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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iran's foreign minister on Sunday expressed optimism about what he said was a "new environment" for talks with major powers over its nuclear program.

MIAMI (Reuters) - A lawyer for a defendant in the Argentine "suitcase scandal" said a U.S. government witness has sworn that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was personally involved in the affair, according to a U.S. court filing.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel will begin exhuming the bodies of Hezbollah fighters buried in Israel ahead of a swap deal with the Lebanese guerrilla group, which is holding two Israeli soldiers, a military official said on Sunday.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - U.S. Republican presidential candidate John McCain took a veiled swipe at Democratic rival Barack Obama over trade on Thursday in the final leg of a Latin American trip aimed at showcasing the Arizona senator's foreign policy credentials.

ST. LOUIS (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said on Saturday his plan to end the Iraq war was unchanged and he was puzzled by the sharp reaction to his statement this week that he might "refine" his timetable for withdrawing U.S. combat troops.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian dissident launched a campaign on Sunday in support of what he called political prisoners, demanding President Dmitry Medvedev free 25 people - including jailed oil boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli police have concluded that a Palestinian construction worker who killed three Israelis with a bulldozer in Jerusalem last week acted alone and not as part of a militant organization, a spokesman said on Sunday.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed at least eight people and wounded 23 in an attack on police who had been guarding Islamists marking the anniversary of an army commando raid on Islamabad's Red Mosque.

PRAGUE (Reuters) - The Czech Republic and the United States will sign a treaty on Tuesday to build a missile defense radar on Czech soil despite opposition at home and in Russia.

TOYAKO, Japan (Reuters) - President George W. Bush pledged on Sunday that Japan's concerns about North Korean abductions of its citizens would not be ignored even as Washington moved to ease sanctions against the communist country.

TBILISI (Reuters) - Georgian officials said six explosions struck on both sides of a de facto border between Georgia and its breakaway Abkhazia region on Sunday, killing one person.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A 5.7 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of the largely uninhabited Kuril Islands in the Pacific Ocean on Sunday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A car bomb killed six civilians and wounded 14 other people in the Shaab district of northern Baghdad on Sunday, police said.

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia has issued an international alert for a missing private eye after he made, and abruptly retracted, allegations about the deputy prime minister's links to a high-profile murder case, police said on Sunday.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian peacekeepers said four explosions went off in the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia early on Sunday, according to Russian news agencies reports, in the latest sign of growing conflict.

CHITOSE, Japan (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush arrived in Japan on Sunday for the Group of Eight rich nations' meetings where North Korea's nuclear weapons program, soaring oil and food prices, and climate change top the agenda.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel was reopening some border crossings with Gaza on Sunday, an official said, after it closed them on Thursday following the launch of a rocket into the Jewish state by Palestinian militants.

MANAGUA (Reuters) - Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega warned his political adversaries on Saturday that he would not allow them to depose him as opposition groups planned street protests against his government.

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Democrats in Hong Kong urged Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping to speed up implementation of direct elections on Sunday, during his first visit to the city since taking charge of its affairs as a state leader.

HANOI (Reuters) - The patriarch of a Vietnamese Buddhist group that has peacefully campaigned against successive governments and Communist Party controls on religion, died in his monastery at the age of 87 on Saturday, the organization said.