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JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli troops killed a drugs smuggler from Syria and wounded another on Saturday as they crossed a fence into territory controlled by Israel on the occupied Golan Heights, the Israeli army said.

GENEVA (Reuters) - Major powers gave Iran two weeks to answer calls to rein in its nuclear programme on Saturday or face tougher sanctions after talks ended in stalemate despite unprecedented U.S. participation.

KABUL (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama met the commander of U.S. troops in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday to talk about the war he says is not getting enough attention from the Bush administration.

HANOI (Reuters) - A court in southern Vietnam has sentenced an Australian woman of Vietnamese origin to life in jail for trafficking heroin, and her husband, who is also of Vietnamese descent, to a 20-year jail term on the same charge.

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict on Saturday apologized directly for the first time for sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy, but victims groups in Australia said they wanted action and not words.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese police arrested a human rights campaigner in the country's southwest for "possession of state secrets" after he offered help to parents of children killed in the region's massive earthquake, his family said.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel accused six Arabs on Friday of trying to set up an al Qaeda cell in Israel and said one of them had proposed attacking helicopters used during a visit by President George W. Bush.

DETROIT (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate John McCain commented on Friday on the unannounced timing of a high-security trip by Barack Obama to Iraq, saying he believed his Democratic rival was going this weekend.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Phil Gramm, an economic adviser to Republican presidential hopeful John McCain, resigned from his campaign on Friday in the fallout over his comment that the United States had become a "nation of whiners."

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Bush administration plan to define several widely used contraception methods as abortion is a "gratuitous, unnecessary insult" to women and faces tough opposition, Sen. Hillary Clinton said on Friday.

GENEVA (Reuters) - Major world powers will sound out Iran's readiness to negotiate an end to the long dispute over its nuclear program on Saturday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Five Democratic senators called on Friday for an independent review of electrical work at U.S. bases in Iraq where more than a dozen soldiers have been electrocuted and others injured.

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Police killed at least eight people in a raid on drug traffickers in a Rio de Janeiro slum, a spokesman said on Friday, following widespread anger and fear over police brutality in recent weeks.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - U.S. Hispanic activists laid out plans on Friday to register 2 million new Latino voters to boost the clout of the United States' fastest-growing voter bloc in the November presidential election.

KINSHASA (Reuters) - A soldier on trial for the killing of a Congo opposition politician earlier this month testified on Friday that the governor of Kinshasa, an ally of President Joseph Kabila, had ordered the murder.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Barack Obama has decided against using the Brandenburg Gate as a backdrop for a speech in Berlin, his aides said on Friday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Key farm state senators warned the Bush administration on Friday they would not support a world trade deal that cuts U.S. farm subsidies more than it opens foreign markets to American farm products.

DURBAN (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's crisis has weakened the unity of the southern African body SADC, Angola's foreign minister said on Friday, suggesting the region is divided over how to deal with President Robert Mugabe's disputed re-election.

DETROIT (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate John McCain commented on Friday on the unannounced timing of a high-security trip by Barack Obama to Iraq, saying he believed his Democratic rival was going this weekend.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will meet North Korea's foreign minister next week at an informal gathering of the six countries working to end Pyongyang's nuclear arms program, the State Department said on Friday.