AP - Turkey's state-run news agency says authorities have released an AFP photographer, along with 12 other people who were detained as part of an investigation into a group prosecutors accuse of having links to Kurdish rebels.

AFP - US President Barack Obama will make a statement on the economy Monday, in his first public remarks since Standard and Poor's downgraded America's top notch sovereign debt rating, officials said.

AFP - Former Finnish prime minister and United Nations General Assembly president Harri Holkeri has died at the age of 74, Finland's ruling National Coalition Party said Monday.

AFP - United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon on Monday pledged solidarity with Japan after its quake, tsunami and nuclear disasters and asked Tokyo for input to a UN meeting on atomic safety next month.

AFP - US President Barack Obama and his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai reaffirmed their commitment to Afghanistan on Sunday after the death of 38 troops in a helicopter crash, the White House said.

AFP - Somalia's Islamist Shebab rebels pulled out of key positions in the war-torn and famine-struck capital on Saturday, with the country's president proclaiming the city "fully liberated".

AFP - Italy called Friday for emergency G7 talks and the EU worked "night and day" to ready new rescue funding as eurozone lending costs soared and stocks plunged amid fears of a renewed global recession.

AFP - EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton on Friday roundly disapproved Israel's go-ahead to the building of 900 new homes in east Jerusalem, saying new settlements damaged the prospects for peace.

AFP - US President Barack Obama's Republican foes assailed his economic policies Friday despite better-than-expected monthly jobs data that left overall US unemployment stubbornly high at 9.1 percent.

AFP - The Obama administration sent its ambassador back to Damascus on Thursday as it incrementally turned up the heat on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with tougher rhetoric and new sanctions.