Federal officials said Monday they are probing allegations by a former investigator into the deadliest terrorist attack in Argentine history that he was kidnapped and tortured by men who said they were national intelligence agents. Claudio Lifschitz, 43, said three hooded men threw him into the back of a truck on Friday night and put a plastic bag over his head. They then questioned him on details of the probe into the bombing of the Argentine Jewish Mutual Association (AMIA) ...

Stocks crashed through a psychological barrier on Monday, falling below 7000 to close down 4.24% for the day, at 6763 — the first market close under 7000 since May 1997. The broader S&P 500 was down sharply as well, falling 4.66% to finish at 700.82. The market opened on a sharp down note after absorbing a weekend of anxiety over AIG, the black hole of an insurance company that is swallowing another $30 billion of government assistance with no ...

The Vatican said Friday it is not satisfied by the apology issued by a Catholic bishop who denied the Holocaust, saying the cleric must still clearly "distance himself" from the controversial comments. Bishop Richard Williamson, who is now in England, issued a statement Thursday saying he regretted making the remarks. But he did not retract them or say he had changed his mind about the Holocaust. A Vatican spokesman pointed out that the apology, which was posted on a Catholic ...

The Catholic bishop who caused outrage for denying the Nazis had systematically murdered millions of Jews in the Holocaust apologized Thursday for his statements. "I regret having made such remarks," Bishop Richard Williamson said in a statement on a Catholic Web site where he has posted in the past. "If I had known beforehand the full harm and hurt to which they would give rise, especially to the Church, but also to survivors and relatives of victims of injustice under ...

The world needs a "global New Deal" to haul it out of the economic crisis it faces, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the United Kingdom said Sunday. "We need a global New Deal -- a grand bargain between the countries and continents of this world -- so that the world economy can not only recover but... so the banking system can be based on... best principles," he said, referring to the 1930s American plan to fight the Great Depression. Brown ...

Europe's euphoria over Barack Obama is fading fast. As Congress wrangles over the President's $819 billion stimulus package, a "buy American" clause has the European Union threatening legal action and retaliatory sanctions and opening up the prospect of an explosive trade war. Just weeks after hailing Obama's election, E.U. officials are now howling that his plans are putting a global economic recovery at risk. They want Obama to resist any retreat into protectionism, warning that it could ...

Terminal lung cancer patients are living longer thanks to the world's first registered lung cancer vaccine, a leading Cuban scientist says. Dr. Gisela Gonzalez has spent years researching the vaccine which the Cuban government approved for the use of the general public last year. Gonzalez and her team have worked on developing the CimaVax EGF vaccine at the Cuban Center of Molecular Immunology since the early 1990s. She says all those years of hard work have finally paid ...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel phoned Pope Benedict XVI Sunday over a Holocaust denier whom the pope welcomed back into the Roman Catholic Church last month. Neither side seems to have shifted its position over Bishop Richard Williamson, who, shortly before the pope lifted his excommunication, denied the Nazis had systematically murdered six million Jews during World War II. "It was a very constructive conversation," the German government and Vatican said in a joint statement about the call. Merkel and the ...