MANILA, Philippines (AP) Rescuers dug with picks and shovels trying to reach dozens of people trapped under houses collapsed by a strong earthquake Monday that shook a central Philippine island and set off landslides.

CAIRO (AP) Ignoring a U.S. threat to cut off aid, Egypt on Sunday referred 19 Americans and 24 other employees of nonprofit groups to trial before a criminal court on accusations they illegally used foreign funds to foment unrest in the country.

BEIRUT (AP) Syrian forces hammered restive neighborhoods in the city of Homs for hours with mortars and artillery before dawn Saturday, sending terrified residents fleeing into basements and killing more than 200 people in the bloodiest episode of the nearly 11-month-old uprising, activists said.

CAIRO (AP) Soccer fans rushed the field after the home team won an unexpected victory over Egypt's top squad Wednesday, setting off clashes and a stampede that left at least 73 people dead and 1,000 injured in a Mediterranean port city, officials said.

BEIRUT (AP) Syrian forces pushed dissident troops back from the edge of Damascus in heavy fighting Monday, escalating efforts to take back control of the capital's eastern doorstep ahead of key U.N. talks over a draft resolution demanding that President Bashar Assad step aside.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) A suicide attacker detonated a car laden with powerful explosives Thursday in southern Afghanistan, killing four Afghan civilians and wounding 31 other people, including three British aid workers, officials said.

QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) Iranian security forces on Thursday killed six Pakistani traders taking goats into Iran, a Pakistani official said.

STOCKHOLM (AP) A storm from the broiling sun turned the chilly northernmost skies of Earth into an ever-changing and awe-provoking art show of northern lights on Tuesday.

ROME (AP) Salvage experts can begin pumping fuel from a capsized cruise ship as early as Tuesday to avert a possible environmental catastrophe and the ship is stable enough that search efforts for the missing can continue, Italian officials said.

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WASHINGTON (AP) The world last year wasn't quite as warm as it has been for most of the past decade, government scientists said Thursday, but it continues a general trend of rising temperatures.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) Israeli forces on Wednesday attacked a group of suspected Palestinian militants believed to have been planting a bomb along Gaza's border with the Jewish state, the Israeli military said. Palestinian officials said two people were killed and two wounded.

NEW YORK (AP) The capsizing of the Costa Concordia could not have come at a worse time for the cruise industry right at the start of the peak booking season.

GIGLIO, Italy (AP) Coast guard divers searching the submerged part of the Costa Concordia on Sunday found the bodies of two elderly men still in their life jackets, authorities said, raising to five the death toll after the luxury cruise liner ran aground and tipped over off the Tuscan coast.

LONDON (AP) British police say a man was arrested close to the home of singer Kate Bush, amid media reports a fan broke into her home in England and attempted to propose marriage. The Daily Mail newspaper reported that the man was Frank Tufaro, from New York, who had flown to Britain with a $4,500 Tiffany engagement ring.

PORTO SANTO STEFANO, Italy (AP) Divers searched the submerged part of a luxury cruise liner that went aground off Italy's coast in case any of 70 people unaccounted for might be trapped inside, a coast guard official said Saturday, as passengers described a delayed and terrifying evacuation.

LIMA, Peru (AP) Joran van der Sloot pleaded guilty on Wednesday to the 2010 murder of a young Peruvian woman he met at a Lima casino who was killed five years to the day after the unsolved disappearance in Aruba of an American teen in which he remains the main suspect.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) A former U.S. Marine interpreter arrested while on a trip to visit his Iranian grandmothers has been sentenced to death as a CIA spy, state radio reported Monday, in a case likely to become a new flashpoint in the escalating tensions between Tehran's defiance over its nuclear program and Washington's efforts to impose more crippling sanctions.

CAIRO (AP) Prosecutors on Thursday called for Hosni Mubarak to be hanged, saying he bore full responsibility for the killing of protesters during the uprising against him, in a courtroom moment unthinkable barely a year ago when the longtime leader held unquestioned power.

BAGHDAD (AP) An apparently coordinated wave of bombings targeting Shiite Muslims killed at least 78 people in Iraq on Thursday, the second large-scale assault by militants since U.S. forces pulled out last month.

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TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran's navy said it test-fired a surface-to-surface cruise missile on Monday during a drill in international waters near the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the official IRNA news agency reported.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) The U.S. warned Iran on Wednesday it will not tolerate any disruption of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz after Iran threatened to choke off the vital Persian Gulf oil transport route if Washington imposes sanctions targeting its crude exports.

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) Kim Jong Il's son was identified Monday as head of a top decision-making body of the ruling Workers' Party, a post that now gives him authority over political as well as military matters in North Korea.

BAGHDAD (AP) A wave of 16 bombings ripped across Baghdad Thursday, killing at least 69 people in the worst violence in Iraq for months. The apparently coordinated attacks struck days after the last American forces left the country and in the midst of a major government crisis between Shiite and Sunni politicians that has sent sectarian tensions soaring.

CAIRO (AP) Around 10,000 women marched through central Cairo demanding Egypt's ruling military step down Tuesday in an unprecedented show of outrage over soldiers who dragged women by the hair and stomped on them, and stripped one half-naked in the street during a fierce crackdown on activists the past week.