Costa Rica elects first woman president

Costa Rica elected its first female president, as the ruling National Liberation Party claimed a historic victory.

A Cuban blogger who has criticized her government has been denied permission to travel to New York to pick up a prestigious journalism award Wednesday.

Rescue crews will resume their search Tuesday for an Australian state minister who went missing while hiking alone on a rugged, icy mountain.

The man jailed for trying to kill British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in a hotel bombing in 1984 is to appear in Parliament Tuesday with the daughter of one of his victims.

U.S. President Barack Obama will meet Monday night with his national security team on Afghanistan and Pakistan, the White House announced.

More than two dozen militants were killed Friday in a Pakistani military airstrike that targeted high-value Taliban leaders, a Pakistani military official told CNN Saturday.

The death toll climbed to 16 Monday in the attack early Sunday on teens at a party in Mexico, Juarez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz said. The victims, aged 14 to 19, had no known criminal ties, he said.

A former Iranian vice president was sentenced to six years in prison for his role in post-election violence, but will remain free on bail while his case is appealed, the semi-official Iranian Student’s News Agency reported.

Five people were killed and 900 rescued when a ferry capsized Sunday in the Philippines, leaving crews scouring the waters for dozens of unaccounted passengers, coast guard officials said.

Eleven people were killed and 21 were wounded Thursday when a suicide bomber struck a checkpoint in Ramadi, Iraq, an Iraqi Interior Ministry official said.

The supply line to Haiti is clogged by airport congestion and blocked roads, forcing thousands of earthquake survivors to scrounge for food and emergency aid. But the head of the United Nations is calling for calm among the increasingly desperate populations.

Two American women formed Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods, an organization that facilitates the construction of toilets that compost human waste to be used as fertilizer in Haiti.

At least nine people were killed and at least 30 were wounded Friday in a suicide attack targeting Sunni Muslim worshipers at a mosque in northern Iraq, an Interior Ministry said.

Ten civilians were killed and 13 were wounded when a suicide attacker targeted a police vehicle, a spokesman for the Afghan Interior of Ministry said Thursday.

Investigators have found “elements of an explosive device” at the site of the derailment of an express train in Russia and believe an act of terror caused the deadly incident.

Two more churches in Malaysia were firebombed Sunday, bringing the total to six since a court ruled that non-Muslims can use the word “Allah” as a term for God.