worldheadlines

Even by the lofty standards of the Williams sisters, three victories at the Olympics is a good day's work.
They won in singles and doubles Tuesday, and the toughest match was the one they played together. Venus and Serena rallied in first-round doubles to beat Iveta Benesova and Nicole Vaidisova of the Czech Republic 4-6, 7-5, 6-1.
Earlier, the Williamses won second-round singles...

China won the gold medal it has long craved in men's gymnastics Tuesday, while the Americans settled for bronze.
China's score of 286.125 was more than seven points ahead of Japan, the defending Olympic champion. The Americans were in the running for the silver until their last two events, but it was...

The U.S. trade deficit unexpectedly fell in June as exports advanced to an all-time high, offsetting another big surge in oil imports.
The Commerce Department reported Tuesday the trade imbalance dropped to $56.8 billion in June, down by 4.1 percent from a revised May deficit of $59.2 billion. It was the smallest deficit in three months and much better than the $61.5...

Former Justice Department officials will not face prosecution for letting improper political considerations drive hirings of prosecutors, immigration judges and other career government lawyers, Attorney General Michael Mukasey said Tuesday.
Mukasey used his sharpest words yet to criticize the senior leaders who took part in or failed to stop illegal hiring practices...

Michael Phelps put on another dominating performance at the Beijing Olympics, winning the 200-meter freestyle Tuesday with a third straight world record. Phelps has two more finals Wednesday — the 200 butterfly and the 800 free relay — and will be an overwhelming favorite in both races, already holding the world record in each. By lunchtime, he'll likely to be in...

Russia ordered a halt to the war in Georgia on Tuesday, after five days of air and land attacks that sent Georgia's army into headlong retreat and left towns, military bases and homes in the U.S. ally smoldering. Georgia insisted that Russian forces were still bombing and shelling.
Despite the televised order by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Russia launched an offensive Tuesday...

Zimbabwe police detained US and British diplomats Thursday in a dramatic confrontation at a roadblock following what the government described as a gathering at the home of an opposition supporter.
The convoy of three vehicles was initially stopped at a checkpoint in the Bindura region before making a getaway and then later pulled over again, US embassy officials said.
"The police forced them...

U.S. Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne and Air Force Chief of Staff Michael Moseley intend to resign, a congressional source told Reuters on Thursday.
The resignations come after a series of concerns about recent Air Force matters, including a controversial award of a contract for the Air Force's elite Thunderbirds flying group and the service's mistaken shipment of fuses for nuclear missiles to Taiwan in 2006, the source...

The accused al Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks stood in a U.S. military court on Thursday, sang a chant of praise to Allah and said he would welcome the death penalty.
"This is what I wish, to be martyred," Pakistani captive Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the highest-ranking al Qaeda operative in U.S. custody, told the Guantanamo war crimes court.
He and four accused co-conspirators appeared in court...

Two astronauts stepped outside the international space station Thursday for a spacewalk to spruce up the orbiting outpost's newest room — a $1 billion Japanese lab.
In the early part of their excursion, space shuttle Discovery crew members Michael Fossum and Ronald Garan Jr. set up two TV cameras around the Kibo lab's robotic arm. Japanese flight controllers were to test the...

Democrats gave final approval on Thursday of a budget blueprint for 2009 that rewards domestic agencies and the Pentagon with generous budget increases while leaving wrenching decisions about curbing Medicare costs and increasing taxes to the next president.
The House approved the $3.1 trillion budget plan by a 214-210 vote; senators passed the measure Wednesday. The nonbinding measure does not go to...

Two US diplomatic vehicles and one from Britain were attacked in Zimbabwe and the diplomats detained Thursday, as the country becomes "lawless," US ambassador James McGee told CNN.
"My people were stopped, detained," McGee, US ambassador to Zimbabwe, said by telephone from Harare.
"The police put up a roadblock, stopped the vehicles, slashed...

The alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks Thursday called to be sentenced to death so he could become a martyr at the start of a US military hearing of five alleged plotters.
"This is what I want, I'm looking to be a martyr for long time," Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, a Pakistani national, told the hearing at Guantanamo Bay as he...

A U.N. global food crisis summit risked embarrassing failure to reach any formal agreement on combating hunger threatening a billion people worldwide.
Delegates from 183 countries at the Rome talks were supposed to issue a resounding declaration on Thursday on "eliminating hunger and securing food for all."
But squabbling about trade barriers and geopolitics raised the prospect of...

Zimbabwean police detained U.S. and British diplomats for several hours on Thursday, slashing the tires of their cars after they visited victims of political violence ahead of a presidential vote, the U.S. embassy said.
The U.S. ambassador blamed the attack on President Robert Mugabe's government, which it accuses of trying to intimidate opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai's supporters ahead of the June 27 run-off election.
"Now what they are trying...