AFP - China must deal with security threats in the runup to the Olympics but avoid using them as "a cover" to muzzle political dissent, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned here Saturday.

AP - To compete in the Francophone World Scrabble Championship, 32-year-old Elisee Poka spent five days in a bus traversing Africa's potholed roads. His competitors from France arrived by plane.

AP - A Texas woman wanted by the FBI for international parental kidnapping has been awarded refugee status in Costa Rica and cannot be extradited to the United States.

AP - As of Friday, July 25, 2008, at least 4,124 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

AFP - US presidential hopeful Barack Obama was set to meet Prime Minister Gordon Brown in London Saturday, with the focus on key foreign policy issues facing both countries, particularly Iraq and Afghanistan.

AP - An aide to Sen. Barack Obama said Friday the Democratic presidential contender believed he could visit wounded troops at a military hospital in Germany without involving them in a campaign controversy and scrapped his plans after the Pentagon raised concerns.

AP - Hamas security arrested dozens of supporters of the rival Fatah group early Saturday, Fatah said, a day after a mysterious beachside blast killed five Hamas members and a 6-year-old girl.

AP - Australian investigators on Saturday began examining a Qantas jumbo jet which had to make an emergency landing after a large hole opened on its fuselage, a Philippine aviation official said.

AP - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is running a worldwide race against time, trying for diplomatic victories before the Bush administration ends in January.

AP - Presidential contender Barack Obama is meeting with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on the last leg of his European and Middle Eastern tour.

AP - Karl Unterkircher, one of the world's top mountaineers, died when a bridge of snow masking a crevasse on Pakistan's "Killer Mountain" gave way under his tentative step, his surviving colleagues said Friday.

AP - Power-sharing talks between Zimbabwe's rival political parties were proceeding well Friday, a South African official said, although violence continued and hundreds of opposition supporters remained jailed.