AFP - Teams from the Central African Republic's electoral commission have begun deploying throughout the country to prepare for a census that will begin on September 22, the organisation announced Friday.

AP - Juan Mari Bras, an elder statesman of Puerto Rico's independence movement who gave up U.S. citizenship in an act that inspired hundreds of other activists, died Friday. He was 82.

AFP - England cruised to a 24-run win over embattled Pakistan thanks to a tempo-setting display from Steve Davies in the first match of the one-day international series at the Riverside on Friday.

AP - Hundreds of sex abuse victims have come forward in Belgium with harrowing accounts of molestation by Catholic clergy that reportedly led to at least 13 suicides and affected children as young as two, a special commission said Friday.

AP - Fidel Castro says his comments about Cuba's communist economic model were misinterpreted by a visiting American journalist.

AFP - In far northeastern Badakhshan province, thousands of people gathered outside a small NATO base in the capital Fayzabad, where they threw rocks at the gate and burned an American flag, police said.

AP - Iran's president intervened to secure the release of Sarah Shourd, one of three Americans jailed for more than 13 months, in part because of her gender, a news agency reported Friday.

AFP - Up to 40,000 frontline police jobs could be axed if suggested government cuts of 25 percent go ahead, the Police Federation warned Friday.

AP - Patients jammed rudimentary clinics and health workers in surgical masks sprayed anti-bacterial solution on muddy paths as the government struggled to contain a cholera epidemic that has killed nearly 800 Nigerians in two months.

AP - Clashes between police and alleged militants left six more people dead Friday in Russia's volatile North Caucasus, even as stunned residents laid flowers in a square where a suicide car bombing killed 17 people and wounded more than 140 only a day ago.

AP - An Afghan insurgent commander who was allegedly planning bombings in Kabul on the eve of the Sept. 18 parliamentary elections and two of his associates have been killed in an airstrike, NATO said Friday.

AP - Hundreds of sex abuse victims have come forward in Belgium with harrowing accounts of molestation by Catholic clergy that reportedly led to at least 13 suicides and affected children as young as two, an independent Belgian commission said Friday.

AFP - New Delhi's top health official on Friday blamed preparations for next month's Commonwealth Games for an outbreak of dengue fever that has caused concern among nations participating in the event.

AP - Three U.S. mothers who have pleaded with Iranian authorities for more than a year to free their sons and daughter from a Tehran prison finally received a piece of the news they've been longing for.

AP - German stocks led European markets modestly lower Friday following reports that Deutsche Bank AG is planning to raise as much as euro9 billion ($11.4 billion) to lift its stake in Deutsche Postbank AG and shore up its capital base.

AP - Some of Britain's best-known artists are opposing planned government cuts that could slash arts funding by 25 percent.