SAN FRANCISCO – Prison guards shot into a crowd to stop 200 rioting inmates at California’s Folsom State Prison, wounding five, authorities said Saturday.Another two inmates were injured by other prisoners during Friday’s riot,…

SHANGHAI – Pianist Liu Wei sits quietly to compose himself before plunging into the music. Then he takes off a sock.The 23-year-old, whose arms were amputated after a childhood accident,

SYDNEY – Memo to Australian smokers: don’t expect much sympathy from your compatriots if you develop lung cancer.Research has found Australians are the world’s least sympathetic when it comes to patients diagnosed with lung cancer.Three…

NEW YORK – Yoko Ono is planning a series of events in Iceland to mark what would have been John Lennon’s 70th birthday.The artist and peace campaigner will light the Imagine Peace Tower illuminated memorial, located on the island…

Forty-four people were injured, most of them children, when 100 horses ran amok during a night-time torchlit procession in Germany. One 14-year-old girl was in critical condition after the incident but was now stable, police said….

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is driving 2000km across Siberia in a canary yellow Lada. Accompanied by television cameras, Putin set out on the gruelling drive between the far eastern city of Khabarovsk and Siberia’s Chita in…

CARACAS: A Venezuelan politician is holding an unusual raffle to raise campaign cash. The grand prize: breast implants.For a little under US$6 ($8.50) a ticket, donors get the chance to win the pricey operation free of charge….

SPAIN: A Kazakh man cut off his penis at Madrid’s Barajas airport to avoid being extradited home and was taken to hospital in a serious condition, Spanish media reported. The 52-year-old man had finished serving a five-year prison…

A Kiwi mining safety expert says the trapped Chilean miners will need to create a community to get them through the months ahead underground.Dave Feickert, who is working in China improving accident-prone mines there, says the…

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today he has never seen anything like the flood disaster in Pakistan after surveying the devastation first-hand.Ban urged foreign donors to speed up assistance to the 20 million people affected.His…