Reuters - U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney visited Afghanistan on Thursday and met President Hamid Karzai ahead of a NATO summit where Washington will urge its allies to send more troops to fight a tough Taliban insurgency.

Reuters - Republican John McCain's presidential campaign on Thursday suspended a staffer for sending a racially charged video involving Democrat Barack Obama and his controversial preacher.

AFP - Thousands of soldiers were seen in Lhasa on Thursday amid reports of a huge military build-up as China admitted for the first time it had shot Tibetan protesters.

AFP - The US-led war on Iraq that toppled the brutal regime of dictator Saddam Hussein entered its sixth year on Thursday with millions of Iraqis still battling daily chaos and rampant bloodshed.

Reuters - Stocks jumped on Thursday, capping a tumultuous week, on optimism that giving Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac a bigger role in the mortgage market will ease a credit crunch that claimed Bear Stearns as its biggest victim.

AP - Residents of low-lying towns stacked sandbags or grabbed belongings and evacuated Wednesday after a foot of rain pushed rivers and creeks out of their banks in the nation's midsection. At least 13 deaths had been linked to the weather, and three people were missing.

AP - Protesters blocked traffic and government buildings in Washington, acted out a Baghdad street scene in upstate New York and banged drums in San Francisco on Wednesday to mark the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Reuters - Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Wednesday visited an Israeli town hit frequently by Palestinian rockets from the Gaza Strip and voiced doubts a peace deal could be reached this year.

AP - A $1 million offer to the call girl linked to former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer was rescinded because she'd already shot footage for "Girls Gone Wild." Now it might be the video maker who will lose out.

AP - Amanda Overmyer sang "Back in the U.S.S.R." — and now, she's going back home.

AP - President Bush defiantly defended the Iraq war Wednesday as U.S. troops began a sixth year of combat in the long and costly conflict that has dominated his presidency. Bush conceded the war has been harder and more expensive than anticipated but insisted it has all been necessary to keep Americans safe.

AP - Osama bin Laden, in a new audio message posted Wednesday, condemned the publication of drawings that he said insulted the Prophet Muhammad and warned Europeans of a "severe" reaction to come.

AP - China acknowledged for the first time Thursday that anti-government riots that rocked Tibet last week have spread to other provinces, while communist authorities announced the first group of arrests in connection with the violence.

AP - Hillary Rodham Clinton was home in the White House on at least seven days when her husband had sexual encounters there with intern Monica Lewinsky, according to Sen. Clinton's schedule, released Wednesday among 11,000 pages of papers from her years as first lady.

Reuters - Federal prosecutors said on Wednesday they would seek a new indictment against home run king Barry Bonds after previous perjury charges were recently thrown out.

Reuters - The shooting apart of a crippled U.S. spy satellite last month created no significant new space debris, with all but small bits burning on re-entry to the atmosphere, the mission commander said Wednesday.

AP - Fans at City of Palms Park were ready for Boston's final spring training game in Florida. The Red Sox weren't.

Reuters - More than 160 people were arrested across the United States on Wednesday as protesters marking the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq obstructed downtown traffic and tried to block access to government offices.

Reuters - A young Canadian prisoner held at Guantanamo said in legal documents that U.S. interrogators repeatedly threatened to rape him and Canadian government visitors told him they were powerless to do anything.

Reuters - Two U.S. home financing heavyweights won government approval on Wednesday to pump $200 billion more into troubled U.S. mortgage markets, the latest step to stabilize credit markets and avert a deep recession.

AFP - US President George W. Bush on Wednesday defended the launch of the war against Iraq five years ago, vowing no retreat as he promised US forces would triumph over Iraqi insurgents.

Reuters - President George W. Bush said on Wednesday he had no regrets about the unpopular war in Iraq despite the "high cost in lives and treasure" and declared that the United States was on track for victory.

AFP - China said Wednesday it was in a "life or death struggle" over Tibet as dramatic new footage emerged of Tibetans rampaging on horseback and destroying a Chinese flag.

Reuters - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama criticized Republican John McCain on Wednesday for misidentifying Iraqi extremists, saying he fails to understand the war has emboldened U.S. enemies.

AP - Nearly a dozen central Florida firefighters pulled a 2-month-old foal from some deep doo-doo after the little horse fell into a septic tank.

AP - President Bush says he has no doubts about launching the unpopular war in Iraq despite the "high cost in lives and treasure," arguing that retreat now would embolden Iran and provide al-Qaida with money for weapons of mass destruction to attack the United States.

AP - Stop that $1 million check: It turns out the call girl linked to Eliot Spitzer had already shed her clothes for "Girls Gone Wild" as an 18-year-old while partying in Miami, the video company's founder said Tuesday.

AP - Hillary Rodham Clinton told a group of young veterans Tuesday that one lesson of the Iraq War is not to commit troops "unless you are prepared to go all the way and are prepared to be successful."

AP - Barack Obama confronted the nation's racial divide head-on Tuesday, tackling both black grievance and white resentment in a bold effort to quiet a campaign uproar over race and his former pastor's incendiary statements.

AFP - The United States and Russia failed in talks here Tuesday to bridge gaps over US missile defence plans and the fate of the main strategic arms treaty, but vowed to make a clean break with past tensions.

Reuters - President George W. Bush will acknowledge on Wednesday the Iraq war has been fought at a high cost but will insist a U.S. troop buildup has opened the door to a "major strategic victory" against Islamic militants.

AP - Lynndie England, the public face of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, told a German news magazine that she was sorry for appearing in photographs of detainees in the notorious Iraqi prison, and believes the scenes of torture and humiliation served as a powerful rallying point for anti-American insurgents.