Afghanistan
KANDAHAR — Forces of two regional Afghan army commanders, both loyal to President Hamid Karzai, clashed in southern Afghanistan, leaving three soldiers dead and wounding two others, a senior official said Tuesday.
Argentina
BUENOS AIRES — In a bid to stop runaway crime, new President Nestor Kirchner on Tuesday announced one of the biggest overhauls of Argentina's federal police force in years.
Canada
TORONTO — Canada's largest city avoided a new World Health Organization travel advisory over SARS, and health officials said Tuesday the latest outbreak of the pneumonia-like virus appeared to be easing.
TORONTO — Another 650 cattle in Canada will be slaughtered and tested for mad cow disease after DNA testing failed to confirm the origin of the lone cow infected so far, an investigator said Tuesday.
Congo
BUNIA — Tribal fighters controlling this shattered northeastern town are withdrawing to outlying camps ahead of the arrival of a French-led emergency force to stabilize the region after hundreds were killed in fighting, U.N. officials said Tuesday.
Denmark
COPENHAGEN — A Lutheran minister was suspended Tuesday for saying that God doesn't exist and there is no eternal life. Thorkild Grosboel, pastor of Taarbaek, a town of 51,000 just north of Copenhagen, said in a recent interview that "there is no heavenly God, there is no eternal life, there is no resurrection."
France
PARIS — Strikes hobbled subway service, cut train routes and grounded hundreds of commercial flights on Tuesday to and from France, one of several European countries hit by job actions. Though Italy, Austria and Germany also faced strikes Tuesday, France was center-stage as host of the Group of Eight summit of the world's most-powerful leaders.
India
LUCKNOW — A truck crowded with construction workers swerved off a road Tuesday and overturned, killing 13 people and injuring 20 others in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, police said. The accident took place early Tuesday near Naudiya, a village 435 miles southeast of the Indian capital, New Delhi.
Indonesia
LHOKSEUMAWE — Three Indonesian soldiers went on trial Tuesday for alleged human rights abuses against villagers during the military's ongoing offensive against separatist guerrillas in Aceh. Rights groups criticized the trial as an attempt to deflect more serious allegations of abuse in Aceh, a northern province that has been the setting for separatist violence since 1976.
Kazakhstan
ASTANA — China's president pledged on Tuesday to vastly increase trade with neighboring Kazakhstan, reasserting his nation's interests in a region where the United States has increased its presence. President Hu Jintao also agreed to revitalize work on an oil pipeline from Kazakhstan to China as well as boost Chinese participation in the Kazakh energy sector, establishing a program for cooperation running to 2008.
Peru
LIMA — Thousands of trade unionists and striking teachers marched Tuesday through downtown Lima in defiance of a state of emergency that put the armed forces in charge of maintaining order. Hundreds of helmeted riot police watched as protesters marched from the Dos de Mayo plaza to Congress in the capital. There was no sign of military troops.
South Africa
BLOEMFONTEIN — South Africa's highest appeals court rejected the government's request to retry the head of apartheid's germ warfare program who was once accused of plotting to poison Nelson Mandela. Wouter Basson, accused of directing the former apartheid regime's biochemical efforts to destroy its opponents, was acquitted in April 2002 on 46 charges, ranging from murder and drug trafficking to fraud and theft.
Togo
LOME — Security forces in the west African nation of Togo arrested opposition leaders and beat their followers Tuesday, moving out in force to quell protests of an election the longtime military ruler claimed to be winning. President Gen. Gnassingbe Eyadema, Africa's longest-ruling leader, has often used the army and police to crush democratic challenges during his 36 years in power.