The U.N. says the world economy is "teetering on the brink" of a severe downturn and will grow by only 1.8 percent in 2008.
Troops dug burial pits in this quake-shattered town and black smoke poured from crematorium chimneys elsewhere in central China as priorities began shifting Thursday from the hunt for survivors to dealing with the dead. Officials said the final toll could more than double to 50,000.
British tourist Barry Jackson describes the moment the quake hit and how his group reacted.
AP correspondent Christopher Bodeen reports people are collecting bodies in some of the hardest hit areas.
A look at the quake's aftermath
China: Quake death toll could reach 50,000
State TV: China quake death toll could hit 50,000
State TV: China quake death toll could hit 50,000
Exclusive raw video: China earthquake
Moment of silence at torch relay
Rescuers reach epicenter of China quake
President Hugo Chavez on Thursday vehemently denounced Interpol's conclusion that documents detailing links between Venezuela and Colombia's leftist rebels came directly from rebel computers and weren't tampered with by the Colombians.
Osama bin Laden, who has threatened to extend al-Qaida's terror to Israel, will release a new Internet message dealing with Israelis and Palestinians, a terrorism monitoring group said Thursday.
Interpol said Thursday that computer files suggesting Venezuela was arming and financing Colombian guerrillas came from a rebel camp and were not tampered with, discrediting Venezuela's assertions that Colombia faked them.
The Security Council unanimously approved a resolution on Thursday calling for a U.N. political presence in conflict-wracked Somalia for the first time in years and setting conditions for the deployment of U.N. peacekeepers.
As of Thursday, May 15, 2008, at least 4,078 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
Teachers, postal workers and other public servants staged a one-day strike and tens of thousands marched through French cities Thursday, a widespread protest against President Nicolas Sarkozy's planned job cuts.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper will deliver a public apology for a decades-long government policy requiring Canadian Indians to attend state-funded church schools - often scenes of physical and sexual abuse.
An international banker whose nomination for Haiti's No. 2 political post was rejected by the lower house of Parliament said Thursday he was hamstrung by corrupt legislators.
A Moroccan court broadened investigations Thursday into two alleged terrorism cells, one accused of supporting insurgents in Iraq and the other of plotting suicide bombings in Casablanca last year.
The Hezbollah-led opposition and U.S.-backed government reached a deal Thursday to end Lebanon's worst violence since the 1975-90 civil war, now that the Cabinet has reversed measures aimed at reining in the Iranian-backed militants.
Canada's national pharmacy regulation body is recommending that "morning-after" contraceptive pills be sold over the counter.
The United Nations said Thursday it had evacuated 250 civilian staff from the town of Abyei following three days of clashes in the oil-rich region between Sudan's army and former southern rebels.
U.S. and Iraqi troops moved against al-Qaida on two separate fronts Thursday, with house-to-house searches in Mosul and an operation in the desert to stanch the flow of insurgents and weapons to that northern city.
