By Wendell Roelf

CAPE TOWN | Thu Jan 10, 2013 8:56am EST

(Reuters) – South African police fired rubber bullets at rock-throwing farm laborers in the western grape-growing region on Thursday, marking the second straight day of clashes in a country braced for spreading labor unrest.

Hundreds of striking workers seeking higher wages and better working conditions again blocked a major highway running through the town of De Doorns, about 100 kms (60 miles) east of Cape Town, …

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PARIS — Three female Kurdish activists were found dead Thursday at an information center for Kurds in Paris, all of them shot in the head in what a French official described as execution-style killings.

The victims included Sakine Cansiz, a co-founder of the militant nationalist Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. Interior Minister Manuel Valls said the deaths were “no doubt executions” and called them “intolerable.”

The three women were last seen inside the information center of the …

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Saudi Arabia has beheaded a Sri Lankan domestic worker for killing a baby in her care in 2005 in a case that has been widely condemned by rights groups.

The maid, Rizana Nafeek, had denied killing the four-month-old boy.

Her supporters say she was only 17 at the time of the killing. They say her execution is a breach of international child rights.

The Sri Lankan government condemned the execution, which it said took place despite numerous clemency …

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Venezuela’s Supreme Court has ruled that the postponement of President Hugo Chavez’s inauguration for a new term in office is legal.

Earlier, the National Assembly voted to give Mr Chavez as much time as he needed to recover from cancer surgery.

The opposition argues that Mr Chavez’s current mandate expires on 10 January, the day he is due to be sworn in.

Mr Chavez is in hospital in Cuba and has suffered complications caused by a lung infection.

Supreme …

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Nearly half of California’s children live in poverty or “perilously close” to it, according to a new report that warns about a trend of increasing childhood poverty in the state.

The report from nonprofit advocacy group the Center for the Next Generation, released Tuesday, said that children live in poverty at twice the rate of California seniors.

“We’ve taken steps to provide our seniors with some level of assurance that they’ll be cared for in their later …

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SACRAMENTO — A combative Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday declared that “the prison crisis is over in California” and demanded an end to years of intervention by federal judges and expensive edicts designed to reduce crowding and improve inmate healthcare.

“At some point, the job’s done,” Brown said at a Capitol news conference before catching a plane for Los Angeles, where he repeated the message. “We spent billions of dollars” complying with the court orders, the …

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Los Angeles County got a reprieve in an ongoing dispute over who is responsible for pollution from storm water when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a ruling won by environmentalists.

However, the court’s 9-0 decision Tuesday did not deal with the larger question of how to regulate storm water and urban runoff flowing into the region’s waterways.

Gary Hildebrand, assistant deputy director of the county’s Department of Public Works, said the court’s decision “validates the approach the …

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BEIJING (AP) — Editors of a Chinese newspaper known for bold reporting were meeting Tuesday with propaganda officials to find a way out of a censorship dispute that has triggered protests and evolved into a political challenge for China’s new leadership.

What started out as a confrontation by Southern Weekly journalists with a top censor over a New Year’s editorial has rapidly become a focal point driving public calls for the authoritarian Communist Party government to …

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CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is in a “stable situation” in a Cuban hospital receiving treatment due to a severe respiratory infection, his government said Monday.

Information Minister Ernesto Villegas provided the update, saying the government is in “permanent contact” with Chavez’s medical team and relatives who are with him in Havana where he underwent surgery for cancer. His report came as other government officials reiterated their stance that the president need not be …

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Gay and lesbian Americans have been able to serve openly in the military ever since President Obama repealed “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” in September 2011. But online, some Pentagon computers appear to force the LGBT military community behind closed doors, blocking military users’ access to LGBT advocates’ and other progressives’ websites, while conservative sites remain fully accessible, according to John Aravosis of AMERICAblog. The military now blames faulty computer software for the de facto censorship, …

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