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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said on Monday that China should accept greater responsibilities for its growing economic influence and he chided Beijing for what he called a protectionist stance in global trade talks.

LANSING, Michigan (Reuters) - White House hopeful Barack Obama on Monday called for the sale of 70 million barrels of oil from the U.S. energy stockpile as part of a swap aimed at reining in the high cost of gasoline.

VIENNA (Reuters) - A small amount of plutonium has leaked from an ageing International Atomic Energy Agency laboratory outside Vienna, but radioactive contamination has not reached the environment and no one was injured, the U.N. watchdog said.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi political leaders reached a tentative compromise on Monday that may resolve a stalemate over the fate of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and allow local elections to go ahead, the deputy speaker of parliament said.

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya charged three people on Monday with helping a top al Qaeda operative escape over the weekend, nearly 10 years after two U.S. embassy blasts he is accused of planning put the militant group on the world stage.

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Monday that an accord in stalled global trade talks was only a question of time and that a deal was essential to tackle terrorism and immigration problems.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama called on Monday for swapping some of the oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, in a move his campaign said would be aimed at lowering the price of gasoline.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama attacked Republican rival John McCain as a tool of big oil companies in a television ad released on Monday.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Paris Hilton's mother -- a John McCain donor -- on Sunday dismissed as a "waste of money" a television ad that used her daughter and Britney Spears to portray Democrat Barack Obama as more celebrity icon than chief executive.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Monday said it was time for Russia to rebuild links with former Cold War ally Cuba, news agencies reported.

MINGORA, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan's army killed 94 Islamist militants and lost 14 soldiers in fighting in the northwestern Swat valley during the past week, a senior officer said on Monday.

MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippines Supreme Court issued a temporary restraining order on Monday to halt a territorial deal between the government and Muslim separatists, the latest setback for peace in the nation's volatile south.

ANKARA (Reuters) - Land forces commander Ilker Basbug has been appointed head of Turkey's powerful armed forces, a hawkish general who is expected to avoid open confrontation with the Islamist-rooted governing AK Party.

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Several hundred Indonesian Muslims rallied on Monday in Jakarta and Surabaya, urging the government to disband the Ahmadiyya sect which many followers of Islam consider heretical.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran and the representative of six world powers talked by telephone on Monday without resolving a row over Tehran's sensitive nuclear work, which the Islamic Republic said would not be stopped.

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean activists said on Monday they planned a large candlelight rally to protest U.S. President George W. Bush's visit on Tuesday and demand the two countries scrap a widely criticized beef import deal.

CHANDIGARH, India (Reuters) - Indian authorities ordered an investigation on Monday into possible organizational lapses that led to a stampede outside a mountaintop Hindu temple in northern India, killing at least 145 pilgrims.

PIETERMARITZBURG, South Africa (Reuters) - Jacob Zuma, leader of South Africa's ruling ANC, appeared in court on Monday in a bid to win the dismissal of a graft case that could stop him becoming president next year.

VIENNA (Reuters) - A small amount of plutonium leaked in an ageing International Atomic Energy Agency laboratory outside Vienna but radioactive contamination was contained to a storage area and no one was injured, the U.N. watchdog said.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia has accused Georgia of using disproportionate force in its breakaway province of South Ossetia and warned it not to aggravate the crisis there, the foreign ministry said on Monday.