DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan – A suspected U.S. missile strike on the house of a Taliban commander inside Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan killed up to 20 people Monday, Pakistani intelligence officials said.
The reported strike occurred in the South Waziristan region, part of Pakistan’s wild border zone that is considered a possible hiding place for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri.

Sri Lanka will not be part of a process that comes in the form of an investigation on the extension of the GSP + facility to Sri Lanka, observed Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama during his discussions today (24th October 2008) with the Ambassador of France, Michel Lummaux. France is the current Chair of the European Union (EU). He further reiterated that the route of an investigation to assess Sri Lanka’s compliance on the requisites for extension of this facility would not be accepted and therefore an alternative process should be …

An explosion has destroyed a key bridge linking Georgia’s breakaway republic of Abkhazia with the rest of the country.
Georgian officials and Abkhazian authorities blamed each other for the blast. Residents of Abkhazia’s Gali district had used the bridge to reach Georgia’s Zugdidi region. Georgian authorities have called the explosion an effort by separatist and Russian officials to cut off Abkhazia and another breakaway Georgian region, South Ossetia, from the rest of the country.
Meanwhile, the chief of the European Union monitors in Georgia, Hansjoerg Haber, asked Russia to give specific …

BAGHDAD – Iraq’s Cabinet is meeting to review a proposed security pact with the United States that would keep American troops in the country three more years.
The Cabinet must sign off before the draft agreement goes to Iraq’s parliament.
The biggest Shiite alliance has expressed reservations over the agreement and some Sunni lawmakers are also opposed.
Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh says the Cabinet meeting began Tuesday with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki chairing the session.