AP - David Petraeus, the American general who presided over Iraq's pullback from the brink of all-out civil war, relinquished his command Tuesday to Gen. Ray Odierno under a cascade of official thank-yous.

AP - The speaker of the Ukrainian parliament has announced the collapse of the pro-Western governing coalition.

AP - South America's presidents converged on Chile for an emergency summit Monday aimed at preventing the collapse of Bolivia, whose leftist president has lost control of about half the country and said bloody unrest there amounts to an attempted coup.

AFP - German flag carrier Lufthansa could be a partner for a restructured Alitalia, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said on Monday as talks continued with unions on saving the near bankrupt airline.

AP - People must accept death at "the hour chosen by God," Pope Benedict XVI told ailing pilgrims Monday in an anti-euthanasia message at Lourdes, the shrine that draws the desperate, sick and dying.

AP - An al-Qaida suspect's 12-year-old son, who was taken into custody with his mother and held for two months, was handed over to Pakistan Monday and returned to his relatives there.

AP - A popular foreign minister hoping to become Israel's first female leader in more than three decades squares off against a tough-talking military man Wednesday when the ruling party picks a new chief to replace Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

AP - Bombings in Baghdad and northeast of the capital killed at least 32 people Monday, Iraqi officials said, the latest in an apparent bid by insurgents to chip away at growing public confidence in recent security gains.

AP - President Robert Mugabe relaxed his iron hold on Zimbabwe for the first time in nearly three decades of one-man rule, forced by escalating economic chaos into signing a power-sharing deal Monday with his bitter political rivals.