VoteKansas.org

BUTTE, Montana (Reuters) - Democrat Barack Obama mixed presidential politics with parades and barbecue on Independence Day on Friday, celebrating his daughter's birthday with a picnic and fireworks in Montana.

ST. LOUIS (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said on Saturday his plan to end the Iraq war was unchanged and he was puzzled by the sharp reaction to his statement this week that he might "refine" his timetable for withdrawing U.S. combat troops.

BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungarian riot police used water cannon and tear gas on Saturday to stop far-right extremists from throwing petrol bombs and breaking up the annual gay parade in the capital Budapest.

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - A Malaysian detective has gone missing after retracting allegations he made linking Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak to the brutal murder of a Mongolian woman, police said on Saturday.

BERLIN (Reuters) - A man tore the head from a controversial waxwork figure of Adolf Hitler on the opening day of Berlin's Madame Tussauds museum on Saturday, police said.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Israeli forces blockaded a Palestinian village on Saturday in what the army called an effort to curb protests against the construction of a West Bank barrier deemed illegal by the World Court.

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia found explosives set to be used in bombs across the capital in reprisal for this week's rescue of leftist rebels' highest-profile hostages, including Ingrid Betancourt, military officials said on Saturday.

LONDON (Reuters) - A film secretly taken by a Zimbabwe prison guard and smuggled out of the country shows the extent of the rigging that took place for the June 27 presidential run-off vote, the Guardian said on Saturday.

LAGOS (Reuters) - At least 18 people, 12 of them school children, were killed when the bus they were traveling in crashed on a busy highway in the southern Nigerian state of Delta, media reports said on Saturday.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - Taliban militants released two Pakistani journalists on Saturday more than 36-hours after they were abducted in a tribal region near the Afghan border.

TOYAKO, Japan (Reuters) - Leaders of the Group of Eight rich nations meet this week in northern Japan to grapple with a raft of problems from soaring food and fuel prices to African poverty and global warming amid doubts about how much the annual diplomatic pageant can achieve.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A "new war" could break out in Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia if Tbilisi uses military force to resolve the conflict, Russia's Defense Ministry said on Saturday.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - A London-based Syrian human rights group said on Saturday that Syrian security forces had shot dead dozens of prisoners during a riot at a military jail near Damascus.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese leaders are finalizing a deal on the formation of a national unity government as stipulated in an agreement that ended the country's political crisis, political sources said on Saturday.

SANAA (Reuters) - At least four people were killed in an explosion near a postal office in the northern province of Saada in Yemen, a local official said on Saturday.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Georgia's breakaway region Abkhazia said on Saturday Tbilisi had planned to take the area over by military force earlier this year but failed in its mission, Russian agencies reported.

PARIS (Reuters) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Saturday said it was "not reasonable" to gather the Group of Eight (G8) leaders at an annual summit without the participation of strong emerging countries such as China and India.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - A key regional party in India said on Saturday it backed the government over a controversial nuclear energy agreement with the United States, easing concerns the pact could trigger early elections.

KABUL (Reuters) - Two gunmen shot dead an Afghan parliamentarian near his home in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar, the Interior Ministry said on Saturday.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran vowed on Saturday to pursue its uranium enrichment program, a day after delivering its response to an incentives package by world powers trying to curb its nuclear ambitions.