AP - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice plans Wednesday to sign a deal to build a U.S. missile defense base on Polish soil, an agreement that has already prompted an infuriated Russia to threaten its former Soviet satellite.

AP - French President Nicolas Sarkozy visited a military chapel in Kabul on Wednesday where the bodies of 10 French soldiers killed in battle lay before they were to be flown home.

AP - Russia took the first steps toward a troop pullback from Georgia on Tuesday but at the same time paraded blindfolded and bound Georgian prisoners on armored vehicles and seized four U.S. Humvees.

AP - As police with riot clubs patrolled nearby, a merchant whispered that he feared a sweeping crackdown in China's northwestern Muslim region once the Olympic spotlight fades.

Reuters - A rogue monkey holed up at a Tokyo train station for more than two hours on Wednesday before giving dozens of net-wielding police officers the slip among crowds of excited children and passersby.

AP - Paraguay's new president is replacing the nation's police commander four days into the new administration.

AFP - China has detained six American pro-Tibet activists, including an artist who planned to project a giant laser beam onto a Beijing building at the Olympics, a group said Wednesday.