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BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has reshuffled and replaced the head of a negotiating team seeking to finalize an agreement on the future presence of U.S. troops here, a senior Iraqi politician said on Thursday.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Thursday he suspected someone in the United States provoked the conflict in Georgia in an attempt to help a candidate in the U.S. presidential election.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Thursday said scrapping a U.S.-Russia civil nuclear agreement was under discussion in the aftermath of the Georgia conflict, but there was no announcement at this time.

BEDUM, Netherlands (Reuters) - The Tower of Pisa is being challenged by a lesser-known 12th-century building in the northern Dutch town of Bedum as Europe's most steeply leaning tower.

DENVER (Reuters) - To shouts of "Yes we can," Democrats nominated Barack Obama on Wednesday as their presidential candidate in a historic first for a black American, backed by his ex-rivals Bill and Hillary Clinton.

GENEVA (Reuters) - Major inequalities in health and life expectancy persist worldwide, according to an independent World Health Organization commission which on Thursday called for all countries to offer universal health care.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Presidential candidates searching for votes in the U.S. heartland will find rising poverty. But appealing to the poor is not necessarily a winning strategy, analysts said.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia successfully tested a long-range Topol missile designed to avoid detection by anti-missile defence systems from its Plesetsk launch site, a Russian military spokesman said on Thursday.

LONDON (Reuters) - A British computer expert accused by the United States of "the biggest military hack of all time" lost an appeal on Thursday and could be extradited within weeks.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. troops will on Sept. 1 hand over control of Iraq's Anbar province, once the heart of a bloody Sunni Arab insurgency, reflecting a dramatic drop in violence across the country, an Iraqi official said on Thursday.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican has warned journalists who will travel with Pope Benedict to Lourdes next month not to put the revered water from the shrine in their hand luggage on the papal plane or it may be confiscated.

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan and U.S.-led coalition forces have killed more than 100 Taliban in the southern Afghan province of Helmand during three days of fighting, the U.S. military said on Thursday.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni will easily win leadership elections in the ruling Kadima party to replace embattled Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, poll results showed on Thursday.

TBILISI (Reuters) - Georgians prayed for their country on Thursday and buried soldiers killed in a war with Russia as the nation marked a religious holiday in somber mood.

PATNA, India (Reuters) - Indian army troops helped evacuate more than 120,000 people from floods in eastern India, but more bad weather raised fears that rivers would to continue to overflow, officials said on Thursday.

MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippines has a lower incidence of HIV than most of its neighbors despite sharing many of the risks, but health officials warned on Thursday that many new cases were now coming to light.

GAZA (Reuters) - Israel on Thursday reopened its border crossings with the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, two days after they were shut in response to rocket attacks.

SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - Authorities tentatively relaxed a four-day curfew in Indian Kashmir on Thursday to allow people to buy essentials as residents ran short of food during massive protests against Indian rule.

DENVER (Reuters) - Barack Obama burst onto the national stage four years ago with a speech describing himself as a skinny guy with a funny name and an improbable life story.

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - The hijackers of a Sudanese airliner surrendered to authorities in Libya on Wednesday after releasing all the passengers and crew, Libya's aviation authority said.