KABUL, Afghanistan – Vice President Dick Cheney met with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday to discuss ways the country’s fragile government as it faces rising threats from al-Qaida and Taliban militants.

KUWAIT (Reuters) – Kuwait’s ruler dissolved parliament and set an election for May 17 on Wednesday after a political crisis that delayed economic reforms forced the oil exporting state’s government to resign.

BELGRADE (Reuters) – Serbia’s neighbors in Croatia, Hungary and Bulgaria dealt a blow to the Serb campaign to overturn Kosovo’s month-old independence on Wednesday by announcing they would recognize the new republic.

MITROVICA, Kosovo (Reuters) – U.N. police in Kosovo returned to the Serb stronghold of north Mitrovica on Wednesday with heavy NATO support, having pulled out two days ago after deadly riots by Serbs opposed to secession.

PARIS (Reuters) – Six French men and one Algerian went on trial in Paris on Wednesday accused of involvement in a network smuggling Islamist fighters to Iraq.

RIYADH (Reuters) – A group of Saudi clerics has come out in support of a colleague who issued a fatwa saying two writers deserve to die if they did not retract views that he said made them apostates.

GAZA (Reuters) – Hamas voiced willingness on Wednesday to talk to Fatah as part of a Yemeni reconciliation initiative but said the secular faction must drop its demand the Islamist group first give up control of the Gaza Strip.

ADEN, Yemen (Reuters) – A small bomb exploded in a market in Yemen’s southern port city of Aden on Wednesday but caused no casualties, witnesses said, a day after three mortars hit a school near the U.S. embassy in Sanaa.

KUWAIT (Reuters) – Kuwait’s ruler has dissolved parliament days after the government resigned, Al Jazeera television reported on Wednesday.

They said the victims, from the families of two brothers, were all civilians, but the U.S. military said the two brothers were involved in conducting bombing operations using improvised explosive devices.