World News: General

A series of blasts tore through a Russian arms depot on Friday, local news agencies reported.
The RIA news agency quoted an emergency official as saying that blasts at the depot in Ulyanovsk, a city on the banks of the Volga River, had been reported by local residents.

France will issue recommendations against full face veils but not pass a law barring Muslim women from wearing them, a leading backer of a legal ban said on Friday.

The European Union is expected to approve plans next week to train some Somali armed forces, an EU official said on Friday.

CHISINAU (Reuters) - Moldova is in a flap over accusations by its new pro-West leaders that communist ex-President Vladimir Voronin took hens, turkeys and even a cow with its calf from an official residence when he stepped down.

Jerusalem, Nov. 13 (ANI): Israel has signalled fresh hope for talks with the Palestine Authority following Palestinian officials postponing the elections in their territories indefinitely.The polls were originally scheduled to be held on January 24.

A predominately white South African trade union accused the government on Thursday of putting racial job quotas ahead of fighting crime.

Former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, convicted last month for his role in an arms scandal in the 1990s, accused former President Jacques Chirac on Thursday of letting illegal weapons sales to Angola go ahead.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has created a powerful new intelligence organisation to try to quell any further public unrest following June's disputed election, an exiled Iranian opposition group said on Thursday.

Poor Hondurans are going hungry and their sick children cannot obtain medicines as donors cut aid to the country following a June coup that deposed President Manuel Zelaya, doctors and aid workers say.

Six Algerians have been arrested as part of a Europe-wide counterfeit ring that stole the identities of Algerian footballers and is believed to have funded terrorism, Italy's interior minister said on Thursday.

Two Swiss businessmen prevented from leaving Libya for more than a year will be tried for tax evasion and visa irregularities, Libya's Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.

Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards force has replaced its commander for the greater Tehran area, its Web site said on Thursday.

Global food commodities prices are set to stay high in the medium term due to tight balance between supply and demand which can be easily rocked and trigger food price spikes similar to the 2007/08 crisis, agriculture experts say.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday warned the Russian elite that an upsurge of violence in the Muslim-dominated North Caucasus had become Russia's single biggest domestic problem.

A U.N. world food summit next week is likely to make little headway in the fight against hunger, with leaders simply pledging to boost agricultural aid to poor countries but setting no targets or deadlines for action.

Thirty-two people were killed after a truck carrying them to Angola's northern Uige province overturned, also injuring 42 other people, state-owned Radio Nacional de Angola said on Thursday.

Indonesian radicals plotted to crash an explosives-laden car into a convoy carrying President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono just weeks after deadly attacks on Jakarta hotels in July, a suspect said on Thursday.

President Dmitry Medvedev warned Russia's opposition in his annual address on Thursday not to use democracy as a cover to "destabilise the state and split society".

Insurgents may step up attacks in Iraq before a parliamentary election in January, the government said on Thursday, acknowledging the fears of many Iraqis who are only just starting to enjoy better security.

Emboldened by a rousing welcome in Cambodia, Thailand's fugitive former premier Thaksin Shinawatra is rallying supporters from just over the border, upping the ante in Thailand's political crisis.