WASHINGTON -- Rupert Murdoch has won the Wall Street Journal. The boards of directors of Journal parent Dow Jones & Co. and Murdoch's News Corp. approved Murdoch's unsolicited $5 billion bid for the company Tuesday night, a source said. The offer received more than enough support from the deeply split Bancroft family, Dow Jones's controlling owners.

HAVANA -- One year after taking over from his ailing brother as Cuba's leader, Raul Castro is raising hopes of reforms to relieve economic inefficiencies and food shortages, but he is not offering political change.

President Vladimir Putin has an unexpected ally in his current war of words with the United States -- Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of the Soviet Union and architect of perestroika and glasnost, the

In the latest interview given by former security services officer Andrei Lugovoi, whose extradition on suspicion of murder is being sought by Britain, there was a remarkable moment that doesn't seem to have been fully appreciated.

Judging purely by news reports, there is a serious international crisis in British-Russian relations. For the past two weeks, we have been inundated with newspaper articles on the expulsion of diplomats and the exchange of reproaches and threats.

The stiff body language was more eloquent than anything the president or the prime minister actually said.

UNITED NATIONS -- The UN Security Council unanimously approved a 26,000-strong peacekeeping force for Darfur to help end four years of rape and slaughter of civilians in the vast Sudanese region.