban in Afghanistan depend on Pakistan for support, even though they do not necessarily welcome it, a secret NATO report says, according to a journalist who has read it.