Iraqi forces, which have no air support of their own, have so far failed to subdue Shiite militias in Basra and have asked the Americans and British for help.

A gap between Western and Chinese leaders on perceptions of the Dalai Lama is breeding pessimism that China will take a new approach to Tibet.

Kenya’s president and the top opposition leader are deadlocked over a new government.

The price of rice, a staple in the diets of nearly half the world’s population, has almost doubled on international markets.

The court agreed with Kenzaburo Oe’s assertion that the Japanese military was deeply involved in the mass suicides of civilians in Okinawa at the end of World War II.

A “criminal network” was behind the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri and is “linked to” some of the 20 additional killings of anti-Syrian officials in Lebanon, the head of the United Nations inquiry into the deaths, David Bellemare of Canada, said in his first report since taking the post in November.

The Dalai Lama criticized China’s state-controlled media, saying its coverage of the unrest in Tibet was biased and could eventually “sow the seeds of racial tension” there.

Tibetan high school children scaled a brick wall surrounding the United Nations compound in Katmandu. They were served dumplings on the other side.

Experts said Pyongyang was seeking to boost its bargaining leverage by escalating tensions at a time when negotiations over its nuclear program are not proceeding in its favor.

British Airways again canceled dozens of flights at Heathrow’s new Terminal Five as its staff struggled with new technology meant to hasten check-in procedures.

The disruption of a Chinese official’s address in Greece was just the beginning of a string of protests planned to coincide with the torch’s trip around the globe.

The government announced that it would permit the general public to buy cellphones, which until now were set aside mainly for the Communist Party elite. The move was seen as a sign of liberalization by the new president, Raúl Castro. But most Cubans, who earn only about $20 monthly in state salaries, will find it hard to afford the phones without help from relatives off the island.

For the second successive day, British Airways canceled dozens of flights at Heathrow Airport’s glittery new Terminal 5 as its staff struggled with state-of-the-art technology supposed to hasten check-in and baggage-handling procedures. The hitches since the terminal opened on Thursday were “definitely not British Airways’ finest hour,” the airline’s chief executive, Willie Walsh, told reporters. Some passengers slept overnight inside the steel-and-glass terminal, reviving precisely those images of delay and decline in British aviation that British Airways said Terminal 5 would banish.

The government offered cash and reduced jail terms to leftist guerrillas in exchange for releasing the politician Ingrid Betancourt after years of captivity in jungle camps. Ms. Betancourt, left, 46, was kidnapped during her 2002 presidential campaign by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and is suffering from malnutrition and hepatitis B, according to Colombia’s human rights ombudsman. President Álvaro Uribe said his government would maintain a $100 million fund to pay rewards to guerrillas who free any of the hundreds of kidnapping victims held by the FARC. On Thursday he signed a decree allowing for a mass release of guerrillas from jail if Ms. Betancourt was freed.

Some 25 brands of buffalo mozzarella with elevated levels of the carcinogen dioxin were pulled from stores as the nation worked to reassure foreign buyers that none of the contaminated cheese had left the country. After the recall, European Union health officials declared themselves satisfied that Italy was confronting the problem.

All charges were dismissed Friday against one of two remaining enlisted marines involved in a combat action that killed 24 Iraqis in Haditha in 2005.

Mariko Bando’s book, “The Dignity of a Woman,” has become one of Japan’s biggest best sellers in decades, but critics say it reinforces the view that women should be subservient.

Many of the same elements that lined up in the 1990s to create a famine are lining up again — war, drought, displacement and skyrocketing food prices.

A tax-evasion scandal in Germany has sparked a debate in Switzerland about the country’s banking secrecy.

The United States is willing to make agricultural concessions to reach a new world trade deal if other countries open their markets to more American exports, President Bush said Friday.