Police identified a second Pakistani terrorist as an engineer of the attacks as gruesome new evidence emerged of mistreatment of hostages.

PARIS (AP) -- Armed robbers -- some disguised as women -- snatched euro85 million ($108 million) worth of diamond rings, necklaces and luxury watches from a Harry Winston boutique on a posh Paris avenue in one of the largest jewel heists in history, officials said Friday.

A car bomb devastated a busy street in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar on Friday, killing at least 17 people and injuring dozens more.

Iraq’s three-person Presidency Council approved the security agreement that envisions the complete withdrawal of American forces by the end of 2011. The approval came on a day of widespread violence in Iraq, with bombings in several cities that left dozens killed or wounded.

Aleksy II led a revival of the church after Communism and built ties to the Kremlin under Vladimir V. Putin.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that it was “well past time” for President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe to leave office, as evidenced by a cholera epidemic and crisis of the health care system.

A Danish warship on patrol to thwart piracy in the Gulf of Aden ended up rescuing seven of its presumed prey when its crew found suspected Somali pirates adrift.

Mexico’s violent drug war is finding its way into the seeming sanctuary of the nation’s hospitals.

The new governor of the turbulent province of Kandahar said he had been abruptly fired by the central government, but gave no reason.

A Turkish court sentenced a Kurdish activist to 10 years in prison for what prosecutors said was “making propaganda for a terrorist organization,” the state-run Anatolian News Agency reported. The activist, Leyla Zana, is a former lawmaker who spent a decade in jail in the 1990s for what Turkish authorities said were links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., the separatist group that has been fighting the Turkish military in the country’s southeast for decades. Ms. Zana was released in 2004, and was convicted on Thursday for saying, among other things, that the P.K.K.’s struggle was for “freedom and democracy.”.