Top News

MOSCOW, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Russia has urged Denmark to prevent a planned visit by a Chechen envoy, Interfax news agency reported Friday.

VLADIKAVKAZ, Russia, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Beslan residents are sending aid to the tsunami victims in Southern Asia, the Interfax-South news agency reported Friday.

MOSCOW, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed amendments to the law on the minimum wage, the Kremlin press service reported on Friday.

OSLO, Norway, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- A poll finds that Norwegians are warming to their future queen, a single mother whose 2001 marriage to Crown Prince Haakon was controversial.

VATICAN CITY, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- An article in a leading Roman Catholic journal signals that the Vatican may join the public health establishment's crusade against cigarette smoking.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- second eyes, pls. also wasn't sure if the slug shud be asia-earthquake-us or us-asia-earthquake...

NAIVASHA, Kenya, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Sudan's government and southern rebels signed a permanent cease-fire Friday ending one of Africa's longest-running civil wars.

KIEV, Ukraine, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Ukraine Prime Minister Victor Yanukovych, who just lost a presidential election, resigned Friday in a televised address, the BBC reported.

NEW YORK, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- The United Nations secretary general says he will work with the four nations U.S. President Bush says are coordinating responses to South Asia's tsunamis.

ARLINGTON, Va., Dec. 31 (UPI) -- A Virginia judge has denied political asylum to a mildly retarded teen whose cause has been supported by more than 70 members of Congress.

PEMBROKE PINES, Fla., Dec. 31 (UPI) -- A funeral was scheduled Friday for 17-year-old Norman Smith, a Pembroke Pines, Fla., youth who died after saving a young drowning woman.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Unrealistically short life expectancy projections for U.S. residents are about to make Social Security's financial problems even worse.

News from United Press International, around the world, around the clock ...

MADRID, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- The Spanish government plans an all-out celebration of the 400th anniversary of Don Quixote, one of literature's most famous characters.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- The Justice Department, in expanding its definition of torture, says the act is "abhorrent" to U.S. law and values.