AP - Outspoken conservative Taro Aso took power as Japan's prime minister on Wednesday after he overcame opposition forces in a split parliament, tasked with rejuvenating the ailing ruling party ahead of elections.

AP - An energy company's decision to cut off electricity to a New Zealand woman's home because of an unpaid bill contributed to her death from morbid obesity, a coroner's court ruled Tuesday.

AP - Nomura, Japan's largest brokerage, said Tuesday it would buy the European and Middle Eastern operations of Lehman Brothers — just a day after disclosing it had acquired the Asian units of the failed U.S. investment bank.

AFP - The European Union condemned on Tuesday the Sudanese military's use of white aircraft in strife-torn Darfur, calling it a deliberate attempt to create confusion with UN planes.

AP - A five-ton elephant escaped from a circus and wandered onto a busy highway, where it was hit by a bus and died on Tuesday.

AP - The international shipping industry must take on more responsibility to protect vessels against pirate attacks and kidnappings in the dangerous waters of Somalia rather than rely on the U.S. Navy, the commander of the 5th Fleet warned on Monday.

AFP - A masked student went on the rampage at a Finnish school Tuesday, methodically gunning down 10 people before turning the weapon on himself, a day after police quizzed him over a chilling YouTube warning.

AP - When the Taliban engineered a prison break in the southern city of Kandahar in June, nearly 900 inmates escaped but not a single one had been fingerprinted or photographed.

AP - Iran's president blamed U.S. military interventions around the world in part for the collapse of global financial markets ahead of his speech Tuesday to the U.N. General Assembly.

AP - Myanmar's longest-serving political prisoner was among more than 9,000 inmates freed Tuesday, days before the first anniversary of the junta's deadly crackdown on anti-government protests led by Buddhist monks.

AP - China's agriculture minister acknowledged Tuesday that the country's milk-gathering system was "out of control" and led to abuses that put contaminated dairy products in stores across Asia, sickening some 54,000 babies and killing four.

AP - A masked gunman whose violent YouTube postings prompted police to question him just a day earlier opened fire Tuesday at his trade school in western Finland, killing 10 people and burning some of their bodies before shooting himself in the head.

AFP - Four hundred sheep died in a road accident in Australia, prompting animal rights activists on Tuesday to repeat their call for an end to the long distance transportation of livestock for slaughter.

AFP - Egypt renewed efforts on Tuesday to free 19 people including European tourists kidnapped in the remote desert and taken to Sudan, after Cairo went back on an official statement that they had been freed.