AP - Pakistani security forces destroyed two major militant sites and arrested 18 resisting insurgents as part of an operation in the troubled Khyber tribal region that entered its fifth day Wednesday, the Interior Ministry said.

AP - A helicopter from the U.S.-led forces was shot down south of the Afghan capital Wednesday, but the crew escaped without serious injury, the coalition said.

AP - As crude soared to a new record, the head of the International Energy Agency declared that the world was in the grip of an "oil shock," and the president of OPEC acknowledged he could not say whether prices would flatten out or continue to soar.

AP - The cyclone that devastated Myanmar's heartland has also roiled a political landscape dominated by the military for more than four decades.

AFP - Venus and Serena Williams cruised closer to another Wimbledon final on Tuesday, but they were upstaged by pint-sized Zheng Jie's history-making performance.

AFP - An African Union summit on Tuesday adopted a resolution calling for dialogue between Zimbabwe's political foes and a national unity government following President Robert Mugabe's widely discredited reelection.

AP - Israel's national museum said Tuesday that a Polish noble family has received compensation for two 1,700-year-old medallions that were seized by Nazis during World War II.

AP - France's army chief resigned Tuesday following a weekend military show in which 16 people were shot and wounded when real bullets were used instead of blanks. 's resignation, Sarkozy's office said Tuesday, and the defense minister suspended the use of blank munitions at public military shows.

AP - The same year that Sputnik soared into space saw the launch of another Soviet-era icon that may have loomed larger for generations of Russians: a huge toy store in central Moscow called Detsky Mir, or Children's World.

AP - Iraq's foreign minister told lawmakers Tuesday the U.S. made major concessions in talks on a new security agreement, urging them to approve the deal to keep U.S. troops here after the U.N. mandate expires at the end of the year.

AP - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe will not step down and Western critics who called the country's recent election a sham can "go hang," the longtime ruler's spokesman said Tuesday.

AP - Hezbollah instructors trained Shiite militiamen at remote camps in southern Iraq until three months ago when they slipped across the border to Iran — presumably to continue instruction on Iranian soil, according to two Shiite lawmakers and a top army officer.

AP - Not long after two top commanders of Latin America's last major rebel army were killed — one in a raid, the other by a turncoat bodyguard — Diego Canizares decided to call it quits.