In the world of business, who in their right mind would turn down the opportunity to dine with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett? Chinese tycoons, apparently.

A Florida pastor Thursday called off his controversial plan to burn copies of the Quran on the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack.

Iran says it will release one of the three American hikers detained for more than a year on Saturday, a day after the conclusion of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, according to an official at the ministry of culture and Islamic guidance.

A large oil drilling platform is on its way to the Chilean mine where 33 trapped miners are awaiting rescue and is expected to arrive later Thursday or Friday, an engineer overseeing the drilling said.

Suicide bombers driving a pair of civilian cars disguised as government vehicles slammed into the main gate at Somalia's main airport Thursday, a spokesman for the African Union said.

A car exploded in the Russian republic of North Ossetia-Alania on Thursday, killing at least 16 people, government officials said.

The imam behind plans for an Islamic center near ground zero told "Larry King Live" that moving it to another location would embolden Islamic radicals.

Muslim headscarves might not be the most obvious garments for a high fashion makeover, but that's just what two Belgian women have given them. And now, their designs are selling from Paris to Dubai.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, prompted the U.S. to take sensible security measures and launch a justified counterattack against al Qaeda, says analyst Fareed Zakaria. But he says they also led to an overreaction that continues today.

U.S. Marines boarded and seized control Thursday of a German-owned vessel that had been captured by pirates the day before off the coast of Somalia, the U.S. Fifth Fleet said.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono wrote a letter to President Barack Obama urging him to stop a Florida church that said it will burn copies of the Quran, a presidential spokesman told CNN Thursday.

A British journalist held captive in Pakistan since March has been released, the U.K. Foreign Office told CNN Thursday.

Thursday is the ninth day of the ninth month of the 99th year since the founding of Taiwan. That made it the perfect day for 163 couples to get married simultaneously in Taipei.

Philippine authorities acknowledged for the first time Thursday that some of the tourists taken hostage in a bus standoff last month may have been shot by police in the bungled rescue operation.

Nearly 200 commercial pilots in China falsified their flying experience, Chinese aviation officials have discovered.

The 33 workers trapped in a Chilean mine got a rare treat Tuesday night: they got to watch their national soccer team compete against Ukraine in the European Cup live via a small projector wired down to their safety chamber on a fiber optic cable.

British TV host Piers Morgan said taking over for retiring Larry King is like replacing Frank Sinatra's Las Vegas show.

China's capital will step up surveillance of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, in response to a superbug that first emerged in South Asia and is spreading globally, state media said.

Three Pakistani men linked to Faisal Shahzad, the 30-year-old Pakistani-American who has pleaded guilty to the botched Times Square terror attack, were arrested and have confessed before a judge, authorities said Wednesday.

The mayor of El Naranjo, Mexico, in the central state of San Luis Potosi was gunned down and killed inside his office Wednesday, officials said.