France has withdrawn its first batch of soldiers from Mali, the army said Tuesday, as it begins to pull out troops sent to battle Islamist fighters in the west African nation.Paris -- which sent 4,000 troops to Mali in January to block a feared advance on the capital Bamako from the north by Islamist fighters -- is preparing to hand over to a UN-mandated African force of 6,300 in the coming weeks.It will gradually pull its soldiers out of the country -- where its intervention has driven insurgen

He went from house to house in the village at dawn, cold-bloodedly gunning down his mother, his son, a 2-year-old cousin and 10 other neighbors. Terrified residents said if a police patrol car hadn't shown up, they all would have been dead.Police said they knew of no motive yet in the carnage Tuesday that left six men, six women and a child dead in Velika Ivanca, a Serbian village 50 kilometers southeast of Belgrade.After the rampage, police said suspect Ljubisa Bogdanovic, a 60-year-old who saw

A strong 6.3-magnitude earthquake has hit southern Iran, the US Geological Survey said.The epicenter of the quake, which struck at a depth of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles), was located about 90 kilometers southeast of Bandar Bushehr, the USGS said.(AFP)

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon is warning that even a slight miscalculation involving the tensions on the Korean peninsula could spiral into an "uncontrollable situation'' as he urged North Korea to tone down its "provocative'' rhetoric.Ban, a former South Korean foreign minister, also called on Pyongyang to restart work at the Kaesong industrial park near its border, the only remaining product of economic cooperation between the North and South Korea. North Korea on Tuesday pulled out more

TEHRAN (AFP) ― Iran unveiled on Tuesday a new uranium production facility and two extraction mines, only days after talks with world powers on its disputed nuclear program again ended in deadlock.President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hailed the advances and boasted of mastery over “the entire chain of nuclear energy,” while demanding that the work be accelerated.The announcements come after talks between sanctions-hit Iran and six world powers on Tehran’s nuclear drive failed to produce a breakthrough i

BAGHDAD (AP) ― Iraqi authorities forced an Iranian plane to land on Monday so it could be searched for weapons bound for Syrian regime fighters, but they found only humanitarian aid and medical supplies, officials said. Also Monday, a series of five bombs targeted security forces across Iraq, killing five and wounding more than a dozen other people, officials said. The move to force the Damascus-bound plane to land came 10 days after Iraq said it would conduct more searches of aircraft and road

JERUSALEM (AP) ― U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry worked Monday to corral Israeli and Palestinian leaders into a new and ambitious peace process that includes reviving parts of a long-dormant plan embraced by the Arab world a decade ago, officials said. The 2002 initiative that Kerry wants to revive parts of would have provided Israel recognition throughout the Arab world in exchange for a pullout from territory conquered in 1967. On his third trip to Jerusalem in the last two weeks, Kerry com

HARTFORD, Connecticut (AP) ― President Barack Obama arrived Monday in Connecticut, where a deadly school shooting in December shocked the nation, looking for a breakthrough in his efforts to curb gun violence as the U.S. Congress returns from a two-week recess with gun control legislation high on the agenda. A gunman killed 20 young children and six educators in Newtown in one the worst school shootings ever in the U.S. State lawmakers last week passed one of the strictest gun control laws in th

AMSTERDAM (AP) ― Vladimir Putin faced hundreds of protesters ranging from gay rights activists to a topless feminist group during his visit to Germany and the Netherlands on Monday, but the Russian president appeared unruffled by the furor. In Hannover, Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel criticized Russia’s human rights record at a press conference. Then activists from Ukraine’s Femen group bared their torsos and ran at him shouting “Putin dictator!” before they were detained. Putin shrugged off

Iran, under international sanctions for its nuclear enrichment program, on Tuesday launched a new uranium production facility and began operations in two uranium extraction mines, state media said.The two mines in the city of Saghand in central Iran operate 350 meters underground, and are within 120 kilometers of the yellowcake production facility in the city of Ardakan, in Yazd province, state television said.Yellowcake is the impure state of uranium oxide later used in enrichment facilities. (

Combative and determined to get her way, Margaret Thatcher divided opinion down the middle in life _ and in death.Many leaders lauded Thatcher for her steely determination to modernize Britain's industrial landscape, even at the cost of strikes and riots, and to stand beside the United States as the west triumphed in the Cold War versus the Soviet Union. Others saw a pitiless tyrant who preferred conflict to compromise.British Prime Minister David Cameron lauded his 1980s predecessor as “a great

BERKELEY, California (AP) -- Les Blank, an acclaimed documentary maker who focused his camera on cultural corners ranging from blues music, to garlic lovers, to shoe-eating artists, died Sunday at age 77, his son said.Blank died at his home in Berkeley, California nearly a year after being diagnosed with bladder cancer, Harrod Blank said.Blank's 42 films earned him a lifetime achievement award from the American Film Institute."I think he's a national treasure," filmmaker Taylor Hackford, preside