AFP - Nelson Mandela and George W. Bush led heightened international pressure on Robert Mugabe ahead of the one-man presidential run-off election in Zimbabwe on Friday.
AP - A Canadian judge said in a ruling Wednesday that the U.S. military's treatment of a teenage detainee at Guantanamo Bay violated international laws against torture.
AP - Israel will keep Gaza border crossings closed another day in response to Palestinian rocket fire that had violated a new cease-fire, the Defense Ministry said late Wednesday.
AFP - Unicredit, Italy's biggest bank by capitalisation, said on Thursday it planned to cut 9,000 jobs in western Europe and invest in central and eastern Europe to boost profits.
AP - Divers having difficulty removing bodies from a capsized ferry were forced to use heavy weights to help pull the dead out of the upside-down vessel, Philippine officials said Thursday.
AP - President Robert Mugabe faced deeper international isolation Wednesday, with African states demanding that a discredited runoff election be postponed and anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela rebuking the Zimbabwe leader for the first time.
AP - Roadside bombs killed four U.S. soldiers in northern Iraq, the military said Wednesday, in a spike of violence that pushed to at least 10 the number of Americans who have died here this week.
AP - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday she expected developments on North Korea's long-delayed nuclear declaration within hours, as she arrived in Japan to attend a meeting of foreign ministers from the Group of Eight industrialized nations.
AP - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday warned Zimbabwe's president against declaring victory in what she said will be an illegitimate run-off election this week.
AFP - A nickel mining partnership between BHP Billiton and an Indonesian firm in a protected island paradise has "strategic" importance and should proceed, Indonesia's investment chief said Wednesday.
AFP - Sudanese authorities have expelled from Darfur the head of the Dutch branch of the charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in the south of the war-stricken region, a humanitarian source said on Wednesday.
AP - A violin case slung over her shoulder, 10-year-old Daniela Fagundez trudges home along a row of muddy yards where chickens scratch among banana trees and laundry hangs drying on wire fences.
AFP - New mayor Boris Johnson has pulled out of a global campaign group that calls for nuclear disarmament, saying the city's membership was "not a priority", his office told AFP Wednesday.
AP - Iran's parliament speaker warned the West on Wednesday that it may face "a done deal" if it provokes Iran, a stern hint that Tehran could build nuclear weapons if attacked.
