Bangladesh
NARAYANGANJ — A fire raced through a garment factory in Bangladesh, killing 22 people who were trapped because most of the exits were locked, officials said Friday.
Cambodia
PHNOM PENH — Cambodia renewed its call Friday for the United Nations to find money for a genocide tribunal as the country marked the 26th anniversary of the end of the Khmer Rouge's brutal rule.
China
BEIJING — China is planning to make selective abortions of female fetuses illegal as a way to close the widening gap between the number of boys and girls in the country, the official Xinhua News Agency said. "The government takes it as an urgent task to correct the gender imbalance of newborns," Zhang Weiqing, minister of National Population and Family Planning Commission, was quoted as saying Thursday by Xinhua.
BEIJING — A Chinese man was sentenced to seven years in jail for making a baby formula so low in nutritional value it killed one baby and permanently injured two others, the government said Friday.
Congo
KINSHASA — Renegade army soldiers in eastern Congo massacred at least 30 civilians, including women and children, to avenge the deaths of three of their troops, the United Nations said Friday.
India
SRINAGAR — Paramilitary soldiers surrounded and stormed a government building that militants had set on fire in Indian-controlled Kashmir on Friday, rescuing almost all the 70 workers trapped inside. A soldier, a civilian and two militants were killed, police said.
Israel
JERUSALEM — An Israeli television station broadcast a video of Israel's top secret nuclear facility in the southern town of Dimona on Friday, the first detailed video of the site ever shown to the public. The 14-minute video depicted a pastoral setting of well-manicured lawns and palm trees, swaying gently in a light desert breeze. The reactor dome loomed in the background, flanked by a three-story building.
Italy
BOLOGNINA DI CREVALCORE — A passenger train and a freight train collided head-on in heavy fog in northern Italy on Friday, killing at least 13 people, injuring dozens and crushing several cars into a wreck of buckled metal.
Japan
TOKYO — The dispatch of Japanese troops to Iraq — a deeply unpopular move here — is a public relations problem caused by ungrounded fears about the region's stability, Japan's defense chief said Friday, vowing to turn around public opinion.
Malawi
LILONGWE — President Bingu wa Mutharika dissolved the country's intelligence network Friday, following claims that some agents were involved in an alleged plot to assassinate him. Four senior ruling party officials were arrested this week and charged with treason after allegedly trying to bring handguns and knives into a meeting with the president.
Mexico
CIUDAD JUAREZ — Ten alleged gang members were convicted Thursday in the killings of 12 women, some of the hundreds who have been found slain in this border city in recent years. Four bus drivers, all thought to be loyal to a criminal gang known as "Los Toltecas," were sentenced to between 40 and 113 years in prison for premeditated homicide, aggravated rape and criminal association in the slayings of six Ciudad Juarez women.
Russia
MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin, in his first public comment on the dramatic Ukrainian presidential election that the Kremlin-favored candidate lost, said Friday he hopes that the country will move from rhetoric to pragmatism, news agencies reported. The reproving tone of the remarks, made after meeting with Ukrainian parliament speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn at Putin's residence outside Moscow, appeared to indicate continued Russian discomfort with Viktor Yushchenko, the Western-leaning opposition candidate who preliminary results show convincingly defeated Kremlin favorite Viktor Yanukovych.
Syria
DAMASCUS — Sen. John Kerry arrived Friday for talks in Syria, which has been accused of doing too little to curb the infiltration of anti-American insurgents into Iraq.