Japan: Leaders resign
TOKYO — Japan's Prime Minister Taro Aso and his Cabinet resigned today to pave the way for parliament to elect Yukio Hatoyama as the country's next leader.
The top officials resigned after holding their final Cabinet meeting early Wednesday morning, the prime minister's office said.
The resignations were a formality so that parliament's lower house, now controlled by Hatoyama's party following their landslide election victory last month, can vote him in as Japan's prime minister. Hatoyama's victory ends more than 50 years of nearly unbroken rule by Aso's Liberal Democratic Party.
Iraq: Shells as Biden visits
BAGHDAD — Insurgents fired four mortar shells at Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone on Tuesday, killing two civilians, on the same day Vice President Joe Biden arrived in the Iraqi capital on an unannounced visit to help resolve political differences among Iraqis.
The shells were fired after Biden arrived in Iraq on his third trip to the country this year. It was not clear where he was at the time.
The faint pops of the mortars being fired were audible on the opposite side of the Tigris River from the Green Zone, and at least one of the shells was heard exploding on impact.
One round that fell short hit residential apartments on the Tigris River, killing two people and wounding five others, including a 12-year-old, a police official said.
Canada: Election avoided
TORONTO — One of Canada's opposition parties says it will prop up Prime Minister Stephen Harper's minority government in a no-confidence vote on Friday, averting an immediate election.
The announcement Tuesday by Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe means the Conservative government will survive at least until October, when the main opposition Liberals plan to introduce a non-confidence motion.
The opposition New Democrats are also expected to support Harper on Friday in a vote on a budget bill in order to push through the government's legislation on unemployment benefits.
Cuba: Mass in prison
HAVANA — Cuba will allow inmates to attend Roman Catholic Mass and Protestant services inside prisons, a top religious leader said Tuesday, in a significant easing of the communist government's policy toward religion.
Authorities from the religious affairs wing of the Cuban Communist Party agreed to authorize organized worship behind bars after a meeting with prison officials and the Protestant Cuban Church Council last week, said Jose Aurelio Paz, a council spokesman who attended the gathering.
Paz said Cuban prisoners could previously worship "on a personal level." When inmates sought guidance from a Catholic or Protestant leader, they were allowed to meet with one individually.
Venezuela: Nuclear power
CARACAS — Hugo Chavez wants to join the nuclear energy club and is looking to Russia for help in getting started.
The Venezuelan leader is already dismissing critics' concerns over his nuclear ambitions, offering assurances his aims are peaceful and that Venezuela will simply be following in the footsteps of other South American nations using atomic energy.
Yet his project remains in its planning stages and still faces a host of practical hurdles, likely requiring billions of dollars, as well as technology and expertise.
Russia has offered to help bridge that gap, and Chavez has announced that the two countries have created an atomic energy commission.
"I say it before the world: Venezuela is going to start the process of developing nuclear energy, but we're not going to make an atomic bomb, so don't be bothering us afterward … (with) something like what they have against Iran," Chavez said Sunday.