CLAIREFONTAINE, France Zinedine Zidane has made an appearance at France’s training camp to help coach Laurent Blanc restore the beleaguered national team’s confidence following its poor performance at the World Cup.Zidane, who won the 1998 European Championship and 2000 World Cup with France, spent Wednesday with the players at its camp in Clairefontaine. Blanc wanted [...]

WASHINGTON The number of illegal immigrants in the U.S. has dropped for the first time in 20 years as substantially fewer undocumented workers from Mexico, Latin America and elsewhere are crossing the border in search of jobs, an independent research group says.The analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center suggests the nation’s economic downturn and increased [...]

MUNDRI, Sudan The United Nations on Wednesday opened its first field office ahead of Southern Sudan’s scheduled January referendum on independence.The U.N. is expanding its presence across the vast, largely rural southern part of Sudan for the January vote, which is likely to lead to the breakup of Africa’s largest country. The world body is [...]

At least two bombs exploded at a Shi’ite procession in the Pakistani city of Lahore on Wednesday, killing up to eight people and wounding 100, piling pressure on a government already overwhelmed by floods.Witnesses said a suicide bomber blew himself up in a crowd of hundreds, after a lull in violence during the floods, the [...]

Amnesty International urged the parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to reject the proposed ban on wearing clothes that impede the introduction of the identity of the user, including a veil that covers the entire body.Amnesty says the law violates human rights of women who choose to show the religious, cultural or personal belief. [...]

TOKYO The star of “The Cove,” an Oscar winning documentary about a Japanese dolphin hunt, is back in Japan to protest the slaughter but had to cancel his trip to the village at the center of the controversy because of threats from an ultranationalist group.Instead, Ric O’Barry, the former dolphin-trainer for the 1960s “Flipper” TV [...]

Pro-Palestinian groups in Ireland launched a fundraising drive Monday to buy a ship for a second attempt to breach Israel’s sea blockade of Gaza.The Irish Ship to Gaza campaign aims to send between 30 and 50 Irish people, including public figures, journalists and activists, to join a flotilla taking aid to people in the Hamas-controlled [...]

Johannesburg – A draft report from the UN reveal that if the army of Rwanda and its Congolese rebel groups who become allies, considered to have been a massacre of Hutu refugees in Congo Tribe.Events that took place during the 1990s can be regarded as an act of Genocide.Hearing this accusation, the President of Rwanda [...]

SACRAMENTO, Calif. The temperature was nearly 100 degrees as 17-year-old Maria Vasquez Jimenez pruned grapes for nine hours at a vineyard near Stockton in California’s Central Valley.By the end of the day, the pregnant teen was dead from heat stroke, and her death set off renewed calls among union advocates for greater protections for farmworkers. [...]

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev welcomed U2 frontman Bono to tea on Tuesday ahead of the group’s first ever Russian concert, and the Irish musician asked for Russia’s help in fighting AIDS.”Taking care of people is not just what politicians do,” self-proclaimed rock music lover Medvedev told Bono, adding that U2′s music has united generations of [...]