OSLO, Norway - President Barack Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize with a striking defence of war, saying that evil must be vigorously opposed even as he made an impassioned case for building a "just and lasting peace."
"I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people," Obama told his audience Thursday in Oslo's soaring City Hall as he was newly enshrined among the world's great peacemakers. "For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world."
STOCKHOLM, Sweden - A record five women were among the 13 people awarded Nobel Prizes, including a writer who depicted life behind the Iron Curtain and two American researchers who showed how chromosomes protect themselves from degrading.
Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf on Thursday presented the 10 million kronor ($1.4 million) prizes in chemistry, physics, medicine, literature and economics at an elegant ceremony at Stockholm concert hall. Hours earlier, President Barack Obama received the peace prize in Oslo.
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Supporters of Zimbabwe's notorious dictator helped stave off their leader's electoral defeat in 2008 by embarking on a "systematic and widespread" campaign of sexual violence against women affiliated with the leading opposition party, a prominent human rights group alleged Thursday.
AIDS-Free World outlined its accusations in a 64-page report which details a well-co-ordinated campaign of rape encompassing the entire southern African country.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark - European nations pressed former East bloc neighbours to help create a multibillion-dollar fund for poor countries suffering the most from global warming, while key U.S. senators signalled progress on legislation in line with what President Barack Obama will pledge at the U.N. climate conference next week.
The release of the legislative blueprint Thursday was timed to bolster the argument by U.S. delegates in Copenhagen that Washington is taking climate change seriously and that Congress is making progress - albeit slowly - on reducing heat-trapping greenhouse gases.
NEW YORK - New York City police are investigating suspicious white powder found in envelopes at American Express Co. headquarters, near the site of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.
Detective Mindy Diaz says no injuries were reported after police were called to the building in lower Manhattan on Thursday afternoon.
BERLIN - Germany's defence minister on Friday travelled to a northern Afghan region where a September airstrike is believed to have killed many civilians, an attack that has caused political turbulence in Berlin.
Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg arrived Friday morning at the German military base in Kunduz, his ministry said. He travelled with German lawmakers.
PARIS - Pieces of old Paris from a lamp post to a park bench go on the auction block next week, with the piece de resistance 40 iron steps from the Eiffel Tower, all 7.8 metres (25.6 feet) of them.
"Paris Mon Amour," the title given to the auction Monday at the famed French house Drouot, brings together an eclectic batch of memories that evoke a bygone era as well as the present.
MOSCOW - The failure of a new Russian intercontinental ballistic missile during testing was the cause of spectacular spiraling blue lights in the skies over northern Norway, analysts said.
Russia's defence ministry said Thursday a Bulava missile was launched Wednesday by a nuclear submarine submerged in the White Sea and its third stage suffered an unspecified failure.
The United States, Britain and France warned Thursday that Iran risks increased sanctions unless it immediately complies with a series of Security Council resolutions regarding its nuclear program.
Ambassadors from the three countries made their comments at a Security Council meeting after a sanctions committee report to the council on Thursday found an "apparent pattern of sanctions violations involving prohibited arms transfers" over the past three months.
WASHINGTON - A U.S. government official says a top al-Qaida operative has been killed in a drone attack in western Pakistan.
The official would not immediately identify the target of the attack, which he said occurred very recently. However, he said it was neither Osama bin Laden nor Ayman al-Zawahiri, the terrorist network's top two leaders. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the classified program publicly.
MANILA, Philippines - Officials negotiated for a second day Friday with government-armed former militiamen who took 57 villagers hostage in the southern Philippines to press their demands that murder and banditry charges against them be dropped.
The abductions Thursday by 15 gunmen raised fresh questions over the government's long-standing policy of arming civilian volunteers to protect against insurgencies. Just the day before, 100 other militiamen in the south were accused of slaughtering civilians in the country's worst political massacre.
WASHINGTON - Private security guards working for Blackwater USA participated in clandestine CIA raids against suspected insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, The New York Times reported Thursday.
Blackwater's role points to a much deeper connection between the company and the spy agency than has been previously disclosed and raises concerns over the legalities of involving contractors in the most sensitive operations conducted by the U.S. government.
BEIJING - High-profile Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo has been indicted and will likely be tried within four to six weeks, his lawyer said Friday.
Lawyer Shang Baojun said he has yet to see the formal indictment but expects the charge against Liu to be inciting to subvert state power. Police recommended Liu be charged with that crime when they handed his case to prosecutors on Dec. 1, Shang said.
SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea said Friday that it understands the need to resume the stalled international talks on ending its nuclear programs, and that it agrees to work with the United States to narrow unspecified "remaining differences."
The statement from North Korea's Foreign Ministry was the first reaction from the communist nation to three days of high-level talks with President Barack Obama's special envoy. Upon returning from North Korea on Thursday, envoy Stephen Bosworth made similar remarks in Seoul that the two sides reached common understandings on the need to restart the nuclear talks.
NEW YORK - A plainclothes cop chased a scam artist through sidewalks crowded with holiday shoppers and tourists Thursday in the heart of Times Square, killing the suspect near a landmark Broadway hotel after a gunfight that shattered box office and gift shop windows, police said.
No one else was injured.
SARGODHA, Pakistan - Five young American Muslims detained in Pakistan wanted to join militants in the country's Taliban-ruled tribal region, battle U.S. troops in neighbouring Afghanistan and die as martyrs, police officials said Thursday.
The men initially tried to contact jihadist groups in Pakistan via YouTube and other Web sites, then travelled to Pakistan to attempt personal meetings, said the police chief in this eastern Pakistani city, Usman Anwar.
BRUSSELS, Belgium - The EU's self-proclaimed position as global leader in the fight against climate change was rocked Thursday by the bloc's failure to agree on how much they are willing to pay as a continent to help poor countries cope with and fight global warming.
"You will always find between 27 sovereign nation states that there are differences," Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt told reporters after pledges fell well short of the C6.6 billion ($9.72 billion) leaders were aiming for.
HAVANA, Cuba - The Rev. Jesse Jackson took him to church for the first time in 27 years. Home run legend Hank Aaron asked him for autographed baseballs. Literary great Gabriel Garcia Marquez gave him a copy of "Dracula" that kept him up all night reading and smuggled ingredients into the country so he could make baklava.
An international cast of luminaries who travelled to Cuba and met with Fidel Castro, as well as top members of his government and military, talk about their experiences with the man who ruled the island for 49 years in U.S. documentarian Estela Bravo's "Anecdotas Sobre Fidel," or "Fidel Anecdotes."