Government

Several thousand people held anti-government protests in the Hungarian capital during a national holiday Sunday, and police detained 35 people. Dressed in riot gear, the police chased some of the protesters through the streets of Budapest and prevented them from reaching the parliament building, where violent protests had taken place in 2006. At one point, tear gas was used to drive back a small group of demonstrators that tried to attack police lines near St. Stephen's Basilica.

The Interior Department on Wednesday blocked a Bush administration plan to open parts of the Mountain West for oil shale development, announcing that it would first study the water, power and land-use issues that complicate one of the nation's most abundant but controversial untapped sources of energy. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar canceled shale development leases on federal land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming and launched a second round of leases in the region limited to research purposes.

Sri Lankan forces on Friday captured the Tamil Tigers' de facto capital, a major victory in a decades-long battle to prevent the rebels from establishing an independent state. The rebels, who still control 620 square miles of jungle in the northeast, an area slightly larger than that of Los Angeles city, swiftly sent a message that they would fight on.

Israel's week-old assault on the Gaza Strip has widened the rift between Palestinians who back the search by moderate leaders for a peace accord with the Jewish state and those drawn to Hamas' call for armed struggle. The breach was on display Friday in the West Bank as the territory's U.S.-backed Palestinian Authority leadership, striving to contain rising anger over the death toll in Hamas-ruled Gaza, sent police to put down pro-Hamas demonstrations.

Like many Chinese peasants of his generation, 53-year-old Wang Zhengnian had never seen a cow until he reached adulthood. He certainly never drank a glass of milk. The fact that Wang now spends his days tending 400 cows on a farm near Beijing says a lot about the way China created a dairy industry out of thin air. But in their haste, the Chinese made mistakes that left six babies dead and hundreds of thousands ill from tainted milk. Milk is not part of the traditional Chinese diet.

The Bush administration said Wednesday that it wouldn't finish implementing new vehicle fuel-efficiency rules, leaving the issue to the incoming Obama administration. The Transportation Department said that the recent financial problems of automakers would require the next administration "to conduct a thorough review of matters affecting the industry." The auto industry was swift to criticize the decision, saying any delay could cost companies money.

The president of Iraq's Kurdish region charged Saturday that Prime Minister Nouri Maliki was drifting toward authoritarian rule, in the latest sign of the dangerous rift that has emerged between the Iraqi leader and his partners in the country's ruling coalition. "One gets lost in absolute authority," said Massoud Barzani, the leader of the semi- autonomous Kurdistan region in Iraq's north. "You become too authoritarian, you lose yourself."

Ireland's government moved Thursday to take over Anglo Irish Bank, declaring that a plan to inject money into the troubled lender was not enough to secure the future of an institution battered by the collapse of the boom known as the Celtic Tiger. Ireland's Department of Finance said the bank, which had soared for more than a decade in Ireland's unprecedented boom, had a weakened funding position.

Days before Barack Obama begins his presidency, a new survey has found that Latinos do not believe immigration should be the top priority for the new administration. Rather, the economy was cited most often by Latinos as an "extremely important" issue for the Obama administration -- followed by education, healthcare, national security and the environment. Thirty-one percent of Latinos rated immigration as extremely important, whereas 57% said the economy was.

There are days when renowned Russian ecological crusader Marina Rikhvanova feels like an endangered species. She has gotten used to a certain amount of ambient harassment -- the intelligence agents rifling through her files, the bank accounts abruptly blocked, the phone she believes is bugged. It comes with the territory. As Russian President- turned-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has rolled back democracy and downsized civil rights, activists of all stripes have struggled to operate.