Mideast Israeli forces began evicting the final hard core of Gaza Strip settlers, surrounding synagogues where thousands of religious Jews have taken refuge to block their forcible ejection from the Palestinian territory. Russia Russia and China launched their first-ever joint wargames in a show of military might they insisted was not aimed at any other country after the United States expressed concern. Vatican Pope Benedict XVI set off from Rome on his first foreign trip as pontiff, saying "friendship, joy and peace" would be the focus of his groundbreaking four-day visit to his native Germany. Iraq International pressure was mounting on Iraqi leaders to wrap up a draft constitution for the war-torn country after a wave of car bombings in the capital killed 43 people. Bangladesh Bangladesh security forces arrested almost 90 people in connection with a wave of simultaneous bombings that police said were linked to a banned group of Muslim extremists. Afghanistan Afghanistan's Taliban rebels released a kidnapped Lebanese engineer whom they had earlier threatened to kill, a provincial government official said. Saudi Saudi police reportedly killed four suspected militants in a dawn shootout, the first such incident since King Abdullah took the helm of the oil-rich kingdom which has been fighting a wave of Islamist attacks for more than two years. Britain London's police chief faced growing calls to resign over the shooting of an Brazilian wrongly suspected of being a suicide bomber, as reports emerged that he tried to stop an inquiry into the killing. Pakistan Pakistani voters went to the polls for local elections that are being seen as a test of President Pervez Musharraf's fight against Islamic hardliners and his commitment to women's rights. Venezuela Investigators searched for the last remaining bodies from the crash of a Colombian airliner that killed all 160 people on board, as the plane's two black box flight recorders were to be analysed by French experts.