MEXICO CITY — A massive early-morning prison brawl Saturday in the central Mexican state of San Luis Potosi left 11 inmates dead and more than 65 wounded, officials said, the latest in a string of violent episodes that have plagued this country’s corrupt, porous and unsafe penal institutions.

The melee began at 4:15 a.m. in a penitentiary called La Pila, according to a state attorney general’s office statement, with inmates wielding homemade knives. State and federal police officers and some military personnel had the prison under control as of late Saturday morning, the statement said.

The prison director, Concepcion Tovar, said the brawl was sparked by a group of convicts who were stealing money from others, according to the website of  TV network Televisa. San Luis Potosi Gov. Fernando Toranzo ordered an investigation to identify those who took part in the fight.

Mexico’s prisons are one of numerous weak links in the country’s criminal justice system....

KABUL, Afghanistan -- At a pivotal moment when U.S. forces are winding down combat operations in Afghanistan and handing over the lead security role to the Afghan government, Taliban insurgents announced Saturday the launch of their annual spring offensive.

In an elaborately worded statement, the Taliban proclaimed that a "monumental spring operation’’ will begin Sunday with the goal of "defeating this era’s western invaders.’’

The Islamist insurgent group, tossed from power by U.S.-led forces in late 2001, is threatening a new round of mass suicide bombings and "insider" attacks on U.S. and coalition forces.

After announcing a similar major warm weather offensive last year, the Taliban launched an attack in Kabul featuring suicide bombings and a deadly, 18-hour street battle that targeted the U.S. Embassy and the headquarters of the NATO-led international security force.

The threat of more insider killings comes as the rate of such attacks has slowed in...

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Two weeks after Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad resigned, President Mahmoud Abbas, whose government is based in the West Bank, announced Saturday that he has started consultations over forming a new national unity government.

Abbas said he was following the timetable his Fatah party had reached with its archrival, the Islamist group Hamas, which says that he should start consultations on forming a unity government as soon as the Palestinian elections commission completed an update of its voter registry.

The elections commission said on April 10 that it has finished its work in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and therefore was ready to hold elections three months after Abbas decides on a date.

But Abbas’ announcement did not please Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. It immediately described his declaration, made on the official news agency Wafa, as “unilateral” and said he should have consulted with it first.

Hamas official Salah Bardawi...

NEW DELHI -- As the death toll rose to at least 345 people, more than two dozen more survivors were rescued Saturday from the rubble of a nine-story factory building outside the Bangladesh capital of Dhaka that collapsed Wednesday morning.

Meanwhile, government officials detained five people, including two factory owners, on capital charges in response to the tragedy that has led to widespread public protests.

Rescue efforts were hampered by rain Saturday, but soldiers and volunteers, many moving debris with their hands, managed to retrieve 29 survivors from the Rana Plaza building, local media reported. Authorities initially said they would halt rescue efforts Friday night, some 72 hours after the collapse. But with survivors still being pulled out alive and relatives threatening to riot, the deadline was extended.

“We want to ensure that everyone trapped inside are rescued,”  army Maj. Gen. Chowdhury Hasan Suhrawardi told journalists.

Police had ordered an evacuation...

MEXICO CITY — Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has been busy telling the world about the economic miracle the country will experience after lawmakers approve the package of reforms he calls the Pact for Mexico.

Nobody said the reforms would come easily.

In recent weeks, hundreds of teachers who are opposed to the pact's education component have taken to the streets in the southern state of Guerrero — many of them wearing masks to conceal their identities — blocking a major federal freeway, smashing windows with brickbats and setting fires.

The demonstrations, which began in earnest a few weeks ago, have illustrated the challenges Peña Nieto is likely to face as he seeks to shake up Mexico’s status quo, including the union culture that critics say has long been a drag on Mexico’s educational system. The pact includes proposed revisions of the telecommunications industry, the state-run oil company  and the tax system, all of which have entrenched and...

“Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.”

Nowhere has that admonishment by 18th century statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke been ignored with such disastrous consequences as in Afghanistan.

The imperial British army suffered its most inglorious defeat there in 1842, only to have the folly of invasion repeated by the Soviet Union in 1979 and again by the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

As tens of thousands of U.S. and allied troops prepare to leave Afghanistan after nearly a dozen years, Scottish writer-historian William Dalrymple’s new chronicle of the British debacle more than 170 years ago evokes comparison of the fates that have met foreign invaders.

In “Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, 1839-42” (2013 © Alfred A. Knopf), Dalrymple traces the protagonists of today’s battles for power between U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai and Taliban mullahs to their clansmen of the First Anglo-...

BEIJING -- North Korea said Saturday that a U.S. citizen held since November will be tried on charges of trying to overthrow the government, an offense that could carry the death penalty.

The man is 44-year-old Kenneth Bae, also known by his Korean name, Pae Jun Ho, of Lynnwood, Wash. Described as a tour operator, he was arrested in the special economic zones in Rason, in the northeast of the country.

"In the process of investigation he admitted that he committed crimes aimed to topple the DPRK [North Korea] with hostility," the official KCNA news service reported.

Pyongyang has not detailed what it was that Bae allegedly did, but people  in the aid community said he was a devout Christian. Many Korean American groups work out of the North Korean border region bringing humanitarian aid into North Korea, sometimes serving as missionaries or helping defectors.  Even bringing a Bible into North Korea carries a harsh punishment.

His case might be hurt as well by the ongoing tumult over...

BEIJING-- The rabbit and the rat are finally coming home.

Two bronze heads that were looted from Beijing’s old Summer Palace in 1860 are to be returned to China this year by a French billionaire who acquired them from Christie’s auction house, Chinese state media reported.

The donation was announced late Friday by Francois-Henri Pinault, heir and chief executive of luxury fashion conglomerate Kering Inc., which is expanding its business in the booming Chinese market. Pinault was part of a business delegation accompanying French President Francois Hollande to China.

"It is not only a friendly gesture to the Chinese people, but will also be conducive to the return of more Chinese relics from overseas," the State Administration of Cultural Heritage said in a statement published Saturday in state media.

The two heads, as large as beach balls, are part of a set of 12 representing the animals of the Chinese zodiac. Originally fountain ornaments, they are less valued aesthetically...

BEIRUT — In a strong message of solidarity, Muslim clerics across Damascus on Friday denounced the kidnapping earlier this week of a pair of Syrian Christian bishops abducted at gunpoint.

Imams and preachers at mosques throughout the Syrian capital said in Friday sermons that  the kidnappers were  “violating the sanctity of Christian and Islamic clergymen,” the official Syrian Arab News Agency reported.

Greek Orthodox Archbishop Paul Yazigi and Syriac Orthodox Archbishop Yohanna Ibrahim were abducted Monday when gunmen stopped their vehicle near the battleground northern city of Aleppo, where both are based. The deacon who was driving their car was shot and killed in the attack.

The two were on their way back to Aleppo from a “humanitarian mission” to neighboring Turkey, church officials said.

Religious leaders worldwide, including Pope Francis, have called for the release of the bishops. Orthodox communities in the United States and elsewhere have prayed...

Russian authorities said Friday that 140 people had been detained in southern Moscow on suspicion of involvement in an Islamic extremist organization, according to the state news agency.

The Federal Security Agency said at least 30 of the suspects were citizens of other countries and some had ties to militants in the northern Caucasus, the state news agency, RIA Novosti, reported. It did not say which countries the detainees were from.

The roundup came after two brothers of Chechen descent who grew up in Kyrgyzstan and Dagestan were named as suspects in the April 15 Boston Marathon bombings, which killed three people and wounded hundreds of others. Russian President Vladimir Putin invoked the deadly bombings Thursday as justification for closer cooperation internationally to quash terrorism in the region.

The Boston attack “proved how correct our thesis is … It is absolutely not about nationality or faith. We said this a thousand times. The problem is the extremist...