WORLD

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao is expected to hold talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il on a three-day visit he began on Sunday, when the neighbors signed a pact on China's economic aid to the impoverished North.

Kenya's coalition government rejected on Monday international donors' accusations it was not doing enough to tackle the root causes of last year's post- election violence and bring to account those behind the killing.

Markets reopened and some children attended school in the earthquake-shattered city of Padang on Monday, but inland villages engulfed by landslides were to be left as mass graves to focus on getting aid to survivors.

The G30, a group of prominent bankers, policymakers and economists, called on Monday for sweeping reforms to the International Monetary Fund, warning that the impetus for change would wane as pain from the financial crisis fades.

Foreign and Afghan forces launched an assault on Monday against a group of Taliban in an area of eastern Afghanistan where the militants killed eight American soldiers at the weekend, an official said.

Afghanistan's U.N.-backed election watchdog will treat presidential candidates as equally likely to be guilty of vote fraud in suspicious cases, new rules issued on Monday show, a move that may ensure a win for Hamid Karzai.

Rescue workers used sandbags to stop a raging river from breaching its embankment near a southern Indian city on Monday as floods triggered by heavy rains over the last week left 2.5 million people homeless.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will travel to the United States next month and address both houses of Congress, the government said on Monday

China pledged to strengthen bonds with isolated North Korea, nudging it to improve its economy, while reports of Indian and South Korean swoops on North Korean shipping underscored strains behind a recent easing of tension.

The Obama administration wants to ensure multilateral development banks have adequate resources, but any capital increase must be tied to reforms, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Monday.

A suicide bomber dressed as a paramilitary soldier attacked an office of the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) in the Pakistani capital on Monday, killing five staff members, government and U.N. officials said.

The U.S. Supreme Court will again consider gun rights and decide an important case that could loosen restrictions on corporation spending in political campaigns in its new term beginning on Monday.

Pope Benedict opened a synod of Roman Catholic bishops on Africa by denouncing the West's materialism and lack of moral values, which he said were contaminating the world's poorest continent like toxic waste.

Indian warships detained a North Korean cargo ship for dropping anchor in Indian waters without permission, a navy spokesman said on Sunday.

A confidential analysis by staff of the U.N. nuclear watchdog has concluded that Iran has acquired sufficient information to be able to design and produce an atom bomb, The New York Times reported on Saturday.

Former Japanese finance minister Shoichi Nakagawa, who resigned his key post after being forced to deny he was drunk at a G7 news conference in February, has died, Tokyo police said on Sunday.

Indonesians dug a pit for a mass burial in the earthquake shattered city of Padang on Sunday, while in nearby hills villagers with wooden hoes clawed in the mud in a near-hopeless search for hundreds entombed by landslides.

A powerful typhoon moved out to sea on Sunday after thrashing the remote northeastern Philippines and killing 17 people and may remain there for days, bringing more rain and possible landslides, officials said.

North Korea's leader Kim Jong-il made a rare appearance to greet visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, starting a trip that swiftly drew a statement from the North that it was willing to discuss its nuclear weapons.

U.N. experts will inspect Iran's newly disclosed uranium enrichment plant on October 25, the IAEA nuclear agency chief said on Sunday, praising a shift from conspiracy to cooperation in Tehran's dealings with the West.

Amid job losses, workers and small businesses can seek gov't help

A powerful typhoon slammed into the northeastern Philippines on Saturday, killing four people, tearing roofs off houses and uprooting trees, but damage and flooding was much less than expected.

Israeli planes carried out strikes on tunnels used for smuggling along the Gaza-Egypt border and a building east of Gaza city on Saturday, causing damage but no casualties, security forces and the Israeli military said.

Irish voters have approved the EU's Lisbon Treaty, Ireland's foreign minister said on Saturday, reversing last year's shock rejection and pulling the bloc's ambitions for greater global influence out of the deep freeze.

Myanmar's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi held a rare meeting with a minister from the ruling junta on Saturday, a government source said, a week after she offered to work for withdrawal of sanctions on the country.

Rescue teams pushed deeper into Indonesia's earthquake-hit Sumatra on Saturday, finding entire villages obliterated by landslides and survivors desperate for aid three days after the tremor.

The head of the U.N. nuclear agency arrived in Iran on Saturday for talks on a timetable for inspectors to visit a newly disclosed nuclear enrichment plant, state radio reported.

Rio de Janeiro's successful bid to host the Olympics in 2016 crowns Brazil's remarkable rise over the past decade from a near basket case to an economic and diplomatic heavyweight.

An Israeli soldier held captive for the past three years by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas smiled briefly and looked healthy in a two-minute Hamas video handed over to Israel on Friday.