Wales’ four main party leaders clash in a televised debate days before the assembly election.

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Welsh leaders clash in TV debate

Just days before the 25th anniversary of the world’s worst nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in 1986, several thousand people who took part in the clean-up operation have held a demonstration in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev.

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VIDEO: Chernobyl’s ‘liquidators’ protest

A man from northern Michigan has been charged with the bomb left inside a Detroit federal building for 20 days before anyone realized it might be an explosive. Gary Mikulich, 42, has a history of bizarre rants and strange complaints to the FBI….

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Michigan Man Charged in Detroit Explosives Plot

Raymond Clark III, 26, a former lab technician at Yale, pleaded guilty Thursday to the 2009 murder and sexual assault of Annie Le, then a 24-year-old graduate student at the lab. Le disappeared in September 2009, days before her wedding. She was found…

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Lab Tech Pleads Guilty in Yale Murder

British reggae artist Smiley Culture dies during a police raid at a house in Surrey, days before he had been due to go on trial accused of drugs offences.

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Reggae star dies in police raid

A man tells a murder trial that he saw the accused near the spot in Aberdeenshire where his wife died, 11 days before the fatal crash.

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Man ‘saw accused at crash scene’

Killer Derrick Bird warned “they are going to get it big style”, days before opening fire on fellow taxi drivers, an inquest hears.

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Bird’s ‘get it big style’ warning

Holiday shoppers exceeded the most optimistic retail forecasts this season, giving the retail sector a 5.5 percent increase in the 50 days before Christmas. In fact, spending jumped to rates higher than even before the recession. Nearly every sector…

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Holiday Sales Impress the Optimists

Two days before Christmas, the alleged smuggler apparently thought Easter eggs would be the perfect ploy to conceal 14 pounds of cocaine.

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Easter eggs used to smuggle cocaine

It’s snowing in Boston, finally. Yes, you heard me: finally. The rest of the country has been getting creamed lately – the Metrodome roof caved in, and Syracuse is all but buried – but until yesterday, we here haven’t had so much as a flake. I’ve never been much of a summer person; heat and humidity tend to turn me into a useless gob of, well, uselessness. Spring is nice, but around here it has made a generational habit of lasting 0.0000031 days before the heat hammer comes down. read more

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All I Want for Christmas

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the jailed Russian tycoon whose imprisonment has become a cause celebre, continued his attacks on the Russian government this week. In a newspaper op-ed, published three days before a judge is to rule whether to extend his prison…

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Jailed Tycoon: Putin is Pitiable

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil hails his eight years in power, days before he steps down with approval ratings of more than 80%.

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Lula closes his Brazil presidency

Burma has been cut off by a huge data attack that swamped the nation’s link to the wider internet, days before its first elections in 20 years.

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Burma hit by massive net attack

Two days before voters go to the polls, uncertainty – both economic and political – remains the watchword. The strength of the recovery is in question, as the economic growth spurt of late 2009 and early 2010 appears to have given way to a slog. In the sixth “How We’re Doing” Index, a team of sch…

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Uncertainty ahead of the midterms

Two days before Tuesday’s midterm elections, Republicans appear poised to capture control of the House and are likely to make substantial gains in the Senate, an outcome that could dramatically alter the balance of power in Washington, according to a Washington Post analysis of competitive seats…

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Republicans hold edge in final stretch