At least five Iranian pilgrims were killed and dozens more wounded Wednesday in an attack northeast of Baghdad, security officials said. Foreign Office minister Lord Malloch-Brown, who is resigning from the government later this week, said: "We definitely don't have enough helicopters," adding that "mobility" was vital for operations in southern Afghanistan, where British troops are battling a resurgent Taliban. Malloch-Brown also questioned Prime Minister Gordon Brown's claim that the war was being fought to prevent Afghan terrorists carrying ...

As President Obama steps up his push for health care reform, there is a growing effort to stop it, and rising doubts about how Obama is handling the issue. The president said from the first day of his administration that health care was a top domestic priority, and some observers say he's taking a risk in addressing the nation through a primetime news conference Wednesday with little to show after months of wrangling. Obama and top Democrats are seeking ...

Japan dissolved its lower house of parliament Tuesday ahead of general elections in August. The move was not unexpected. On July 13, Prime Minister Taro Aso said he would dissolve the lower house of the Diet some time this week. Elections for new lawmakers will be held on August 30, said Jun Matsumoto, the chief Cabinet spokesman, at the time. The beleaguered prime minister has faced increasing pressure from within his party, the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), ...

The brother of powerful Iranian cleric Ali Akbar Hasehemi Rafsanjani hailed the latter's upcoming Friday sermon as one that Iranians have highly anticipated and said that a "great turnout" is expected. Rafsanjani, a former president and normally a frequent speaker at the prayer service on Islam's holy day, has not appeared at the weekly sermon since the disputed June 12 presidential vote, according to the semi-official Iranian Labor News Agency. Rafsanjani's absence was seen by many as an indication of ...

In the latest episode of Protesting French Workers Do the Darndest Things, laid-off employees at the New Fabris car-parts factory have come up with a novel method of negotiating their severance pay. Either they're given $41,000 per employee as part of the company's closure, they warn, or they'll blow the entire plant to smithereens. "We burned these machines here a couple of days ago as proof we're ready to go all the way," New Fabris employee Daniel Thébault told ...

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has defended the UK's involvement in the war in Afghanistan following the British Army's bloodiest day of the near eight-year conflict. Addressing lawmakers on Monday, Brown said the security of Afghanistan was crucial to preventing terrorist attacks elsewhere in the world. "In 2009 the case for our continued involvement is the same: to prevent terrorist attacks in Britain and across the world by dealing with the terrorist threat at its source -- that crucible of ...

June has been rough for President Obama. PRINCETON, New Jersey (CNN) -- June has been rough for President Obama. After experiencing enormous success during his first months in office, some of his political vulnerabilities have started to emerge. As Republicans begin to think about the 2010 midterm elections and moderate Democrats decide how they should vote on Obama's most ambitious initiative, health care, the White House must prevent these weaknesses from becoming debilitating. The first vulnerability is the tension between ...

The British tabloid News of the World is no stranger to sleaze. It regularly publishes articles accusing the country's leading figures of affairs, fraud and other wrongdoing. Now, in what could be read as karmic retribution, the tabloid finds itself on the other side of scandal, with claims that News of the World's publisher, News International, Rupert Murdoch's British subsidiary, paid $1.6 million to settle court cases that exposed that its journalists had used criminal methods to secure stories. ...

It may have sounded strange, on the campaign trail in 2006, when Mexico's President Felipe Calderon warned members of his conservative National Action Party to repress "the little PRI-ista we all carry inside us." PRI, of course, is the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which ruled Mexico as a corrupt one-party dictatorship for 71 years until the PAN finally ousted it in 2000. Unconvinced that the ruling party had indeed exorcised its inner-PRI, Mexico's voters in Sunday's midterm election indulged ...

In bowing out as Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin harkened back to her high school basketball days — although there was no sign of the "Barracuda," as she was nicknamed for her ability to cut through the opposing team's offenses. In a hastily called press conference on the eve of a three-day holiday, Palin presented herself as a point guard exhausted by the "full court press from the national level." The 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee explained how the ...