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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Tuesday welcomed steps by Vietnam toward permitting greater religious freedom after meeting with the communist government's prime minister, Nguyen Tan Dung.

PARIS (Reuters) - Prosecutors in the French capital opened an investigation on Tuesday into an attack on a teenage French Jew that they described as anti-Semitic.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A group of senior U.S. Democratic senators on Tuesday urged the Bush administration to try to stop the Iraqi government from awarding short-term service contracts to major oil companies, saying the no-bid deals could inflame sectarian tensions.

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - A group that campaigns for tribal peoples' rights denied on Tuesday that it and the Brazilian government had misled the media over photographs of an uncontacted Indian tribe in the Amazon last month.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A leading conservative evangelical on Tuesday said Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama had distorted the Bible and espouses a "fruitcake" approach to the U.S. Constitution.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Tuesday pledged U.S. help to Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in the aftermath of a typhoon, saying he was sending an aircraft carrier to aid in the relief effort.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush's Justice Department improperly injected politics into hiring programs, a department investigation released on Tuesday found.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two weeks after his wife ended her White House bid, former Democratic President Bill Clinton offered a faint voice of support for Barack Obama -- through a spokesman.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday approved a bill that would shave billions of dollars in reimbursement from health plans that contract with the federal Medicare program.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Insurgent attacks in eastern Afghanistan rose by 40 percent in the first five months of this year over the same period a year ago, the U.S. commander of NATO forces in the region said on Tuesday.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican defended the late archbishop Paul Marcinkus, the head of the Vatican Bank whose tenure was marred by financial scandal, from media reports on Tuesday that he ordered the killing of a 15-year-old girl in 1983.

OTTAWA (Reuters) - A Canadian software developer designed a remote bomb detonator he called the "hi-fi digimonster" to be used in planned attacks in the United Kingdom, an Ottawa court heard on Monday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate was expected to approve as soon as Wednesday the biggest government program yet to tackle a deep housing market slump feared to be dragging the economy into recession.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York's Republican Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno said on Tuesday his surprising decision not to seek re-election had nothing to do with a federal probe of his business ties.

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's president on Tuesday urged people angry at a U.S. beef import deal to lay down protest banners and give new quarantine checks on the products a chance, vowing to crack down on violent street rallies.

ABUJA (Reuters) - A senior U.N. official appointed by Nigeria to help end unrest in the oil-producing Niger Delta said on Tuesday he would seek a 90-day truce with militants as a first step towards formal peace talks.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush, will not visit South Korea during a July trip to Japan for the Group of Eight summit, the White House said on Tuesday, after violent protests in Seoul over a U.S.-South Korean beef deal.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired several rockets into Israel on Tuesday, breaching a five-day-old ceasefire after Israeli troops killed a Palestinian militant leader in the occupied West Bank.

GUWAHATI, India (Reuters) - A powerful separatist group in India's restive northeast suffered a blow when half a dozen of its senior commanders decided to shun violence and declared a ceasefire, officials said on Tuesday.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Tibet will be reopened to foreign tourists from Wednesday, China's official Xinhua news agency said, after the region was shut off to foreign visitors following riots there in March.