Fires in central and southern California raged Saturday as triple-digit temperatures mixed with dry conditions continued to fuel the flames. A growing blaze known as the Station fire in the Angeles National Forest-La Canada Flintridge area consumed 2,000 acres Saturday, for a rough total of 7,500 acres burned, officials said. "The fire has been very active on all fronts," U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman Randi Jorgensen said. The fire threatened about 1,800 buildings in Los Angeles County, and 900 homes were ...

Two international staffers supporting the peacekeeping mission in the volatile Sudanese region of Darfur were kidnapped Saturday morning, a spokesman for the peacekeeping force told CNN. The man and the woman, whose identities and nationalities were withheld, worked for UNAMID, a U.N. and African Union force designated to keep peace in Darfur. "Our people have been able to establish contact with the people responsible for the abduction," said UNAMID spokesman Noureddine Mezni, but he declined to identify the abductors. The ...

In Pakistan's combustible Swat Valley, some girls refuse to wear uniforms so they can make it to school without being harmed. Other girls hide textbooks in their shawls to escape harassment. School-age girls are among the victims in the fierce fighting between government soldiers and Taliban militants in the Swat Valley. The Pakistani government said it has flushed much of the Taliban out of the area, but some fighting persists. Many girls remain banned from schools. Dozens of their schools ...

America's top diplomat for Afghanistan and Pakistan says the deadly Taliban insurgency in those countries relies heavily on funding from the oil-rich Persian Gulf. Such money even outpaces the cash gathered from Afghanistan's multibillion-dollar exports of opium and heroin, said Richard Holbrooke, the United States' special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, in an interview Tuesday with CNN. "It seems to be more from individuals carrying money in their suitcases," Holbrooke said. "Sometimes they are taking advantage of the pilgrimage [to ...

Eyebrows were raised around the world Aug. 14 when Hamas security forces in Rafah swiftly, and brutally, destroyed an al-Qaeda-inspired group that had proclaimed the southern Gaza town an "Islamic emirate." After all, Hamas is listed by the U.S. and the European Union as a terrorist organization, and many in the West don't expect an avowedly Islamist political organization to forcefully suppress jihadist groups. Yet, that's exactly what happened when pro-al-Qaeda cleric Abdel Latif Moussa gathered about 100 of ...

Hundreds of people were stranded on Wednesday in villages dotting Taiwan's mountainous regions after Typhoon Morakot unleashed its fury over the weekend and caused the worst flooding in a half-century. Morakot dumped 83 inches (2.1 meters) of rain on parts of the island, unleashing the worst flooding there in half a century, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Buildings collapsed in the floodwater, and mudslides buried everything in their paths. After hitting Taiwan on Saturday, ...

Saudi Arabian officials have closed a second office of a Lebanese broadcasting network, this one in Riyadh, after the network aired an interview with a Saudi man who bragged about his sex life, authorities said. Pakistani police registered a case Tuesday against Musharraf over his order to arrest and detain judges in late 2007, the Pakistani High Commission in London said. As a result, "If Musharraf returned to Pakistan, he would face a court who would decide whether he ...

The wrath of Typhoon Morakot has affected nearly 9 million people across four coastal China provinces and killed dozens in Taiwan, officials said Tuesday. The typhoon, which stormed through the Philippines and Taiwan before slamming into eastern China over the weekend, has forced more than 1.4 million people to relocate on the mainland, China's Ministry of Civil Affairs said. At least six people -- four of them in Zhejiang province -- were killed along the coast, and more than ...

Apple is the exclusive gatekeeper to its iPhone App Store, able to reject apps at will -- as it did July 28 with Google Voice. But some developers aren't taking the rejection lying down: They're turning instead to an unauthorized app store called Cydia, where forbidden wares continue to exist -- and even earn developers some money. That store is operated by Jay Freeman, more fondly known in the iPhone "Jailbreak" community as Saurik. Only five months old, his ...

The intruders wore masks and carried guns. They went door to door, through the narrow and dusty alleyways, asking if there were any Christians inside. When the terrified faces inside replied yes, they poured chemicals on the small, redbrick homes of Episcopalians and Evangelicals, setting them ablaze. In some cases, they didn't bother with the question. Instead, they opened fire and hurled rocks, forcing families to flee in a panic — moments before fresh flames consumed their homes as ...