International

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 - Suicide bombings targeting religious minorities killed at least 44 people in Pakistan on Friday, sharply driving up the toll of sectarian assaults in a country already battered by massive flooding.

AFP - An ex-MI6 agent has been sentenced to 12 months in jail Friday after trying to sell top secret information.

Reuters - A suicide bomber struck a rally in the Pakistani city of Quetta on Friday, killing up to 43 people in the second major attack this week, piling pressure on a government struggling with a flood crisis.

AP - Iran's military chief of staff says Tehran could strike Israel's nuclear facility if the Jewish state were to attack Iran's nuclear sites.

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 - African Union peacekeepers say they have established nine new bases in Somalia's capital over the last several months.

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 - A Portuguese court found six men and one woman guilty Friday of crimes relating to child sex abuse in a major trial that lasted nearly six years, a prosecution lawyer said.

AP - A Turkish Cypriot businessman who voluntarily returned to Britain after 17 years to face fraud charges learned Friday that he will have to wait more than a year for the trial he insists will vindicate him.

AP - Soldiers killed at least 25 suspected cartel members Thursday in a raid and gunbattle in a Mexican state near the U.S. border that has become one of the most dangerous battlegrounds in the country's drug war.

Time.com - Amid the catastrophes, the country's religious minorities are under assault -- and one group has allegedly been denied official assistance

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

AFP - An Indonesian volcano unleashed its most violent eruption in 400 years Friday, sending a tower of ash into the sky but failing to budge a handful of stoic villagers who live on its slopes.

AP - Swedish investment bank Carnegie says it is buying competitor HQ Bank, which had its banking license revoked by the financial watchdog last week.

AP - The bearded young cleric yells at a young woman for lifting her traditional veil from her face while speaking to him on the street, and rants against Egyptians who adopt Western lifestyles and values. His followers beat up an opponent.

AFP - Greenpeace chief Kumi Naidoo on Friday likened Japan's treatment of two of its anti-whaling activists to the tactics of the former apartheid regime he once campaigned against in his native South Africa.

AP - As the last of 30,000 U.S. reinforcements arrive in Afghanistan, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Friday got a firsthand look at operations in the dangerous south where Afghan and international troops are ramping up security.

AP - An Indonesian volcano that was quiet for four centuries shot a new, powerful burst of hot ash more than 10,000 feet (three kilometers) in the air Friday, sending frightened residents fleeing to safety for the second time this week.

AFP - An Australian man was attacked by a shark which mauled his face and neck during a holiday in the South Pacific Solomon Islands, officials said on Friday.