Mexico ended 2009 with a record number of drug-related deaths, greatly surpassing the then-record tally reached in 2008, unofficial counts indicate.

Two people were killed and four injured in a three-alarm fire Thursday night at the Huntington Hotel in downtown Detroit, Michigan, according the Detroit Fire Department.

Terror suspect Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab appears to have had direct contacts with radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. counterterrorism official told CNN Thursday.

Two of the seven CIA officers killed in an attack on a U.S. base in Afghanistan were contractors for Xe, a private security firm, a former intelligence official said.

At least 14 people have died in Brazil after flooding caused by heavy rain, the government-run news agency Agencia Brasil reported Thursday.

The New Year got under way with blasting horns and fireworks shot from the Sky Tower as revelers partied Friday morning in Auckland, New Zealand.

The office of a reformist Iranian member of parliament burned Tuesday night, and a reformist Web site said the act was the work of extremists.

A federal judge dismissed all charges against security contractors from the former Blackwater in connection with the 2007 deaths of 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad.

The State Department on Thursday is directing its embassies around the world to include information on whether a person has a U.S. visa when they send special cables to Washington containing information on potentially suspect individuals, CNN has learned.

To understand how the suspect in the botched terror attack got on a plane, see how the system is supposed to work.