Fox World

A Chinese official has tried to reassure companies and investors the country's growth is stable despite unexpectedly weak data for July, saying the world's second-largest economy is "making steady progress." The spokesman for the National Bureau of Statistics said Friday the weakness in factory output, imports and other activity in July was due largely to summer flooding and other one-time factors.

Coordinated explosions targeting some of Thailand's most popular resort cities and beach towns killed at least four people and wounded dozens more. Police said Friday that 10 foreigners were injured in the violence, some of the worst here since the military seized power in a coup two years ago.

Fidel Castro greeted his 80th birthday from his sickbed, gripping a newspaper to show he was alive two weeks after stepping down as president.

A Chinese billionaire arrested in a United Nations bribery scandal asserted in court papers Thursday that charges against him were politically motivated, a way for the United States to block his construction of a major U.N. conference center in China and slow the progress of Chinese influence over developing nations.

Officials say 10 inmates, including two alleged Chinese drug criminals, died in a suspected grenade blast that rocked a Philippine jail.

A strong magnitude-7.2 earthquake struck Friday in the Pacific Ocean near the island nations of Vanuatu and New Caledonia, but authorities said there was no threat of a tsunami.

Australia's treasurer on Friday rejected accusations that the true reason his government plans to ban Chinese bidders from leasing a Sydney electricity grid is to appease influential lawmakers with xenophobic views.

A coalition of international business groups has appealed to China to change proposed cybersecurity rules they warn will harm trade and isolate the country.

Former Philippine president Fidel Ramos says China has welcomed him to come to Beijing for discussions in the wake of last month's international arbitration panel's ruling in favor of the Philippines over China's South China Sea maritime claims.

Mexican authorities say they have detained a second suspect in the killing of a journalist who was dragged from her home earlier this year.

Venezuela and Colombia have agreed on the gradual reopening of their border one year after the Venezuelan government closed crossings to crack down on smuggling.

Police in Brazil have arrested two alleged Islamic State sympathizers in the second phase of raids that earlier led to the detention of 12 people days before the Olympic Games started in Rio de Janeiro.

Mexico City officials have issued a pollution alert for the capital and surrounding suburbs after ozone levels reached more than 150 percent of acceptable levels.

An Ecuadorean opposition journalist convicted of libeling President Rafael Correa says he is broke and must take up a public collection to pay the $141,000 judgment.

A private zoo in Ukraine has a new attraction: five white lion cubs.

Reports of an escaped tiger have put Mexican authorities on alert nine months after another Bengal tiger fled into a mangrove forest and disappeared.

Kenya's government says it has approved a plan to start producing between 2,000 and 4,000 barrels a day of crude oil as a start to exploiting the country's oil production potential.

Russia's top investigative agency says that at least six people have died when a bus fell off a mountain road in Crimea.

A notorious video featuring late Toronto mayor Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine has been made public.

As U.S.-backed forces close in on the Islamic State group in the northern Syrian town of Manbij, the extremists have used hundreds of residents as human shields, laying mines and shooting those trying to flee the town near the Turkish border.