AP - Venezuela's environment minister said Saturday that the government will put national interests first in the mining sector and forbid mining in a biodiverse forest reserve that is home to two of the country's largest gold concessions.

AP - Jordan turned over Sunday nearly 2,500 stolen Iraqi artifacts to Iraq's top antiquities official, in the latest effort to recover the war-torn nation's stolen heritage.

AFP - Fifteen-year-old British rider Scott Redding on Sunday became the youngest winner in grand prix history after he crossed the line first during a thrilling 125cc race at Donington.

AP - Rescuers battled huge waves and strong winds Sunday to reach a ferry that capsized during a deadly typhoon in the Philippines a day earlier, but found no immediate signs of the more than 740 passengers and crew.

AP - Militants in Pakistan fired rockets at NATO bases across the border in Afghanistan, killing three children in a village and prompting the alliance to launch a pair of retaliatory artillery strikes, officials said Sunday.

AP - A female suicide bomber concealing explosives beneath her black robe struck outside a government complex northeast of Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 15 people and wounding more than 40, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.

AP - Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai pulled out of Zimbabwe's violence-wracked presidential runoff Sunday, declaring that the election was no longer credible and the loss of life among his supporters was simply too high.

AP - Saudi Arabia is willing to produce more oil if customers need it, the kingdom's oil minister said Sunday without citing any specific output increase.

AFP - Australia's new government has vowed to maintain a controversial policy aimed at protecting Aboriginal children in remote settlements, a year after police and troops were sent into the camps.

AFP - Police and protesters clashed at an anti-US beef rally here Sunday as Seoul's announcement on extra health safeguards failed to immediately calm South Koreans' fears over mad cow disease.

AP - Militants from Zimbabwe's ruling party have occupied the site of the opposition party's main pre-election rally.

AP - Mexico City's mayor expressed outrage Saturday that youths as young as 13 were among the dozen people killed in a nightclub stampede and said the officials involved in the police raid that sparked the crush had been suspended.

AP - Israel was set to increase the number of trucks bringing badly needed supplies into the Gaza Strip on Sunday as a truce with Hamas militants entered its fourth day, a military spokesman said.

AFP - A homeless Uganda-born man was on Saturday charged with murdering a Swedish woman whose body was found next to a road in Cambridgeshire, police said.

AP - The decisive battle of the Iraq war is shaping up — not in the streets of Baghdad but in the halls of government where the future of America's role across the region is on the line.