AP - Dozens of scared children filed silently into the bare room, their eyes on the cracks in the floor.

AFP - British energy giant BG Group on Tuesday launched a hostile 6.6-billion-pound (13.8-billion Australian dollar) bid for Origin Energy, which if successful, would be one of the biggest foreign takeovers of an Australian firm.

AFP - Thailand's opposition began grilling Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej in a no-confidence debate on Tuesday, as his four-month-old government faces claims of mismanagement and cronyism.

Reuters - The U.N. Security Council has for the first time unanimously condemned violence against opposition supporters in Zimbabwe and said a free and fair presidential election is impossible now.

AP - President Michelle Bachelet pushed to permanently ban whaling along Chile's sprawling coast at the opening Monday of the weeklong International Whaling Commission meeting.

AP - Afghan officials say an airstrike has killed more than a dozen militants in the east of the country.

AFP - Baosteel, China's largest steelmaker, said Tuesday it had agreed to nearly double what it pays Anglo-Australian mining group Rio Tinto for iron ore.

AP - Coalition warplanes swooped down on militants withdrawing from a firefight with police into the mountains of eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday, killing 15 of them, officials said.

AP - South Korea's president spoke out Tuesday against the protests that have rattled his administration, saying the government would not tolerate any illegal, violent demonstrations against the planned resumption of U.S. beef imports.

AP - Divers wriggled into an upside-down ferry Tuesday and found bodies but no survivors three days after the vessel capsized during a powerful typhoon with more than 800 people aboard, officials said.

AP - An explosion apparently targeting U.S. troops struck a local council building Tuesday in Baghdad's Shiite Sadr City district, killing at least two Iraqi civilians, police and witnesses said.

AP - Outraged at the turmoil in Zimbabwe, the U.N. Security Council declared that a fair presidential vote is impossible because of the "campaign of violence" waged by President Robert Mugabe's government.

AFP - Australia must strengthen its relationship with India, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said Monday as he repeated his government's decision to refuse to sell uranium to the south Asian power.

AFP - The 80-nation International Whaling Commission began meeting in Chile Monday to debate whether to lift a 22-year-old ban on commercial whale-hunting.

AFP - Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on Monday told CNN that the international community should declare presidential elections "null and void" and organize a new vote.