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LONDON -- As Britain begins to weigh the costs of the rioting of recent days and ponder measures to prevent a recurrence, the government of Prime Minister David Cameron put forward on Friday a new way of punishing the looters and vandals who rampaged through many of the country's cities and towns: kick them and their families out of their government-subsidized homes. If carried out on the scale Mr. Cameron and his ministers have proposed, the measure would probably be the most punitive of the sanctions that they have said would be considered in response to the worst civil disorder in a generation. More than 10 million Britons, about one in six, live in public housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strong winds and a leaky hull caused a panic aboard an overcrowded ship that capsized in the seas off of Libya on Monday, and more than 230 of the 257 Europe-bound migrants aboard are presumed dead, officials from the International Organization for Migration said Wednesday. The 20 survivors, interviewed by the organization at an assessment center outside of Tripoli, the Libyan capital, on Wednesday, said they had clung to the hull in the roiling sea for eight hours after the boat overturned. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Three missiles thought to have been fired from remotely piloted American aircraft struck a Taliban training camp in northwestern Pakistan and killed 21 militants, according to a local government official and news reports on Friday. Fifteen other people were wounded in the strike, from about 9:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Thursday, on a training camp some 20 miles from Parachinar, the capital of the Kurram tribal area, according to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Iran is not on Hillary Rodham Clinton's itinerary in her first swing through the Middle East and Europe as secretary of state. But it is clearly, and constantly, on her mind. After three days of meetings in Egypt, Israel and the West Bank, Mrs. Clinton said she was struck by the depth of fear about Iran and the extent to which officials say it meddles in their affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The war in Afghanistan will be ''much tougher than Iraq,'' President Obama's special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan said at a security conference here on Sunday. ''There is no magic formula in Afghanistan,'' the envoy, Richard C. Holbrooke, warned an audience of European policy makers and military planners. ''There is no Dayton agreement in Afghanistan,'' he added, referring to the peace accord he negotiated to end the war in Bosnia. ''It's going to be a long, difficult struggle.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A fierce winter snowstorm crippled London's roads, subways and buses and all but shut down many parts of Britain on Monday. It was followed by a barrage of complaints as stranded travelers asked why the government seemed so ill prepared for the bad weather, when everyone had known for several days that it was coming. ''I think it's pathetic,'' said Matthew Hickley, a writer in his 30s, who was fruitlessly seeking a train home at the High Street Kensington subway station in West London. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An explosive device ripped through a minibus on Wednesday, killing nine civilians and wounding seven others on a road frequently used by Afghan security forces and international troops in eastern Afghanistan, the police said. Abdul Quyom Baqizoy, the provincial police chief of Khost, said the passengers on the bus, traveling from the town of Zazimydan, included women and children. Seven people were killed instantly and two more died on the way to the hospital, Mr. Baqizoy said. Seven more were wounded, of whom six were hospitalized, two of them in critical condition. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]