A 7.0-magnitude quake struck off the western coast of Indonesia's Sumatra Island on Sunday, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

It may have been a case of hitting the target but missing the opportunity. Reports last week said Saad bin Laden, Osama bin Laden's fourth son and a mid-ranking al-Qaeda operative, was killed by a recent CIA Predator strike. But six years ago, the U.S. had an opportunity to get him alive, but lost it when the Bush administration decided to pull away from cooperation with Iran. Saad's death has not yet been confirmed, but U.S. officials believe he ...

A jury in Arkansas convicted evangelist Tony Alamo on Friday of 10 federal counts of taking minors across state lines for sex, according to the court in the Western District in Arkansas. Authorities in September charged Alamo, the 74-year-old founder and leader of Tony Alamo Christian Ministries, and raided his 15-acre compound near Texarkana, Arkansas. Jurors reached the verdict after more than eight hours of deliberations. Each count carries a maximum sentence of 10 years. Between March 1994 and ...

The French Senate began debate Tuesday on a law that would mark a significant cultural shift -- allowing many more shops across the country to open on Sundays. The bill passed the lower house, the National Assembly, last Tuesday by a vote of 282 to 238, a partial victory for President Nicolas Sarkozy, who backs it. What seems routine in much of the Western world has been fiercely resisted in France, where Sundays have officially been set aside as a ...

When Pope Benedict XVI greets U.S. President Barack Obama at the Vatican on July 10, the symbolism and sheer star power of the encounter will keep the pundits chattering away. The photo op alone is worth a thousand words: The 82-year-old man in white, the world's most recognizable religious leader and head of its largest single denomination comes face-to-face with the charismatic first black President of the world's last superpower. And the scheduling efforts of both the Vatican and ...

A reporter for Newsweek magazine who was arrested in Tehran has confessed to doing the bidding of Western governments, the semi-official Fars News Agency reported Wednesday. Maziar Bahari, 42, made his alleged confession at a news conference Tuesday. Because international journalists have been limited in their ability to gather news in Iran, CNN has not been able to confirm the agency report. Fars reported that the Canadian-Iranian reporter who had worked for the BBC and England's Channel 4 network admitted ...

As millions of Iranians took to the streets of Tehran over the past week to protest the presidential-election results, exiled opposition group the National Council of Resistance of Iran saw its moment. "This uprising is the result of 30 years of murder, oppression and corruption by an Iranian regime we've dedicated our entire lives to fighting," Mohammad Mohaddessin, chairman of foreign affairs for the Paris-based group told TIME. "Even if protesters aren't calling for [the NCRI] to take ...

There is no denying that the news clips from Tehran are dramatic, unprecedented in violence and size since the mullahs came to power in 1979. They're possibly even augurs of real change. But can we trust them? Most of the demonstrations and rioting I've seen in the news are taking place in north Tehran, around Tehran University and in public places like Azadi Square. These are, for the most part, areas where the educated and well-off live — Iran's ...

The rift between Russia and Western powers over Georgia burst back into full view on the U.N. Security Council when Russia vetoed a resolution that would have extended the U.N. observer mission in Georgia.

"For the last time, I'm not your messiah," groans the title character in the 1979 comedy The Life of Brian. There's an echo of Brian's panicked renunciation in a shakeup currently underway in Tibetan Buddhism — in this case, nobody's laughing, although the ending will, no doubt, be happier. Late last month, two Spanish media outlets confirmed that 24-year-old Tenzin Osel Rinpoche, one of the most renowned Buddhist "golden children" — toddlers determined ...