Canada
OTTAWA — A Vancouver doctor is organizing clinical trials for the controversial French abortion drug RU-486, the first time the pill is being used in Canada.
TORONTO — An Egyptian man with alleged links to militant leader Osama bin Laden and an Egyptian extremist group will remain detained in a Canadian jail while a judge decides whether he can be deported, Canadian authorities said Friday.
Spain
MADRID — A bomb exploded outside a newspaper office in Spain's Basque region Friday in the latest attack blamed on the separatist guerrilla group ETA, officials said. There were no injuries.
Sierra Leone
FREETOWN — Sierra Leone's government Friday told soldiers loyal to the country's former military junta to turn themselves in to be disarmed by U.N. peacekeepers or face the consequences.
Croatia
ZAGREB — A court on Friday overturned war crimes convictions against five Croatian Serbs, saying no evidence at their original trial linked them to attacks on Croatian cities in 1991.
Peru
LIMA — Reacting to what the government said was unauthorized logging by a U.S. company, Peru's president has deployed the military in an Amazon frontier region and declared wide swaths of Peru's jungle protected zones.
Northern Ireland
BELFAST — Northern Irish authorities refused Friday to lift a ban on the most hotly disputed parade of the Protestant "marching season" in the British province.
Germany
HANOVER — Facing huge deficits and far fewer visitors than hoped, the World's Fair will slash ticket prices and step up advertising while dropping the original goal of selling 40 million tickets as unrealistic, officials said Friday.
Russia
NAZRAN — Russia's defense minister conceded Friday that the 10-month-old military offensive against rebels in Chechnya could drag on through the winter and said the Chechens are planning new coordinated attacks.
Belarus
MINSK — An exhibit of artist Marc Chagall's sketches went on display Friday in Belarus, offering viewers a rare glimpse of their native son's vast work as an artist in exile.
Guatemala
GUATEMALA CITY — Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu, who is campaigning to have leaders of the former Guatemalan military dictatorship charged with genocide, has received threats by e-mail, her rights group said Friday.
China
BEIJING — A Chinese court on Friday found two members of a banned opposition group guilty of subversion and sentenced them to 5 1/2 and seven years respectively, a rights group reported.
Iceland
REYKJAVIK — Iceland's Environment Ministry has seized two protected ravens from the Viking ship Islendingur that is crossing the Atlantic to North America to commemorate Leifur Eiriksson's voyage 1,000 years ago.
England
LONDON — London schoolchildren, tired of trading Pokemon cards or collecting pictures of football stars, have alarmed city authorities by swapping prostitutes' pornographic calling cards instead.
Israel
JERUSALEM — An 18-year-old American tourist died of sunstroke after getting lost during a hike in Israel's Judean Desert, police said Friday. New Jersey resident Esther Strobel died Thursday, police spokesman Shlomo Abutbul said.
Haiti
PORT-AU-PRINCE — Supporters of a losing mayoral candidate in Haiti went on a rampage in a remote provincial town, wounding 12 people and setting houses ablaze, a radio report said Friday.