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KINSHASA (Reuters) - More than 2,000 rape cases were recorded last month alone in Democratic Republic of Congo's violent North Kivu province, a new report said on Tuesday, highlighting the failure of a U.N.-backed deal to deliver peace.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrat Barack Obama's highly publicized foreign trip does not appear to have increased confidence in his ability to be president and may have helped energize supporters of Republican John McCain, according to a poll published on Tuesday.

PRETORIA (Reuters) - South African President Thabo Mbeki denied on Tuesday that talks between Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF and the opposition MDC had hit deadlock and said they were "doing very well".

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A former dormitory matron charged with abuse at U.S. talk show host Oprah Winfrey's girls academy in South Africa on Tuesday pleaded not guilty.

MANILA (Reuters) - A cockpit voice recorder gave no useful information about what had torn a large hole in the fuselage of a Qantas Airways 747 plane last week, forcing it to make an emergency landing, investigators said on Tuesday.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's president called on Tuesday for developing nations to unite against what he said was bias by the U.N. Security Council, which the Islamic Republic accuses of siding with the West in a nuclear row.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has appointed Sergei Kislyak, a deputy Foreign Minister who represents Moscow in nuclear talks with Iran, as Russia's new ambassador to the United States.

MINGORA, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pro-Taliban militants attacked a security post and took up to 30 hostages on Tuesday in Pakistan's Swat valley, a day after insurgents killed three army intelligence staffers, officials said.

AHMEDABAD, India (Reuters) - Police defused several unexploded bombs in the western Indian city of Surat, one of the world's biggest diamond-polishing centers, on Tuesday, three days after a series of blasts in the same state killed 45 people.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A major pilgrimage of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Shi'ites to a Baghdad shrine passed peacefully on Tuesday, a day after three female suicide bombers killed 35 people among crowds of pilgrims.

MADRID (Reuters) - A small bomb exploded on Tuesday at Spanish holiday resort Torremolinos without causing injury or any significant damage, a government official said.

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada will investigate why its troops opened fire on a car in southern Afghanistan, killing two small children, Defence Minister Peter MacKay said on Monday.

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Police have launched an investigation after a cache of up to 10 petrol bombs was found stashed underneath a train heading to the Indonesian capital Jakarta, officials said on Tuesday.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council was split on Monday over an effort by Libya and South Africa to have the council prevent the International Criminal Court from indicting Sudan's president for genocide.

ATLANTA (Reuters) - If Barack Obama wins November's election and becomes the first black president in U.S. history, will an older generation of civil rights leaders go out of business?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama met Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Tuesday, discussing the risk of further deterioration in a weakening U.S. economy.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani sought on Monday to reassure U.S. President George W. Bush of his government's commitment to securing its border with Afghanistan, where Taliban and al Qaeda militants pose a growing threat.

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysian opposition figure Anwar Ibrahim produced a report by a private doctor on Tuesday that he said showed his accuser had not been sodomized, as he battles a criminal case in his drive to unseat the government.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - France's first lady, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, said she sees herself as akin to former U.S. first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, in an interview with a U.S. magazine released on Monday.

LONDON (Reuters) - Leonardo da Vinci's drawings of machines are uncannily similar to Chinese originals and were undoubtedly derived from them, a British amateur historian says in a newly-published book.