Washington's top tax official was fired on Wednesday as President Barack Obama sought to stem a rising tide of criticism over the Internal Revenue Service's improper targeting of conservative groups for special scrutiny.

The White House released 100 pages of emails Wednesday designed to defuse Republican claims of a cover-up over the attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi last year that killed four Americans.

rney General Eric Holder told Congress Wednesday that a serious national security leak required the secret gathering of telephone records at The Associated Press as he stood by an investigation in which he insisted he had no involvement.

Ninety-seven percent of scientists say global warming is mainly man-made but a wide public belief that experts are divided is making it harder to gain support for policies to curb climate change, an international study showed on Thursday.

Prestigious jeweler Harry Winston, which was acquired earlier this year by Swatch Group, bought a new colorless, flawless 101.73-carat diamond for a record US$26.7 million at an auction in Geneva on Wednesday, auction house Christie's said.

ish embassies were asked if they could silence a cockerel and order an unfit husband to shape up, among other “bizarre” requests for help in the last 12 months, the Foreign Office said Thursday.

Economic losses from disasters since 2000 are in the range of US$2.5 trillion, a figure at least 50 percent higher than previous international estimates, according to a U.N. report released Wednesday.

British Prime Minister David Cameron suffered an embarrassing blow in parliament on Wednesday when more than a third of his Conservative lawmakers voted against him in protest at his stance on Britain's membership of the European Union.

Car bombs struck Shiite neighborhoods of the Iraqi capital and a northern city on Thursday, killing 16 people, while gunmen in Baghdad shot dead the brother of a Sunni lawmaker, officials said.

The U.S. military vowed Wednesday to address a wave of sexual assault cases after a soldier who worked in a rape prevention program was accused of forcing a subordinate into prostitution.