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Russian troops are continuing to advance into Georgia, despite the Kremlin signing an agreement to end the conflict.

A car bomb has killed at least six people and wounded dozens in the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

Southern African leaders are set to start a two-day summit, with the continuing crisis in Zimbabwe top of the agenda.

Thousands of Peruvians have marched in protest at their government's response to a deadly earthquake a year ago.

The FBI has confirmed the identity of a man accused of kidnapping his London-based daughter in the US.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has signed a ceasefire agreement designed to end the fighting in Georgia, according to a Kremlin spokesman.

The new governor of Kandahar province says his top priority is to fight the insurgency in the volatile region of southern Afghanistan.

A Brighton, Ont., woman accused of drug trafficking was given a 25-year sentence in a Pakistani court, said a Foreign Affairs official Friday.

About 40 people were killed in Somalia on Friday after roadside bomb blasts prompted Somali and Ethiopian troops to open fire on nearby civilians, witnesses said.

When Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe attends a South African summit Saturday, he will find one of his neighbours refuses to legitimize his victory in a widely condemned presidential run-off vote.

It used to be considered unseemly to scour the medals list too closely. China has subverted this tradition, writes Matthew Engel

It has taken less than a week for contradictions between the reality of Communist rule and pre-Olympics promises to burst into the open

Knife-wielding attackers killed three security officers and injured another at a checkpoint in the western Chinese province of Xinjiang

The Chinese government is trying to control every conceivable element of the Olympics, often by rather dubious means

The pragmatic government in Taipei is seeking a diplomatically worded association with the world body – in a key test for its relations with Beijing

British trio defeats French favourites by conclusive margin on a first day at the Laoshan Velodrome that lacked excitement

Tirunesh Dibaba of Ethiopia shows fine form in the final of the women's 10,000m, setting a new games record ahead of naturalised Turk but Ethiopian-born Elvan Abeylegesse

It used to be considered unseemly to scour the medals list too closely. China has subverted this tradition, writes Matthew Engel

Kosuke Kitajima of Japan becomes the only man to win the breaststroke titles at two consecutive games while China moves into the outright lead in the medals table

Shutting patients shut in will fuel complaints that Olympic preparations failed to take sufficient account of rights and interests of vulnerable

Iraqi Shia fighters are now been trained inside Iran as assassination squads, the U.S. military has told the Iraqi government.

Two suicide bombers attacked Shiite pilgrims Thursday evening as they traveled to a festival, killing 15 and wounding 40, an Iraqi Interior Ministry official said.

An explosion targeting a bus rocked a business district in central Tripoli Wednesday morning, killing at least six people and wounding four others, Lebanese internal security forces told CNN.

The United States spent $85 billion on contracts in Iraq and other countries in the first four years of the war and is relying on contract employees at a greater rate than in any other war, according to a government report released Tuesday.

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The U.N. refugee agency this week helped evacuate more than 700 Georgians from the Abkhazia region with the cooperation of the Russian and Georgian forces.

Iraqi Shia fighters are now been trained inside Iran as assassination squads, the U.S. military has told the Iraqi government.

The leader of Nepal's former communist rebels was named as the country's new prime minister Friday.

Talks between Zimbabwe's political rivals will resume Friday afternoon and continue on the fringes of this weekend's regional summit in Johannesburg, George Sibotshiwe, the spokesman for Zimbabwe's opposition leader, said Friday.

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Stung by criticism, the US adopts an increasingly muscular and high-profile approach to the South Ossetian crisis, including the launch of a military-led humanitarian mission

With George Bush accusing Moscow of bullying, and Dmitry Medvedev warning the west to back off, the Russia-Georgia conflict has turned into a cold war-style diplomatic confrontation

The prevailing view of those Ossetians who fled to the Russian side is that Georgia's pro-western leader, Mikheil Saakashvili, tried to wipe out their breakaway enclave

A decree increasing state institutions' power to check up on and, if necessary, punish or sack employees absent for illness has led to a big drop in sick leave, the government claims

The tiny Alpine state is poised to launch an initiative that could see it provide tax information about foreign account holders in return for guarantees they would not be punished unduly

Turkey Should Reject Calls to Suspend the ICC Investigation The Turkish government should reject efforts by Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir to secure a suspension of the International Criminal Court’s investigation against him, Human Rights Watch said in a letter today. Turkey should also convey a clear message that Khartoum must not respond to the investigation with retaliation against civilians, peacekeepers, or humanitarian workers. President Bashir will be in Turkey for the Turkish-African Summit on August 19-20, 2008. Human Rights Watch expressed concern that Turkey chose to welcome al-Bashir, who is currently subject to a request for a warrant at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, and whose armed forces continue to carry out attacks on civilians in Darfur.

Summit Leaders Should Act on Equality for Women Southern African leaders should adopt the proposed Gender and Development Protocol at their upcoming summit after amending it to include crucial provisions deleted in 2007, Human Rights Watch said today. One of the most important provisions that should be put back in to the protocol would commit states to criminalize marital rape.

Stop Using Weapon Banned by 107 Nations Human Rights Watch researchers have uncovered evidence that Russian aircraft dropped cluster bombs in populated areas in Georgia, killing at least 11 civilians and injuring dozens, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch called upon Russia to immediately stop using cluster bombs, weapons so dangerous to civilians that more than 100 nations have agreed to ban their use.

IOC Should Investigate and Publicize Abuses The International Olympic Committee (IOC) should turn words into action and immediately establish a reporting mechanism for violations of media freedoms in China, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch and other groups have documented many violations of China’s promise to allow press freedom in exchange for hosting the Olympic Games.

Urgent Need to End Impunity Guinea’s new leader should put the country’s chronic human rights problems at the top of his agenda, Human Rights Watch said in a letter to Prime Minister Ahmed Tidiane Souaré made public today.

Pakistan's beleaguered leader is to resign after nine years in office, government officials and a member of his circle have told the Financial Times

The declining fortunes of US consumers are proving to be a boon for India's outsourcing industry

Taxpayers face $3.6bn cost of increase for 5m federal workers this year as concerns grow over rising inflation and health of government finances

Angry Muslims mourning at least 20 protesters killed by police torched security bunkers and rioted in Indian Kashmir's main city on Wednesday, as a land row with Hindus revived calls for independence

Analysts say that with volumes now substantially lower, India's brokerage industry is likely to experience a period of rationalisation similar to the mid-1990s, when a previous market correction led to a shake-up among small brokers

Until now, business leaders in Argentina have largely gone along with official inflation figures, in spite of intensifying doubts about murky methodology and dubious reliability. But now, with July price data due out on Monday, the captains of industry are publicly calling for change

Banco Santander was planning to sell its Venezuelan subsidiary anyway, so Hugo Chávez's decision to nationalise the country's third largest bank is not as alarming as it appears at first glance

While monetary policy in Brazil under Lula has been consistently tight, fiscal policy has been fast and loose and the structural reforms left undone by the previous government have made almost no progress, says Jonathan Wheatley.

Brazil's central bank is set to continue raising interest rates this week as inflationary pressure persists. Indeed, Henrique Meirelles, president of the central bank, thinks other central banks should join Brazil's focus on inflation

Chávez on the advance in Central America and the Caribbean; Petrobas workers strike in Brazil; the trouble with farmers in Argentina; and Mexico's drug challenge.

Temporary seizure of opposition leader's passport at Harare airport as regional leaders prepare to attend a summit that is likely to be dominated by the crisis in Zimbabwe

South Africa's central bank has opted not to raise interest rates – a move that will cheer the business community but worry economists concerned about inflation

Power-sharing talks again stalled amid reports that Morgan Tsvangirai was excluded from a deal and former consultant Arthur Mutambara reached a pact with President Mugabe

Mining group Anglo American has held secret talks with Zimbabwe's opposition that could see Anglo Platinum, its majority-owned subsidiary, regain lucrative concessions recently ceded to the Mugabe regime

Mugabe is looking for means to preserve the status quo. At this point, the talks are only worth pursuing if they establish a peaceful way for him to go

North Korea has agreed to set up a committee to reinvestigate its abduction of Japanese nationals with the goal of completing the probe by this fall. Japan, for its part, has agreed to lift some of its sanctions against the North simultaneously with the start of the reinvestigation. North Korea should realize that the reinvestigation is a litmus test of its will to be accepted into the international community and, as such, should carry it out in a sincere and speedy manner. The new agreement describes the reinvestigation as a "total investigation" to find surviving abductees and return them to Japan. The reinvestigation will cover not only 12 Japanese nationals officially recognized by...

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The Cabinet Office has announced that Japan's gross domestic product in the April-June quarter shrank 0.6 percent, or an annualized 2.4 percent, from the previous quarter in real terms — the first drop in four quarters and the largest drop since the July-September quarter of 2001 when the economy shrank 1.1 percent. Exports and corporate capital investment fell as the U.S. and European economies slowed down and soaring prices of oil and raw materials began to affect Japanese business enterprises. Exports decreased 2.3 percent from the previous quarter — representing the first fall in 13 quarters. Net exports neither pulled down nor pushed up gross domestic product. Corporate capital...

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Cabinet ministers and at least 53 Diet members visited Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo on surrender day Friday while Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and two key ministers opted to keep their distance from the contentious landmark, which served as Japan's spiritual pillar during the war. Fukuda, Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura and Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura all refrained from visiting the Shinto shrine, conforming with Fukuda's moderate stance of not antagonizing China and South Korea.

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Electricity generation jumped 9.5 percent nationwide in July after warmer-than-normal temperatures prompted consumers to increase their use of air-conditioners. The country's 10 regional utilities generated 94.12 billion kwh last month, the Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan said Friday. The output was the second-highest since a record 96.2 billion kwh was generated last August, it said.

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A box of banned beef has been found in a shipment of pig bones imported from Sweden, the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry said Thursday. A ban on beef imports from the European Union was imposed in 2001. The ministry said it has provisionally barred Swedish food processing company Scan AB and warehouse company Skara Frys AB, which stored the beef prior to shipment to Tokyo-based Japanese trading house Agri Trade, from exporting to Japan.

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Alarmed over a lapse in the security cover of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati, police authorities here have decided to further strengthen her security.

Stepping up pressure in the party chief Shibu Soren's campaign to become the Chief Minister, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha has threatened to withdraw support to the coalition government

Pakistani troops opened fire at a security post on the Line of Control in Uri sector of Jammu and Kashmir, resulting in the death of jawan Naresh Kumar.

Major Padmanabhan and Major S Ganapathy of the Army Aviation Squadron at Leh and jawan E Narsaih have died in a helicopter crash in eastern Ladakh.