World - Reuters

OTTAWA (Reuters) - The history of Afghanistan demonstrates that foreign troops cannot stay there indefinitely in an attempt to completely suppress all insurgency, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Tuesday.

TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) - Bodies are cut up and dumped in acid. Victims are stripped naked and hung from bridges. Others have their tongues cut out before being murdered -- Mexican gangs are using horrifying methods to outdo each other in an already harrowing drugs war.

BEIJING (Reuters) - A $6.5 billion U.S. arms sale to Taiwan has ruined years of work building trust with China, China said on Tuesday as the Pentagon voiced disappointment that Beijing had reacted by postponing military exchanges.

MALE (Reuters) - The Maldives archipelago holds its first multiparty president election Wednesday, in a vote seen as a referendum on President's Maumoon Abdul Gayoom's 30 year-rule on islands famed for their luxury resorts.

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Two Japanese scientists and a Tokyo-born American shared the 2008 Nobel Prize for physics for helping to explain the behavior of subatomic particles, work that has helped shape modern physics theory, the prize committee said on Tuesday.

KABUL (Reuters) - Britain's military commander and ambassador in Afghanistan are being "defeatist" by thinking the war cannot be won, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, as Washington seeks more troops for the conflict that started exactly seven years ago.

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Former Guatemalan President Alfonso Portillo, accused of fraud and corruption at the end of his term in 2004, was extradited on Tuesday from Mexico to face charges in his home country.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Preparations for a November 16 parliamentary election are on track in the West African state of Guinea-Bissau, where narcotics trade and organized crime are at crisis levels, a U.N. official said on Tuesday.

JAVA, Georgia (Reuters) - Russia will pull back on Wednesday from the southern edge of a buffer zone inside Georgia next to South Ossetia, a Russian officer said as EU monitors watched to see if Moscow would meet its withdrawal deadline.

GENEVA (Reuters) - Britain called on Tuesday for further reforms to United Nations aid agencies, saying their slow response to disasters had cost lives.

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's foreign minister played down on Tuesday the notion that North Korea delivered an ultimatum when it held talks last week with a visiting U.S. envoy who was trying to save a floundering nuclear disarmament deal.

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations called on Tuesday for tougher regulation of financial markets to deal with the "crisis of a century" and warned that the global policy response risked creating a prolonged deflationary downturn.

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan legislators wearing surgical masks and displaying skull-and-crossbones banners took over parliament's floor on Tuesday after the island's security chief accused China of starting the global SARS epidemic six years ago as part of a biological warfare campaign.

PRISTINA, Kosovo (Reuters) - The United States will keep troops in the NATO peacekeeping operation in Kosovo until at least late 2009, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Tuesday.

TEHRAN/BERLIN (Reuters) - Iran has accused six major powers of "unreasonable behavior" over its disputed nuclear program, but the European Union said on Tuesday it would stick to a dual approach combining diplomacy with the threat of sanctions.

KABUL (Reuters) - U.S.-led coalition and Afghan security forces killed nearly 60 militants during separate clashes in southern Afghanistan, the U.S. military and a police official said Tuesday.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Wednesday it hoped the Nobel Peace Prize, due to be announced on Friday, will go to the "right person" after a Chinese dissident had been mentioned as a potential winner.

GUWAHATI, India (Reuters) - Police used helicopters to spot armed mobs attacking Muslims in India's troubled northeast Tuesday, where clashes between indigenous tribesmen and settlers have left 47 people dead and tens of thousands homeless.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - The death toll from a suicide attack on a Pakistani opposition politician's home rose to 17, police said Tuesday, a day after the bomber struck in the town of Bhakkar, deep in the central province of Punjab.