AP - Hooded gunmen killed the mayor of a small town in the northern Mexico state of San Luis Potosi on Wednesday, and prosecutors announced the arrest of seven suspects in the massacre of 72 migrants in August.

AP - South Korea said it will ban many financial dealings with Iran and impose other penalties as part of a U.S.-led campaign to enforce sanctions against the country over its disputed nuclear enrichment program.

AP - Fidel Castro told a visiting American journalist that Cuba's communist economic model doesn't work, a rare comment on domestic affairs from a man who has conspicuously steered clear of local issues since stepping down four years ago.

AP - Most Asian stock markets advanced Thursday after worries about Europe's financial health eased, sending Wall Street higher.

AP - Israelis usher in the Jewish new year, or Rosh Hashana, at sundown Wednesday with a widespread sense of pessimism that a new round of U.S.-sponsored Mideast talks can achieve peace.

AFP - US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday called Sudanese leaders in a bid to defuse what she called the "ticking time bomb" of an inevitable secession of the country?s restive and oil-rich south.

AFP - Australian regulators rejected National Australia Bank's 12.2 billion US dollar bid for financial services firm AXA Asia Pacific Thursday over concerns about competition in the industry.

Time.com - In North Korea, the first congress in 30 years of the Workers' Party of Korea may be imminent, suggesting that a succession is being prepared to hand power from Kim Jong Il to his son Kim Jong Un