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TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran plans to send a manned rocket into space in the next 10 years, state television reported on Thursday, just days after the Islamic Republic announced it had put a dummy satellite into orbit.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Eight police officers and three soldiers were wounded on Thursday by a car bomb which ripped through a minibus in the western Turkish city of Izmir, the local governor said.

VIENNA (Reuters) - Forty-five nations met on Thursday to weigh whether to lift a 34-year ban on nuclear trade with India, a crucial step towards launching its civilian atomic cooperation accord with the United States.

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea could provide food aid to impoverished North Korea through a U.N. agency after Seoul halted direct shipments of rice due to political tensions with its neighbor, a government official said on Thursday.

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has threatened to pull his party out of Pakistan's ruling coalition it does not decide by Friday to reinstate judges purged by former president Pervez Musharraf, the Wall Street Journal reported.

PARIS (Reuters) - France reacted in shock on Wednesday to the death of 10 of its soldiers in an ambush in Afghanistan and questions began to be asked about the country's worst military loss in 25 years.

TBILISI (Reuters) - Russia said it would complete a pullback of troops in Georgia by the end of Friday but it stopped short of the extensive withdrawal demanded by the West, saying it would keep a force deep inside Georgia's heartland.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican cement firm Cemex said on Wednesday it will seek international arbitration to resolve a dispute with Venezuela's government, which seized the company's unit there in a nationalization drive.

MADRID (Reuters) - Grieving relatives on Thursday tried to identify charred bodies from the wreckage of a Spanish jet which crashed at Madrid airport on its second attempt at takeoff after mechanical problems.

ALOFI, Niue (Reuters) - South Pacific leaders warned Fiji's post-coup government on Wednesday it could be suspended from a regional forum if it failed to hold democratic elections in early 2009.

Jon Hemming has been Reuters chief correspondent in Afghanistan for just over a year and traveling, when conditions allow, across the country. Before moving to Afghanistan, Jon worked for Reuters in London, Tehran, Ankara and Istanbul. In the following story, he tells of an experience traveling in a convoy of U.S. troops through the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, a hot-bed of Taliban insurgents.

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libya, now in the mainstream of international politics after decades of isolation, needs reforms to revamp its political system into one that stands out against the region's "forest of dictatorships", Muammar Gaddafi's most prominent son said on Wednesday.

SUSIA, West Bank (Reuters) - In the stony hills south of Hebron, Palestinian shepherds complain of frequent attacks by militant Israeli settlers encroaching on their land.

VIENNA (Reuters) - A civilian nuclear deal between India and the United States faces a crucial test on Thursday when the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group meets in Vienna.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has halted a program that united African refugees with relatives in America after DNA testing revealed many people were lying about family links, the State Department said on Wednesday.

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libya will sign a free trade accord with the European Union soon, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's influential son Saif al Islam said on Wednesday.

PARIS (Reuters) - France reacted in shock on Wednesday to the death of 10 of its soldiers in an ambush in Afghanistan and questions began to be asked about the country's worst military loss in 25 years.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev discussed Middle East peace moves with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Wednesday, in advance of an expected visit by Syria's leader to Moscow, an Israeli official said.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Russia circulated its own draft U.N. resolution aimed at bringing peace to Georgia to the Security Council on Wednesday, a day after blocking a rival Western draft that demanded an immediate Russian withdrawal.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran described talks with a top U.N. inspector over its nuclear program -- which the West fears is a cover to build atomic bombs -- as "positive", the official IRNA news agency reported on Wednesday.