Claudia Parsons

Dirty Harry himself nearly hijacked Mitt Romney's presidential nomination with a rambling diatribe against Barack Obama - addressed to an empty chair.

Giuseppe Oglio's farm near Milan looks like it's suffering from neglect. Weeds run rampant amid the rice fields and clover grows unchecked.

Chinese President Hu Jintao on Tuesday promised to put a ''notable'' brake on the country's rapidly rising carbon emissions.

A US Airways jet with 155 people on board ditched in the frigid Hudson River off Manhattan after apparently hitting a flock of geese on Thursday.

Investors said good riddance on Wednesday to one of the worst years and prayed that rescue plans will pull the global economy out of its tailspin.

Another day, another batch of warning signs indicating the world will enter 2009 in the throes of a sharp economic slowdown.

The hit musical Rent closes on Broadway this weekend after 12 years.

Sixth seed Dinara Safina weathered a spirited challenge from Swiss teenager Timea Bacsinszky to win 3-6, 7-5, 6-2 in the third round of the US Open.

A music festival with heavy metal, punk and hip-hop might seem like an unusual place to get baptised, but Creation is a festival with strict rules.

Morocco and Western Sahara's Polisario independence movement ended a fourth round of talks near New York City on Tuesday without narrowing differences on Africa's longest-running territorial dispute. Morocco took control of most of Western Sahara in 1975 when colonial power Spain withdrew, prompting a guerrilla war for independence.

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer faces pressure to resign on Tuesday as well as questions about whether he will be prosecuted for any crime after a report linked him to a high-class prostitution ring. A New York Times report said the man who made his name fighting corruption hired a  000-an-hour sex worker

Republican Rudy Giuliani and Democrat John Edwards abandoned their failing United States presidential bids on Wednesday, narrowing the race to two main candidates on each side before next week's nomination voting in more than 20 states.