AP - Representatives of the Dalai Lama headed to Beijing on Monday for the first formal talks with Chinese officials in a year, the Tibetan government-in-exile said, a move that comes less than four months after anti-government riots swept through Tibet.

AP - A U.S. ship carrying thousands of tons of food aid has arrived in North Korea, after the communist nation agreed to expanded international assistance for its impoverished people, the U.N. food agency said Monday.

AFP - At least six people were killed and 39 injured Sunday in two separate bomb blasts in India's insurgency-hit Assam state, police said.

AFP - Robert Mugabe was sworn in Sunday to a new term as Zimbabwe president and called for dialogue between the country's political parties after a one-man election widely denounced as illegitimate.

AFP - Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero on Sunday urged the European Central Bank to show "flexibility" in its interest rate policy which he said was too focused on fighting inflation.

AP - France's first lady sings in English and dreams in Italian, and the president's roots reach to Hungary and Greece. Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni-Sarkozy could be a metaphor for a harmonious, borderless Europe.

AP - Pakistani paramilitary forces destroyed a handful of militant centers and uncovered alleged torture cells as they pressed ahead Sunday with an offensive against extremists near the Afghan border, officials said.

AP - Israel's Cabinet overwhelmingly backed a deal Sunday with Hezbollah to swap a Lebanese prisoner convicted of a brutal 1979 attack for the bodies of two captured soldiers who were declared dead earlier in the day.

AP - President Robert Mugabe was sworn in for a sixth term Sunday, just hours after government officials said he overwhelmingly won a runoff that has been widely discredited. His main rival dismissed the inauguration as "an exercise in self-delusion."

AFP - Australia's senior Catholic leader said Sunday he would welcome Pope Benedict XVI addressing the issue of paedophile priests when he visits for World Youth Day next month.