AP - Two suspected U.S. missile strikes Friday on villages close to the border with Afghanistan killed at least 12 people, most of them militants, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

AP - Iraq's presidential council on Friday ratified a law that paves the way for the first provincial elections in four years, officials said.

AP - A 7-year-old boy broke into a popular Outback zoo, fed a string of animals to the resident crocodile and bashed several lizards to death with a rock, the zoo's director said Friday.

Reuters - U.S. diplomat Christopher Hill ended talks in Pyongyang on Friday aimed at convincing North Korea to abide by a sputtering disarmament deal, although Washington has said it would not offer new concessions.

AFP - The death toll in flash floods in a historic Algerian town climbed to 31 Friday, as aid workers battled to help hundreds of homeless and the army was deployed to prevent looting, state radio said.

AP - Mexican President Felipe Calderon has an offer for drug users: Go into rehab, stay out of jail.

AP - As of Thursday, Oct. 2, 2008, at least 4,176 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

AFP - Switzerland's biggest bank UBS said it would cut 2,000 more jobs as it revamps its investment bank which had been battered by the US subprime crisis.

AP - Somali pirates on a hijacked cargo ship holding battle tanks and hostages said Thursday that they were ready to battle any commando-style rescue attempt.

AP - Washington's chief U.S. nuclear envoy left North Korea on Friday after spending an extra day in the communist nation to try to persuade Pyongyang to resume dismantling its nuclear program.

AP - Pakistan's war against Islamic extremists will go on until the country is "terrorism-free," a senior official said Friday after mounting violence prompted the United Nations to raise its security stance.

Reuters - The United Nations said on Thursday it has ordered children of its international staff to leave Pakistan after raising its security level in the wake of last month's suicide attack on the Marriott Hotel in the capital.