BODIES littered the streets after Nigerian forces crushed an Islamist sect's uprising and controversially gunned down the movement's leader after his capture.

A SAUDI man has been arrested over charges linked to his televised boasts of sexual exploits, outraging religious conservatives in the Muslim state, newspapers reported.

MORE than 500 fires are raging out of control in British Columbia fueled by dry forests and record-high temperatures, the governor of the Canadian western province said.

THREE US tourists held by Iran after they crossed from Iraqi Kurdistan were warned by police before hiking across the mountainous terrain where they were arrested, a Kurdish security official said.

IRAN has arrested three Americans who "infiltrated" through the border with Iraq, state-owned Al-Alam television said, in the Islamic republic's first confirmation of the incident.

THE Moroccan government seized all issues of the country's leading French-language independent weekly because it contained a survey of how people viewed the king, officials and the magazine's publisher said.

A FORMER banker who is unable to quit smoking is to spend this month on a remote uninhabited Scottish island in a bid to break the habit.

US President Barack Obama has hailed a key congressional committee's approval of a bill embracing his plan to overhaul the US health care system as a "historic consensus".

IRAN has arrested three Americans who "infiltrated" from Iraq, state television says.

RUSSIAN Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has dived to the bottom of the world's deepest lake aboard a mini-submarine.

Rights activists lashed out Friday at local officials who allowed hundreds of infants to be dropped from the roof of a mosque in western India in the belief that the fall -- which ends when the babies are caught in

He'll be home for Christmas . Pope Benedict XVI will, according to reports, release an album in time for the Christmas season.

A woman has told how youths threw bleach into her face and left her with damage to her sight after she asked them to be quiet in a cinema.

The U.S. State Department said Friday it was investigating reports that three American tourists have been detained by Iranians while hiking near the border in the self-ruled Kurdish region in northern Iraq.

AN IRAQ WAR VET FIRED SHOTS AT A CAR WITH A SIX YEAR OLD GIRL INSIDE, AND HE CLAIMS IT WAS BECAUSE OF POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER

A man has been charged in connection with a fatal road crash in which a 29-year-oldA father-of-two was killed.

Three U.S. troops were killed Saturday when roadside bombs ripped through their patrol in southern Afghanistan, while a French soldier died in a gunbattle north of the capital, officials said.

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As word emerges that thousands of Wall Street bankers and traders were given seven-figure bonuses last year even as their failing firms were handed billions in government bailout funds, Paul Solman weighs in on just why CEOs make so much