Reuters - A Shenzhen company has been fined for sending bulk junk email in what is believed to be the first case of its kind in China where more than 50 billion spam messages are received a year, state media said on Tuesday.

AFP - Australia's Coles Myer has said it would not be pressured into accepting a "highly conditional" takeover bid from private equity funds potentially worth 15 billion dollars (11.25 billion US).

AFP - A Russian recluse who solved a complex riddle has won the mathematics world's version of a Nobel prize, but true to form refused to accept the honour nor attend the royal awards ceremony.

Reuters - Twenty-one Italian tourists have been kidnapped on the border between Niger and Chad, the Italian foreign ministry said on Tuesday.

AP - Wal-Mart's Japanese subsidiary said Tuesday its first-half losses grew fivefold, but the unit's chief executive reaffirmed his commitment to Japan even as the U.S. retailer abandons the German and South Korean markets.

AP - Officials said Tuesday that Indonesia will hold landmark elections in Aceh province on Dec. 11, paving the way for former rebels to take part in the political process.

AP - AP Correspondent Robert H. Reid covers Iraq events from Baghdad. AP Correspondent Rebecca Santana is embedded with the First Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry Division. Antonio Castaneda is embedded with the U.S. Marines, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Regiment.

AP - Police raided the official residence of Israeli President Moshe Katsav as part of a sexual harassment investigation, seizing computers and documents, officials said Tuesday.

AP - A suicide car bomber hit a Canadian military convoy in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, witnesses and a police officer said. There was no immediate word on casualties.

Reuters - The European Union rushed more peacekeepers to Congo on Tuesday as the U.N. and foreign leaders struggled to end fighting between soldiers loyal to President Joseph Kabila and supporters of his election rival.

Reuters - Pollution and poor management have worsened the quality of China's increasingly scarce urban water supplies, but in the next five years the government will spend $125 billion on the problem, an official said on Tuesday.

Saudi police kill two men during a gun battle in the Red Sea port of Jeddah. The Saudi Press Agency says police followed a group of men to an apartment building and ran into heavy gunfire.

Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi has pledged a "significant" contribution to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan as the world leader continues to seek support for the cease-fire in Lebanon. Prime Minister Prodi tells the UN that "Italy is ready to command the UN mission," in a letter faxed to the...

AFP - More than 427,000 people from the eight EU member states in eastern Europe have come to work in the UK since the bloc's enlargement in May 2004, according to government figures.

AP - Police acting on a tip discovered and defused a powerful bomb planted in a box of vegetables on a bicycle in a busy shopping district in the Sri Lankan capital Tuesday, an official said.

Reuters - Britain may cut its force in Iraq in half by the middle of next year after handing over security responsibility for the south of the country to Iraqis within nine months, a senior British commander said on Tuesday.

AFP - London-listed energy group JKX Oil and Gas has said that its Ukrainian unit had signed a deal to supply gas to Anglo-Dutch giant Royal Dutch Shell.

AFP - Shoppers and commuters in Zimbabwe have been left out of pocket as a severe lack of low denomination banknotes blighted the first day of a new currency.

AP - Defendants in the second Saddam Hussein trial insisted on Tuesday that Iraq's military was attacking Iranian troops and Kurdish rebels only when it launched the Anfal campaign in the 1980s in which tens of thousands of Kurds were killed.

AP - More than 500 Iraqi men have joined the police in restive Anbar province — a focal point of the Sunni Arab insurgency — in the most successful recruiting drive by U.S. and Iraqi forces in the country, the U.S. military said Tuesday.