World News

AP - Pakistani officials say the second suspected U.S. missile strike of the day has killed two people in the country's restive tribal region.

AP - Seven people were convicted of child sex abuse in Portugal on Friday in a major trial that lasted nearly six years, a prosecutor said.

AP - Pro-government militiamen attacked the home of an Iranian opposition leader with homemade bombs and beat one of his bodyguards unconscious, an opposition website reported, in an apparent attempt to keep him from attending a key rally on Friday.

AP - North Korea is preparing its largest political meeting in 30 years, and leader Kim Jong Il is expected to appoint a son to a key Workers Party position in what would be the strongest sign yet of a succession movement in the secretive communist country.

AP - Is the global economy out of the woods? Two years after near-meltdown, with the U.S. looking sluggish, equity markets groggy and Europeans fighting a debt crisis, experts gathered in Italy offered a generally gloomy outlook — especially for the United States and much of the industrialized world.

Time.com - A new anti-immigration book by a director on the board of Germany's central bank has outraged the nation -- and has critics calling for his job

Reuters - To sweeten their first day at primary school German children are normally given a cardboard cone filled with sweets, but schoolchildren in Essen this year opened their cones to find pens which project erotic images.

AP - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned Friday from the resumption of Mideast negotiations in Washington to confront internal opposition to his peace moves, just as his Palestinian counterpart faced harsh criticism for agreeing to the talks at all.

AP - Fidel Castro dusted off his full military uniform for the first time since stepping down as president four years ago, a symbolic act in a communist country where little signals often carry enormous significance.

AP - Mozambique's economy has lost more than $3 million because of deadly riots over the rising prices of food and other goods, the government said Friday, as state media reported new protests in two other towns.

AFP - British police questioned Pakistan bowlers Mohammad Aamer and Mohammad Asif on Friday as cricket's governing body insisted the case was not the tip of a corruption iceberg in the game.

Reuters - Chinese officials have ordered state-owned companies to meet with investment bankers to explore potential options to block BHP Billiton's $39 billion bid for Canada's Potash Corp, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter.

AP - Whether or not she emerges as winner following recent elections, Australia's first woman prime minister will have led the nation's oldest political party to one of the lowest points in its 119-year history.