AP - The Taliban vowed Sunday to attack polling places in Sept. 18 parliamentary elections, warning Afghans not to participate in what it called a sham vote.

AP - Abid Hussein fears the deep floodwaters that destroyed his cotton crop, rotted his wheat seeds and swept away his farming tools are not done ravaging his life.

Reuters - Afghanistan's Taliban said on Sunday they would attempt to disrupt elections this month and warned Afghans to boycott the vote, the first explicit threat against the poll by the hardline Islamists.

AP - When Mio Honzawa starts fifth grade next April, her textbooks will be thicker.

Reuters - Pro-Taliban Pakistani militants are trying to create a sectarian rift, Interior Minister Rehman Malik said on Saturday, as a new wave of violence piled pressure on a government already struggling with a flood crisis.

AFP - A fourth Pakistan cricketer was reportedly being investigated over alleged match-fixing Sunday, with fresh betting scam claims casting a shadow over the country's match against England.

AP - Afghanistan's largest bank remained solvent Sunday after a nearly weeklong run on the troubled institution, according to the governor of the nation's central bank, which is being criticized for looking the other way at the bank's mismanagement problems for too long.

AFP - Hong Kong's Tsui Hark unveiled his latest blockbuster, a Tang Dynasty whodunnit, at the Venice film festival Sunday while Kelly Reichardt cast her feminine eye on the Wild West in "Meek's Cutoff".

AP - A Japanese journalist who was abducted by apparent Taliban militants in Afghanistan five months ago has been freed by his captors, reports said Sunday.

AP - East Asia is the world's electronics factory, yet unless they are Japanese, producers are largely anonymous. Now HTC Corp., a Taiwanese maker of smart phones, is moving out of the shadows and trying to establish its own brand name as it competes with Apple's iPhone.

AP - The powerful earthquake that smashed buildings, cracked roads and twisted rail lines around the New Zealand city of Christchurch also ripped a new fault line in the Earth's surface, a geologist said Sunday.

AP - Investigators expressed confidence Sunday that they will learn why an airplane carrying skydivers crashed in flames near a popular tourist spot in New Zealand's Southern Alps, killing four Europeans and five New Zealanders.

AP - NATO commanders were overly optimistic when they predicted quick success taking the key Taliban-held town of Marjah last winter, the outgoing deputy commander said.

AP - Abdul Rehman and his family live under a tree next to a pile of rubble on a newly created island where his house used to be.

AP - The death toll from a Pakistani Taliban suicide attack on a Shiite Muslim procession rose to 65 Saturday as critically wounded people died in hospitals, while a suspected U.S. missile strike killed seven insurgents in a restive tribal area.

AP - South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan offered to resign Saturday amid accusations of nepotism over the hiring of his daughter for a ministry job, officials said.

AP - An 11-year-old boy was recovering Saturday after a sea lion mauled him at a popular Sydney zoo's aquarium show as horrified visitors looked on.