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BEIJING (Reuters) - Drug traffickers in China's far west are smuggling heroin into the country woven into carpets imported from Afghanistan and Pakistan, state media said on Tuesday. Customs officials in Xinjiang, which borders both countries, have seized more than 30 carpets containing some 50 kg (110 lb) of heroin in the last several months, the official China Daily said.

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Koreans against U.S. beef imports should lay down their protest banners and give new quarantine checks on the products a chance, the president said on Tuesday, vowing to crack down on violent street rallies.

SIBUYAN ISLAND, Philippines (Reuters) - Divers found bodies in lifevests bobbing in airpockets of a giant sunken ferry in the Philippines on Tuesday, and an official said it would be a miracle if any of the hundreds of missing had survived.

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe defied mounting pressure on Tuesday from both inside and outside Africa to call off Friday's presidential election, saying he had a legal obligation to go ahead.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Baghdad's minibus taxi drivers are returning to once deadly routes as security in the Iraqi capital improves, allowing them once again to drive between Sunni and Shi'ite areas and link divided communities.

MILAN (Reuters) - Optimists might call it Milan's Eiffel Tower moment.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York's Republican Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno said on Monday he will not seek reelection, saying he wished to "move on with my life" after serving 32 years as an elected official.

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Judges at the International Criminal Court will consider on Tuesday releasing their first suspect after they suspended his trial over access to evidence in a blow for the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal.

FRESNO, California (Reuters) - A top adviser to Republican presidential candidate John McCain apologized on Monday after he was quoted as saying a September 11-type attack before the November election would benefit McCain.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate could vote as early as Tuesday on a housing rescue plan that would deliver billions of dollars in aid to borrowers facing foreclosure.

BERLIN (Reuters) - The United States will continue to press for the release of Japanese citizens abducted decades ago by North Korea as it seeks the resumption of disarmament talks with Pyongyang, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Monday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal judge criticized the White House and Congress on Monday for failing to resolve differences in a probe of fired U.S. prosecutors, accusing both sides of stubbornness and even some "silliness."

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Air Force study saying most European military sites equipped with U.S. nuclear weapons fail to meet Pentagon security requirements has prompted calls for the removal of U.S. nuclear arms held in Germany.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council considered on Monday a plan to disband its peacekeeping mission to the volatile border between Eritrea and Ethiopia after Eritrea forced most of its troops to go home.

FRESNO, California (Reuters) - Republican John McCain said on Monday if elected he would propose awarding a $300 million prize to the auto company that develops a next-generation car battery that weans America off oil.

VIENNA (Reuters) - U.N. nuclear inspectors on Monday examined an alleged nuclear site in Syria that the United States says housed a secretly built reactor nearing completion when it was bombed by Israel nine months ago, a diplomat said.

QUITO (Reuters) - The head of the assembly rewriting Ecuador's constitution offered to resign on Monday, exposing a rift in the leftist government as it seeks to overhaul institutions to bolster the president's power.

PENSACOLA, Florida (Reuters) - Democrat Barack Obama's race will complicate his White House bid, Americans say in both interviews and a poll showing that nearly a third of them acknowledge feeling racial prejudice.

DALLAS (Reuters) - American evangelicals remain more Republican than Democratic but are not locked tightly in the embrace of either party, according to a new survey released on Monday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Floods, landslides and hail in the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan have killed 35 people, state media said on Monday.