Indonesia Indonesian Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, accused of leading an Al-Qaeda-linked group blamed for numerous deadly blasts, was jailed for two and a half years for involvement in the Bali bombings. Iraq Two suicide car bombs outside Iraq's interior ministry and another near a police station in Baqbuba killed six people as Shiite political parties piled pressure on the Kurds to join them in a governing coalition. Iraq French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin called on the kidnappers of a French reporter in Iraq to deal with government officials only -- and not a maverick MP mentioned by name in a video they released this week. Britain Three people have been arrested in the industrial city of Coventry under Britain's main anti-terrorist law. Mideast Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon faced renewed pressure from his own Likud party over plans to pull out of the Gaza Strip later this year, as a car bomb blast in the West Bank dealt a new blow to the fragile peace process. North Korea The UN atomic agency called on North Korea to return to six-party talks on its nuclear program, even as Pyongyang ended a self-imposed moratorium on testing long-range missiles and said "hostile" US policy was forcing it to make nuclear weapons. France One of France's biggest-ever criminal trials, in which 66 men and women are accused of raping children "sold" by their parents for pitiful sums of money and cigarettes, opened in the western city of Angers. Vatican Pope John Paul II's health is improving after throat surgery to ease his breathing but there is no set date for his departure from hospital, a Vatican spokesman said. Bosnia The man who led Muslim forces during the Bosnian war of the 1990s pleaded not guilty to charges of war crimes before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Pakistan A Pakistani court overturned the convictions of five men sentenced to death in 2002 for raping a woman on the orders of a tribal council for her brother's alleged affair. Kenya Police arrested more than 40 anti-globalization protestors as ministers and senior officials from 33 nations met to jumpstart efforts to seal a global trade accord by 2006.