International

AP - Mexican police have arrested six suspects in a bar fire that killed eight in the resort city of Cancun.

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

AP - A UPS cargo plane with two crew members on board crashed shortly after takeoff Friday outside Dubai, officials said.

McClatchy Newspapers - JERUSALEM mdash; Jewish settlers across the West Bank have vowed to begin construction in more than 60 locations, posing a direct challenge to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he returned home from Thursday's first round of direct peace talks in Washington.

The Christian Science Monitor - North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-il is expected to convene the first high-level conference of the ruling Workers’ Party in about 40 years amid widespread speculation that the world will finally get the answer to one great question:

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.