AP - Police cordoned off quake-hit schools and towns Thursday in an apparent attempt to quell protests by parents angry that probes of shoddy school construction have not begun a month after the disaster.

AP - President Bush on Thursday strongly disagreed with a Supreme Court ruling that clears foreign terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts. Bush suggested new legislation may now be needed to keep the American people safe.

AP - President Robert Mugabe's regime struck at the opposition leadership Thursday only two weeks before Zimbabwe's presidential runoff election, twice detaining his challenger and jailing the No. 2 opposition official to face treason charges.

AFP - China warned Australia Thursday not to allow the exiled Dalai Lama to carry out separatist activities on its territory, despite the Tibetan spiritual leader's stated opposition to an independent Tibet.

AFP - Police on Thursday kicked foreign journalists out of a city where the collapse of several schools in China's earthquake drew charges of corruption from parents of dead children.

Reuters - Western donors have failed to condemn war crimes by Ethiopian forces during a year-old campaign against separatist fighters in the country's eastern Ogaden region, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday.

AP - President Hugo Chavez is loosening economic controls on businesses to boost growth in the face of soaring inflation.

AP - Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Thursday that his Labor Party will support dissolving Israel's parliament if Prime Minister Ehud Olmert doesn't step aside over his latest corruption scandal.

AFP - The Russian shareholders of British-Russian oil venture TNK-BP are to sue their partner in the firm, global energy giant BP, Russian and foreign media reported overnight.

AP - The British government says a senior intelligence official in the Cabinet office has been suspended after secret government documents were left on a commuter train.

AP - Police cordoned off schools destroyed in China's devastating earthquake one month ago Thursday, apparently on alert for protests by parents demanding investigations into whether shoddy construction played a role in their children's deaths.

AP - President Bush can look forward to a hearty welcome from his old friend, the charismatic Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, and Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to Rome. That's not what he should expect in the streets, however, where anti-Bush sentiment over the war in Iraq still lingers.

AP - The U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan released footage Thursday of a skirmish with militants that Pakistan claims resulted in an airstrike on one of its border posts that killed 11 of its troops.

AP - Taiwan and China agreed Thursday for the first time ever to set up permanent offices in each others' territories as the two sides met for their first formal talks in more than a decade, an official with one of the delegations said.

AFP - Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Wednesday denied snubbing the Dalai Lama, who is in Australia on the second leg of a five-nation tour which has brought protests from Beijing.