AP - President Robert Mugabe on Thursday said he is open to talks with the opposition, which is boycotting Friday's runoff because its leader says state-sponsored violence has made it impossible to take part.

AP - President Bush on Thursday lifted trade sanctions against North Korea and moved to remove it from the U.S. terrorism blacklist, a remarkable turnaround in policy toward the communist regime he once branded as part of an "axis of evil."

AP - President Jose Ramos-Horta, who narrowly escaped an assassination attempt by rebel soldiers earlier this year, has accepted the top U.N. human rights job, members of East Timor's parliament said Thursday.

AP - South Korea lifted its ban on U.S. beef imports Thursday and the government, paralyzed by weeks of tumultuous demonstrations, warned it would not tolerate further protests.

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.