Reuters - South African President Thabo Mbeki will meet Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe on Wednesday for talks ahead of next week's presidential election run-off, Mbeki's spokesman said.

Reuters - Israel said on Wednesday it accepted an Egyptian-brokered truce with Hamas Islamists ruling the Gaza Strip but voiced skepticism the ceasefire involving all Palestinian militant groups in the territory would hold.

Reuters - The Olympic torch was paraded on Wednesday through China's sensitive former Silk Road city of Kashgar, home to ethnic-minority Muslim Uighurs, under the scrutiny of soldiers and choreographed cheering crowds.

Reuters - A meeting between the Indian government and its communist allies to break a deadlock over a controversial nuclear deal with the United States has been postponed, a senior communist leader said on Wednesday.

Reuters - The Mississippi River surged up through storm drains and flooded part of an eastern Iowa river town on Tuesday as the worst Midwest floods in 15 years ruined cropland and drove up world food prices.

Reuters - The Afghan army launched an operation on Wednesday to drive Taliban insurgents from villages on the outskirts of Kandahar city in the south , the defense ministry said, but gave no details.

AP - Snow White, Dorothy Gale, the HAL 9000 computer, Charles Chaplin's Little Tramp and Marlon Brando's Godfather share top billing among the American Film Institute's best genre movies.

AP - The United States and China, hoping to defuse simmering trade tensions, were cobbling together a set of modest achievements to cap two days of high-level economic talks.

AP - Israel confirmed Wednesday that a cease-fire with the Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip will begin Thursday.

AP - The rising Mississippi River broke through a levee Tuesday, forcing authorities to rescue about a half-dozen people by helicopter, boat and four-wheeler as floodwaters moved south into Illinois and Missouri.

AP - Barack Obama is answering a question he faced often on the campaign trail. Who would he turn to for advice when making foreign policy decisions?

AP - Former detainees from American military jails in Iraq and Guantanamo are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and lingering physical injuries and scars that can be traced to their imprisonment, according to a human rights group.

AP - Wearing everything from T-shirts to tuxedos and lavish gowns, hundreds of same-sex couples rushed to county clerks' offices throughout California to obtain marriage licenses and exchange vows as last-minute legal challenges to gay marriage failed.

AP - Afghan and Canadian forces moved into a series of villages outside of southern Afghanistan's largest city on Wednesday to root out any Taliban who have infiltrated the area, officials said.

AP - For a quarter-century, drilling for oil and gas off nearly all the American coastline has been banned in part to protect tourism and to lessen the chances of beach-blackening spills.