Reuters - Pakistani soldiers captured two militant strongholds and inflicted heavy casualties during fighting on Saturday in northwestern mountains near the Afghan border, a military spokesman said.

Reuters - Nigerian militants on Saturday warned oil firms in the Niger Delta to withdraw their workers in the next 24 hours or face a "hurricane" of retaliation after a major gun battle with security forces.

AP - For years the shantytown grew in the shadow of a limestone cliff, its wooden shacks and shoddy brick apartments creeping up and spreading over the hill. The whole time, the limestone was cracking inside, slowly and invisibly, from the slum's own sewage.

AFP - Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday held a mass for 260,000 people in the French capital before joining tens of thousands of pilgrims in the shrine city of Lourdes.

AP - Gunmen on Saturday abducted and killed four employees of an Iraqi television station who were filming a program about the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, one of a series of attacks in Iraq that left at least 18 people dead.

AP - A Chinese dairy that sold milk powder linked to kidney stones in infants knew it contained a banned chemical weeks before ordering a recall, the health minister said Saturday.

AP - Hundreds of Russian forces packed up and withdrew from positions Saturday in western Georgia, and a Georgian official said Russia had met a deadline for a partial pullout a month after the war between the two former Soviet republics.

AP - A coordinated series of explosions struck a park and crowded shopping areas across the Indian capital Saturday evening, killing at least 18 people and injuring at least 61, officials said. A Muslim militant group claimed responsibility.

AP - Pakistan's government eased its rhetoric Saturday against unilateral U.S. attacks on militant havens near the Afghan border, saying it hopes quiet diplomacy will persuade Washington that the raids only inflame sentiment against leaders of both countries.

AFP - Remote Australia, which covers 85 percent of the vast continent, has become a failed state due to a "perfect storm" of social and economic neglect, experts said in data published Saturday.

AFP - Indian security forces and stone-throwing protesters demanding an end to Indian rule over Muslim-majority Kashmir clashed for a second straight day on Saturday.

AP - The U.S. military says a pretrial hearing has started for one of two U.S. soldiers charged with killing an Iraqi detainee and lying about it earlier this year.