The Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility for two explosions on October 7 at a shrine in Karachi in which at least eight people were killed and dozens injured.

A UN employee has been kidnapped in Sudan's Darfur region, officials say, hours after a Security Council delegation arrived in the area.

The EU and the United States met on October 7 to discuss improving their coordination of security alerts, after a US warning of possible terrorist attacks sparked alarm in Europe.

Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa, one of the most acclaimed writers in the Spanish-speaking world, has been awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize for literature.

The European Union should stop pressing China to revalue the yuan as a rapid revaluation could cause turmoil, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said on Wednesday.

Taliban officials have engaged in periodic, discreet contacts with Afghan and U.S. officials for months but are unwilling to move to formal peace negotiations until the U.S. agrees to a timetable for the withdrawal of all foreign troops, according to a Pakistani intelligence official and members of a newly formed Afghan peace council.

Western efforts to renew peace talks between Syria and Israel are focusing on finding common ground, but nothing has crystallized yet and the chances of success are unknown, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad said.

At least 64 people are dead in flash floods that struck Indonesia following torrential rains, officials said Wednesday.

A Tajik military helicopter carrying members of an elite unit crashed in eastern Tajikistan on Wednesday, killing 28 soldiers, military sources said.

Emergency workers in Hungary battled on Wednesday to keep a tide of toxic red sludge that spilled from an alumina plant from reaching the Raba and Danube rivers.