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LONDON (Reuters) - Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Soviet dissident writer and Nobel literature prize winner, has died aged 89, the Interfax news agency reported on Sunday.

DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Syrian officials attended the funeral on Sunday of a senior security officer whose killing has shaken the tightly controlled country.

ATHENS (Reuters) - A 31-year-old Greek beheaded his girlfriend and carried her head round the popular tourist island of Santorini before he was arrested, police said on Sunday.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The two candidates favored to succeed Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Sunday they may seek to forge a government with rightists, a step that could hurt peace talks but avoid an early election.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States said on Sunday that Iran has left the U.N. Security Council no choice but to increase sanctions on the Islamic Republic for ignoring demands that it halt sensitive nuclear activities.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin said on Sunday he sees the current uncertain economic situation continuing for "quite some period of time."

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Sri Lankan government forces killed at least 18 Tamil Tiger rebels and lost five of their own soldiers as they bombarded guerrilla-held areas in the north of the island from land, sea and air, the military said on Sunday.

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Sri Lanka must act to prevent human rights abuses including abductions, the intimidation of media personnel and the recruitment of child soldiers as it fights a 25-year civil war against Tamil Tiger rebels, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher said on Sunday.

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - A roadside explosion in Mogadishu on Sunday killed at least 14 people, most of them women who were sweeping a street in the Somali capital, witnesses said. Nearly 50 people were wounded.

DUBAI (Reuters) - Al Qaeda confirmed on Sunday that Abu Khabab al-Masri, a chemical and biological weapons expert, was killed with three other militants in a suspected U.S. air strike in Pakistan's border region last week.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A global AIDS conference that opens in Mexico City on Sunday is meant for people infected with HIV, but transsexual sex worker Elma Delea cannot get inside.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Talks between Zimbabwe's ruling party and opposition on ending the political crisis resumed on Sunday after adjourning early last week, South Africa's presidency said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Despite long insisting that sports and politics don't mix, U.S. President George W. Bush will have a hard time keeping them separate when he visits China this week for the Beijing Olympics.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi parliamentarians failed on Sunday to pass a law on provincial elections, putting the date of important polls in doubt and leaving unresolved a political standoff that has stoked ethnic tensions.

CHANDIGARH, India (Reuters) - At least 145 people, mostly women and children, were crushed to death under the feet of thousands of pilgrims in a stampede at a temple in northern India on Sunday, police said.

GILGIT, Pakistan (Reuters) - At least nine climbers have perished on K-2 in Pakistan in the worst day for mountaineering on the world's second-highest peak, and the toll could rise further, expedition organizers said on Sunday.

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Pakistan's prime minister said there was no evidence linking his country to attacks on India, adding such accusations had hurt the peace process, a report said on Sunday.

GAZA (Reuters) - About 30 pro-Fatah Palestinians who fled to Israel after fierce clashes in the Gaza Strip were sent back to the Hamas-controlled enclave on Sunday and the Islamist group said its forces immediately detained them.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel's cabinet on Sunday approved the release of five Palestinian prisoners as part of a swap deal with the Lebanese Hezbollah guerrilla group that brought the bodies of two Israeli soldiers home.

KABUL (Reuters) - A roadside bomb struck a U.S.-led military convoy outside the Afghan capital on Sunday, killing one soldier and wounding another, the military said.