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DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday dismissed Israeli demands that Syria abandon an alliance with Iran as a requirement for a peace deal.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Several U.S. senators want Visa Inc and MasterCard Inc, the dominant electronic payment companies, to break down detailed costs associated with transactions called interchange fees, according to letters obtained by Reuters on Tuesday.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany unveiled a monument to the tens of thousands of homosexuals persecuted under the Nazis, whose laws were used to prosecute gay men for a generation after World War Two.

PANAMA CITY (Reuters) - A leftist with an anti-U.S. past is the early front-runner for next year's presidential election in Panama, one of Latin America's economic growth success stories.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice does not expect to meet with her counterparts from foes Iran and Syria at an international conference on Iraq in Stockholm this week, her spokesman said on Tuesday.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi officials reopened a landmark Baghdad bridge on Tuesday after it was destroyed by a truck bomb last year, vowing to defeat terrorists and unite a country ravaged by sectarian strife.

BEIJING (Reuters) - The United States on Tuesday gave a cautious endorsement to this week's resumption of a human rights dialogue with China that has been frozen since 2002.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Jimmy Malish huddles under a blanket, looks at the darkening sky and prays that it doesn't rain again on him and the hundreds of other African migrants camped in the courtyard of a Johannesburg police station.

GENEVA (Reuters) - Rich and poor countries clashed on Tuesday about whether new proposals to free up trade in industrial goods did enough to open markets or help developing countries.

TBILISI (Reuters) - Georgia demanded on Tuesday that Russia apologize after a U.N. report said a Russian air force jet had shot down a Georgian spy plane last month, but Moscow said it did not trust the report's conclusions.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China urged all sides trying to rein in communist North Korea's nuclear weapons program on Tuesday to engage fully to achieve results sooner rather than later.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Illinois Gov. George Ryan on Tuesday lost a U.S. Supreme Court appeal that sought to overturn his corruption conviction on the grounds his right to a fair trial by an impartial jury had been violated.

NAPLES (Reuters) - A judge in Naples has ordered 25 people, including employees at units of construction company Impregilo, to be put under house arrest for alleged irregularities in waste management activities in southern Italy.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Human rights conditions have worsened in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank since Hamas ousted Fatah in Gaza last year, a Palestinian rights group said on Tuesday.

BERLIN (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog's report on Iran this week showed the international community must push for a faster response from Tehran over its nuclear program, Germany said on Tuesday.

GENEVA (Reuters) - Millions of people caught up in armed conflicts will be pinched hard by the global food crisis, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which vowed on Tuesday to sustain aid to 52 countries.

HARARE (Reuters) - More than 50 people have been killed in political violence since Zimbabwe's disputed March 29 elections and 25,000 have fled their homes, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said on Tuesday.

KABUL (Reuters) - Eleven civilians and 13 policemen were killed in a series of blasts and Taliban attacks in Afghanistan on Tuesday, officials said.

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Islamist insurgents firing grenades attacked Ugandan peacekeepers in Mogadishu, killing at least 10 people and injuring a dozen others in the crossfire, residents and officials said on Tuesday.

PARIS (Reuters) - France will keep its 35-hour working week in order to enable employees to add tax-deductible overtime to their salaries and boost growth, President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Tuesday.