AP - A letter bomb exploded Friday at an office of Italy's tax collection agency, wounding the organization's director. Police said an Italian anarchist group that sent a letter bomb to Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt earlier in the week claimed responsibility for the attack.

AP - Russian authorities are allowing the opposition to hold a massive protest against election fraud following a violent police crackdown on a series of unsanctioned demonstrations earlier this week, rally organizers said Friday.

AP - The winners of the Nobel Peace Prize vowed Friday to work even harder to make the world see women not just as victims of conflicts, but as leaders in efforts to resolve them.

AP - A roadside bomb struck a vehicle carrying United Nations peacekeepers in southern Lebanon on Friday, wounding five French soldiers and a Lebanese bystander, officials said.

AP - Italian police say package bomb explodes at public office in capital Rome, injuring one.

Reuters - A roadside bomb wounded five French peacekeepers in southern Lebanon on Friday, in the third attack this year on United Nations forces deployed near the frontier with Israel.

AP - The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal is aiming to start Gen. Ratko Mladic's genocide trial March 27, but Mladic and his lawyer say they will not be ready.

The Atlantic Wire - Even if the break-up of the EA does not destroy the EU completely and does not represent a prelude to a return to the intra-European national and regional hostilities, including civil wars and wars, that were the bread and butter of European history between the fall of the Roman empire and the gradual emergence of the European Union from the ashes of two made-in-Europe world wars, the case for keeping the Euro Area show on the road would seem to be a strong one: financially, economically, and politically, including geopolitically.

AP - A 27-year-old German man was arrested Thursday by a police special-ops team in the western city of Bochum on charges he was part of an al-Qaida bomb plot in Europe, the federal prosecutors' office said.

Reuters - President Barack Obama said on Wednesday he wanted answers to the environmental questions about the Keystone XL pipeline, whose delay overshadowed a new U.S.-Canadian border agreement announced on Wednesday.

AP - A Russian investigator probing Sergei Magnitsky for alleged tax evasion denied Thursday he had played any role in the ailing lawyer's death while he was imprisoned in a Moscow jail.

AP - Women will be allowed to serve on submarines for the first time in Britain's history, the country's defense secretary announced Thursday, after research showed there were no health reasons to support the ban.

AP - Pope Benedict XVI has illuminated a huge Christmas tree lighting display in Umbria by tapping on a tablet computer from the comfort of the Vatican.

AP - Leading international broadcasters on Wednesday accused Iran of increasing its intimidation of foreign media and accelerating efforts to jam satellite broadcasts in Farsi from reaching Iranian audiences.

AP - Police on Wednesday captured one of Italy's most-wanted fugitive mobsters, arresting the last major boss of one of Italy's bloodiest mafia clans.

AP - Austria's parliament has authorized a donation of euro6 million ($8 million) toward helping to renovate a memorial to Holocaust victims who died at Auschwitz.

AP - As of now, Austria's national anthem pays homage not only to the country's great sons but also to its favored daughters.

AP - An attorney for Manuel Noriega says the former Panamanian strongman is to be extradited from France to his homeland on Sunday.

AP - Russian countermeasures to NATO's ballistic missile defense system would be a waste of money because they would be aimed at an "artificial enemy," NATO's top official said Wednesday.

AP - Russian authorities should annul the results of the parliamentary vote and hold a new one, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev urged Wednesday as popular indignation grew over widespread allegations of election fraud.

AP - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is seeing the sights on his whirlwind three-day, three-country tour of Europe. Not that he's spent time touring the Eiffel Tower in Paris or the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.

AP - A German official has sought to dampen down expectations for a summit on the European debt crisis this week, saying he is pessimistic about the chances of a far-reaching deal.

AP - The Obama administration bluntly warned the world against gay and lesbian discrimination Tuesday, declaring the U.S. will use foreign assistance as well as diplomacy to back its insistence that gay rights are fully equal to other basic human rights.

AP - Socialist Elio Di Rupo took the oath as Belgium's first Francophone prime minister in nearly 40 years on Tuesday, formally ending a record 541-day government impasse.