World News

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her Polish counterpart signed a deal Wednesday to build a U.S. missile defense base in Poland, an agreement that prompted an infuriated Russia to warn of a possible attack against the former Soviet satellite.

A convoy of badly needed food aid for beleaguered Georgians rumbled through a Russian checkpoint Wednesday, waved through by soldiers who themselves showed no signs of fulfilling their president's promise of a pullback within two days.

Twin car bombings rocked a hotel and military headquarters in the Algerian town of Bouira on Wednesday, killing 11 people a day after a suicide bombing in a neighboring region killed 43, official media and witnesses said.

Hua Guofeng, who briefly ruled China as communist founder Mao Zedong's successor but was pushed aside as a prelude to reforms that launched an economic boom, died Wednesday at the age of 87, state-run media reported.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy visited a military chapel in Kabul on Wednesday where the bodies of 10 French soldiers killed in battle lay before they were to be flown home.

Lebanon's prime minister traveled to Baghdad on Wednesday in only the third such visit by a top Arab leader since the U.S.-led invasion five and a half years ago.

North Korea stepped up criticism of ongoing U.S.-South Korea military exercises, warning Wednesday that it would boost its "war deterrent" — a euphemism for its nuclear programs.

Armed pirates seized a Malaysian palm oil tanker with 39 crew off the coast of Somalia — the fourth hijacking in a month, a global maritime watchdog said Wednesday.

As police with riot clubs patrolled nearby, a merchant whispered that he feared a sweeping crackdown in China's northwestern Muslim region once the Olympic spotlight fades.

When Sudan's president landed in this remote western Darfur town, he was warmly greeted by a man who by all logic should be his mortal enemy — a tribal chief the Sudanese leader is charged with trying to exterminate.

Two car bombs in Algeria killed at least 11 people on Wednesday, the day after an attack that left 43 dead at a military academy, Algerian press agency APS said quoting the Interior Ministry.

Russian military trucks crossed from Georgia back into Russia on Wednesday but there was no sign of the large-scale, rapid pullout demanded by the West.

Deadlock between Pakistan's coalition partners over the restoration of deposed judges has raised questions about the survival of the government that forced President Pervez Musharraf's resignation.

Floods triggered by heavy monsoon rains left some 50,000 people homeless in India's remote northeast, officials said on Wednesday, warning of more rains in one of the country's most flood-prone regions.

An earthquake hit southwest China on Wednesday, knocking down houses and forcing around 1,200 people to evacuate from near the site of a devastating quake which killed at least 70,000 people in May, state media said.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora vowed on Wednesday to strengthen ties with Iraq, calling for it to be "reintegrated into the Arab world," as he became the second Arab leader to visit since Saddam Hussein's fall.

Zimbabwe's main opposition MDC said on Wednesday plans by President Robert Mugabe's government to convene parliament would endanger power-sharing talks between the country's political rivals.

An alleged World War Two war criminal living in Australia was eligible for extradition to Hungary to face justice, an Australian court ruled on Wednesday.

Five American blogger-activists and a foreign artist have been detained in Beijing as the government intensifies a crackdown on pro-Tibetan protests in the home stretch of the Olympics, rights groups said on Wednesday.