AP - A suicide car bomber hit the central market of a major city in Russia's North Caucasus on Thursday, killing at least 17 and wounding more than 130 people in one of the worst attacks in the volatile region in years, officials said.

AP - South Africa's murder rate, one of the highest in the world, has dropped by 8.6 percent to its lowest level in nearly two decades, according to statistics released Thursday.

AP - North Korea celebrated its 62nd anniversary Thursday with odes to supreme leader Kim Jong Il and pilgrimages to his late father's statue amid hints that a political meeting believed aimed at promoting his son as successor is imminent.

AP - Afghanistan's top prosecutor said Thursday that while President Hamid Karzai backs the work of Western-supported anti-corruption teams, he wants investigations to be led by Afghans and free of interference from international advisers.

AP - Some victims in a botched hostage rescue of a tourist bus in the Philippines may have been hit by police fire, the nation's top law enforcement official said Thursday.

Time.com - On the eve of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, the hottest event on New YorkCity's couture calendar, TIME takes a look inside the grueling auditionprocess for hundreds of high-fashion hopefuls

AP - Prague zoo said Thursday one of its fearless honey badgers is on the run.

AP - Four prisoners with links to al-Qaida being guarded by American troops escaped from a maximum-security prison in Baghdad and are still at large, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Thursday.

AP - Cuba's communist economic model has come in for criticism from an unlikely source: Fidel Castro.

AFP - Eleven police recruits died and another four were injured when flames engulfed their barracks in a Cairo suburb on Thursday, a security official told AFP.

Reuters - Pakistan is expected to become the next head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog's governing body despite being outside a global anti-nuclear arms pact and home to a nuclear smuggler who supplied Iran and North Korea, diplomats say.

Reuters - The Conservative government has seen its lead over the main opposition Liberals evaporate in public opinion polls following recent controversies and the two parties are now running neck and neck, though an election is not seen in the near term.

AFP - Australian regulators rejected National Australia Bank's 12.2 billion US dollar bid for financial firm AXA Asia Pacific on competition concerns Thursday, in a move welcomed by rival suitor AMP.

McClatchy Newspapers - WASHINGTON — With concerns growing about hostile or even violent international reaction to a Florida pastor's plans to burn the Koran on Saturday, the Obama administration is stepping up its efforts to mitigate the damage.

The Christian Science Monitor - The young man playing with kids at the Main Krokodile preschool here isn't your typical caregiver. He's among the tens of thousands of Germans who fulfill their military service by working with children, the elderly, or the disabled. The head of the school, Berndt Niedergesss, is all for it: "The children love dealing with men," he says.