A car exploded Thursday near the central market of a major city in Russia's restive North Caucasus region, killing at least 12 people, regional police said according to the Interfax news agency.

U.S. Marine commandos stormed a pirate-held cargo vessel off the Somalia coast Thursday, reclaiming control of the ship and taking nine prisoners without firing a shot, the U.S. Navy said.

Drug gangs in Mexico and Central America are morphing into an insurgency like the one that gripped Colombia 20 years ago, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says.

Two men were arrested after bewildered diners at a McDonald's spotted them wrestling a 5-foot python named Boris in the restaurant parking lot, police said Thursday.

Fidel Castro said Cuba's economic model no longer works, a U.S.-based journalist reports following interviews with the former president last week.

A suspected American missile strike killed five alleged militants in northwestern Pakistan early Thursday, an intelligence official said, the fourth such attack on suspected insurgent targets there in 24 hours.

A blind, self-taught activist lawyer who documented forced abortions and other abuses was released from a Chinese prison Thursday and promptly confined in his rural village with no access to communication, a relative said.

The brother of Afghanistan's president said Wednesday he made at least $800,000 by buying and then quickly reselling a high-end Dubai villa using a loan provided by the chairman of the troubled Kabul Bank.

Making a Difference: Madieu Williams is better known for his work as a free safety for the NFL's Minnesota Vikings than for his efforts in West Africa. But when he's not trying to stop the NFL's best receivers, he's committed to bringing better health and education to his native Sierra Leone. NBC's Ron Allen reports.(Nightly News)

Zimbabwe wants normal ties with Western powers critical of its policies but will press ahead with a plan to hand control of foreign companies to local blacks, President Robert Mugabe said.

The legitimacy of Afghanistan's parliamentary elections is severely threatened by insurgent attacks on candidates and the lack of security provided by the government, an international rights group said Thursday.

A servant of the politically powerful clan accused in last year's massacre of 57 people told a Philippine court Wednesday that the family members plotted the killings of rivals and journalists over dinner six days before the ambush.

Forest fires killed five people in northern Kazakhstan as neighboring Russia sends aircraft to fight blazes advancing onto its territory.

The father of a U.S. soldier serving in Afghanistan tells The Associated Press he tried to warn the Army that troops in his son's unit had killed civilians.

At least 22 Mexican journalists have been killed over the past four years, according to a U.S.-based media watchdog group that is calling on the government to respond forcefully to the dangers facing reporters who cover the country's drug war.