Diminutive South Korean Ji-Yai Shin was walking tall after a superb two-stroke victory from Australian Katherine Hull at the HSBC Women's Champions tournament in Singapore on Sunday. Seven adrift at halfway and still six behind with a round to go at Tanah Merah, the 20-year-old British Women's Open champion took the title with her second successive 66 for an 11 under total of 277. Hull had started the final round with a two-shot advantage thanks partly to a final-hole birdie ...

The U.S. military feels its experience fighting terrorists overseas can help Mexico in its fight against the drug cartels. "There are an awful lot of similarities," said Adm. Michael Mullen. Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke to reporters as he flew home from a weeklong visit to countries in Latin America, ending with Mexico on Friday. "The intelligence support capabilities, tactics that evolved for us in our fight against networks in the terrorist world bears ...

The case of the pregnant 9-year-old was shocking enough. But it was the response of the Catholic Church that infuriated many Brazilians. Archibishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho of the coastal city of Recife announced that the Vatican was excommunicating the family of a local girl who had been raped and impregnated with twins by her stepfather, because they had chosen to have the girl undergo an abortion. The Church excommunicated the doctors who performed the procedure as well. "God's laws," said ...

The Phenomenon is back. You may not have recognized him when he came on as a substitute for Corinthians in a Brazilian Cup match, though. After all, he's a few kilos heavier than the Ronaldo we grew to know and love in the last decade. However, at 32 years of age, Ronaldo Luis Nazario de Lima is attempting another comeback. Will it be a successful one As far as I am concerned, it won't. Debate: Do ...

An 8-year-old American boy is caught in the middle of an ugly custody battle so high profile that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is using her clout to try to bring the boy home. In 2004, David Goldman dropped off his wife, Bruna, and then-4-year-old son, Sean, at the airport for a two-week vacation in Brazil. Shortly after she arrived in her native country, Bruna told David she wanted a divorce and planned to stay in Brazil with their ...

The world might be sinking into its worst recession in generations, but China is on a wild shopping spree. Sitting some $2 trillion of cash reserves, Beijing is taking advantage of the woes of others to cement its grip on new sources of commodities ranging from olive oil to crude oil —often at fire-sale prices. China's growth rate may be slowing in concert with the world economy, but even at that slower ...

If it feels like big companies are doing more than their fair share of letting employees go these days, that's not just because mass layoffs at blue chip firms are the ones that make headlines. New research suggests that in times of recession, large employers disproportionately lose workers, while small companies, as a group, fare better. "It's definitely the case that large firms are downsizing much faster in recessions," says Giuseppe Moscarini, an economist at Yale University who conducted ...

Sexual exploitation and forced labor are the most common forms of human trafficking in the world, a new report from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime said. The "Global Report on Trafficking in Persons" is based on data from 155 countries and offers a global assessment of human trafficking and efforts to fight it. The most common form of human trafficking is sexual exploitation, at 79 percent, the report said. The victims of sexual exploitation are predominantly women and ...

Former presidents of Mexico, Colombia and Brazil called Wednesday for the decriminalization of marijuana for personal use and a change in tactics on the war on drugs, a Spanish news agency said. Ex-presidents Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico, Cesar Gaviria of Colombia and Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil made their announcement at a meeting in Brazil of the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, the EFE news agency said. "The problem is that current policies are based on prejudices and ...

Chelsea said on Tuesday that they had been given permission to talk with Guus Hiddink about taking charge at the Premier League club until the end of the season. The Dutchman has emerged as the clear favorite to replace the sacked Luis Felipe Scolari, but his involvement with the Russian national team is a stumbling block. A statement on Chelsea's official Web site www.chelseafc.com said they had been cleared to open negotiations with Hiddink. "Chelsea can confirm that we have ...