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NEW ORLEANS - Hurricane Ida, the first Atlantic hurricane to target the United States this year, plodded Sunday toward the Gulf Coast with 105 mph winds, bringing the threat of flooding and storm surges.

PARIS - The city of romance got a lesson in love's hard knocks Sunday, as thousands flocked to the French capital's first divorce fair.

Kenya launches an unprecedented campaign to survey the country's gay population about their sexual behaviors -- taking on a subject long met with hostility in the country.

BERLIN - With concerts and memorials on Monday, Germans will celebrate the day the Berlin Wall came crashing down 20 years ago.

BAGHDAD - Iraq's parliament ended weeks of debate Sunday and passed a long-delayed law paving the way for the planned January election to go forward, sidestepping a crisis that could have delayed the U.S. troop withdrawal.

BOGOTA - After notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar was killed, the son who many thought would succeed him fled Colombia, assumed a new identity and lived a low-profile life as an architect in Argentina.

KOURE, Niger - A crisp African dawn is breaking overhead, and Zibo Mounkaila is on the back of a pickup truck bounding across a sparse landscape of rocky orange soil.

KARACHI, Pakistan - Some women strode the catwalk in vicious spiked bracelets and body armor. Others had their heads covered, burqa-style, but with shoulders — and tattoos — exposed. Male models wore long, Islamic robes as well as shorts and sequined T-shirts.

KABUL - The embattled Afghan president pledged Sunday that there would be no place for corrupt officials in his new administration — a demand made by Washington and its international partners as they ponder sending more troops to confront the Taliban and shore up his government.

SAO PAULO - A Brazilian university has expelled a woman who was heckled by hundreds of fellow students for wearing a short, pink dress to class — publicly accusing her Sunday of immorality.

TEHRAN, Iran - A senior Iranian lawmaker warned Russia that its delay in delivering an anti-aircraft missile defense system to Tehran could harm relations between the two countries, state television reported Sunday.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - A suicide bomber blew himself up Sunday in a market in northwest Pakistan crowded with shoppers ahead of a Muslim holiday, killing 12 people, including a mayor who once supported but had turned against the Taliban, officials said.

VERAPAZ, El Salvador - Torrents of mud and boulders choked the streets of Verapaz on Sunday, part of massive wave of rain-fueled flooding that authorities said killed 91 people throughout El Salvador and left about five dozen missing.

TAWANG, India - Joyous Buddhist pilgrims welcomed the Dalai Lama back Sunday to the Himalayan town he first set foot in five decades ago while fleeing Chinese rule in his native Tibet — a rare trip close to his homeland that has angered Beijing.

SHARM EL-SHEIK, Egypt - China's premier on Sunday pledged $10 billion in new low interest loans to African nations over three years, offering the beleaguered continent sorely needed cash while dismissing criticism that Beijing's motives in Africa are far from altruistic.

BERLIN - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged Europeans and Americans on Sunday to see the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall as a call to action against new global threats.

SAN'A, Yemen - Saudi Arabian forces seized a strategic mountain straddling the border with Yemen and cleared it of Shiite rebels after five days of fighting that have left three Saudi soldiers dead, a Saudi defense official said Sunday.

Feeling "cheated" by Washington, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas says he won't run again. His departure would derail U.S. peace efforts, but then again, the poll from which he's withdrawing won't happen

DANANG, Vietnam - On the day his side lost the Vietnam War, Hung Ba Le fled his homeland at the age of 5 in a fishing trawler crammed with 400 refugees. Thirty-four years later, he made an unlikely homecoming — as the commander of a U.S. Navy destroyer.

SYDNEY (AFP) - A man spearfishing in South Australia was mauled in a shark attack Sunday, officials said as a report warned of several sightings of the deadly predators in the area.

CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez on Sunday ordered Venezuela's military to prepare for a possible armed conflict with Colombia, saying his country's soldiers should be ready if the United States attempts to provoke a war between the South American neighbors.

ISLAMABAD - As Pakistan's army plows ahead with its offensive in South Waziristan, its success is at risk because the government has yet to come up with a plan to run and rebuild the lawless territory so that the Taliban and al-Qaida don't re-emerge.

BERLIN - Harald Jaeger was a loyal East German border guard — respected and trusted to command a crossing point to the west on Berlin's Bornholmer Strasse.

MIAMI (AFP) - Hurricane Ida is now a category two storm packing top wind speeds of nearly 100 miles (160 kilometers) per hour as it heads towards Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said.

PARIS - During her years as a top model, French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy gave psychoanalysis nary a thought.

ISTANBUL - Turkey said Sunday that Sudan's internationally indicted leader, President Omar al-Bashir, will not attend a conference of Muslim nations in Istanbul.

ROME - Italy on Sunday hailed the capture of a wig-disguised mobster who had been on the list of the country's top 30 fugitives.

ISLAMABAD (AFP) - Pakistani police shot dead a would-be suicide bomber who approached a checkpoint in the capital Islamabad shouting "Allah Akhbar!" late Sunday, senior officials said.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States has been negotiating highly sensitive understandings with the Pakistani military about the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported in the latest issue of The New Yorker magazine.

VALENCIA (AFP) - British top seed Andy Murray defeated Russia's Mikhail Youzhny 6-3, 6-2 on Sunday to win the Valencia ATP title.