AP - With impeachment proceedings looming, the pressure on President Pervez Musharraf to quit built Friday as both his rivals and allies confirmed back-channel talks were under way that could ease him out.

AP - A reluctant Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili said Friday he signed a cease-fire agreement with Russia and declared in the presence of the chief U.S. diplomat that the West had behaved in ways that invited the invasion.

AP - Minutes after a suicide bomber killed 25 people, hundreds of angry Kurds stormed the headquarters of an ethnic Turkish group in this northern Iraqi city and torched the building and nearby parked cars.

AP - Western leaders engaged in intense diplomacy Friday to persuade Russia to pull troops out of Georgia, but tensions soared after a top Russian general warned that Poland had exposed itself to attack by striking a missile defense deal with the United States.

AP - Zimbabwe's opposition leaders are in South Africa for talks with regional leaders on the eve of a summit expected to focus on their country's political crisis.

AP - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is accusing the United States of masterminding the current conflict between Georgia and Russia.

AP - As of Thursday, Aug. 14, 2008, at least 4,141 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

AP - A Canadian schoolteacher who pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a 13-year-old boy was sentenced Friday to 3 years and 3 months in jail in Thailand.

AP - Iraqi Shiite assassination teams are being trained in at least four locations in Iran by Tehran's elite Quds force and Lebanese Hezbollah and are planning to return to Iraq in the next few months to kill specific Iraqi officials as well as U.S. and Iraqi troops, according to intelligence gleaned from captured militia fighters and other sources in Iraq.

AP - Talks are under way that could lead to the resignation of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf or else reduce his role to that of a figurehead, an ally of the embattled leader said Friday.

AP - Russian troops are still blocking entrance to the city of Gori in war-battered Georgia. Doubt remains about whether Russia will honor an agreement to pull back its forces.

AP - Choosing expediency over principle, the United States and its allies are pushing Georgia's pro-Western government to accept major concessions in a cease-fire with Russia.