06 November 2008 Zagreb – Croatia’s Prime Minister Ivo Sanader welcomed the EU’s decision to name the target date for Croatia’s completion of accession talks as its “international affirmation.”

06 November 2008 Pristina – Muhamet Hamiti, Kosovo’s first ambassador to Great Britain has been invited to Buckingham Palace in London for a formal welcoming by Queen Elizabeth II.

SOFIA (Reuters) – Bulgaria will withdraw its 155 troops from Iraq at the end of the year, the defense ministry said Thursday.

KHAR, Pakistan (Reuters) – A suicide bomber killed 10 people and wounded 30 when he blew himself up at a meeting of ethnic Pashtun tribal leaders in northwest Pakistan’s Bajaur area on the Afghan border Thursday, government officials said.

HERAT, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Foreign forces have killed seven civilians in an air strike in northwest Afghanistan, officials said on Thursday, a day after the Afghan president said warplanes had killed 40 civilians in the south.

GAZA (Reuters) – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah group said Hamas forces arrested dozens of its activists in the GazaStrip on Thursday, undermining Egyptian efforts to reconcile the rival factions.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Causing death through “cyber terrorism” will be punishable by death in Pakistan, according to a decree issued by President Asif Ali Zardari on Thursday.

KABUL (Reuters) – Afghan President Hamid Karzai opened a new, Japanese-built $37 million terminal at Kabul airport on Thursday, but said he hoped it would survive undamaged for at least one year now that it is in Afghan hands.

MINGORA, Pakistan (Reuters) – Pakistani Taliban militants have released unharmed a group of schoolboys they abducted on suspicion of spying for the security forces, police said on Thursday.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Dmitry Medvedev could resign from his post in 2009 to pave the way for Vladimir Putin to return to the Kremlin, Vedomosti newspaper reported on Thursday, citing an unidentified source close to the Kremlin.