World

The prime ministers of Russia and China, Vladimir Putin and Wen Jiabao, discussed topical international problems and bilateral economic relations.

Pakistan and Afghanistan have agreed to make contact with militant groups through a tribal council, an Afghan official said Tuesday, after two days of talks on tackling a Taliban-led insurgency.

The European Union could resume in November talks on a new cooperation pact with Russia, temporarily put on hold last month over Russia's military operation in Georgia, the French foreign minister has said.

Two white supremacists allegedly plotted to go on a national killing spree, shooting and decapitating black people and ultimately targeting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, federal authorities said Monday.

The U.N. nuclear chief said Monday that Iran is blocking his watchdog agency from verifying whether the nation has any ambitions for nuclear weaponry.

Insurgents shot down a U.S. helicopter after exchanging fire with its crew in central Afghanistan on Monday, while a suicide bomber in the north killed two American soldiers inside a police station, officials said.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will have a hard time meeting his election pledge of "putting oil money on people's tables" as crude prices tumble, industrial investment shrinks and spending on imports soars.

The U.S. has imposed sanctions against the Russian state-run arms exporter, Rosoboronexport, in connection with the alleged proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Russia may avoid a full-scale crisis despite global financial turmoil and can emerge from it with a more effective economy, President Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday.

U.S. and U.N. experts agree that Afghanistan will harvest fewer poppy plants bound for the drug trade in 2008 after two years of record crops. But they have radically different estimates about what that decline will mean for opium production.