Ukraine's security service detained former interior minister Yuri Lutsenko on December 26, his political party said.

Seven people died and 15 others were injured when more than 100 vehicles crashed on an expressway in southwest China's Guizhou Province on the morning of December 27.

With a series of measures being adopted to curb price spikes, the Chinese government is confident of keeping prices at a reasonable level, Premier Wen Jiabao said on December 26.

Freezing rain has badly disrupted air traffic at Moscow's airports and left more than 400,000 people in and around Russia's capital without electricity.

Ivory Coast presidential claimant Alassane Ouattara called on December 26 for a nationwide general strike that would shut the country down until internationally isolated incumbent Laurent Gbagbo cedes power.

Eight American tourists - six women and two men - were killed in a traffic accident on December 26 while on a tour bus in Aswan, Egypt, the country's interior ministry said. An additional 19 American tourists and two Egyptians - the bus driver and a tour guide - were injured.

Thirty-six people in northern India are dead and another 28 are injured following a collision between a bus and a vehicle carrying mourners from a funeral, an official news agency reported on December 26.

Suspected Somali pirates have hijacked a merchant ship with 27 crew off the sultanate of Oman, the head of a regional maritime group and the European Union Naval Force of Somalia said on Saturday.

A series of unprecedented Christmas Eve bomb blasts and attacks on churches have left at least 38 people dead in Nigeria as authorities worked Saturday to keep the violence from spreading.

The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan crisscrossed the country on Saturday, making a Christmas visit to coalition troops at some of the main battle fronts in a show of appreciation and support in the tenth year of the war against the Taliban.