World Audio/Video - NPR

The U.S. military handed over Iraq's Anbar province to Iraqi government forces on Monday. The vast desert region west of Baghdad was long a hotbed of the insurgency and the deadliest place in the country for U.S. troops.

Gustav developed into a Category 4 hurricane on Saturday and forecasters say it could gain yet more power. It is on a track to hit the U.S. Gulf Coast, three years after Hurricane Katrina.

A visit to the Georgian port of Poti, still under effective Russian control in the wake of this month's conflict, finds there are still some Russian soldiers inside the town — Georgia's largest Black Sea port. Many checkpoints dot the outskirts, but the town is beginning to return to normal.

Explorers looking for the lost cities in the Amazon have famously come up empty-handed. But now, scientists have found the remains of numerous smaller villages clustered around larger villages. Urban life may have been a part of the ancient Amazon after all.

A pending deal with the state-run China National Petroleum Corp. calls for China to help develop an oil field south of Baghdad, Iraq. It would be the first contract Iraq has signed with a big foreign oil company since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Iraq needs help to develop its oil fields, and China needs energy for its fast growing economy.

North Korea recently allowed foreigners to visit parts of the country that aren't usually seen. Tony Banbury, the World Food Program's regional director for Asia, is there now and has visited several locations close to the border with China.

A separatist enclave in Moldova could be the next place Russia will try to assert its control over the former Soviet republics.

Brady is a rare African-American Republican in Ohio's heavily Democratic Cuyahoga County, though he says there are more in the area than people think.

As critics question her approach to Russia, aides to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice say she played a key role in getting Georgia to sign a peace plan with Russia and uniting NATO around a common response.

Multinationals have invested billions of dollars into developing an energy thruway that circumvents Russian territory. With the recent Russian-Georgian war, the route's security is questionable.