BAGHDAD — Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. drew an analogy to the signers of the Declaration of Independence on Sunday in exhorting Iraqi leaders to end the paralysis that has stalled the formation of a government since the parliamentary elections four months ago.
KABUL, Afghanistan — Gen. David H. Petraeus took command of the troubled Afghan war on Sunday, warning of hard days to come but promising to persevere until the government and army here are strong enough to stand on their own.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — In an unusual sign of accord between the two major political parties, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani announced over the weekend that the government and the opposition would hold a national conference on ways to combat terrorism.
TOKYO — Japan's national sport of sumo ejected a top wrestler and a coach on Sunday and slapped punishments on nearly two dozen others for their involvement in gambling run by organized crime.
RAZMAK, Pakistan — On an operating table at a makeshift trauma center at this military base in North Waziristan, a Pakistani soldier lay anesthetized, blood-soaked bandages applied in the field just an hour earlier a testament to a near-fatal wound.
WARSAW — Poland's acting president fended off a stiff electoral challenge on Sunday from the twin brother of the leader who died in a plane crash in April.
PORTO ERCOLE, Italy — Four hundred years after Michelangelo Merisi, the painter known as Caravaggio, died in this coastal Tuscan town — wretched, feverish and on the run from numerous enemies — what are said to be his remains received a hero's welcome on Saturday.
TEL AVIV — Perched 22 stories above an affluent suburb of this prosperous seaside city, three Chinese construction workers inched their way along the arm of a crane last autumn and refused to budge. Facing deportation because of expiring visas, theirs was an act of desperation aimed at getting thousands of dollars in wages they claimed their Israeli employer had illegally withheld.
WILLEMSTAD, Curaçao — Thousands of languages spoken by small numbers of people, including many of the Creole languages born in the last centuries of human history, are facing extinction. But a little-known language spoken on a handful of islands near the coast of Venezuela may be an exception.
MEXICO CITY — The political party that governed Mexico for 71 years before voters shunted it aside a decade ago finished strongly in gubernatorial elections on Sunday, which analysts saw as a sign of growing concern about the country's rising insecurity from violent drug gangs.
