Google says U.S. Internet too slow

Google long has been an advocate of a single Web, one that’s free of government censorship and barriers to information access.

Now that the big guns have waded into the public standoff between Google and China, who will be the next to blink?

Thai authorities seized a cargo aircraft carrying tons of weapons from North Korea during a refueling stop in Bangkok, a government official said.

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With the withdrawal of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s only challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, in the run-off election for the presidency, Afghans are divided over who stood as the better candidate.

The Federal Reserve kept its key interest rate near zero once again Wednesday. It added in a statement that although the economy continues to improve, it intends to stay the course in recent months.

You want to return from your vacation happy and relaxed, not worrying about your health, your money or your sanity. So here’s some easy tips on how to avoid adding stress to your trip.

Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, arrested in 1989 for his role in the Tiananmen Square protest, has received an 11-year sentence for his role in a separate subversion case, the official Chinese news agency reports.

Philippine authorities charged a mayor and a group of unidentified suspects with 25 counts of murder Tuesday in the slaying of dozens of unarmed people, a court spokesman said.

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The pilots’ union of Lufthansa began a strike on Monday after a last-ditch effort at negotiations over pay and job security failed, a spokeswoman for the airline told CNN.

The government’s monthly job report on Friday showed that the disastrous labor situation plaguing the nation’s economy is moderating. But the report also underlines an unsettling reality: 8.4 million jobs have been vaporized since the recession began, and digging out won’t be easy.

A suicide bomber self-detonated Friday morning next to the governor’s house in the capital of Afghanistan’s western Farah province, killing at least seven people, including a policeman, police said.

The Air France plane that crashed last month with 228 people aboard “did not break up or become destroyed in flight,” the French air investigation agency announced Thursday. Flight 447 “went straight down, almost vertically… towards the surface of the water, very very fast,” air accident investigator Alain Bouillard told reporters in Paris.

A proposed partnership between the French government and Google is stoking fears in France that the country’s literary treasures will fall under commercial control of a U.S. technology company.

A British oil rig is due to start drilling off the Falkland Islands in a move likely to stoke further tensions between Argentina and the UK over the disputed South Atlantic territory.