AP - Two soldiers were killed and seven others injured Tuesday in two separate roadside bomb blasts in Afghanistan, officials said.

Reuters - French President Nicolas Sarkozy will attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, representing his own country and the European Union, his office said on Wednesday.

AP - Iraq's national security adviser said Tuesday his country will not accept any security deal with the United States unless it contains specific dates for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces.

AP - Ecuador's government seized three television stations and 195 businesses on Tuesday to collect debts stemming from a bank failure in the 1990s. The economy minister resigned just hours before the takeover.

AP - World leaders embraced for the first time on Tuesday an ambitious but nonbinding goal of slashing greenhouse-gas emissions in half by midcentury to stave off global warming. Unimpressed environmentalists called the effort too slow and too uncertain.

AP - Israeli troops stormed the shopping mall in this West Bank city Tuesday and ordered it to close, saying the popular facility is linked to the militant Islamic Hamas.

AP - Even in the chin-high piles of roadside rubble, the crumbled cinderblock and the eerily empty streets of this neighborhood in western Mosul, America's top military officer sees hope. But he also sees peril and an urgent need to get the economy going — jobs, services, some semblance of regular life.

AP - Sultan al-Mazeen recently stopped at a gas station to fill up his SUV, paying 45 cents a gallon — about one-tenth what Americans pay these days.