OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada and the United States will agree on Saturday to the terms of a final deal to resolve their long-standing trade dispute over softwood lumber, an Ottawa source told Reuters on Friday.

KATHMANDU (Reuters) - The United States is undermining Nepal's peace process by warning it could cut aid if Maoist guerrillas join an interim government without giving up their weapons first, the rebel's chief said.

AP - Sen. Maria Cantwell, a true-blue Democrat, is trying to tamp down unrest among those on Washington state's political left who are furious with her unapologetic support for the Iraq War.

AP - You may need a scorecard in 2008 to keep track of all the candidates. Neither party has an incumbent president or vice president running, creating the first wide-open race in decades. A look back at previous contests without an heir apparent:

AP - Congressional Republicans considering an overhaul of the nation's immigration laws are leaving Washington to examine labor needs and the vulnerabilities of the nation's borders.

AP - The Bush administration said the world learned lessons from North Korea's failed test of a long-range missile that could threaten U.S. shores, yet it warned that the secretive communist regime could use the launch to improve its aim next time.

AP - Intent on seizing control of Congress, Democrats want to keep the focus on President Bush's missteps in Iraq. Yet the war is fracturing the party in a handful of House and Senate races.

AP - Nearly a week after New Jersey government stopped fully functioning, lawmakers early Saturday edged toward voting on a budget that would kick-start state spending and allow Atlantic City casinos to reopen.

AP - Could a Republican-controlled Congress pass a bill to protect the words 'under God' in the Pledge of Allegiance from court challenges? No problem, especially if proposed during the patriotic season leading up to the Fourth of July, Republican leaders thought. No way, it turned out.

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea and the United States, kicked off a second round of talks on a free trade pact on Monday with differences on contentious issues such as agriculture that have sparked mass protests in Seoul.

AP - Unity among Republicans on Capitol Hill is once again being tested over the treatment of suspected terrorists, with lawmakers trying to decide in an election season how military detainees should be tried and what their rights should be.

BEIJING (Reuters) - U.S. diplomat Christopher Hill said on Wednesday North Korea's response to Chinese diplomacy to defuse a missile crisis was 'discouraging' but Beijing's efforts would continue.

AP - Having quieted dissenting conservatives, House Republicans are trying again to renew the 1965 Voting Rights Act in an election-year effort to win support from minority voters.

AP - Republicans are in jeopardy of losing their grip on Congress in November. With less than four months to the midterm elections, the latest Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that Americans by an almost 3-to-1 margin hold the GOP-controlled Congress in low regard and profess a desire to see Democrats wrest control after a dozen years of Republican rule.

ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) - Russian and U.S. trade negotiators have failed in marathon talks to strike a bilateral deal to pave the way for Russia to join the World Trade Organization, a U.S. trade spokesman said on Saturday.

ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) - A U.N. Security Council resolution imposing weapons-related sanctions on North Korea shows an international unity that will help get Pyongyang back to six-party talks, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Sunday.

ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) - President Bush and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Monday urged a redoubling of efforts to break the impasse in talks toward a global trade pact.

AP - The Senate is poised to send a bill expanding federal funding of embryonic stem cell research to President Bush, who has promised a swift veto — his first.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke goes before Congress on Wednesday to deliver testimony on the U.S. economy that financial markets will scour for clues on where interest rates are heading.

AP - A man was accused Wednesday in an indictment of making threats against former President Clinton.

AP - Democrats are on track to jumble the states in the presidential primary calendar in response to growing criticism that the same predominantly white states hold many of the cards in early voting.

AP - A former mayor of this western Virginia community was convicted Friday on election fraud charges accusing him of manipulating vulnerable voters into lying on absentee ballots during his 2004 re-election bid.

AP - Queens Democratic Chairman Thomas Manton, a former congressman who for years wielded his influence to shape the city's political landscape, has died. He was 73.

AP - White House officials said President Bush remains opposed to an immediate cease-fire to stop violence in the Middle East, despite personal pleas from ally Saudi Arabia that he help stop the bloodshed.

AP - President Bush retains confidence in Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki despite the failure of the Shiite politician's signature effort to improve security in Iraq's bloody capital, the White House said as Bush prepared to host the new leader.

AP - Gov. Linda Lingle is a Republican in a mostly Democratic state, someone who reaches across party lines, dodges attacks from Democrats and talks about ending homelessness and cutting taxes in the same breath.

AFP - The US House of Representatives approved a controversial US-India civilian nuclear energy deal, which supporters said will be the cornerstone of a new strategic alliance between the two countries.

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is closely tracking efforts to push Lebanon and Israel to end their conflict and is prepared to return to the region if needed when she leaves Malaysia on Friday, said a senior U.S. official.

AP - The House on Saturday approved and sent to President Bush an update of the nation's vocational education law, rebuffing White House attempts to overhaul it.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the left-winger who claims he was robbed of victory in Mexico's contested presidential election, will lead a massive protest rally on Sunday to press for a vote-by-vote recount.

Reuters - Serbia is finally showing the political will to arrest Bosnian Serb fugitive Ratko Mladic after years of delays and false starts, the chief prosecutor of the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague said on Saturday.