AP - For years, the only thing sold openly in Saudi stores selling women's cloaks were of the all-black, drab covering variety. Now, streaks of vibrant color, bands of glittering crystal — even sheaths of sexy leopard skin prints — are showing up on the racks.

AP - A senior campaign staffer for the governing Conservative Party resigned Tuesday after admitting he wrote a speech for Prime Minister Stephen Harper that plagiarized another leader's address urging support for the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

AP - Russian troops have allowed a group of European Union monitors to enter a buffer zone on the edge of Georgia's separatist province of South Ossetia despite an earlier warning to them to stay out of the area.

AP - China's government said an additional 31 batches of Chinese milk powder were found contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine, further broadening a scandal affecting products ranging from baby formula to chocolate.

AP - A missile strike by a suspected U.S. drone killed at least six people in a Pakistani tribal region near the Afghan border, two Pakistani intelligence officials said Wednesday.

AFP - Canada's prime minister was accused Tuesday amid an election campaign of plagiarizing Australia's then-prime minister John Howard in a March 2003 speech in support of the US war of Iraq.

AP - Hong Kong authorities said Tuesday the amount of melamine found in two samples of chocolate made at British candy maker Cadbury's Beijing factory was legally acceptable for human consumption, a day after the company recalled 11 items sold in parts of Asia and the Pacific.

AP - A new command takes over all U.S. military operations in Africa on Wednesday, a program that many Africans fear has a hidden agenda skewed by the war on terror and a self-interested scramble for resources.

AP - The number of Iraqi security forces killed in September rose by nearly a third to 159 compared with the same period last year, Associated Press figures showed Tuesday. U.S. troop deaths for the same period fell by nearly 40 percent to 25 — only eight due to combat.

AP - A British court has struck down immigration restrictions placed on Gurkha veterans who served in the country's armed forces, ordering the government to draw up a new policy that takes their service into account, lawyers for the Gurkhas said Tuesday.

AP - The end of a 10-day ordeal for the tour group came far out in the desolate Sahara, when kidnappers lined up some of the captives and cocked their weapons. "At that moment, we thought we were dead," said one Egyptian guide.

AP - Thousands of pilgrims panicked by false rumors of a bomb stampeded at a Hindu temple in western India on Tuesday, killing at least 168 people in the crush to escape.

AP - Pakistan named a new head of its main intelligence service, a change sure to be scrutinized by American officials who have questioned the powerful spy agency's loyalties in the war on terror.