AP - One detainee told of being beaten with pipes and having a screwdriver rammed into his back. Another said interrogators tied his hands behind his back then lifted him into the air by his bound wrists.

AP - Four suicide bombers believed to be women struck a Shiite pilgrimage in Baghdad and a Kurdish protest rally in northern Iraq on Monday, killing at least 57 people and wounding nearly 300 in one of this year's deadliest attacks, police said.

AFP - The Australian government insisted Monday that the country's banks were sound after news that major lender ANZ had increased provisions for bad debts led to a plunge in bank stocks.

AP - Nigeria's main militant group sabotaged two more oil pipelines Monday during its two-year campaign of attacks on the country's oil industry, a leader of the group told The Associated Press.

AP - Investigators found fragments that appeared to bolster the theory that an oxygen tank exploded on board a Qantas jet, forcing it to make an emergency landing with a car-sized hole in its fuselage, an official said Monday.

AP - In the flatlands north of Baghdad sits a prison with no prisoners. It holds something else: a chronicle of U.S. government waste, misguided planning and construction shortcuts costing $40 million and stretching back to the American overseers who replaced Saddam Hussein.

AP - Anti-terror squads have carried out raids in the search for leads into the deadly synchronized bombings that killed at least 45 people in western India over the weekend, police said Monday.

AP - Three suicide bombers and a roadside bomb struck Shiite pilgrims taking part in a massive religious procession in Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 28 people and wounding 92, police said.

AP - A newspaper says police have detained three teenagers in connection to bomb blasts in a crowded Istanbul square that killed 17.

AFP - Four giant panda cubs have been born within just 14 hours in China, giving a rare boost to the population of the endangered species, state media said Sunday.

AFP - Egypt denied on Sunday that it had banned a book by a British journalist about Egyptian politics and society entitled "Inside Egypt: The Land of the Pharaohs on the Brink of a Revolution."