BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - Workers from Indonesia to India rushed to bury corpses to ward off disease Wednesday as cargo planes touched down with promised aid - from lentils to water purifiers - to help the region cope with its tsunami catastrophe. The death toll soared to 67,000.

It’s hard to figure out Mitt Romney.

It almost seems like more than five years ago that the United States invaded Iraq. Unfortunately, no clear and satisfactory end to this conflict seems to be on the horizon.

TORONTO - Tens of thousands of sun-drenched revelers gathered Wednesday for a star-studded outdoor bash - headlined by the Rolling Stones - aimed at showing Toronto is free of SARS and ready to rock.

 The Russian invasion of Georgia took place just before the 40th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

BANGKOK, Thailand - Myanmar needs more than food and shelter. It needs human expertise for everything from cleaning water to mental health counseling - and right now, those experts can't get to the hard-hit delta.

TOKYO - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday the United States is ready to use the "full range" of its military might to defend Japan in light of North Korea's nuclear weapons test, and her Japanese counterpart drew a firm line against developing a Japanese bomb.

Surrounded by the protection of barbed-wire fences and cement barricades, the United States Forces — Iraq flag was furled for the last time during an unpretentious ceremony in Baghdad on Dec. 15. It has been a long nine years. At the war’s onset in 2003, troops were promised the only way to return home was through Baghdad. Nine years, two administrations, and multiple tours later — with mission finally accomplished — troops are headed home to celebrate Christmas.

WASHINGTON - President Bush on Monday signed a civilian nuclear deal with India, allowing fuel and know-how to be shipped to the world's largest democracy even though it has not submitted to full international inspections.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Afghanistan has been drawing a fresh influx of jihadi fighters from Turkey, Central Asia, Chechnya and the Middle East, one more sign that al-Qaida is regrouping on what is fast becoming the most active front of the war on terror groups.

WASHINGTON - British Prime Minister Tony Blair told Congress Thursday he believes "with every fiber of instinct and conviction" that the U.S. and British led war on Iraq was justified - and that history will forgive them if weapons allegations used as justification were wrong.

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - Health officials plan to go door-to-door and tent-to-tent with mosquito-killing spray guns beginning Friday to head off a looming threat that one expert says could kill 100,000 more people around the tsunami disaster zone: malaria.

SALT LAKE CITY - President Bush compared the fight against terrorism to both world wars and other great conflicts of the 20th century as he tried to reassure an increasingly skeptical public on Monday to support U.S. military involvement in Iraq.

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Tuesday that authoritarian rule in the Middle East has begun to ease, and he insisted anew that Syria must end its nearly three-decade occupation of Lebanon.

HANOI, Vietnam - President Bush, on his first visit to a country where America lost a two-decade-long fight against communism, said Friday the Vietnam War's lesson for today's confounding Iraq conflict is that freedom takes time to trump hatred.

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - Cargo planes touched down with promised aid Wednesday, bearing everything from lentils to water purifiers to help survivors facing the threat of epidemic after this week's quake-tsunami catastrophe. The death toll across 12 nations has risen to more than 76,700.

Ten years on, what do we have as a result of our involvement in Iraq?

IWO JIMA, Japan - The tunnels of Iwo Jima snake deep beneath the volcanic rock and soil, their entrances camouflaged by a dense tangle of vines and tall grasses.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Cornered alone in a cramped hole near one of his sumptuous palaces, a weary, disheveled Saddam Hussein was seized by U.S. troops and displayed on television screens worldwide Sunday, a humiliating fate for one of history's most brutal dictators.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Kidnappers have released up to 12 foreigners taken hostage in Iraq, a member of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council said Monday.

WASHINGTON - President Bush outlined a $7.1 billion strategy Tuesday to prepare for the danger of a pandemic influenza outbreak, saying he wanted to stockpile enough vaccine to protect 20 million Americans against the current strain of bird flu.

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia - Mourners in Sri Lanka used their bare hands to dig graves Tuesday while hungry islanders in Indonesia turned to looting in the aftermath of Asia's devastating tsunamis.

GALLE, Sri Lanka - Bodies washed up on tropical beaches and piled up in hospitals Monday, raising fears of disease across a 10-nation arc of destruction left by a monster earthquake and walls of water that killed more than 22,500 people.

SANTIAGO, Chile - President Bush wrapped up a weekend summit with Asia-Pacific leaders on Sunday, vowing to press a guest worker plan to give temporary legal status to millions of Mexicans illegally in the United States.