MOSCOW – A jailed former oil executive gravely ill with HIV/AIDS was transferred to a specialist clinic on Friday, Russia’s prison service said, following an international campaign on his behalf.

OTTAWA – Canada said on Friday it plans to keep its 2,500-strong military mission in Afghanistan until the end of 2011, almost three years longer than initially scheduled, and wants to shift the focus to training Afghan forces.

PRISTINA, Serbia – Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci said on Friday about 100 countries were ready to recognize the province’s independence from Serbia as soon as it was declared.

MOSCOW  – President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Russia would not allow itself to be drawn into what he called a new arms race.

BEIRUT  – Arab League chief Amr Moussa brought feuding Lebanese parties together on Friday to try to agree on a new government and end a protracted political crisis.

GHAZNI, Afghanistan – A suicide car bomber targeting an army convoy killed three people on Friday in Afghanistan, witnesses said.

AUSTIN, Texas – Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said on Thursday a lasting peace accord with Israel was unlikely in 2008 despite renewed diplomatic efforts to resolve the long-running conflict.

WASHINGTON – British police have concluded that Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was killed by the force of a suicide bomb and not by an assassin’s bullet, The New York Times reported in its Friday editions.

TEHRAN (FNA) – Tehran’s interim Friday Prayers leader Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami stressed that the Israeli regime could never thwart Palestinian Intifada through continued siege on Gaza and massacre of Palestinians

TEHRAN (FNA) – Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki here Friday assigned new heads for his European, Asian and Economic affairs departments.