Traditional May Day celebrations to recognize the achievements of organized labor turned violent in some cities Friday, May 1st, 2009 - as workers decried government efforts to deal with the economic downturn.

Tens of thousands of government supporters and opponents are demonstrating across Russia in rallies marking May Day. The traditional holiday celebrating labor is colored by growing unemployment amid Russia's worst economic crisis in a decade.

CIA Used Waterboarding 266 Times
A footnote in one of the newly declassified torture memos has revealed that CIA interrogators used waterboarding far more than had been previously reported. In August 2002, the CIA waterboarded Abu Zubaydah eighty-three times. The CIA also used waterboarding 183 times in March 2003 against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. In 2007, a former CIA officer publicly claimed that Abu Zubaydah had undergone waterboarding for only thirty-five seconds before agreeing to tell everything he knew.

The United States announced Saturday it will not attend a United Nations conference on racism set to start Monday in Geneva.

State Department spokesman Robert Wood says the U.S. will boycott the conference "with regret" because of objectionable language in the meeting's draft declaration.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has announced a new $10 billion Asian infrastructure investment fund and said China's stimulus package was already paying off.

He also called Saturday for a more diversified monetary system and responsible oversight. In his opening remarks at the Boao Forum on Asia, Mr. Wen said the China-ASEAN Fund on Investment Cooperation would support infrastructure development in the region.

The US would be in breach of international law if it does not prosecute CIA officials for torturing alleged terrorists, the United Nations' monitor on torture Manfred Nowak said in a newspaper interview published Saturday in Austria. The UN Special Rapporteur on torture was reacting to the announcement by US President Barack Obama that CIA operatives who used harsh interrogation tactics authorized by the Bush administration should not be held responsible.

Thousands of opposition supporters in Georgia have begun a fifth day of protests, calling on President Mikhail Saakashvili to step down.

The demonstrators gathered outside the parliament in Tbilisi, before marching on to the presidential palace, where they plan to hold an ongoing protest. Correspondents say turnout is falling and the opposition seems increasingly unsure of how to continue its campaign.

Mr Saakashvili says Russian oligarchs are financing the Georgian opposition. The opposition accuses him of mishandling last year's conflict with Russia over the breakaway region of South Ossetia, and of being increasingly autocratic.

Iran has welcomed an offer of talks with six world powers over its nuclear programme, state television says. Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili spoke to EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and discussed the proposals, Iran's news agency ISNA said.

"[Iran] welcomes discussion with the group of six for a constructive cooperation", Mr Jalili said. Last week the six - US, Russia, China, France, UK and Germany - said that they were inviting Tehran for talks. The group's statement also reaffirmed its members' commitment to a "dual track" strategy, promising economic and political assistance if Iran agreed to international demands to halt uranium enrichment operations, but tighter sanctions if it did not.

The arrest of some 49 Hezbollah agents who were accused of plotting to carry out attacks against Israeli tourists at resorts in the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula portends a verbal war between Egypt and Iran in the future and a worsening of already stale diplomatic relations between the two countries, Egyptian experts said.

The experts -- fanned by statements made by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on TV in which he confessed that the main suspect in the arrested group of operatives was a member of his organization -- said Iran uses Hezbollah as a pawn in its war with Egypt over influence in the Middle East.