AP - The Olympics hadn't even started when Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin quietly confirmed to President Bush the sketchy reports of Russian troops involved in an outbreak of fighting in Georgia's breakaway republic of South Ossetia.

AP - Georgia's president says Russia's troops have effectively cut the country in half by seizing a strategic city that straddles the country's main east-west highway.

AFP - Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf will not resign, his spokesman said on Monday, as the ruling coalition put the finishing touches to impeachment charges against the key US ally.

AFP - Russia intensified attacks on Georgia on Monday, the Tblisi government said, ignoring appeals for a ceasefire and US diplomatic warnings.

Reuters - Shares in Dutch TNT NV rose more than 6 percent on Monday after a source said Europe's No.2 mail and logistics company was in talks with U.S. rival United Parcel Service .

Reuters - More than 20 U.S. cities, including New York, Las Vegas and Denver, have agreed to measure their carbon footprints, with a system some 1,300 companies have been persuaded to use, in an attempt to find ways to curb emissions blamed for warming the planet.

Reuters - Oscar-winning soul singer Isaac Hayes who, along with Al Green, James Brown and Stevie Wonder, was one of the dominant black artists in the early 1970s, died in Memphis on Sunday. He was 65.

Reuters - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Japan that Washington would not remove North Korea from a U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism on the initial deadline of Monday, Japanese Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura said.

Reuters - India took the first individual gold medal in its history on Monday and American swimmers won the most exciting contest so far of the Olympics by a finger-tip.

Reuters - Georgia shelled the capital of South Ossetia on Monday, a Russian news agency said, while Tbilisi said dozens of Russian bombers were attacking Georgia.

AP - Everyone wondered who would fill the void with Tiger Woods recuperating and out of the last two majors.

AP - With its riveting orchestration, definitive guitar play and signature sensual baritone vocals, Isaac Hayes' theme song for the 1971 movie "Shaft" not only became one of pop music's iconic songs, but also the defining work of Hayes' career.

AP - Like others returning from a religious festival in Missouri, Hoang Vu stopped at the spot where a charter bus carrying fellow Vietnamese Catholics on the pilgrimage had crashed and killed 17 people.

AP - Rafael Nadal made a successful debut in Olympic singles Monday, overcoming numerous missed chances by sweeping the final four games to beat Potito Starace of Italy 6-2, 3-6, 6-2.