The newly elected French President Francois Hollande made an unannounced visit to Afghanistan on Friday, days after a NATO summit at which he discomfited allies by insisting that France would pull out its combat troops by the end of the year. The newly inaugurated French leader was meeting with President Hamid Karzai and visiting with French troops, who are mainly deployed in Kapisa province, east of the ca ...

By Alex Rodriguez Pakistan -- A Pakistani doctor who led a phony vaccination campaign aimed at helping the CIA pinpoint Osama bin Laden's whereabouts was convicted of treason Wednesday and sentenced to 33 years in prison, a decision that is likely to further fray Washington's fragile relations with Islamabad. U.S. officials have been seeking the release of Shakeel Afridi since his arrest by Pakistani author ...

 "Press TV" - -In an interview with Russia’s Channel One, Berkan Yashar, who is also a Turkish politician, said the US has not killed the al-Qaeda leader. “In September of 1992, I was in Chechnya, that’s when I first met the man whose name was Bin Laden. This meeting took place in a two-story house in the city of Grozny; on the top floor was a family of Gamsakhurdia, the Georgian president, who then was kic ...

Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg wed longtime girlfriend Priscilla Chan on Saturday, announcing the nuptials through a status update on the social networking site. The 28-year-old billionaire's wedding took place a day after Facebook's initial public offering on the Nasdaq stock exchange on Friday. More than 280,000 people "liked" Zuckerberg's status change, which was accompanied by a photo of th ...

Blind Chinese lawyer Chen Guangcheng has arrived in New York with his family. Shuffling in front of the cameras for his first news press conference in America he said: "I hope everybody works with me to promote justice and fairness in China." He had emerged from 17 days confined in a Beijing hospital and years under illegal house arrest and yet seemed remarkably composed and at home addressing scores of rep ...

By DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW Whether restarting work on a nuclear reactor or (allegedly) kidnapping Chinese fishermen, trying to launch a satellite or to import banned tap-dancing shoes from Italy, North Korea continues to draw international attention a month after Kim Jong-un was declared its new leader. China is North Korea’s closest ally. Yet for many Chinese, exasperated tolerance seems to be turning to anger ...

SYRIA: Opposition leader stepping down The main opposition council is crumbling under the weight of infighting over issues that cut to the heart of the revolution, including accusations that the movement is becoming as autocratic as the regime it wants to drive out. The slow disintegration of the Syrian National Council could complicate Western efforts to bolster the opposition, just as President Bashar Ass ...

The US has plans in place to attack Iran if other measures fail to stop it developing nuclear weapons, Washington's envoy to Israel says. Dan Shapiro said the US hoped diplomacy and sanctions would persuade Iran to alter its nuclear programme, but a military option was "ready". US President Obama has previously said military action has not been ruled out. The US and its allies say Iran is developing a nucle ...