LONDON — A British judge on Thursday sentenced a businessman who sold fake bomb detectors to 10 years in jail, saying the millionaire had shown a cavalier disregard for potentially fatal consequences.

James McCormick made an estimated $77.8 million from the sales of his phony detectors — which were based on a novelty golf ball finder — to countries including Iraq, Belgium, Niger and Saudi Arabia.

McCormick, 57, was convicted of three counts of fraud last month and sentenced Thursday at the Old Bailey court in London, where Judge Richard Hone called his profits from a “callous confidence trick” obscene and outrageous.

“Your fraudulent conduct in selling so many useless devices for simply enormous profit promoted a false sense of security and in all probability materially contributed to causing death and injury to innocent individuals,” Hone told McCormick. “You have neither insight, shame or any sense of remorse.”

Prosecutor Richard...

April was the deadliest month in Iraq in nearly five years, the country's United Nations assistance mission said Thursday, tallying 712 lives lost and 1,633 people wounded in the violence. Most of those killed or injured were civilians, according to the world body.

Iraq has been embroiled in violence as sectarian tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims surge, triggering fears that a new war might erupt in the country. The divided nation suffered its worst violence in 2006 and 2007.

Frustration and anger against the Shiite-led government, which Sunni protesters accuse of sidelining and persecuting them, has boiled over in recent weeks. A raid late last month on a Sunni protest camp set off a week of clashes that left more than 200 people dead. Car bombings in largely Shiite areas of southern and central Iraq rattled the country as the month drew to a close.

Terrorist attacks and other acts of violence killed 595 civilians and 117 members of the Iraqi security forces last month,...

WASHINGTON -- President Obama on Thursday headed to Mexico City to talk trade, security and immigration as he navigates his relationship with his new Mexican counterpart.

The visit is Obama's first across the southern border since President Enrique Pena Nieto took office in December. Obama is slated to meet privately with Pena Nieto before holding a news conference Thursday afternoon.

"I'm going to be working to deepen our economic and trade relationships across Latin America, relationships that create jobs and growth here at home, and offer our businesses growing markets where they can sell more American-made goods and services abroad," Obama said in a Rose Garden appearance just before his departure.

The Mexican leader came to office promising broad reforms and a strengthened federal government, and at least one of those changes already has caused friction with U.S. officials. Pena Nieto's administration plans to curb U.S. involvement in Mexico's security operations, raising...

ROME -- The Vatican became the home of two living popes Thursday when former pontiff Benedict XVI took up residence in a house in the city-state’s garden.

The unprecedented cohabitation with his successor, Pope Francis, began when Benedict arrived by helicopter about 4:45 p.m. from Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer residence where he had stayed since retiring Feb. 28.

After becoming the first pope in six centuries to step down, Benedict left the Vatican that day by helicopter to avoid intruding on the election of his successor and to give time for his new house to be renovated. On Thursday, Pope Francis was waiting to greet Benedict at the newly decorated home, a former monastery that the former pope will occupy along with four lay nuns who will cook and clean for him and his private secretary, Archbishop Georg Ganswein.

Francis and Benedict briefly prayed together in the house's private chapel, the Vatican said in a statement.

Concerns have been raised that Francis’...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A border clash between Pakistani and Afghan forces that killed an Afghan police officer has renewed tension between the countries at a time when Washington is trying to step up their involvement in peace talks.

The skirmish occurred late Wednesday night and continued for several hours. Afghanistan's Interior Ministry spokesman, Sediq Sediqi, said Pakistani troops fired first on Afghan border guards in the Goshta district of Nangahar province, killing one officer and injuring two others. The firefight continued into early Thursday morning, Sediqi said.

A Pakistani military official confirmed that a clash at the border broke out late Wednesday night, but contended that the incident began when shots were fired from the Afghan side onto a Pakistani border post in the Mohmand tribal region, injuring two officers. Troops at the post then fired back, said the official, who asked not to be named because he is not authorized to speak on such matters.

Pakistan’s...

A conference to promote peace between communist and capitalist adversaries might sound like an antiquated notion in the post-Cold War era.

But in this 60^th anniversary year of the signing of the Korean War armistice, which suspended the fighting but never led to a peace treaty, tension has escalated to a frightening crescendo. In a bid to focus the world's attention on this unresolved crisis, Koreans from both sides of the U.S.-designated demilitarized zone will bring their stories of personal heartache to a three-day forum organized by the UCLA Center for Korean Studies.

Setting the stage for discussions on how to pursue a formal end to the conflict will be two documentary films, "Memory of Forgotten War" and "The Woman, the Orphan, and the Tiger," tracing the tragic fates of war survivors and families separated by the ideological cleaving of their homeland.

In  “Memory of Forgotten War,” Bay Area filmmaker Deann Borshay Liemand her Boston College professor brother-in-...

BEIJING -- Adding to the strained relations with the U.S., North Korea said Thursday that an American citizen held since November has been sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for "hostile acts" against the country.

Kenneth Bae, a Korean American tour operator from Washington state, was tried Tuesday by the country's highest court,  the official Korean Central News Agency said. The brief dispatch from the capital, Pyongyang, provided no details of any crime.

"The supreme court sentenced him to 15 years of compulsory labor for this crime," the statement said, identifying Bae by the North Korean rendering of his name, Pae Jun Ho.

The dispatch said Bae was arrested after he had entered Rason City, a special economic zone bordering China and Russia, as a tourist on Nov. 3.

Bae's friends have described him as a devout Christian who traveled frequently to North Korea in efforts to help the country's orphans.

The U.S. State Department last week called for Bae's immediate release  and has been...

Reeling from the deadly collapse of a building packed with thousands of factory workers, Bangladeshi laborers rallied Wednesday, marking May Day with renewed calls for workplace safety.

The death toll steadily swelled in the aftermath of the disaster last week and continued to grow Wednesday as more bodies were pulled from the rubble, reaching 412 people killed in the collapse, according to the  Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha national news agency.

Outrage over the disaster spilled into May Day, an annual holiday meant to champion the rights of workers worldwide. Labor activists have accused the building owner and factory managers of forcing workers to enter the Rana Plaza building, which had visible cracks before it collapsed. Thousands of workers packed a procession through Dhaka, the capital, demanding justice for the dead.

PHOTOS: May Day protests

“My brother has died. My sister has died,” one participant said from a loudspeaker on the back of a truck, the Associated Press...

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Bolivian President Evo Morales declared Wednesday he was expelling the U.S. Agency for International Development from the country, accusing the aid agency of conspiring against his government.

“Surely to think that you can still manipulate us economically, politically -- those times are past,” Morales said at May Day celebrations in La Paz, according to the Bolivian national news agency.

The Bolivian leader asserted that USAID had sown divisions and destabilized the country and his government. Ejecting USAID was also a message to U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry, “who says that Latin America is the backyard of the United States,” Morales said.

Kerry referred to the Western Hemisphere as “our backyard” during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing last month. Though Kerry went on to say that the region was "critical to us" and stressed the U.S. should reach out to countries...

Pro- and anti-government legislators blamed each other for the fight that erupted Tuesday night after the head of the Congress, Diosdado Cabello, refused to give opposition members a turn to speak unless they first recognized the election of leftist President Nicolas Maduro.

Maduro won a narrow victory last month over opposition candidate Henrique Capriles to replace the late Hugo Chavez, according to official results. But the opposition disputes the outcome and is waiting for a recount to conclude.

One opposition congressman, Americo de Grazzia, ended up in the hospital after someone pushed him down a flight of stairs Tuesday, knocking him out.

“The blows against Venezuela do not hurt me,” declared opposition congresswoman Maria Corina Machado, her face...

LONDON -- Spurred by the preventable death of a pregnant woman, the Irish government unveiled a proposed law Wednesday spelling out when abortions can be performed to save the life of the mother, a controversial move in a country that still outlaws most terminations.

Prime Minister Enda Kenny said the bill would merely clear up the confusion surrounding when emergency abortions are allowed. But critics accused the government of paving the way for easier access to abortion, which many in the heavily Roman Catholic country oppose.

Anticipating a bruising political battle, Kenny warned fellow lawmakers of his Fine Gael party that he expected them to vote for the measure, even if they disagreed with it.

“I do hope that we can bring everybody with us, on an issue that I know is sensitive,” Kenny told reporters, adding: “Conscientious objection … doesn’t absolve people from responsibility.”

The government was moved to act as a result of public outrage over...