Even before Austrian police pulled over three trucks near the Hungarian border, they could smell that something was up. The trucks had foreign license plates and were way overloaded. Police did not need sniffer dogs to know what kind of contraband they'd captured: more than nine tons of stolen Spanish garlic.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has confirmed she will attend Saturday's meeting in Geneva of a new contact group on Syria. The meeting is aimed at halting the violence and facilitating a political transition in Damascus. Clinton's decision to attend came after Iran was dropped from the meeting, organized by special envoy Kofi Annan.

A Canadian Supreme Court case has the potential to change marriage across the country. In the province of Quebec, partners in a common-law marriage have no legal obligation to support each other if they separate. But that law's validity came into question when the long time de-facto spouse of a Canadian billionaire demanded alimony payments.

European Union leaders meet in Brussels for their latest summit aimed at saving the eurozone from financial meltdown. The top-level meeting will pit German chancellor Angela Merkel against her increasingly unified partners, France, Italy and Spain, which are determined to win concessions from Europe's economic powerhouse.

Since a massive earthquake and tsunami led to the meltdown of the Fukushima nuclear reactors just over a year ago, Japan has closed all of its nuclear power plants. Despite public opposition, Japan has announced it will restart two of them by the end of July, ahead of summer's increased power demand.

The Muslim merchants of the country's most famous bazaar, Hamidiyah, have traditionally backed President Bashar Assad. But the government's brutal response to the uprising, coupled with crippling economic sanctions, is eroding that support.

The Intouchables, a heartwarming comedy about a Paris aristocrat's friendship with the unemployed black man he hires as his aide, is an unlikely box-office hit in France. The film has produced an equally unlikely new movie star: Omar Sy, the son of African immigrants from a gritty Paris suburb.