AP - Pro-government crowds swarmed outside the battered home of a key Iranian opposition leader Friday after militiamen attacked with firebombs and beat a bodyguard unconscious in a brazen message of intimidation and pinpoint pressure on dissent.

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

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 - 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.

AP - A suicide bombing claimed by the Pakistani Taliban killed at least 43 Shiite Muslims at a procession in southwest Pakistan on Friday. The assault sharply drove up the toll of sectarian assaults in a country battered by massive flooding.

AFP - Anti-war campaigners staged a protest against former prime minister Tony Blair on Friday as he arrived at a Dublin television studio for an interview about his new autobiography, police said.

AP - Posters supporting Egypt's intelligence chief as a candidate in next year's presidential election were removed from Cairo's streets hours after they appeared, while an independent newspaper was ordered to pull reports of the campaign from its pages, officials said Friday.

AP - A Honduran who survived the massacre of 72 migrants in Mexico helped untie the only other survivor — a wounded Ecuadorean — and the two fled together, an official said Friday.

AFP - China beat South Africa 4-1 to get off the mark at the third attempt, England drew with South Korea, and Argentina dished out a 4-0 rout to Spain at the women's field hockey World Cup on Friday.

AP - A powerful 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck much of New Zealand's South Island early Saturday and caused widespread damage, but there were just two reports of serious injuries. Looters broke into some damaged shops in Christchurch, police said.

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.

Rescue teams were searching for people trapped in the rubble of a major earthquake that caused extensive damage Saturday in Christchurch, New Zealand?s second-largest city.

A UPS 747 cargo plane with two crew aboard crashed in Dubai shortly after takeoff Friday, the company said.

A suicide bomber struck a rally in the Pakistani city of Quetta on Friday, killing at least 54 people in the second major attack this week.

Seven people were convicted of child sex abuse in Portugal on Friday in a major trial that lasted nearly six years and shocked the country.

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.

Pro-government crowds swarmed outside the battered home of a key Iranian opposition leader Friday after militiamen attacked with firebombs and beat a bodyguard unconscious in a brazen message of intimidation and pinpoint pressure on dissent.

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

At 84 and having dusted off his military uniform, Fidel Castro on Friday addressed his first political rally since becoming ill and resigning as president in 2006.