CANNES, France: The apocalypse came early to the Cannes Film Festival this year, filling screening rooms with snarling dogs, bursting bombs, shouting men and screaming women. Midway through Day 2, on Thursday, characters had gone blind, gone to prison, gone to war. One had turned into a piece of furniture, and another had crawled out of a sewer, slimed in waste that the filmmaker threw at the audience with giggles, metaphorically speaking, ofcourse. Cannes has a tradition of shaking audiences...

U.S. officials to meet in N. Korea

A State Dept. envoy’s visit to Pyongyang this week appears aimed at restarting six-party talks on N. Korea’s nuclear programs. The communist country failed to disclose an inventory of its nuclear activities when it was due Dec. 31. Pyongyang had pledged to halt its nuclear programs in return for aid. The U.S. is trying to prod talks rather than provoke confrontation.

INDONESIA: The country extradited 4 rebel soldiers suspected in the attempted assassinations of East Timor’s president and prime minister, the police chief said.

BRAZIL: Rescue workers found 2 more bodies near the site where a boat ferrying people home from a religious festival sank in the country’s Amazon region. The discovery raised the death toll to 17, with dozens still missing.

HONG KONG: Chinese government suggestions that it may allow mainland insurance companies to invest in property could unleash billions of dollars in deals for commercial buildings and embolden developers and foreign investors who want a more active market. Property investment typically gives insurers the steady income they need to balance long-term liabilities. But Beijing wants to cool property prices, particularly in a housing sector fueled by an influx of eight million people into cities...