UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The Security Council failed to agree on action to end the escalating crisis in Gaza on Wednesday, but the U.S. threw its weight behind a cease-fire initiative and Egypt announced it will host separate talks with Israel and Hamas on the proposal....

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) -- Israel resumed its Gaza offensive Wednesday, bombing heavily around suspected smuggling tunnels near the border with Egypt after a three-hour lull to allow in humanitarian aid. Hamas responded with a rocket barrage....

BAGHDAD (AP) -- Anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr on Wednesday urged reprisals against American forces in Iraq to protest Israel's Gaza offensive, as Arab anger grows over civilian deaths in the Palestinian territory....

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- The country that gave the world chewing gum is getting gummed up: The average square yard (meter) of Mexico City sidewalk has 70 blobs of discarded chew....

MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia cut off all gas supplies to Europe through Ukraine on Wednesday, playing hardball in a weeklong standoff that has left more than a dozen countries struggling to cope with dwindling energy supplies in the depths of winter....

BAGHDAD (AP) -- The top American commander in the former insurgent stronghold of Anbar said Wednesday the Shiite-led government should have poured reconstruction money into the Sunni region after Sunni fighters joined forces with U.S. troops to chase al-Qaida out of the western province....

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) -- I live alone in my office. My wife and two young children moved in with her father after our apartment was shattered. The neighborhood mosque, where I have prayed since I was a child, had its roof blown off. All the government buildings on my beat have been obliterated....

MILAN, Italy (AP) -- Freezing temperatures and exceptional snowfall caused travel delays Wednesday across Europe and were blamed for at least 12 deaths, including that of a man in Milan who was crushed when a canopy collapsed under the weight of snow....

BERLIN (AP) -- A German court ruled Wednesday that an elderly former Nazi hit squad member is medically unfit to stand trial for the World War II reprisal killings of three Dutch civilians....

NEW DELHI (AP) -- "Keep your phone switched on," a handler instructs a gunman by phone in the midst of the Mumbai siege, "so that we can hear the gunfire."...

BEIJING (AP) -- It was the small game of pingpong that got the big ball of diplomacy moving on U.S.-China relations, and on Wednesday, the two countries commemorated 30 years of formal ties with a friendly exhibition game of table tennis....

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea announced Wednesday it will hold long overdue elections in March amid indications the impoverished regime plans to fill parliament with finance-savvy legislators and has named new Cabinet ministers with economic know-how....

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- U.S.-led forces raided a Taliban bomb-making cell in eastern Afghanistan, killing 32 insurgents in a battle with scores of armed militants who shot at them from rooftops and alleyways, the military said Wednesday....

SDEROT, Israel (AP) -- Few residents of the Israeli town of Sderot are on the streets these days. They prefer to sit out the war in safer parts of the country or barricade themselves at home as Palestinian rockets keep coming despite Israel's devastating military offensive against Gaza's Hamas rulers. One mile outside Gaza, Sderot was for years the top target of Palestinian rocket fire. Its residents have long demanded a military campaign to wipe out Gaza rocket squads, saying the curre...

JERUSALEM (AP) -- The rising civilian death toll in Israel's campaign in Gaza highlights the pitfalls of Israel's powerful army using lethal force against often invisible Hamas guerrillas taking cover among civilians....

PARIS (AP) -- Pirates freed 20 hostages aboard a Turkish freighter commandeered off the Somali coast, as nine captives on a French boat were released off southern Nigeria, the boat owners said Wednesday....

GENEVA (AP) -- The Grand Canyon, Mount Everest and Loch Ness will vie with more than 200 other spectacular places in the next phase of the global competition for the New 7 Wonders of Nature, organizers said Wednesday....

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Pakistan's intelligence chief said there will not be war with India over the Mumbai attacks and emphasized terrorism - not India - was the greatest threat to the country, according to a rare interview....

TOKYO (AP) -- Japanese Emperor Akihito commemorated the 20th anniversary of his reign Wednesday with a visit to the grave of his father, Hirohito....

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- A cease-fire initiative Tuesday to halt the increasingly bloody Israeli offensive in Hamas-rule Gaza won support from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called on rival sides to follow up on the proposal....