At a ceremony in Olympia, Greece, the torch was lit for the start of an 85,000-mile (137,000-kilometer) journey to Beijing, China, for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games.
As oil development surges in the Peruvian Amazon, remote rain forest tribes are suffering both physically and socially as they're forced into contact with the outside world, rights groups say.
In Northern Kamchatka in Russia, indigenous people hold an annual festival to celebrate reindeer, complete with racing, wrestling, and cooking competitions.
The Iraq National Museum—which saw many of its ancient treasures looted following the 2003 U.S-led invasion—will not reopen to the public after renovations are complete, officials announced.
Iran is preparing for Persian New Year, which begins with Thursday's spring equinox. The celebrations, called "Nowrūz," last 13 days, according to the millennia-old tradition.
A "dry fog" that muted the sun's rays in A.D. 536 and blanketed the Earth with a cooling ash was triggered by the eruption of a supervolcano, scientists say.
More than 2,000 ill-got pre-Islamic artifacts have been handed over to Iraq's national museum from an area southeast of Baghdad, an Iraqi cultural official says.
The recent slaying of three lions and up to four elephants in southern Kenya reflects the increasingly heated conflict between wildlife and the country's growing human population. Warning: graphic photo
Hundreds died when Australia's H.M.A.S. Sydney and the German D.K.M. Kormoran sank in battle in 1941. Finally found, the wreckages may hold clues to those deaths.
Dressed more conservatively than most of her international counterparts, Afghanistan's only female Olympic athlete—a runner—hopes to bring home her country's first medal.
