Schools shut their doors in protest and Pakistanis across the country held vigils Wednesday to pray for a 14-year-old girl who was shot by a Taliban gunman after daring to advocate education for girls and criticize the militant group.The shooting of Malala Yousufzai on Tuesday in the town of Mingora in the volatile Swat Valley horrified Pakistanis across the religious, political and ethnic spectru

A religious cleric in western Afghanistan said Wednesday he is offering a $300,000 bounty to anyone who kills the maker of an anti-Islam film that has angered Muslims around the world.Mir Farooq Hussini, a cleric and the spokesman for an organization representing about 450 religious schools in Herat province, made the latest bounty offer. U.S. federal prosecutors said Mark Basseley Youssef, 55, an

Standard & Poor's cut Spain's sovereign debt rating Wednesday by two notches to just above junk level, citing the deepening recession and strains from the country's troubled banks.S&P cut the rating to BBB- from BBB+, just one level above "speculative" or "junk" grade debt, which could have sent Madrid's borrowing costs skyrocketing to untenable levels."The downgrade reflects our view of mounting

Turkish jets on Wednesday forced a Syrian passenger plane to land at Ankara airport on suspicion that it might be carrying weapons or other military equipment, amid heightened tensions between Turkey and Syria that have sparked fears of a wider regional conflict.The Syrian Air jetliner was traveling from Moscow when it was intercepted by F16 jets as it entered Turkish airspace and was escorted to

(MCT)A New York married couple is on trial on a charge they brought the wife's niece from El Salvador to New York to force her to bear a child for them.Angelica and Javier Mencias, who live in the Richmond Hill neighborhood in Queens, were arrested in 2010, the New York Post reported. Their trial on charges of rape and child endangerment began last week.Investigators say the niece, then 15, arrive

Chief Justice Yang Sung-tae on Wednesday nominated a female judge to fill the last remaining seat on the Supreme Court’s 14-member bench, long considered as a share of public prosecutors. The selection of Kim So-young, a senior judge at Daejeon High Court, follows the resignation in July of Kim Byeong-hwa, a senior prosecutor and one of the four that Yang chose as replacement for four retiring jus

Police in Louisiana said they arrested a pair of alleged burglars after a friend of a burglary victim overheard them talking about the crime.The Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office said a man overheard Julien Cadis, 17, and Brent Price, 19, talking at a bar Friday about an Oct. 1 burglary that the man suspected to have taken place at the Metairie home of a friend, The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune re

South Korea's jobless rate inched down in September from a month earlier and job creation also quickened, raising hopes that the labor market conditions are improving, a government report showed Wednesday.According to the report by Statistics Korea, the jobless rate stood at 2.9 percent last month, down from 3 percent tallied in the previous month. The number of jobs added to payrolls also acceler

Police say the daughter of a popular Hindi film singer has died from a gunshot wound in an apparent suicide in Mumbai.Commissioner Krishna Prakash said police were investigating the death of Varsha, daughter of Bollywood's most prolific singer, Asha Bhosle.  Bhosle was away in Singapore for a regional film award ceremony when the shooting occurred.Friends and relatives who attended Varsha's cremation early Tuesday said she had been suffering from depression for several years. Asha Bhosle began h

North Korea said Tuesday it possessed "strategic rocket forces" capable of striking the U.S. mainland, as it responded to a new U.S.-South Korean deal to extend the range of the South's missile systems.In a series of bulletins released on the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the spokesman of the National Defense Commission also said Pyongyang was ready to match any enemy, "nuclear for n

A New York state multimillionaire who has spent more than $65,000 on matchmaking services in the past 12 years said the dating services are a "rip-off."Larry Greenfield, 47, a securities trader from Plainview, said he has tried six different agencies and met 250 different women, but none were his ideal mate -- a beautiful, thin, Jewish girl with a sense of humor who is from New York, the New York

Credit rater Moody's assigned the European Stability Mechanism, Europe's new emergency fund, a triple-A rating Monday, but labeled it with a negative outlook.Moody's cited the ESM's expected low leverage, the credit-worthiness of the eurozone countries behind the ESM, and the fund's preferred creditor status in giving it a top Aaa grade.But Moody's assigned its negative outlook to the 500 billion

Iran could produce enough weapons-grade uranium to arm a nuclear bomb within two to four months but would still face serious “engineering challenges” _ and much longer delays _ before it succeeds in making the other components needed for a functioning warhead, a respected U.S. think tank said Monday.While Iran denies any interest in possessing nuclear arms, the international community fears it may

Months before his fall from power, Chinese politician Bo Xilai suspected a plot to poison his second wife and questioned whether his son by his first marriage was involved, a report said Sunday.The second wife Gu Kailai was herself convicted in August of fatally poisoning a British businessman.The latest revelation in the murder and corruption scandal, which brought Bo down and exposed deep divisi

Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi declared her willingness on Monday to serve as president, and her party's intention to amend the constitution to allow her to do so.Suu Kyi said it is her duty as leader of the National League for Democracy party to be willing to take the executive office if that is what the people want. Myanmar's next election is in 2015.“I'm a leader of a political part

South Korea should not be swayed by demands from North Korea in its policies dealing with the communist neighbor, the unification minister said Monday, underlining the principle of denuclearization and prevention of any provocations by Pyongyang."I think that (the government) should not pursue policies that unilaterally accept demands by the North," Yu Woo-ik told a parliamentary inspection. "We h

A combo of handout photos from a Nobel Prize Institute press release shows John B. Gurdon from Great-Britain (left) and Shinya Yamanaka of Japan who won Nobel Medicine Prize, the Karolinska Institute announced on Monday in Stockholm. (AFP-Yonhap News)British researcher John Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka of Japan won this year's Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine on Monday for discovering that matu

April Jones (AP)A family friend was charged Saturday with killing a 5-year-old girl who vanished Monday from her home in Machynllet, Wales.April Jones was still missing five days after her disappearance, The Daily Telegraph reported. But Dyfed and Powys police are treating the investigation as a murder case.Mark Bridger, 46, was formally charged with murder, child abduction and perverting the cour

Accompanied by his daughter Rosa Virginia, left, Venezuela`s President Hugo Chavez gestures to supporters as he leaves the polling station after voting in the presidential election in Caracas, Venezuela, Sunday. (AP-Yonhap News)President Hugo Chavez put to rest any doubts about his masterful political touch in winning a third consecutive six-year term after a bitterly fought race against a youthfu

A German high school has decided to do away with homework to help pupils unwind, school officials said.The homework ban at Elsa-Brandstrom high school in North Rhine-Westphalia came after Germany's high school system cut a year, making school days longer, The Local.de reported.Head teacher at Elsa-Brandstrom, Brigitte Fontein, told the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper Friday that generall