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MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Gunmen shot dead six people, including children, in western Mexico in an execution-style massacre of the kind often carried out by drug gangs, Mexico media said on Thursday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal judge ruled on Thursday that Congress in its fight with the Bush administration can subpoena current and former top White House aides in its investigation over the firing of U.S. attorneys.

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - U.S. military prosecutors finished their case against Osama bin Laden's driver on Thursday after presenting a week's worth of evidence in the first trial in the war crimes court at the Guantanamo Bay naval base.

DAKAR (Reuters) - Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said on Thursday he was "fairly satisfied" with talks with President Robert Mugabe's party to end a political crisis, and said a Monday, August 4 deadline was "not inflexible".

ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua said on Thursday the biggest problem in Africa's most populous nation was poor leadership and rounded on public servants who abused their positions of power to gain personal wealth.

RACINE, Wisconsin (Reuters) - Republican White House hopeful John McCain's campaign accused Democrat Barack Obama on Thursday of playing racial politics in some of the most biting back-and-forth of the presidential campaign.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury on Thursday said it blacklisted six more companies and 13 individuals linked with Colombia's FARC guerrillas in an effort to squeeze the group's financing from narcotics sales.

Corrects in paragraph 11 to Robert Spellane, a Democrat, from Paul Loscocco, a Republican.

DAKAR (Reuters) - Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said on Thursday he was "fairly satisfied" with talks with President Robert Mugabe's party to end a political crisis, and said a Monday, August 4 deadline was "not inflexible".

WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W., Virginia (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush said on Thursday that the latest economic data showed the foundations of the U.S. economy are strong.

COLOMBO (Reuters) - The Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers held talks in Colombo on Thursday against a background of an increase in border skirmishes and bomb attacks on Indian cities that threaten a sluggish peace process.

WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - A man sleeping on a Greyhound bus as it rolled across the Canadian Prairies was killed and decapitated by his seatmate as horrified passengers fled to safety in the night, witnesses and police said on Thursday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush on Thursday held out the prospect of further troop reductions in Iraq later this year as he hailed a new "degree of durability" in security gains there.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. presidential candidates have spent some $50 million and aired more than 100,000 TV ads since the start of the general election campaign in early June, far outpacing the rate of the 2004 campaign, a report showed on Wednesday.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Foreign aid agencies are slowly returning to address Iraq's massive humanitarian woes following a fall in violence in the country to four-year lows.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's highest court on Thursday rejected ruling ANC party leader Jacob Zuma's attempt to stop seized evidence being used against him in a corruption trial.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union's trade chief Peter Mandelson said on Wednesday the United States helped to bring down global trade talks this week when its negotiators shunned a compromise proposal at a key juncture in the talks.

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Three months after Cyclone Nargis slammed into army-run Myanmar, people in the worst-hit Irrawaddy delta are still in dire need of food and clean water, hampering efforts to rebuild their lives, aid agencies say.

KIEV (Reuters) - Floods in western Ukraine have killed 30 people and prompted the evacuation of nearly 18,000, officials said on Thursday, after five days of rain caused rivers to spill over into villages and farmland.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council is set to renew a mandate for peacekeepers in Darfur on Thursday in a resolution that Washington criticized for raising concerns about moves to indict Sudan's president for genocide.