Iran and Syria condemned a U.S. plan to assist rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad on Saturday and signaled the Syrian leader intends to stay in power at least until 2014 presidential...

Shirley MacLaine will be returning to "Downton Abbey" next season, and opera star Kiri Te Kanawa is joining the cast.   MacLaine will reprise her role as Martha Levinson, Lord...

Britain's Queen Elizabeth II is recovering at Windsor Castle after coming down with a stomach bug that forced the cancellation of a royal engagement.   The 86-year-old monarch had been...

President Hugo Chavez has been receiving chemotherapy since recovering from a severe respiratory infection in mid-January and "continues his battle for life," his vice president said late...

The Vatican took the first steps of governing a Catholic Church without a pope on Friday, making some ceremonial and practical moves to formalize the end of one pontificate and prepare for the...

The Vatican says Benedict XVI has spent his first few hours as a retiree praying, watching TV and taking walks.   The Vatican on Friday released details of Benedict's life inside Castel...

Construction crews stopped work Friday on removing a small section from one of the few remaining stretches of the Berlin Wall to make way for a condo project after hundreds of protesters blocked their...

As bells tolled and the clock struck 8, the brass-studded wooden doors swung shut Thursday at this palace in the Italian hills, marking an end to Benedict XVI's papacy and the start of his final...

Benedict XVI become the first pope in 600 years to resign Thursday, ending an eight-year pontificate shaped by struggles to move the church past sex abuse scandals and to reawaken Christianity in an...

Bruce Reynolds, the mastermind of the "Great Train Robbery" in Britain that brought its perpetrators cash, incarceration and pop-culture fame, died Thursday. He was 81.   Reynolds...