AFP - Spain's prime minister shunned Friday a UN-backed meeting with Rwandan leader Paul Kagame after protests that his regime was linked to the 1994 genocide as the UN chief called for a probe into recent deaths in the central African nation.

AFP - Farmer's boy Louis Oosthuizen forged a five-stroke, second-round lead in the British Open here Friday through a combination of his own talent and the merciless forces of nature.

AP - A fierce blaze at a hotel without fire escapes sent some desperate guests plunging to their deaths in a northern Iraqi oil boomtown, killing 28 people.

AFP - Taiwan still wants the United States to approve further weapons sales despite a marked thaw in tensions between the island and mainland China, the government spokesman said Friday.

AP - Mexican investigators ran forensic tests to determine whether drug gangs used a car bomb in an attack on police patrol trucks that killed two officers the border city of Ciudad Juarez.

AFP - Australia's new Prime Minister Julia Gillard was Saturday expected to call an August general election that will be fought on the hot-button issues of boatpeople, the economy and global warming.

AP - A Sunni insurgent group said it carried out a double suicide bombing against a Shiite mosque in southeast Iran to avenge the execution of its leader, as Iranian authorities Friday said the death toll rose to 27 people, including members of the elite Revolutionary Guard.

AP - Fourteen years ago, a group of Argentine women wearing white kerchiefs with the names of their missing children flew to Madrid and entered the chambers of Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon. He says they changed his life.

AP - It's no wonder the Italian businessmen claimed George Clooney was behind their fashion line — the actor knows how to wow an audience whether he's on the red carpet or the witness stand.

AP - After tens of thousands of years under the Siberian frost, a baby woolly mammoth is taking a summer vacation in southeast France.