Insurgents shot dead nine wedding guests and wounded five more in Afghanistan's turbulent east, local officials said on June 9, the latest attack on revelers who engage in what militants say is un-Islamic activity.

Oil prices breached the US$100-a-barrel mark on Wednesday after OPEC said it could not reach an agreement about raising crude production.

The EU has increased to 210 million euros its offer of compensation to farmers who have lost income due to an outbreak of Ecoli.

Turkey threw open its borders to anxious Syrian refugees on Wednesday and urged their government to curb violence against civilians after thousands abandoned a town near the Turkish frontier in fear of a military assault.

Loud explosions rocked Tripoli early on Wednesday as NATO kept up its heaviest bombing of the Libyan capital since air strikes began in March, but Muammar Gaddafi vowed to fight to the end.

A Syrian town braced for a military assault as international pressure piled on President Bashar al-Assad's regime amid reports his envoy to France had quit in solidarity with protesters.

Heavy rain drenched a swathe of what had been drought-gripped southern and eastern China, killing 24 people and forcing more than 100,000 to evacuate, state media reported on Wednesday.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) fired a short-range missile into waters off its west coast last week in what was likely a test of modifications to its arsenal, the Republic of Korea (RoK)'s Yonhap news agency quoted an intelligence source as saying on Wednesday.

A Russian Soyuz craft lit up the starry skies of the southern Kazakh steppe early Wednesday as it blasted off to carry a three-man crew for a mission to the International Space Station that will take in the U.S. shuttle's farewell voyage.

A vast cloud of ash spewing from a Chilean volcano disrupted air travel across much of South America, while heavy rains around the eruption site prompted fears of mudslides.