Fishermen pulled in their boats and hotels warned tourists away from beaches Friday as Hurricane Norbert strengthened and bore down on Mexico's Baja California Peninsula.

Europe’s stock markets plunged Friday after Wall Street opened a breathtaking 7 percent lower, dragging the Dow below the 8,000 level.

Cuba is limiting how much basic fruits and vegetables people can buy at farmers' markets, irritating some customers but ensuring there's enough — barely — to go around.

Dozens of bodies washed ashore Friday in Yemen after smugglers threw nearly 150 Somali migrants overboard, the latest such tragedy in one of the most lawless stretches of ocean in the world.

Finland's ex-president Martti Ahtisaari won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for his efforts to build a lasting peace from Africa and Asia to Europe and the Middle East.

U.S. missile attacks on suspected militants in Pakistan's northwest near Afghanistan are undermining the war on terror and "helping the terrorists," the Muslim nation's Foreign Ministry said Friday. 

The pirates who hijacked an arms-laden Ukrainian tanker off the coast of Somalia threatened Friday to destroy the ship if no ransom is paid, a spokesman for the bandits said.

Amid a series of suicide bombings across Pakistan, the anti-terrorism debate has grown more urgent than ever before.

NATO defense ministers Friday authorized their troops in Afghanistan to attack drug barons blamed for pumping up to $100 million a year into the coffers of resurgent Taliban fighters.

There's no doubt what Vladimir Putin's favorite birthday present is this year — a rare Ussuri tiger cub.