AP - Thousands of Muslims poured into the streets of Kashmir on Thursday, demanding independence from India hours after archival Pakistan called on the United Nations to stop what it characterized as gross human rights violations in the divided Himalayan region.

AP - Russian troops and paramilitaries rolled into the strategic Georgian city of Gori on Wednesday, apparently violating a truce designed to end the conflict that has uprooted tens of thousands and scarred the Georgian landscape.

Reuters - The United Nations pledged on Wednesday to hasten its cautious steps in helping Iraq rebuild, five years after a devastating bomb pushed it to pull foreign staff out of the country.

AP - A U.N. agency rolled out a $214 million program Tuesday to help 16 needy places hit hard by high prices for food and oil, amid a crisis already making it hard for aid groups to provide enough food for the world's hungry.

Reuters - The United Nations said on Wednesday it was concerned about a humanitarian crisis in the southern Philippines where a ferocious battle between government forces and Muslim rebels has displaced about 160,000 people.

AP - The head of Georgia's national security council said Wednesday that 50 Russian tanks had entered the strategic Georgian city of Gori, and another top Georgian official said his country's troops were completely driven from the separatist province of Abkhazia.

AFP - Russia's announcement that it would halt its offensive against Georgia was a "positive" development, US ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad said Tuesday.

AP - Russia ordered a halt to the war in Georgia on Tuesday, after five days of air and land attacks that sent Georgia's army into headlong retreat and left towns, military bases and homes in the U.S. ally smoldering. Georgia insisted that Russian forces were still bombing and shelling.

AP - A U.N. agency rolled out a $214 million program Tuesday to help 16 needy places hit hard by high prices for food and oil, amid a crisis already making it hard for aid groups to provide enough food for the world's hungry.

AP - Some of the countries that will receive aid under a $214 million campaign by the World Food Program to ease the effects of high food and oil prices in 16 trouble spots:

AP - Russian tanks roared deep into Georgia on Monday, launching a new western front in the conflict, and Russian planes staged air raids that sent people screaming and fleeing for cover in some towns.

AP - A helicopter used by the joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur was hit by gunfire Monday and forced to return to its airfield.

AFP - Russian troops launched attacks deeper into Georgian territory on Monday, prompting Tbilisi to retrench its troops closer to the capital as US President George W. Bush blasted Moscow's actions as "unacceptable".

AP - Georgia brought another last-ditch appeal Monday to the United Nations Security Council to stop Russia's advancing army, which U.N. officials confirmed has driven beyond Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.