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SANTA MARIA DI LEUCA, Italy (Reuters) - The Catholic Church has a vital role to play in shaping social policies but does not seek to usurp secular authorities, Pope Benedict said on Saturday.

AMARA, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraq has sent army and police units to the southern city of Amara for a new crackdown on Shi'ite militias, local officials said on Saturday.

BISHKEK (Reuters) - More than 20,000 mourners paid last respects to Kyrgyz writer and statesman Chingiz Aitmatov on Saturday as the country buried the intellectual who helped bring in Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika reforms.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Afghan and foreign troops were hunting on Saturday hundreds of prisoners, including militants, who escaped the main prison in southern Kandahar city after a raid by Taliban insurgents, the government said.

KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Nepali police broke up a protest by Tibetan exiles in Kathmandu on Saturday and detained 182 people for organizing anti-China demonstrations.

GOZ-BEIDA, Chad (Reuters) - Rebels on the offensive in east Chad on Saturday attacked a town ringed by refugee camps but stayed away from European Union troops protecting thousands of civilians, witnesses and rebel spokesmen said.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The outcome of negotiations on a Gaza ceasefire between Hamas Islamists and Israel will be known "in the near term", an Israeli official involved in the talks said on Saturday.

KURIHARA, Japan (Reuters) - A powerful earthquake rocked rural northern Japan on Saturday, killing at least five people, injuring more than 200 and sparking landslides that sliced mountains, destroyed roads and left residents cut off.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan told China on Saturday it remained concerned about its ballooning defense expenditure, an official said, as the two countries sought to build military and other ties following a historic visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao last month.

HARARE (Reuters) - President Robert Mugabe vowed on Saturday that the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) would never rule Zimbabwe and that he was prepared to fight to keep them from taking power.

PARIS (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush said on Saturday he expected to reach a long-term security pact with Iraq despite Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki saying talks were deadlocked because of sovereignty concerns.

MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish police said on Saturday they had charged 20 people with exchanging child pornography online and arrested 14 others in a nationwide operation.

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Congolese police killed prisoners and looted homes in an excessively violent crackdown on a shadowy separatist sect this year in which at least 100 people died, U.N. investigators said in a report.

ZARAGOZA, Spain (Reuters) - Expo 2008, themed on the world's dwindling water resources, opened in the Spanish city of Zaragoza on Saturday, days after the riverside site narrowly escaped flooding.

PARIS (Reuters) - President George W. Bush heads for Britain on Sunday on the final stop of a European farewell tour, having won support on the continent for a ratcheting up of pressure on Iran over its nuclear program.

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China's earthquake-hit Sichuan province will reopen some tourist services to the public from June 15, in a bid to revive its tourism industry, official media said on Saturday.

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Twenty-seven miners were killed and another seven remained trapped after an explosion in a Chinese coal mine, state media said on Saturday.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran again ruled out suspending sensitive nuclear work on Saturday, despite an offer by six world powers of trade and other benefits to try to coax it into stopping activities the West fears are aimed at making bombs.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration's top trade negotiator hosted her South Korean counterpart on Friday in a meeting that aimed to ease the uproar in South Korea over a recent deal to resume American beef shipments.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan's former prime minister Nawaz Sharif stepped up his attack on President Pervez Musharraf on Saturday, suggesting he could be hanged while addressing thousands of protesters outside the presidency.