Afghanistan Hamid Karzai was sworn in as Afghanistan's first democratically elected president, promising to restore security to the war-shattered country exactly three years after the fall of the Taliban. Ukraine The struggle for power in Ukraine shifted to the corridors of parliament as lawmakers tried to break a deadlock between the ruling regime and the opposition over legislative changes ahead of a new presidential runoff vote. Iraq The number of US soldiers killed in combat in Iraq approached 1,000 after a sharp surge in violence, but Iraqi and US leaders vowed that insurgent attacks will not derail the January 30 elections. Saudi Arabia Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda claimed the attack on the US consulate in Jeddah, dealing a blow to the Saudi government's attempts to wipe out Islamic militants behind a wave of terror strikes. Congo The United Nations said it had established "almost with certainty" that Rwandan soldiers had entered neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo over the past two weeks. OSCE The United States and Russia clashed at a meeting of the OSCE security body over whether the West is meddling in Ukraine's presidential election wrangle or is helping democracy in the former Soviet republic. Ghana Ghana voted for the fourth time since democracy was reinstated in 1992, in an election likely to maintain the status quo in a country considered an anchor of tolerance for tumultuous west Africa. Netherlands Dutch police arrested a man suspected of aiding the former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in committing war crimes and genocide by supplying him with materials to make chemical weapons used in attacks in the 1980s. Nigeria Nigerian villagers lifted their blockade of three oil pumping stations in the volatile Niger Delta after energy giants Shell and ChevronTexaco agreed to discuss funding local development projects. US US army deserter Charles Jenkins, who spent nearly four decades in communist North Korea, finally saw freedom as he left a US base with his Japanese wife for a new home on a small island north of Tokyo.