AP - The leader of Taiwan's new ruling party promised Monday to seek peace and economic engagement with China ahead of his trip to the mainland to meet President Hu Jintao.

AP - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon headed back to New York on Monday, saying he hoped Myanmar's military regime would honor its promise to open up cyclone-devastated areas of the country to foreign aid workers.

AP - Chinese soldiers prepared Monday to explode earthquake debris blocking a river where quickly rising waters threatened to flood disaster victims.

AFP - Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe called for unity in his faltering party on Sunday ahead of run-off elections next month in a fiery speech in which he also threatened to expel the US ambassador.

AP - Military commanders often ride to power atop a tank. But in Lebanon, the key to army chief Michel Suleiman's rise to the nation's top job has been keeping his men out of the fight.

AFP - Miguel-Angel Jimenez of Spain won the 600,000-pound (754,000-euro) BMW PGA Championships here on Sunday after a play-off against Oliver Wilson of England.

AP - Gao Ping's arms are still bruised and scratched from scrambling over boulder-strewn roads and dodging rain-slick landslides.

AP - President Robert Mugabe threatened Sunday to expel the U.S. ambassador for providing advice to the opposition opponent in the upcoming presidential runoff.

AP - Donor nations said they were ready to provide Myanmar with more than $100 million to help it recover from Cyclone Nargis, but warned the ruling junta Sunday they will not fully open their wallets until they are provided access to the hardest-hit areas.

AP - Michel Suleiman was sworn in as Lebanon's president Sunday after parliament elected him in long-delayed vote following an 18-month political stalemate that brought the country to the brink of another civil war.

AP - A powerful aftershock destroyed tens of thousands of homes in central China on Sunday, killing one person and straining recovery efforts from the country's worst earthquake in three decades. More than 400 others were injured.

AP - A British diver thought he and his American girlfriend would be eaten alive by sharks as they spent a night floating over Australia's Great Barrier Reef, a newspaper reported Sunday.

AFP - Afghanistan's parliament has started naming stay-away lawmakers, with a brother of President Hamid Karzai first on the list, in a bid to stop no-shows hobbling its work, an official said Sunday.