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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama will meet with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Tuesday afternoon to discuss the U.S. economy and Obama's proposals to bolster it, a campaign aide said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ratcheting up sanctions against Myanmar's military leaders, the U.S. Treasury said on Tuesday it moved to block assets and transactions by two government-controlled business conglomerates with operations from mining and gemstones to banking and construction.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A senior Russian Foreign Ministry official on Tuesday shrugged off anti-Russian remarks by U.S. presidential candidate John McCain and said Moscow could handle any unwanted turn in relations with Washington.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China is concerned about an International Criminal Court case against Sudan's president for alleged genocide in Darfur and its impact on the peace process, a senior Chinese leader told a visiting Sudanese official on Tuesday.

ISTANBUL/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert dispatched two top aides to Turkey on Tuesday for a fourth round of indirect peace talks with Syria, an Israeli official said.

ROME (Reuters) - Italy's top court gave the green light on Tuesday to the expansion of a U.S. military base at Vicenza, overturning a lower court's order for it to be stopped due to locals' fears about terrorism and environmental damage.

DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - A U.N. court trying the masterminds of Rwanda's 1994 genocide said on Tuesday that its mandate had been extended by a year until 2009.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Hamas warned its Fatah rivals on Tuesday that a crackdown against the Islamist group by forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas could spark a revolt in the occupied West Bank.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Washington's ambassador to Tokyo urged Japan on Tuesday to continue its support missions for U.S.-led forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

KABUL (Reuters) - To defeat Taliban militants, foreign troops led by NATO and the U.S. military in Afghanistan should come under the command of the Afghan government, otherwise the war will drag on, a government-owned newspaper said on Tuesday.

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudan's army confirmed on Tuesday that police clashed at the weekend with former Darfur rebels, killing four of them, but said it was the government forces that had come under attack.

KINSHASA (Reuters) - More than 2,000 rape cases were recorded last month alone in Democratic Republic of Congo's violent North Kivu province, a new report said on Tuesday, highlighting the failure of a U.N.-backed deal to deliver peace.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrat Barack Obama's highly publicized foreign trip does not appear to have increased confidence in his ability to be president and may have helped energize supporters of Republican John McCain, according to a poll published on Tuesday.

PRETORIA (Reuters) - South African President Thabo Mbeki denied on Tuesday that talks between Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF and the opposition MDC had hit deadlock and said they were "doing very well".

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A former dormitory matron charged with abuse at U.S. talk show host Oprah Winfrey's girls academy in South Africa on Tuesday pleaded not guilty.

MANILA (Reuters) - A cockpit voice recorder gave no useful information about what had torn a large hole in the fuselage of a Qantas Airways 747 plane last week, forcing it to make an emergency landing, investigators said on Tuesday.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's president called on Tuesday for developing nations to unite against what he said was bias by the U.N. Security Council, which the Islamic Republic accuses of siding with the West in a nuclear row.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has appointed Sergei Kislyak, a deputy Foreign Minister who represents Moscow in nuclear talks with Iran, as Russia's new ambassador to the United States.

MINGORA, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pro-Taliban militants attacked a security post and took up to 30 hostages on Tuesday in Pakistan's Swat valley, a day after insurgents killed three army intelligence staffers, officials said.

AHMEDABAD, India (Reuters) - Police defused several unexploded bombs in the western Indian city of Surat, one of the world's biggest diamond-polishing centers, on Tuesday, three days after a series of blasts in the same state killed 45 people.