Rome was on high alert on Christmas Eve after parcel bomb blasts left two staffers at the Chilean and Swiss embassies in the Italian capital badly injured.
Russia was due Friday to give initial approval to a historic nuclear arms pact with the US that opens the way for the former Cold War foes' cooperation.
The long list of trade disputes between the United States and China lengthened further, as Washington asked the WTO to examine subsidies to the Chinese wind power sector.
India's animators are hoping that a film starring two of Bollywood's biggest stars will revive the sector's fortunes, after earlier efforts to popularise the cartoon genre fell flat.
Scores of villagers on a remote Japanese island chain in the Pacific scrambled for higher ground after a major 7.4-magnitude offshore quake sparked a tsunami alert.
European airports fought to clear a backlog of thousands of stranded Christmas travellers as arctic conditions gripped the continent and sparked fresh delays and cancellations.
French families arrived in Haiti to fetch a group of Haitian children they adopted in the wake of a devastating earthquake that ravaged the impoverished country.
Brazil this year overtook Germany as the fourth-biggest car market in the world -- and foreign investors see huge potential as the Latin American giant becomes increasingly prosperous.
Autistic children have difficulty finding things such as shoes in a bedroom or apples at a supermarket, impairing their ability to lead normal lives, according to a new study.