At the crossroads between east and west in the desert nation of Turkmenistan, a quiet battle is under way for natural gas, oil and influence, and the U.S. and Europe are losing out to China and the Muslim world. There's a lot at stake: the Central Asian country has the world's fourth-largest reserves of natural gas and substantial oil reserves, putting it in the same energy league as Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iraq. Plus, its position just north of Afghanistan could be hugely beneficial to ...

On Oct. 20, China announced, almost casually, that it was canceling 150 items of maturing government debt owed to it by 32 African countries. The announcement came a few days before a meeting between China's top legislator Wu Bangguo and Kenneth Marende, the Speaker of Kenya's National Assembly, to discuss cooperation between the two countries. Further, on Nov. 8, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was to attend the opening ceremony of the 4th Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China-Africa ...

A celebrity gossip Web site has caught Maria Shriver a third time apparently violating California's law against using a cell phone while driving. Web site TMZ posted a 17-second video Tuesday showing the California first lady apparently speaking into a cell phone while turning a corner in Brentwood in a black SUV. She puts the phone down part way through the video, but it's not clear whether she did so because she had finished her conversation or because she noticed ...

A negotiator for de facto Honduran President Roberto Micheletti said that no deal was reached between the two opposed sides Wednesday, as other government officials had reported. Ninety percent of an agreement to end the country's ongoing political crisis has been reached, Micheletti negotiator Vilma Morales said at a news conference Wednesday, but some key points remained to be worked out. Earlier Wednesday, a government official told CNN en Espaol that negotiators for both sides had reached a consensus that ...

A suspect has been arrested in the 1990 abduction and attempted murder of an 8-year-old Texas girl, a spokeswoman for the FBI's Houston, Texas, office said. The victim, Jennifer Schuett, is now 27. She recently shared her story with CNN in hopes of someday bringing her attacker to justice. Schuett fought tears as she spoke at a news conference in Dickinson, Texas. "This event in my life was a tragic one," she said. "But today, 19 years ...

Senior Catholic bishops are threatening to oppose the health care bill under consideration in Congress if lawmakers don't make significant reforms regarding federally funded abortions and other issues. "No one should be required to pay for or participate in abortion," the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops said in a letter Thursday to members of Congress. The letter follows a recent Senate Finance Committee vote that defeated Republican amendments that Democrats said would broaden current restrictions of federal funding for ...

Former Japanese Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa, who resigned from his post after appearing intoxicated at a news conference earlier this year, was found dead in his home Sunday, police told CNN. Tokyo police found Nakagawa, 56, lying face down on a bed on the second-floor of his home, Kyodo reported. Nakagawa submitted his resignation February 17, just three days after he appeared intoxicated at the G7 news conference in Rome, Italy. Japan's prime minister quickly appointed Kaoru Yosano, the economics ...

Google Wave, a product that promises to revolutionize online communication, will go out to about 100,000 beta testers Wednesday. The Web application from Google Inc. combines elements of e-mail, chat, Wiki documents, blogs and photo-sharing sites to create a form of Internet communication called a "hosted conversation," or a "wave." Google demonstrated Wave at the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco, California, in May. The closed group of beta testers will help Google fish bugs ...

Jaycee Dugard will testify against the couple that allegedly held her captive in an elaborate compound hidden in their backyard for 18 years if there is a trial, a lawyer for her family said at a news conference Thursday. Attorney Scott McGregor admitted it has been a difficult transition for Dugard and her two children -- who police say were fathered by her captor -- given her captivity spanned more than half her life and was the only world she ...

A new drug for melanoma has been shown to rapidly shrink malignant tumors in an early trial at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital in New York. Among 27 patients whom the experimental new drug was tested on, "19 showed a 30 percent or greater reduction in tumor size," Dr. Paul Chapman, the lead researcher told CNN from a cancer conference in Berlin. Melanoma develops in cells that produce melanin, the pigment that gives skin its color, and is the most serious ...