AP - Hezbollah's leader on Wednesday confirmed for the first time that his group will hand over two captured Israeli soldiers and information on a missing Israeli airman in exchange for five Lebanese prisoners in Israel.

AP - French designer Jean Paul Gaultier conjured neon birds of paradise heading to a high-class rave in his feathered-and-caged haute couture collection in Paris on Wednesday.

AP - China's latest Olympics nightmare is a vast algae bloom that covers one-third of the sea where the world's best sailors are supposed to be competing in just over a month. Athletes call it the blob, the carpet, the fairway.

AP - Iraqi security forces arrested three locally prominent supporters of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr on Wednesday as part of a crackdown on Shiite militias in the southern city of Amarah, police said.

AP - With Middle East tensions building, Iran's oil minister warned Wednesday that an attack on his country would provoke an unimaginably fierce response.

AP - Iran's foreign minister on Wednesday dismissed talk of a U.S. or Israeli attack against his country, calling the prospect of another war in the Middle East "craziness."

AP - A Palestinian man plowed an enormous construction vehicle into cars, buses and pedestrians on a busy street Wednesday, killing at least three people and wounding at least 45 before he was shot dead by security officers.

AFP - New laws to prevent people "annoying" Catholic pilgrims during Pope Benedict XVI's upcoming visit to Australia are likely to backfire and provoke both protesters and jesters, activists said Wednesday.

AP - South African President Thabo Mbeki says only Zimbabweans can resolve their crisis.

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.

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 - China's Communist Party boss in Tibet delivered a fresh attack on the Dalai Lama Wednesday, even as envoys of the region's exiled leader met for a second day with Chinese officials for talks aimed at easing tensions following anti-government riots.