AFP - Australia's competition watchdog said Wednesday it will not oppose BHP Billiton's 120 billion US dollar takeover bid for rival Rio Tinto, saying the deal was unlikely to substantially lessen competition.

AFP - South and North Korea have agreed to hold military talks this week amid a deadlocked nuclear disarmament deal, the South Korean defence ministry said Wednesday.

AFP - Libyans are shaking off decades of deprivation resulting from an iron-fisted socialist rule, international isolation and sanctions to savour the joys of their new market economy.

AP - As of Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2008, at least 4,176 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

AFP - Smokers buying cigarettes will from Wednesday be confronted with a series of gruesome images printed on the packets showing how tobacco damages health.

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.