World

Reporting from Ratsat, Dogo Nahawa, Nigeria, and Lagos, Nigeria -- The victims of Sunday's sectarian massacres were buried in mass graves in central Nigeria on Monday as survivors told horrific stories of Christian villagers being trapped in nets and hacked to death by Muslim herdsmen. Reports on the death toll differed wildly, with some placing it at about 200 and others reporting 528 killed and thousands injured. Casualty figures in the recurrent Muslim-Christian violence in Nigeria's volatile Plateau state are often difficult to ascertain, as each side inflates its losses.

One of the biggest earthquakes in recorded history rocked Chile on Saturday, killing more than 300 people, toppling buildings and freeways, and setting off sirens thousands of miles away as governments scrambled to protect coastal residents from the ensuing tsunami. Chilean President Michelle Bachelet declared parts of the country "catastrophe zones" in the wake of the magnitude 8.8 quake, which was centered offshore, about 70 miles north of the port city of Concepcion. With images of Haiti's devastation from an earthquake last month still fresh, the world woke up to a new disaster and fears of another catastrophic toll.

After keeping a careful distance for the last year, the Obama administration has concluded that the Iranian opposition movement has staying power and has embraced it as a central element in the U.S.-led campaign to pressure the country's clerical government. Administration officials and some allied governments believe that a combination of domestic unrest and international sanctions targeting Iran's Revolutionary Guard offers the best hope for forcing Tehran to yield on its nuclear program, and could even lead to a change in the government.

Bluntly warning that Iran is sliding into military dictatorship, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told an audience in Qatar on Monday that economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic should be increasingly aimed at its elite Revolutionary Guard. Clinton, who was in Doha, the capital, for a conference on relations between the U.S. and the Islamic world, appeared to suggest that such a strategy could help rein in the ideologically motivated branch of the Iranian military by widening rifts within Iran's domestic political establishment.

Reporting from Jerusalem — You come for a hug. You leave with a slap. It happens in the Middle East. Vice President Joe Biden's trip this week was supposed to highlight U.S.-Israeli cooperation to counter a perceived nuclear threat from Iran and kick off U.S.-brokered indirect peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. Instead, talk about Iran was sidetracked and the outlook for peace may be murkier than it was before. Even here, people are not quite sure how that happened.

Nigeria's ailing president may still be flat on his back in the ambulance that rushed him from the airport to his residence after his secretive return last week from Saudi Arabia, where he was treated for heart-related health issues. Or sitting in a hard-backed chair in his official residence, while nieces, nephews and grandchildren tear up and down the stairs. Or working out daily on an exercise bike and walking up and down stairs. Any of the scenarios, reported by Nigerian newspapers or by President Umaru Yar'Adua's supporters, could be true, false or somewhere between, but they're all that Nigerians have to go on: The president has not addressed the public since he left the country for treatment in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, for pericarditis, inflammation of the lining around the heart, in November, not even after he returned Feb. 24. One thing that does seem clear is that since the president's return, acting President Goodluck Jonathan has been unsuccessful in several attempts to see him. Yar'Adua's supporters put this down to the president's introverted personality and insist that he's on his feet and doing well.

Media Titan to Rivals: Drop Dead! edia Titan to Rivals: Drop Dead! That's tabloid shorthand for the Darwinian clash unfolding between Israel's three biggest newspaper barons. The story begins with a publicity-shy publisher who built a paper so popular and powerful it was deemed a monopoly. Nipping at his heels is a scrappy businessman who once wiretapped competitors and later destroyed an incriminating document by swallowing it. But it didn't become a battle royal until a Jewish-American billionaire, borrowing a page from Fox News, launched a "fair and balanced" newspaper to counter what he called liberal media.

Although pirates last year made many more attempts to board ships in the Gulf of Aden and off the coast of Somalia, the number of successful seizures was about the same as in 2008, according to the U.S.-organized multinational maritime force here. The figures suggest that new "defensive driving" tactics adopted by many commercial shipping companies are helping ward off attackers, naval officials said. There were 198 attempts at piracy in the vast region last year, a 62% increase from 2008, but only 44 attempts were successful.

India signed five deals Friday to purchase more than $7 billion in hardware and expertise from Russia, including an aircraft carrier, a fleet of MIG-29 fighters, defense and space technology and at least 12 civilian nuclear reactors. On the minds of both parties, analysts said, was a nation not present at the signing. "China will be the ghost in the room," wrote analyst C. Raja Mohan in an opinion piece this week in the Indian Express. Having a working aircraft carrier -- India's only carrier, the 50-year-old British-built Viraat, rarely leaves port -- should allow India to expand its presence in the Indian Ocean.

Pressure swelled Monday for Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko to bow out gracefully from a hard-fought and narrowly lost presidential race. But the calls for closure were met with silence from Tymoshenko. The politician known for her relentless drive and seemingly bottomless patience for political tussles stayed out of sight as the country waited for a concession -- or a battle cry. Events appeared to be marching forward without her. Hundreds of supporters of her opponent, Viktor Yanukovich, celebrated his victory -- and called upon Tymoshenko to relinquish the campaign -- in a rowdy rally in central Kiev, the capital.

Protesters seeking to drive the ruling party from power doused the grounds of the Thai prime minister's residence with plastic bags of their own blood Wednesday as they continued their attempt to draw attention to their cause. At the same time, the number of red-shirted protesters camping out across Bangkok dropped by about half, to roughly 50,000, and the Thai stock market hit a two-year high when it became evident the disturbances had been contained. On Sunday, more than 100,000 demonstrators opposed to Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva had gathered in Bangkok and pledged to remain until he dissolved parliament and called new elections.

President Obama's visit to Indonesia next week will offer the unexpected image of an American president delivering a major diplomatic speech to the Islamic world, from a country that has frequently been the source of terrorist plots against Western targets. Obama's three-day trip to the world's most populous Muslim country is intended to demonstrate Washington's improving relationship and closer security ties with the government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. It is also a vote of confidence in Indonesia's security apparatus, once notorious for human rights abuses, but which in recent years has found itself back in favor with the U.S. as it battles home-grown and foreign Islamic extremist networks.

A senior Al Qaeda operative being hunted in the December bombing of a U.S. base used by the CIA in Afghanistan was among those killed in a missile strike in Pakistan's tribal area, U.S. officials said Wednesday. Hussein Yemeni, an Al Qaeda bomb expert and trainer, is believed to have been among more than a dozen people killed in the strike last week in Miram Shah, the largest town in North Waziristan, the officials said. Yemeni is thought to have had a major planning role in the Dec. 30 suicide bombing in Afghanistan that killed seven CIA employees and contractors and a Jordanian intelligence officer, a counter-terrorism official said.

Residents of this scruffy border town thought they had seen the worst of the violence five years ago, when rival drug gangs staged wild gunfights in the streets and a new police chief was slain just hours after being sworn in. The warfare gave way to an uneasy calm after one of the warring groups took de facto control. The number of deaths here ebbed, even as violence soared out of control in other border cities, such as Ciudad Juarez, about 500 miles to the northwest. Now, like a recurring nightmare, dread again hangs over Nuevo Laredo amid a new bloody feud that has ignited widespread fear of a return to the earlier carnage.

The head of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland apologized Wednesday for failing to tell police 35 years ago about an abusive priest who went on to molest more children before being convicted and imprisoned. Amid calls for his resignation, Cardinal Sean Brady expressed regret for his part in a 1975 case in which the church asked two boys to sign oaths of secrecy after they reported being sexually abused. The offending priest, Brendan Smyth, was transferred from parish to parish, where he victimized more children.

Five young American Muslims who last fall left their suburban Virginia homes and families with what Pakistani police say was a desire to wage holy war against American forces in Afghanistan were indicted Wednesday on charges of plotting terrorist attacks on Pakistani soil. The indictments, handed down by a Pakistani anti-terrorism court in the eastern city of Sargodha, also accuse the men of conspiring to wage war against a national ally of Pakistan, a reference to Afghanistan, and funding banned Pakistani extremist groups.

Like plenty of hale and hearty young Irishmen, Chris knows just how to unwind after a tough day at the office: He reaches for his bath salts. He gets the water ready -- but in a glass, not the tub. Then, despite a warning on the box that it's "not for human consumption," he pops a capsule in his mouth and downs it with a swig. For the next few hours, he's happy and hopped up, full of energy for an evening of clubbing, without a hangover lying in wait. "I find it much less debilitating" than alcohol, confides the 29-year-old bookkeeper, who can pop two or three capsules a night.

Moheb Sadiq gazed at his self-portrait and sighed. "Beautiful." Moheb -- call him only Moheb, that's how he signs his work -- paints to trick reality. Each canvas is a refuge, a hallucinatory image of how he wants himself and his broken country to appear in the eyes of others. He is a man unfolding his own prophecy amid a war that seems to have no end. "I began painting six years ago. I had been writing small poems and one night a vision entered my sleep. I saw pictures and woke up an artist," he said without a wink of humor while pointing to his latest work.

With more than 80% of the votes tallied in Iraq's parliamentary elections and the race still neck and neck, hopes that the country might move beyond its deep Shiite-Sunni divide appear to be fading in a stew of sectarian politics. Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, who once campaigned as a nationalist leader responsible for restoring security to all Iraqis, is now falling back on his Shiite Muslim religious identity to position himself against challenger Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite popular with the minority Sunni Arab population.

They are selling secrets along the shining corridors of the Savyolovsky Market: Unlisted numbers. Tax returns. Customs declarations. Wanted lists. Police reports. Car registrations. Business permits. Wrenched from the bowels of government by the forces of runaway capitalism and corruption, the hush-hush databases have made their way to this market in central Moscow where the windows of tiny shops glitter with cellphones, pirated DVDs and porn. Compressed on discs, frozen in Cyrillic letters, is a trove of petty squabbles and personal tragedies that make up the fabric of this vast and often lawless land.