AP - Business travel appears to be the latest victim of China's ever-tightening security crackdown before the Beijing Olympics.

AP - Iraqi police say at least eight people have been killed in a suicide bombing at a checkpoint manned by U.S.-allied Sunni guards northeast of Baghdad.

AP - Before the largest crowd of his campaign, Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama on Thursday summoned Europeans and Americans together to "defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it" as surely as they conquered communism a generation ago.

AP - Both Israelis and Palestinians came away from Barack Obama's visit to the Holy Land with the feeling he would do more for Mideast peace than President Bush has. But neither side seemed fully convinced that Obama would have their interests at heart.

AP - Iran signaled Thursday that it will no longer cooperate with U.N. experts probing for signs of clandestine nuclear weapons work, confirming the investigation is at a dead end a year after it began.

AP - Before the largest crowd of his campaign, Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama on Thursday summoned Europeans and Americans together to "defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it" as surely as they conquered communism a generation ago.

AP - No matter how much she loved the river and sea that once provided her family's daily food, Tin Tin Latt now just wants to stay away from the water that widowed her, killed two of her children and destroyed the family's livelihood.

AP - Canon Inc. said Thursday its second-quarter profit fell 13 percent from a year ago as a stronger yen chipped away at the value of booming overseas sales of color copiers.

AFP - Talks were to begin in earnest on resolving Zimbabwe's political crisis Thursday after President Robert Mugabe gave his top lieutenants the final go-ahead to negotiate power-sharing with the opposition.

AP - Hurricane Dolly toppled trees and sent billboards flying Wednesday in the Mexican city of Matamoros, and authorities south of the U.S. border warned of possible flooding.

AP - Turkish warplanes bombed 13 Kurdish rebel targets in northern Iraq, the military said Thursday.

AFP - World motorsport chief Max Mosley was awaiting a ruling Thursday in his privacy case against a newspaper which alleged he took part in a Nazi-themed sadomasochistic session with prostitutes.