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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia and the United States called on Wednesday for a halt to violence in Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia where separatists made disputed claims of military success against Tbilisi's forces.

BANGKOK (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush flew into Bangkok on Wednesday on the latest leg of a pre-Olympics Asian tour, although his focus in Thailand is mainly on the "outpost of tyranny" junta in neighboring Myanmar.

BANGKOK (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush plans to voice deep concerns about human rights in China in a speech on Thursday, hours before he arrives in Beijing for the opening of the Olympic Games.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia buried Soviet-era dissident and author Alexander Solzhenitsyn at a 16th-century monastery on Wednesday after a religious ceremony attended by President Dmitry Medvedev which bore all the hallmarks of a state funeral.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's prime minister will hold an emergency meeting with political leaders on Wednesday to defuse a land row over a Hindu shrine in Kashmir which has sparked some of the state's worst religious riots in two decades.

PARIS (Reuters) - France said on Wednesday Rwandan charges that senior French officials were involved in the African country's 1994 genocide were "unacceptable" but it still wanted to continue to improve ties with Kigali.

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbia has stepped up its pursuit of fugitive Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic whose arrest is crucial to the country's European Union bid, a senior Serbian official said on Wednesday.

MINSK (Reuters) - Russia may consider deploying strategic bombers or station tactical missiles in its close ally Belarus as a counter-measure to a planned U.S. missile shield in Europe, Moscow's envoy to Minsk said on Wednesday.

NOUAKCHOTT (Reuters) - The leaders of a coup in Mauritania may have won the support of many local politicians but they face a tide of international outrage for ousting the desert nation's first democratically elected president.

ABOARD AIRFORCE ONE (Reuters) - The White House said on Wednesday it believed world powers had to take further "punitive" measures against Iran because Tehran gave no concrete reply to their demand that it freeze its nuclear activities.

ABOARD AIRFORCE ONE (Reuters) - The White House said on Wednesday it believed Western powers had to take further "punitive" measures against Iran because Tehran gave no concrete reply to their demand that it freeze its nuclear activities.

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's ruling ZANU-PF and the opposition MDC on Wednesday called on their supporters to end political violence in the country, the most tangible sign of progress since power-sharing talks began two weeks ago.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan's 4-month-old civilian government has suspended a decree issued last month to put the military's powerful and controversial spy agency under Interior Ministry control, according to an official statement.

DHAKA (Reuters) - European and American diplomats said on Wednesday they were impressed by the high turnout and efficient running of local elections in Bangladesh this week, calling the polls a step in the right direction ahead of December's national polls.

KABUL (Reuters) - A senior Afghan intelligence official has accused a number of parliamentarians of supporting Taliban insurgents, Afghan newspapers said on Wednesday.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A Pakistani army helicopter airlifted a frost-bitten Italian climber to the nearest hospital on Wednesday, a day after he was brought down to the K2 base camp following the worst-ever climbing disaster on the mountain.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon, which closed its Talon intelligence database nearly a year ago amid concerns about domestic spying, will soon begin testing an unclassified alternative for tracking possible threats to U.S. military bases, officials said on Tuesday.

HASHARON PRISON, Israel (Reuters) - Israel released five Palestinian prisoners on Wednesday as part of a swap deal with the Lebanese Hezbollah guerrilla group that brought the bodies of two Israeli soldiers home.

DUBAI (Reuters) - Al Qaeda's North Africa wing said it was behind a deadly suicide bombing in Algeria on Sunday, according to a statement posted on the Internet on Wednesday.

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia's best known opposition politician Anwar Ibrahim is to be charged with sodomy on Thursday, potentially derailing his return to parliament and his plans to push the government out of office.