World Audio/Video - NPR

More than two years ago, U.S. and South Korea signed a bilateral free trade agreement but lawmakers of both countries have yet to ratify the deal. Officials from both countries hope the deal will create new jobs and open up markets. However, auto trade is a major hurdle.

President Obama wraps up his trip to Asia with a stop in South Korea, where leader Lee Myung-bak joked that Obama had saved the best for last. The two men discussed a range of issues, including free trade and the ever-present nuclear threat from North Korea.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai was sworn in for another five-year term Thursday. Watching with a critical eye were foreign dignitaries who are pressing Karzai to make his second term in office far better than his first. Karzai promised to prosecute corrupt officials.

Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai promised Thursday to prosecute corrupt government officials and end a culture of impunity, speaking during an inauguration closely watched by the international community for signs that his administration is moving beyond the cronyism and graft of the past five years.

When Ayon committed suicide in 1999, she was just 32 years old — and already a star in the Cuban art world. A major exhibit of her work now under way in Havana has revived an enduring mystery in Cuba — about art, African myths and the shadowy, all-male secret society known as Abakua.

Prices for MRIs are much cheaper in Japan than in the U.S. The difference in prices provides some insight into why health care costs are so high in the U.S. There's something else at work, too. MRIs are very popular in Japan: Some people get them every year even if they aren't sick.

President Obama, in his first trip to China as president, met Wednesday with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao. Harry Harding, dean of the University of Virginia's Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, discusses what the China visit say about U.S.-China relations.

Under the deal, Iran would send low-enriched uranium to Russia for further enriching and then to France to be converted into fuel rods, which would be returned to Iran. This would reduce the stockpile of material that Iran could enrich to a higher level and possibly use to make nuclear weapons.

The U.S. economic downturn and tighter border security has not deterred migrants from Central America seeking to enter the United States. But they are being abused in new and alarming ways. Tens of thousands of them are robbed, kidnapped and even killed attempting to cross Mexico.

A top Iraqi official vetoed the country's election law Wednesday, throwing plans to hold parliamentary elections in January into disarray. The move could unravel hard-won compromises, and it could complicate U.S. efforts to withdraw U.S. combat troops next year.

Iraq's Sunni Arab vice president vetoed part of a key election law, a move that could delay national polls slated for January even as the top U.S. commander in Iraq said the timetable for American troop drawdown is on track.

The secretary of state will attend Thursday's ceremony for Afghan leader Hamid Karzai in Kabul and meet with top U.S. commander Gen. Stanley McChystal. Security is being tightened in the capital for the inauguration, which could be a target for militants.

The attempt marked the second time in seven months that Somali pirates have targeted the U.S.-flagged cargo ship. In April, pirates took the ship's captain hostage, holding him at gunpoint in a lifeboat for five days before he was freed by Navy SEAL sharpshooters.

South Africa has one of the highest crime rates in the world. But what is widely being called the government's "shoot-to-kill" policy is being blamed for the recent murders of innocent bystanders, including the shooting death of a 3-year-old boy.

U.S. officials need to engage Afghan President Hamid Karzai as they craft a new strategy for Afghanistan. Alex Thier, director for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the U.S. Institute of Peace, tells Steve Inskeep that U.S. officials are considering options that work with Karzai, and options that work around him.

The Obama administration is planning to send more diplomats and civilian aid workers to Afghanistan, and it is working out a strategy to spend billions of dollars for development projects across the border in Pakistan. In both countries, U.S. officials will have challenges working with the local leaders while trying to strengthen their countries.

President Obama's talks in China were cordial, but it was not a breakthrough visit. The modest results have raised questions about how well the two countries can cooperate on important issues. In China, everyone's expectations of Obama's first trip there were different. Some expected him to try to connect more with ordinary Chinese.

Argentina's government has nationalized the television contract that the country's soccer league had with cable television. The president's decision delighted millions of Argentine fans, who previously were excluded from the TV audience because they couldn't afford the cable fees. Now they're watching games for free.

Pakistan's army says it has captured most major Taliban bases in South Waziristan. It plans to fan out across the area's rugged countryside to hunt down militants. The tribal area along the Afghan border has been a command center for extremists. The army flew a group of journalists to the area to see two Taliban strongholds that were captured in the offensive.

Under the plan, 900 more housing units would be built in a Jewish neighborhood in the part of Jerusalem that Palestinians claim. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the steps "could unilaterally pre-empt, or appear to pre-empt, negotiations" and that the issue of Jerusalem "must be resolved through negotiations between the parties."

Iran began a mass trial in August of more than 100 prominent opposition figures and activists, accusing them of a range of charges from rioting to spying and plotting what Iran's clerical rulers have depicted as a foreign-backed plot to oust them from power.

Taiwan and China are enjoying their warmest relations in years, with stronger economic ties that have been welcomed by the business community. As President Obama visits Asia, some Taiwanese warn that their country could pay a price for expanding commerce with China.

Michael Weston was among the three agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration who was killed recently in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan. Graduating from Harvard Law School would provide bragging rights for many, but Weston was different. He skipped the usual path of joining a top law firm, instead choosing to serve as a U.S. Marine and later a DEA agent.

President Obama met with his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, for wide-ranging talks on the challenges facing their two countries. The two discussed how they can pursue a more balanced economic strategy, cooperate on curbing greenhouse gas emissions and the spread of nuclear weapons.

Marines from "America's Battalion," the 2/8, are returning home this month from Afghanistan after a six-month deployment. But before they go, they are passing along vital knowledge of the enemy and the terrain of Helmand province to the Marines replacing them.

In the run-up to the financial crisis, the U.S. and China reinforced each other's bad habits. President Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, on Tuesday agreed to address the imbalances that helped bring about the financial crisis. But change won't come easily.

In places such as Afghanistan, Somalia and Sudan, international relief workers say they are being much more actively targeted by a murky assortment of insurgents and criminal gangs. Some 260 aid workers were killed, kidnapped or seriously injured in 2008, the highest annual toll in 12 years. This year is on track to be similarly bad.

While in Beijing, President Obama is trying to connect with the Chinese people. One of Obama's main messages is that the U.S. does not seek to contain China or force its values on it. Many Chinese welcome that message, but they don't necessarily trust it. One blogger says he sees little difference in Obama's policies toward China than those of President Bush.

The Yemeni government's battle against Shiite rebels in the north has drawn in the Saudi military, in a rare use of its armed forces. The conflict intensified in part because of divisions within the Yemeni army.

James R. Lilley, the U.S. ambassador to China during the Tiananmen Square crisis in 1989, died last week from complications connected to prostate cancer. He was 81. J. Stapleton Roy, who succeeded Lilley as ambassador to China, says when Sino-U.S. ties began to improve, Lilley played an important role.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd issued a formal apology Monday for his country's role in Britain's colonial history. Over the course of three centuries, Britain sent tens of thousands of children involuntarily to the colonies. Although they were promised a better life, many were the victims of abuse and neglect. British historian Stephen Constantine says the essence of the policy was to boost Australia's white population.

President Obama sat down for an informal dinner Monday with his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao. Serious discussions were put off until Tuesday when the two leaders will hold a more formal meeting in China's Great Hall of the People. Earlier, Obama told a group of college students in Shanghai that the U.S. welcomes China's growing influence in the world.

A new musical in London has an unusual storyline: The collapse in 2001 of the Houston-based energy company Enron. The play centers on former CEO Jeffrey Skilling and his efforts to make Enron a global corporate titan. It all plays out as a sort of Faust meets Citizen Kane.

The International Atomic Energy Agency releases a report stating that Iranian technicians have moved technical equipment into a previously secret uranium enrichment site in preparation for starting it up in 2011. But it notes enrichment at another site is stagnating.

The women were hired by a modeling agency to attend an event with the Libyan leader, according to an Italian news agency. Gadhafi was in Rome to attend a U.N. summit on world hunger.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd issues a historic apology to thousands of impoverished British children shipped to Australia with the promise of a better life. But his government rules out paying compensation for the abuse and neglect that many suffered.

The president uses a town hall-style meeting with university students in Shanghai to focus on human rights, one of the trickiest issues separating China's communist government and the United States. Later, President Obama met with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing.

The Pakistani army is battling Taliban militants along the northwest frontier. Despite the widening influence of the extremists on Pakistan's soil, many Pakistanis perceive their eastern neighbor India as the biggest security threat. Analysts say Pakistan is paying a price for sowing anti-India sentiments.

In the city of the ancient Romans and Michelangelo, architecture buffs got a preview over the weekend of something decidedly modern: Rome's new museum of contemporary art. It was designed by Iraqi-born Zaha Hadid.