AP - Myanmar's ruling generals on Friday accused foreign media of tarnishing the country's image by reporting that cyclone victims have not received any assistance.

AP - The opposition said Friday that its rallies had been banned indefinitely three weeks before the presidential runoff, while the U.S. ambassador accused President Robert Mugabe's regime of using food as a weapon to stay in power.

AFP - Australia's competition regulator launched an inquiry Friday into mining giant BHP Billiton's hostile takeover of rival Rio Tinto.

AFP - At least 21 people were killed and 47 others wounded Friday in the latest in a string of suspected Tamil Tiger attacks against civilians in the Sri Lankan capital, officials said.

AP - Zimbabwe's government ordered aid groups to halt operations in a move that could hamper food deliveries in the impoverished nation where millions depend on outside help.

AP - The jungle-shrouded Inca citadel of Machu Picchu may have been rediscovered — and looted — decades before the Yale scholar credited with the find first got there, a researcher said Thursday.

AP - Two suspected Shiite militia leaders surrendered Friday during American raids on their homes south of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

AFP - England's swimming pools will have free admission by 2012 in an effort to get more people involved in sports before the Olympic Games, the government will announce Friday.

AP - Sudan's actions in Darfur have helped turn the region into "a crime scene," the chief U.N. prosecutor charged Thursday, expanding on a scathing report this week that directly linked the government to a feared militia blamed for much of the killing.

AP - World leaders at a U.N. summit embraced an ambitious strategy to combat a food crisis that is causing violent riots and threatening to push up to a billion people across the globe into hunger.

AP - A bomb ripped through a crowded passenger bus near Sri Lanka's capital during morning rush hour Friday, killing at least 21 people and wounding an additional 47, officials said.

AP - Soldiers were ordered to deepen a diversion channel to speed the draining of an unstable earthquake-formed lake that was threatening to burst, state television said Friday.

AP - The accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks said he welcomed martyrdom at U.S. hands, as he and four codefendants asked to be tried for war crimes without the benefit of lawyers.