BANNU, Pakistan — An American drone strike killed four Islamist militants in Pakistan, the first such attack since errant U.S airstrikes in November killed two dozen Pakistan troops and pushed strained ties between the two nations close to collapse, Pakistani intelligence officials said Wednesday. Read full article > >

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U.S. fires 1st drone into Pakistan since strike that killed Pakistani troops; 4 militants dead

BAGHDAD — While U.S. troops left Iraq two weeks ago, Saturday marked the official end of the security agreement between the two countries, and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was quick to take political advantage of the occasion via the podium and a text message to citizens. Recipients reported getting their texts over a period of at least 75 minutes. Read full article > >

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Maliki celebrates end of U.S.-Iraq pact

A delegation of South Korean citizens left for North Korea on Monday, passing through the demilitarized zone between the two countries to express condolences over the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

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S. Koreans enter North to pay respects

MOSCOW — Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin struck out hard at the United States on Thursday, signaling that the warming relations between the two countries could be sacrificed as he tries to bolster his authority in the face of street protests. Putin lacerated Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton for questioning the validity of last Sunday’s parliamentary elections and suggested that she had galvanized thousands of protesters by declaring the vote “neither free nor fair.” Read full article > >

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Putin lashes back at Clinton criticism

To get a sense of how vulnerable the U.S. economy could be if the euro currency union cracks apart, start with the volume of U.S. exports to the euro zone — $153 billion in the first six months of the year. Add several hundred billion dollars in investments by U.S. banks in the euro zone and several trillion dollars’ worth of other financial contracts between the two economies. Read full article > >

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Tremors from a euro collapse would be global, with U.S. recession likely

The US ambassador to the UK has told MPs the extradition treaty between the two countries works well, ahead of a Commons debate next week.

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US ambassador defends extradition

They traveled to the city square from housing projects, antebellum mansions and old plantations on the outskirts of town. By nightfall, more than 100 people had gathered at the courthouse to find out who would be their next mayor. Democrats, most of whom were black, stood in one part of the square. Republicans, most of them white, stood in another part and also waited inside. Three state troopers patrolled between the two groups, on the lookout for another fight to avenge one that had occurred a few hours before. Read full article > >

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Two Washingtons: Bitterly divided Georgia town reflects discord in nation’s capital

GARISSA, Kenya — Gunmen kidnapped two Spanish women working for the aid group Doctors Without Borders at a refugee camp in Kenya on Thursday, the third abduction in a month of westerners in the country by attackers linked to Somalia. Kenyan police said they suspected that Somalia’s al Qaeda-linked al-Shabab insurgents were behind the kidnapping and added that security forces had chased the abductors toward the border between the two countries, which has been sealed. Read full article > >

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Gunmen kidnap two Spanish aid workers from Kenyan camp

People with schizophrenia are six times more likely to develop epilepsy, says a study from Taiwan, which found a strong relationship between the two diseases.

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Schizophrenia ‘link’ to epilepsy

JERUSALEM — A deadly border incident this month that drew a threat by Egypt to recall its ambassador to Israel has starkly revealed the changed political terrain in the relationship between the two countries. Israeli officials who relied on former president Hosni Mubarak as a partner in upholding the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty are now contending with the newly assertive voice of public opinion in Egypt and its influence on that country’s leadership. There is a growing realization in Israel that maintaining ties with post-revolutionary Egypt no longer depends solely on cultivating the relationship with its leaders. Adopting stances that are more acceptable to ordinary Egyptians and the various political forces emerging in that country after Mubarak’s ouster has become important as well. Read full article > >

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Israel mulls ties with a changed Egypt

BEIJING — China formally protested over a Pentagon report on the Chinese military Friday, calling it a major distortion that flew in the face of a warming trend in relations between the two nations and their militaries. The United States’ annual assessment of China’s military capabilities and doctrine “seriously twists the facts and doesn’t have a leg to stand on,” the Defense Ministry said in a statement read on national television. The Pentagon report issued Wednesday said Beijing is on track to achieve its goal of building a modern, regionally focused military by 2020, citing the development of a new stealth fighter, an aircraft carrier and a record number of space launches over the past year. Read full article > >

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China protests Pentagon report on military, labels it distortion

MOSCOW — North Korea is ready to impose a moratorium on nuclear missile tests if international talks on its nuclear program resume, a spokesman for Russia’s president said Wednesday after talks between the two leaders at a Siberian military base. Russian news agencies, meanwhile, reported that North Korean leader Kim Gong Il said his country is ready to resume talks “without preconditions.” Kim and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev met Wednesday at the hotel of a military garrison near the city of Ulan-Ude in Buryatia, a predominantly Buddhist province near Lake Baikal. It was Kim’s first trip to Russia since 2002. Read full article > >

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Russia says North Korea ready to impose moratorium on mass-destruction weapons tests

The first showdown between the two Mormons running for president will take place this week in Utah, where Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman Jr. will hold competing fundraisers only a couple of hours and a few blocks apart. Huntsman will launch his campaign Tuesday near the Statue of Liberty. He and Romney are trying to tap into the wealth of the Mormon community, one of the Republican Party’s ripest donor pools and one that both are laying special claim to. Romney and Huntsman are trying to parlay their status in Utah — the former as the turnaround artist who saved the 2002 Olympic Winter Games, the latter as a recent governor and both as scions of wealthy and influential Mormon families — to give themselves an advantage in the 2012 race. Read full article > >

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Romney, Huntsman try to tap wealth of Mormon community

After six weeks of talks with congressional leaders aimed at restraining the spiraling national debt , Vice President Biden emerged Thursday with a blunt message: Now, the hard part begins. Next week, Biden said, negotiators from the White House and Capitol Hill will begin working “around the clock” to bridge the yawning philosophical divide between the two parties, as Democrats press for fresh revenue and Republicans push for significant cuts to federal health programs as part of the debt-reduction package. Read full article > >

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Biden on debt-reduction talks: Negotiators ‘getting down to the real hard stuff’

Hewlett Packard sues Oracle over a chip dispute as the animosity between the two companies continues to grow.

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HP sues Oracle over chip dispute