1 missing after Swedish freighter capsizes

A Swedish freighter capsized and sank in a storm on the Baltic Sea on Wednesday, forcing its 14-member crew to jump overboard to save themselves. Rescue officials said helicopters plucked all but one man from the high waves and chilly waters.

The storm that swept across parts of Scandinavia with high winds, rain and snow disrupted train, road and ferry traffic in some areas. Winds gusting up to 97 mph swept Germany's North Sea coast, uprooting trees, damaging roofs and disrupting ferry services to several islands.

Power was knocked out to 50,000 people in southern and central Sweden and all bus lines in the capital of Stockholm were canceled Wednesday evening because of icy driving conditions.

Kandahar, Afghanistan

2 soldiers killed by suicide bomber

A suicide car bomber struck a NATO convoy Wednesday in southern Afghanistan, wounding two soldiers and damaging a vehicle, while a NATO air strike killed three suspected insurgents in the east.

British Gen. David Richards, NATO's top commander in Afghanistan, told The Financial Times in an interview published Wednesday that he doesn't have enough forces to defeat the Taliban within the next six months.

Richards told The Associated Press last month that Afghans would likely switch their allegiance to resurgent Taliban militants if their lives showed no visible improvements in the next six months.

Bogotá, Colombia

Rebels kill 17 officers in ambush

Hundreds of leftist rebels bombarded a remote police station with makeshift mortars in a pre-dawn attack Wednesday and ambushed a column of police reinforcements, killing at least 17 officers and a civilian, authorities said.

The six-hour assault in the village of Tierradentro, 230 miles northwest of Bogotá, was the bloodiest since President Alvaro Uribe was re-elected in May.

Authorities blamed the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known as the FARC, which has been fighting the government for more than four decades.

Also

Turkey flooding: Flooding from torrential rains killed 22 people across Turkey, including 14 who died when a minibus carrying wedding guests was swept away near the town of Cinar in Diyarbakir province, authorities said Wednesday. Heavy rain and flooding were also affecting Istanbul and the Mediterranean coast.

Cartoon: Iran awarded a Moroccan artist Wednesday the top prize in an exhibition of cartoons on the Holocaust. In response to the Danish cartoons of Islam's Prophet Muhammad that sparked rage among Muslims around the world, Abdollah Derkaoui received $12,000 for his work depicting an Israeli crane piling large cement blocks on Israel's security wall and gradually obscuring Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. A picture of Nazi Germany's Auschwitz concentration camp appears on the wall.

Compiled from The Associated Press and Reuters