AP - Al-Qaida confirmed Sunday the death of a top commander accused of training the suicide bombers who killed 17 American sailors on the USS Cole eight years ago.

AP - Helicopters flew to the world's second-highest mountain Monday to try to rescue an Italian climber stranded after an avalanche at more than 26,250 feet left at least nine mountaineers missing and feared dead.

AP - Family members moved through row after row of bodies overnight in a grim search for their loved ones among the 145 people killed in a deadly stampede at a remote mountaintop Hindu temple.

AP - Two men rammed a dump truck into a group of jogging policemen and then tossed explosives into their barracks Monday, killing 16 officers in a restive Chinese province bordering Central Asia, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.

AP - When Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" appeared in the thick monthly literary magazine Novy Mir back in November of 1962, taboos were shattered. Buried secrets were unearthed. And the Soviet Union was shaken to its foundations.

AP - Australia's aviation agency launched a review of Qantas Airways' safety standards Sunday after a Manila-bound jetliner spraying hydraulic fuel made the airline's third high-profile emergency landing in eight days.

AP - President Bush's visit to Beijing almost looks like a vacation — right down to a family reunion. But his three-nation Asian trip also takes him to the doorsteps of two troublesome regimes while forcing him to balance the Olympic spirit with the delicacies of diplomacy.

AP - Just outside the rickety wire fence that guards the rich, red soil of this vast hacienda, dozens of peasants have camped for weeks under a patchwork of thatched shelters and tarpaulin-covered tents.

AP - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday refused to grant West Bank asylum to forces who fled weekend faction fighting in Hamas-ruled Gaza, despite fears for their safety.

AP - Despite intense U.S. pressure, Iraqi leaders failed Sunday to resolve differences over how to govern the oil-rich city of Kirkuk — a dispute that is blocking provincial elections and stoking tension in the volatile north.

AP - Al-Qaida confirmed in a Web statement Sunday the death of a senior commander known as a top explosives and poisons expert, who is believed to have been killed in a U.S. airstrike in Pakistan last week.

AP - South Korean investigators, matching once-secret documents to eyewitness accounts, are concluding that the U.S. military indiscriminately killed large groups of refugees and other civilians early in the Korean War.

AP - At least nine climbers are feared dead and five others are missing on K-2, the world's second-highest peak and long considered even more challenging than Mount Everest, officials said Sunday.