AP - Royal Dutch Shell said it shut down production at an offshore oil installation that produces about 200,000 barrels per day after the most powerful militant group in Nigeria said it launched an attack there Thursday.

AP - Guns went quiet as a six-month truce between Israel and Gaza Strip militants took effect early Thursday, but there was widespread skepticism about its ability to hold.

AP - A drought crisis needed urgent attention or a crucial Australian river system could suffer permanent ecological damage by October, a government minister warned Wednesday.

Reuters - U.S. and Chinese officials were to wrap up two days of economic talks on Wednesday with agreements to expand energy cooperation and investment but with differences remaining on how quickly Beijing should liberalize its markets.

Reuters - The son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was a leader of a 2004 coup plot in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea that was backed by Spain and South Africa, a British mercenary told a court on Wednesday.

AP - Food manufacturers promised Mexico's government to freeze prices on more than 150 food products Wednesday to help families cope with rising costs.

AP - Offering a cigarette is as common as a handshake in Egypt, where the culture of smoking is so entrenched that patients sometimes light up in hospital rooms. But now the government is getting serious about the health risks, launching a new campaign of stark visual warnings about tobacco's dangers.

AP - Ayan Ali Hassan decided to leave Mogadishu when militiamen boarded her school bus and kidnapped two screaming boys. For Abdi Gadir Osman, the moment came when a mortar slammed into his mother's home, killing her while she slept on a hot afternoon.

AP - In the 50 hours she was trapped under rubble after last month's earthquake, mother-to-be Zhang Xiaoyan prayed hardest not for her own life but for her baby's survival.

AP - Palestinian militants launched at least 50 rockets and mortars from Gaza and Israel responded with airstrikes on Wednesday, just a day before a truce was set to take effect, illustrating how fragile the arrangement between Israel and Hamas would be.

AP - The U.S. military blamed a renegade Shiite militiaman on Wednesday for a truck bombing that killed 63 people in a Shiite area of Baghdad, saying he was trying to re-ignite sectarian violence for personal gain.

AP - Afghan and Canadian forces moved into villages outside Kandahar on Wednesday to root out Taliban militants, killing at least 36 insurgents, while an explosion elsewhere killed four British soldiers, officials said.

AFP - Afghan forces backed up by Canadian NATO troops pushed into villages near the strategic city of Kandahar in a major "clean-up" operation to drive out entrenched Taliban rebels.

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.