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AFP - France came under fresh fire for expelling Roma migrants Thursday as the European Parliament demanded it "immediately suspend" removal of the Gypsies.

Reuters - President Barack Obama warned on Thursday that a Florida pastor's plan to burn copies of the Koran is being used as an al Qaeda recruitment tool and he urged the minister to reconsider the decision.

AP - President Barack Obama is exhorting a Florida minister to "listen to those better angels" and call off his plan to engage in a Quran-burning protest this weekend.

AFP - At least 15 people were killed on Thursday and over 70 wounded when suicide bombing rocked a crowded central market in the Russian Caucasus city of Vladikavkaz, officials said.

AP - On a wind-swept day at the U.S. Open that had everyone complaining about the conditions, Roger Federer simply embraced them.

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

AP - Former first lady Laura Bush will speak at a National Park Service fundraiser in Pittsburgh on Friday, a day before joining Michelle Obama in rural Pennsylvania to remember the victims of Flight 93, which crashed there in the Sept. 11 attacks.

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 - After a regional airliner crashed in western New York a year and a half ago, killing 50 people, the Obama administration promised swift action to prevent similar tragedies. High on the list: new rules governing the number of hours pilots may work, to prevent tired flight crews from making fatal errors.

AFP - The cleric behind a proposed Islamic center in New York said he would not have planned it so close to the site of the September 11, 2001 attacks had he foreseen the level of "pain" triggered by the controversial project.

AP - BP's long-awaited internal report on what it believes went wrong when a rig exploded and started the massive Gulf oil spill never mentions the words blame, regret, apology, mistake or pollution. The word fault shows up 20 times, but only once in the same sentence as the company's name.

Reuters - Afghanistan will limit foreign involvement in two major anti-crime units in a move likely to worry its Western backers and stoke fears about President Hamid Karzai's commitment to fighting endemic graft.

Reuters - Switzerland remains the world's most competitive economy, while the United States has fallen from second to fourth after losing the top spot last year, according to the World Economic Forum's annual rankings issued on Thursday.

Reuters - North Korea's capital is ready for its biggest political event in decades: giant billboards proclaim an event to make the country's "history shine forever," the dress rehearsals are complete and the army is ready.

AFP - Taliban leader Mullah Omar said the NATO-led coalition is losing the war in Afghanistan, calling on Afghans to redouble their struggle and pressing the United States to withdraw.

AFP - Police in Thailand defused three unexploded bombs discovered in Bangkok and surrounding suburbs over a matter of hours, one of them in front of a school and one in a shopping mall, they said Thursday.