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KABUL, Afghanistan - U.S. and Afghan troops clashed and called airstrikes on a group of insurgents in southern Afghanistan, killing 43 militants, the U.S. military said Tuesday.

BEIJING - Lawyers advising the families of children sickened in China's tainted milk scandal said Tuesday they are facing growing official pressure to withdraw from the cases.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The United States will not permit Israel to attack Iran's nuclear program as long as American troops are stationed in Iraq, an Israeli television report quoting unnamed diplomatic sources said on Monday.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Afghan refugees ordered out of a Pakistani war zone begged Tuesday for bus fares and flowed over the border into their homeland, worsening a humanitarian crisis resulting from an army offensive against Taliban militants, officials said.

TOKYO (AFP) - A British tourist in Tokyo caused havoc on Tuesday after he swam stark naked in the moat around the Imperial Palace, one of Japan's most sacrosanct sites, television footage showed.

KABUL, Afghanistan - A former Taliban ambassador said Monday that the hard-line militants sat with Afghan officials and Saudi King Abdullah over an important religious meal in Saudi Arabia late last month as the insurgency raged back home.

BAGHDAD - The Iraqi foreign minister said Tuesday it will require "bold political decisions" to resolve the major issue standing in the way of a deal allowing American troops to remain here next year — who would try U.S. troops accused of crimes.

BANGKOK (AFP) - Clashes between protesters and Thai police on Tuesday left at least one dead and hundreds injured, with the army deployed as months of political turmoil boiled over into violence, officials said.

ANKARA, Turkey - Turkish warplanes bombed suspected Kurdish rebel positions in northern Iraq and southeast Turkey early Tuesday in retaliation for an attack that killed 17 soldiers, the Turkish military said.

GENEVA - A bad electrical connection likely caused the malfunction that sidelined the world's largest atom smasher days after it was launched with great fanfare, a senior scientist said Monday.

Two Japanese scientists and an American won the 2008 Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for theoretical advances that help explain the behavior of the smallest particles of matter.

MOGADISHU, Somalia - Mortar rounds slammed into a market in Somalia's capital on Monday, killing at least 17 people, after a failed insurgent attack on the presidential palace.

MALE, Maldives - To supporters, President Mamoun Abdul Gayoom is a hero who turned a poor nation of fishermen into a tourist paradise and the economic success story of South Asia.

WASHINGTON — Fear and uncertainty were hot commodities in global markets Monday.

BANGKOK, Thailand - Thai protesters demanding the government resign set fire to cars and threw bottles and metal barricades at police, who used tear gas to break through their blockade around Parliament Tuesday. At least one person was killed and more 350 were injured.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Hamas will cease to recognize Mahmoud Abbas as Palestinian president after Jan. 8 and replace him with one of its own leaders, according to a resolution approved by the Islamic movement's legislators Monday.

BEIJING - A planned multibillion dollar U.S. arms sale to Taiwan threatens China's national security and has cast a pall over military relations between Beijing and Washington, the foreign ministry said Tuesday.

GUATEMALA CITY - An armed man in a jealous rage took 42 hostages in a Guatemala City call center on Monday and released them unharmed and turned himself to police after a five-hour standoff, police said.

JERUSALEM - The Russians are coming to downtown Jerusalem, reclaiming ownership of a landmark with the approval of the Israeli government, just as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert visits Moscow to try to iron out serious policy differences between the two countries.

MOGADISHU, Somalia - A man on a hijacked ship carrying tanks and heavy weapons said Tuesday that the ransom had been reduced to US$8 million (euro5.87 million). It was unclear if he was officially speaking for the pirates holding the vessel.