Sri Lanka's courts ground to a halt Wednesday as lawyers went on strike to protest against a move by lawmakers to impeach the chief justice in a bitter clash over the independence of the judiciary.

Read More

Western and Arab nations sympathetic to Syria's uprising against President Bashar al-Assad gave full political recognition on Wednesday to the opposition, reflecting a hardening consensus that the 20-month-old uprising might be nearing a tipping point.

Read More

Political leaders and musicians paid homage Wednesday to Indian sitar maestro and composer Ravi Shankar, who died in the United States at the age of 92. Many hailed the contribution to popularising Indian classical music

Read More

A Kazakhstan court has ordered two opposition media outlets, a television channel and a web-based channel, to shut down and close all affiliated websites in the country, a rights group said Wednesday. The television channel,

Read More

Thousands of couples in Hong Kong, mainland China and Singapore flocked Wednesday to tie the knot on 12/12/12, seeking good fortune for marriages begun on the century's last repeating date. Authorities in Hong Kong and

Read More

North Korea launched a long-range rocket Wednesday days before its young ruler marks 12 months in power, intensifying the threat posed by the nuclear-armed state and provoking global condemnation. The United States and its allies

Read More

US cotton futures rallied to six-week highs in heavy volume on Tuesday as investors took their long-awaited cue to pile into fibres from a broadly neutral US government monthly crop report. After only a small

Read More

The most-traded March copper contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange rose 0.14 percent to close at 57,980 yuan ($9,300) a tonne on Wednesday as signs of a revival in China's economic growth and hopes of

Read More

Copper prices rose slightly on Wednesday and were near two-month highs on prospects of US monetary easing - which was announced after the market's official close - and on more signs of an economic pick-up

Read More

Oil prices rose sharply on Wednesday, with Brent crude pushing above $110 a barrel, boosted by US Federal Reserve plans for more monetary stimulus and a Texas refinery fire that lifted refined products futures. Analysts

Read More