VoteKansas.org

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush planned to lift a ban on oil exploration in the Outer Continental Shelf on Monday as part of an effort to ease record high oil prices, the White House said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States said on Monday it had tightened security at its embassy and offices in Sudan after an international prosecutor sought the arrest of the country's president on genocide charges in Darfur.

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Middle East envoy Tony Blair is expected to travel to the Gaza Strip on Tuesday in what would be the highest-level visit by a Western official since Hamas took control a year ago, Hamas and Western officials said.

LONDON (Reuters) - Three British Muslim men pleaded guilty on Monday to conspiring to cause explosions, part of a plan prosecutors say would have involved smuggling liquid bombs onto airliners with the intention of blowing them up mid-flight.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Migrant workers in eastern China rioted and protested for three days last week, officials said, vowing tough steps to quell the latest ripple of unrest ahead of the Beijing Olympics.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - White House hopeful Barack Obama will outline his views on Iraq and U.S. national security in a speech Tuesday before a planned trip there, his campaign said.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia made no commitment at last week's Group of Eight summit to back United Nations sanctions on Zimbabwe so it cannot be accused of a U-turn, a senior Russian diplomat said on Monday.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hit back at a senior adviser to Iran's top authority who had criticized his "provocative" speeches about the country's nuclear work, which the West says is a cover to build bombs.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Eighty-six people were indicted on charges of plotting the violent overthrow of Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's government, which is accused by militant secularists of Islamist subversion.

HADARIM PRISON, Israel (Reuters) - Israel prepared on Monday for a prisoner swap with Hezbollah by moving four Lebanese guerrillas in its custody to a holding facility ahead of Wednesday's U.N.-mediated exchange.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama will visit Israel and the occupied West Bank next week, Israeli and Palestinian officials said on Monday.

SAN DIEGO (Reuters) - Republican presidential hopeful John McCain defended himself on Monday against charges from Democrat Barack Obama that he adopted a more aggressive stance against illegal immigration for political purposes.

TOKYO (Reuters) - South Korea said on Monday it would recall its ambassador from Tokyo in protest after Japan said it would write about a longstanding island dispute in school teaching guides.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said on Sunday he used "poor phrasing" in a speech supporting Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel.

PARIS (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said on Monday a military attack on Iran over its nuclear program would have grave consequences for the United States, Israel and the world.

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Protesters marched on the offices of Thailand's graftbusting agency on Monday to press for criminal charges against the government for its role in a dispute over an ancient temple on the Thai-Cambodian border.

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - The International Criminal Court's (ICC) prosecutor charged Sudan's president on Monday with masterminding a campaign of genocide in Darfur, killing 35,000 people and persecuting 2.5 million refugees.

NHA TRANG CITY, Vietnam (Reuters) - Miss Venezuela, Dayana Mendoza, was crowned Miss Universe 2008 in Vietnam's resort city of Nha Trang on Monday.

KABUL (Reuters) - A Taliban attack that killed nine U.S. soldiers, the biggest single American loss in Afghanistan since 2005, was a well-planned, complex assault which briefly breached the defenses of an outpost near the Pakistan border.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Police in southwest China have detained 100 people, including 39 gang members, for their roles in a riot last month that saw the torching of government buildings and official cars, state media said on Monday.