BAGHDAD — New Defense Secretary Robert Gates arrived in Baghdad today, armed with a mandate from President Bush to help forge a new Iraq war strategy. He made the unannounced trip to the battlefront just two days after taking over at the Pentagon.

Gates went in pursuit of advice from his top military commanders on a new strategy for an increasingly unpopular, costly and chaotic war — one he has conceded the U.S. is not winning. His trip so soon after taking office underscored the Bush administration's effort to be seen as energetically seeking a new path in the conflict.

"The whole purpose is to go out, listen to the commanders, talk to the Iraqis, and see what I can learn," Gates told reporters as he boarded his aircraft in Washington on Tuesday.

BAGHDAD — U.S.-led forces captured a senior al-Qaida leader who was responsible for hundreds of civilian deaths and housed foreign fighters who carried out suicide bombings, the U.S. military said today.The leader, who was not identified, was arrested in a raid in Mosul on Dec. 14, the military said in a statement."The terrorist leader was attempting to flee from the location when Coalition Forces chased him across a street and detained him," the statement said.It said the suspect served as al-Qaida's military chief in Mosul in 2005, and then took up the same job in western Baghdad."During that time, he coordinated car vehicle-borne improvised explosives device attacks and kidnap for ransom operations in Baghdad," the military said. It cited reports that said he organized an attempt to shoot down a U.S. military helicopter in May this year.

BEIJING — China is imposing new restrictions on foreign adoptions, barring applicants who are unmarried, obese, over 50 or who take antidepressants, according to U.S. adoption agencies.The restrictions are meant to limit adoptions to "only the most qualified families," said the Web site of one agency, Harrah's Adoption International Mission in Spring, Texas. The agency said China has pledged to try to make more children available to those who qualify.The move comes amid a surge in foreign applications to adopt Chinese children. The United States is the No. 1 destination for children adopted abroad, but the number going to Europe and elsewhere is rising.An employee of the government-run China Center of Adoption Affairs, the agency that oversees foreign adoptions, said it has issued new guidelines but refused to confirm the details released by the American agencies. He wouldn't give his name.Americans adopted 7,906 children from China in 2005, raising the total since 1989 to 48,504, according to the Joint Council on International Children's Services in Alexandria, Va., an association of adoption agencies and parents' groups. The group's Web site lists 110 U.S. groups that arrange adoptions from China.