The pope on Friday approved a miracle attributed to Pope John Paul II's intercession and set May 1 as the date for his beatification, an event that will be a major morale boost for a church reeling from a wave of violence against Christians and fallout from the clerical sexual abuse scandal.

Pope Benedict XVI declared in a decree that a French nun's recovery from Parkinson's disease was miraculous, the last step needed for the beloved pontiff's beatification.

Three Bulgarian airline employees, working on a contract for the United Nations in Sudan, were kidnapped in the east African country, the Bulgarian foreign ministry said Thursday.

"A crew of three Bulgarian nationals, working for a Bulgarian airline company operating flights on a U.N. contract, were kidnapped in north Sudan," the ministry said in a statement.

Chrysler Group said Tuesday it plans to build a new sport utility vehicle for Italy's Maserati in North America.

Chrysler/Fiat Chief executive officer Sergio Marchionne said he had approved a plan to build a sport utility vehicle for the ultra-high end Italian luxury brand at the Jefferson North Assembly plant in Detroit.

NASA said Tuesday it will aim to launch the space shuttle Discovery on February 24, after engineers found a way to shore up cracks on the external fuel tank that have delayed its final liftoff.

NASA engineers have been working since November to figure out why cracks were emerging on the 22-foot-long U-shaped aluminum brackets, called stringers, on the shuttle's external fuel tank.

Soldiers rushed to restore calm to parts of central Nigeria on Tuesday after 13 people were reported killed in an attack on a village and unrest flared in other areas, authorities said.

Central Nigeria has seen a wave of violence in recent weeks, including Christmas Eve bomb blasts and reprisal attacks that killed at least 80 people as well as clashes between Christian and Muslim ethnic groups.

Australia suffered an "inland tsunami" as flash floods killed nine and left 66 missing, and the city of Brisbane was braced for disaster Tuesday with 6,500 properties under threat.

A somber Prime Minister Julia Gillard, dressed in black, warned the country to prepare for more deaths after the flash floods smashed the mountainside town of Toowoomba, sweeping away cars and entire houses.

Danish specialty food ingredients company Danisco said on Monday it would be acquired by US chemical giant Dupont in a deal worth $6.3 billion (4.9 billion euros), pending approval by regulators.

The purchase will involve $5.8 billion paid in cash and assumption of $500 million of Danisco's net debt, the Wilmington, Delaware-based DuPont announced late on Sunday.

The world could face a full-scale "trade war" if governments keep pushing down exchange rates to boost exports, Brazil's Finance Minister Guido Mantega warned in an interview on Monday.

He also told the Financial Times that Brazil was preparing new measures to prevent further appreciation of its currency, the real, whose continued strengthening threatens the country's export-led economy.

Air France-KLM said on Monday that bad weather in December that led to the closure of airports across Europe cost the company an estimated 70 million euros ($90 million), the Franco-Dutch airline said in a statement.

"The passenger and cargo activities were each affected by the periods of heavy snowfall in December in both Europe and the United States," the airline said.

Rescuers were on Monday searching for at least one person missing after an Iran Air passenger jet crashed in bad weather in northwestern Iran killing 77 people and injuring 26, state media said.

"Unfortunately, 77 of our citizens were killed, 26 were injured who have been hospitalized and one person is reported to be missing," Iran's state television said Monday, citing a report from a police information centre.