AP - Pakistan's government said Friday it needs to purge Taliban sympathizers from the country's main intelligence agency but angrily denied a report that the agency helped plan a bombing that killed at least 41 in Afghanistan.

AP - Roadside bombs killed five NATO soldiers and a civilian in eastern Afghanistan on Friday, while a coalition of aid groups warned that violence is spreading to once-stable regions and forcing them to scale back humanitarian work.

AP - Just months after Americans repaired a sewage treatment plant in southern Baghdad, insurgents attacked the facility and killed the manager. Looters took care of the rest.

AFP - A religious boarding school for girls in Turkey collapsed Friday after a suspected gas explosion, killing 14 girls and injuring at least 27 others, officials told media.

AFP - An African Union (AU) peacekeeper from Uganda was killed Friday when a roadside bomb explosion struck his convoy in the capital Mogadishu, an AU officer told AFP.

AP - Hamas forces seized the leaders of Fatah in Gaza early Friday, Fatah officials said, upping the stakes in a week of tit-for-tat arrests between the bitter Palestinian rivals.

AP - Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, appearing for the first time before the U.N. war crimes tribunal, declined to enter a plea and told the judge he intended to act as his own attorney.

AP - An inspection agreement crucial to a landmark nuclear deal between India and the United States came under scrutiny Friday by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

AP - The U.N. Security Council approved another year of peacekeeping in Sudan's bloodied Darfur region Thursday night, but the U.S. abstained from a vote that reflected sharp divisions over genocide charges against the Sudanese president.

AP - Pakistan on Friday angrily denied a newspaper report that its intelligence service helped plan a bombing of India's embassy in Kabul that killed at least 41 people, amid mounting allegations the secretive agency is aiding Islamic militants.

AFP - The new UN Human Rights rapporteur for Myanmar, Tomas Ojea Quintana, will conduct his first mission next week after getting the go-ahead from the military junta, the United Nations said Thursday.

Reuters - Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said on Thursday he was "fairly satisfied" with talks with President Robert Mugabe's party to end a political crisis, and said a Monday, August 4 deadline was "not inflexible."