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BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Monday that an accord in stalled global trade talks was only a question of time and that a deal was essential to tackle terrorism and immigration problems.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama called on Monday for swapping some of the oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, in a move his campaign said would be aimed at lowering the price of gasoline.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama attacked Republican rival John McCain as a tool of big oil companies in a television ad released on Monday.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Paris Hilton's mother -- a John McCain donor -- on Sunday dismissed as a "waste of money" a television ad that used her daughter and Britney Spears to portray Democrat Barack Obama as more celebrity icon than chief executive.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Monday said it was time for Russia to rebuild links with former Cold War ally Cuba, news agencies reported.

MINGORA, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan's army killed 94 Islamist militants and lost 14 soldiers in fighting in the northwestern Swat valley during the past week, a senior officer said on Monday.

MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippines Supreme Court issued a temporary restraining order on Monday to halt a territorial deal between the government and Muslim separatists, the latest setback for peace in the nation's volatile south.

ANKARA (Reuters) - Land forces commander Ilker Basbug has been appointed head of Turkey's powerful armed forces, a hawkish general who is expected to avoid open confrontation with the Islamist-rooted governing AK Party.

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Several hundred Indonesian Muslims rallied on Monday in Jakarta and Surabaya, urging the government to disband the Ahmadiyya sect which many followers of Islam consider heretical.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran and the representative of six world powers talked by telephone on Monday without resolving a row over Tehran's sensitive nuclear work, which the Islamic Republic said would not be stopped.

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean activists said on Monday they planned a large candlelight rally to protest U.S. President George W. Bush's visit on Tuesday and demand the two countries scrap a widely criticized beef import deal.

CHANDIGARH, India (Reuters) - Indian authorities ordered an investigation on Monday into possible organizational lapses that led to a stampede outside a mountaintop Hindu temple in northern India, killing at least 145 pilgrims.

PIETERMARITZBURG, South Africa (Reuters) - Jacob Zuma, leader of South Africa's ruling ANC, appeared in court on Monday in a bid to win the dismissal of a graft case that could stop him becoming president next year.

VIENNA (Reuters) - A small amount of plutonium leaked in an ageing International Atomic Energy Agency laboratory outside Vienna but radioactive contamination was contained to a storage area and no one was injured, the U.N. watchdog said.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia has accused Georgia of using disproportionate force in its breakaway province of South Ossetia and warned it not to aggravate the crisis there, the foreign ministry said on Monday.

DHAKA (Reuters) - Bangladeshis voted on Monday in the first polls organized by the country's army-backed interim government since it took power in early 2007 with a promise to restore democracy.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Suspected Muslim separatists with homemade bombs killed 16 police in western China on Monday, state media said, reporting one of the worst attacks by militants on Chinese soil just four days before the Olympics.

BEERSHEBA, Israel (Reuters) - Israel sent 75 pro-Fatah Palestinians who fled the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip after clashes with the Islamist group to the West Bank on Monday after reversing a decision to return them to the coastal enclave.

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan (Reuters) - The Afghan and U.S. governments have broken ground on an agricultural centre and airport in the volatile southern province of Helmand, aimed at helping farmers grow food crops instead of opium poppies.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's Revolutionary Guards said on Monday they had tested a naval weapon that would destroy any vessel in range of 300 km (190 miles), Fars News Agency reported.