Despite talk of economic "green shoots," more people around the world received pink slips last month. The jobless rate climbed to 9.2 percent in the 16 Eurozone nations of the EU, the highest rate in a decade. In the U.S. unemployment has hit a 25-year high of 8.9 percent and Hong Kong unemployment hit a three-year high of 5.3 percent in April. Meeting in Geneva this week, the International Labor Organization predicts global unemployment could eclipse 7 percent for the ...

Life imitated art in Paris on Saturday. A thief staged a brazen, daylight holdup in an upscale district of the French capital, stealing at least $8.5 million in jewelry from the prestigious Chopard store, police said. A spokesman for Paris police told CNN the man escaped after holding people inside the store at gunpoint. He provided no other details, but police investigator Olivier Lebon told CNN's Paris affiliate BFM-TV, "From the first elements we have, it would be a man ...

More than 20,000 civilians were killed in the final months of Sri Lanka's civil war -- nearly three times previous estimates, The Times newspaper in Britain reported Friday. The Times said it had acquired confidential U.N. documents that record nearly 7,000 civilian deaths in the no-fire zone up to the end of April. The toll then surged, the paper quoted unidentified U.N. sources as saying, with an average of 1,000 civilians killed each day until May 19, when the government ...

The atmosphere was tense in Cape Town on Friday after xenophobic violence that has left more than 40 dead in Johannesburg spread to South Africa's largest city. Clashes overnight resulted in one death and 15 arrests and the evacuations of 420 foreign nationals, a police official in Cape Town said. "Crowds of people went on a rampage, looting and carrying out acts of violence," said Cape Town Police Superintendent Billy Jones. They were charged with public violence and are to ...

The number of swine flu cases in Japan are escalating with surprising speed, and health officials are not sure why. The Japanese government on Wednesday confirmed the first two cases of the disease in Tokyo, the world's most populous metropolitan area. Meanwhile, the number of Japanese who have contracted the new flu has more than doubled since May 18 from 130 to 279, a rate of increase that is "without a doubt" the highest in Asia, says Peter Cordingley, ...

As sure as growth slides and employment tumbles, so cases of fraud rise during recessions. This time is no different. According to a report out today from The Network, a U.S. firm that runs compliance and corporate governance hotlines for about half of the Fortune 500, fraud-related calls amounted to 21% of all reports in the first quarter of this year, up from 14% in the same period in 2007. While reports of problems such as harassment, discrimination or ...

The United Nations is demanding full access to refugee camps that are home to an estimated quarter of a million people fleeing war in Sri Lanka, the United Nations Children's Fund said Tuesday. "People are arriving into camps sick, malnourished and some with untended wounds of war," UNICEF Executive Director Ann Veneman said in a written statement. "... Water and sanitation needs are critical." Some 65,000 people have fled what had been the fighting zone in northeast Sri Lanka over ...

Russian and U.S officials are meeting Wednesday and Thursday in Moscow to discuss a replacement pact for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty I, which is expiring in December. "The key thing is that our two countries seem to have decided that we do want to pursue very intensive negotiations between now and December 2009 to try to achieve a new treaty to replace START when it goes out of force December 5," said Rose Gottemoeller, the U.S. assistant secretary of ...

Humanitarian aid agencies scrambled Monday to offer help to the tens of thousands of people in need after Tamil separatists declared an end to their quarter-century struggle in Sri Lanka. The United Nations said Monday that over the past few days some 65,000 people had fled what had been the fighting zone in northeast Sri Lanka, bringing to 265,000 the number of internally displaced people, which it refers to as IDPs. "This latest massive influx of people, who have endured ...

Around 200 new species of frogs have been found in Madagascar, one of the world's biodiversity hotspots. A study identified between 129 and 221 new species of frogs on the island. The Spanish Scientific Research Council (CSIC), who carried out the study, believe the find could practically double the number of amphibians known in the world if the results are extrapolated at a global scale. The study, published in the journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of ...