Ryan Villarreal

Russia and Iran both reaffirmed their positions Friday that there should be no foreign intervention in the Syrian conflict.

The Russian defense ministry has denied claims that a small division of ships carrying several hundred marines is bound for the Syrian port of Tartus.

China has banned Muslim officials and students under the age of 18 in the restive northwestern region of Xinjiang from fasting during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan in an effort to clamp down on religious extremism.

Egypt's newly appointed Prime Minister Hesham Qandil has announced his cabinet selections, which were represented heavily by longtime state employees and former government ministers, underwhelming expectations of extensive changes in the new government as it facilitates the country's shaky transition to democracy.

The Canadian province of Quebec is set for an election on Sept. 4 that will pit pro-federalist Liberal Party, which currently holds a majority in the National Assembly, against the pro-separatist Parti Quebecois.

Members of Greece's far-right nationalist Golden Dawn party were out in full force Wednesday handing out free food to the needy, so long as they could provide the appropriate documentation to prove they were Greek citizens.

Four senior Mexican army officers are being accused of ties to organized crime. It's the most high-profile military corruption case in the past 15 years, and it may spell the end of a anti-drug policy based on letting the military do the work of the police

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta praised Tunisia's transition to democracy Monday and said the U.S. is prepared to provide the country with economic and military support.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is attending the South American trading bloc Mercosur summit in Brazil, where his country has been inducted as an official member of the group after a six-year wait. But not every Venezuelan is pleased

Last week Cuban President Raul Castro said he was willing to engage the U.S. in talks in an apparent bid to relax five decades of diplomatic impasse.

It is common to see the roofs of commuter trains in Indonesia crowded with people as they travel in and out of the capital Jakarta.

Dubai's police chief Dahi Khalfan has warned that Islamists are plotting to overthrow the governments of Gulf Arab states, following a recent spate of arrests of political dissidents.

Women in Hong Kong are living longer than those in Japan according to the latest annual report from the Japanese health ministry.

Brazil, once hailed for its successes in combatting the AIDS epidemic, but some critics say more still needs to be done.

Thousands are fleeing Syria as violence brings the country to the brink of civil war, a situation that is doubly traumatizing for Iraqi refugees there who had sought to escape the conflict in their own country.

Greece has removed triple jumper Voula Papachristou from its Olympic team following posts she made on Twitter mocking African immigrants and expressing support for the fascist Golden Dawn Party.

Heavy flooding in the central Nigerian state of Plateau has caused at least 39 deaths and washed away dozens of homes after a dam near the city of Jos overflowed.

A small group of Russian fishermen have discovered some 248 human fetuses dumped in a forest near the Ural Mountains 45 miles (70 kilometers) north of the city of Yekaterinburg.

Peruvian President Ollanta Humala appointed a new prime minister among several anticipated cabinet changes Monday, reflecting pressure from low approval ratings amid mass environmental protests.

A new study from the medical journal Lancet dispels the common misconception of India as a physically unfit country amid rising rates of diabetes and heart disease, providing evidence that the majority of Indians are, in fact, physically active.

Greece's Prime Minister Antonis Samaras likened his country's deep economic slump in the wake of the European debt crisis to the Great Depression of the 1930s in the U.S. while meeting with former U.S. President Bill Clinton in Athens.

The Somalia-based terrorist organization al-Shabab has executed three of its members whom it said were informants for U.S. and British intelligence agencies.

The Venezuelan government announced that security forces on Saturday ended a 20-day prison riot during which at least 22 inmates died.

In the old days of Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the party of President-elect Enrique Pena Nieto, a systemic culture of government corruption ensured that the drug cartels would be more or less left alone in exchange for hefty bribes at multiple levels, and as the drugs flowed north into the U.S. there was relatively little violence.

As the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins, the Islamic world will have much to reflect upon this year. In Syria, a civil war looms if it hasn't already arrived. In Egypt, a fledgling democracy is being tested. In Afghanistan, an exhaustive American war is coming to a dubious end.

The sudden removal of senior staff members at two Chinese newspapers known for irking government censors has sparked concerns of a media crackdown in the runup to China's decadal transition of power this October.

Christians in the Gaza Strip staged public protests earlier this week, claiming that five members of their small community had been kidnapped by Islamists with the intention of forcibly converting them to Islam.

Spain's royal family have agreed to take a pay cut amid growing outrage over cuts to public sector wages and with the country mired in a deep recession.

The European Union has called into question Romania's respect for democratic institutions, following the center-left government's attempt to impeach conservative President Traian Basescu.