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KABUL (Reuters) - President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Wednesday French troops must stay in Afghanistan to fight terrorism, a day after insurgents killed 10 French troops, the biggest single loss of foreign forces in Afghan combat since 2001.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Guinness World Records has returned the title of world's tallest man to China's Bao Xishun after Ukrainian Leonid Stadnyk refused to be measured under new guidelines.

BEIJING (Reuters) - At least eight American blogger-activists and several other foreigners have been detained in Beijing as the government intensifies a crackdown on pro-Tibetan protests in the home stretch of the Olympics, rights groups said on Wednesday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iran's attempted satellite launch was a failure that fell far short of claimed successes, U.S. security officials said on Tuesday, but an analyst said the test still marked progress toward a potential weapon.

BEIJING (Reuters) - An earthquake hit southwest China on Wednesday, knocking down houses and forcing around 1,200 people to evacuate from near the site of a devastating quake which killed at least 70,000 people in May, state media said.

CANBERRA (Reuters) - An alleged World War Two war criminal living in Australia was eligible for extradition to Hungary to face justice, an Australian court ruled on Wednesday.

TBILISI (Reuters) - The Kremlin said its forces would pull back from Georgia's heartland by Friday to positions set out under a French-brokered peace plan, amid mounting Western criticism about the slowness of the troop withdrawal.

JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - An hour's drive north of Jeddah on the Red Sea coast, 8,000 workers toil under the relentless summer sun building what Saudi Arabia hopes will be the key to its social and economic future.

GUANTA, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan soldiers and workers seized foreign-owned cement plants on Tuesday, a show of strength as President Hugo Chavez advances a plan to make South America's top oil exporter a socialist state.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A rocket fired from the Gaza Strip landed in southern Israel on Tuesday, prompting the Jewish state to order border crossings with the Hamas-ruled enclave closed temporarily, Israel Radio reported.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iran's attempted satellite launch was a failure that fell far short of claimed successes, U.S. security officials said on Tuesday, but an analyst said the test still marked progress toward a potential weapon.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi security forces raided the office of a provincial governor and arrested the son of a leading Sunni Arab politician in separate incidents on Tuesday that could stoke sectarian and political tension.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council on Tuesday condemned the overthrow of Mauritania's democratically elected president but the country's ambassador said the public supported the military action.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi security forces arrested a son of the leader of the country's main Sunni Arab political bloc at his house in Baghdad on Tuesday evening, accusing him of terrorism, the politician said.

SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia (Reuters) - Hundreds of anti-government protesters battled supporters of President Evo Morales on Tuesday with rocks and sticks as a general strike against the Bolivian leader turned violent.

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's government plans to convene parliament next week despite deadlock in talks to end a post-election political crisis that has worsened the country's economic decline and seen inflation hit 11 million percent.

GORI, Georgia (Reuters) - Russian troops will pull back from Georgia's heartland by the end of this week, the Kremlin said on Tuesday, but NATO said it was freezing contacts with Moscow until all Russian forces were out of the country.

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic has asked the United Nations tribunal in The Hague to replace the judges who are overseeing the preparatory stage of his trial for charges including genocide.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iran's attempt to launch a dummy satellite into orbit was a "dramatic failure" that fell far short of the country's assertions of success, a U.S. official said on Tuesday

LUSAKA (Reuters) - Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa, a favorite of Western donors and strong critic of Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe, died in a French hospital on Tuesday nearly two months after suffering a stroke. He was 59.