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MADRID (Reuters) - The Basque Country regional assembly voted on Friday to go ahead with plans for a public vote on ties with the rest of Spain, but Spain vowed to block the move its sees as unnecessarily divisive.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union urged Iran on Friday to halt the imminent execution of a youth convicted of committing a murder while a minor.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Friday confirmed one Republican and two Democratic nominees to fill open commissioner seats at the Securities and Exchange Commission, returning the agency to full strength as it tackles oversight of big U.S. investment banks and other issues.

GENEVA (Reuters) - Governments negotiating a global trade treaty on Friday backed what trade experts said was a "make-or-break" test of the seven-year drive to cut tariffs and subsidies that pinch exporters and constrain growth.

HARARE (Reuters) - Many Zimbabweans boycotted their one candidate-election on Friday, but witnesses and monitors said government militias forced people to vote for 84-year-old President Robert Mugabe in some areas.

BUCHAREST (Reuters) - A Romanian government commission ruled on Friday that a pregnant 11-year-old girl could legally have a late-term abortion, in a case that has split the Black Sea state's conservative society.

GENEVA (Reuters) - A Swiss man who stood to inherit real estate worth 80 million Swiss francs ($78 million) was convicted on Friday of killing three women, including his adoptive mother and sister, and sentenced to life in prison.

BELFAST (Reuters) - A Northern Ireland court acquitted three men on Friday of involvement in the murder of Belfast man Robert McCartney, whose killing three years ago sparked international outrage.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Hundreds of people in Pakistan have gone missing and women and girls have been left vulnerable to abuse as the government tackles militancy, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Friday.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - A strong earthquake shook India's remote Andaman and Nicobar Islands but no tsunami alert was issued and there were no reports of damage, the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services said on Friday. "The magnitude is 6.3 and it's centred in the Andaman Islands," Srinivas Kumar, an official at the centre, told Reuters.

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombian President Alvaro Uribe said he wants to repeat the 2006 presidential election that gave him a second term, in a combative response to a court ruling that said the vote was tainted by corruption.

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Prosecutors accused two Congolese warlords on Friday of seeking to "wipe out" an entire village and seize survivors as sex slaves and child soldiers in their second case at the International Criminal Court.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The handover of security control in Iraq's Anbar province to Iraqi forces has been put on hold, the U.S. military said on Friday, blaming a sandstorm forecast to hit the region.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The handover of security control in Iraq's Anbar province to Iraqi forces has been put on hold, the U.S. military said on Friday, blaming a sandstorm forecast to hit the region.

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson will meet European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet next week during a trip to Europe to discuss global economic issues.

LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has suffered a humiliating defeat in a mid-term election for a vacant parliamentary seat, the latest setback coming exactly a year after he took power.

KYOTO, Japan (Reuters) - The United States will consult with other members of the U.N. Security Council on the next steps to be taken after Friday's one-man presidential run-off in Zimbabwe, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said.

KHANTY-MANSIYSK, Russia (Reuters) - Russia President Dmitry Medvedev stressed cooperation at a summit with European Union leaders on Friday, striking a softer pose than his tough-minded predecessor Vladimir Putin.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel allowed fuel to reach the Gaza Strip's sole power station on Friday, but kept border crossings used to bring in humanitarian and commercial supplies closed for a third consecutive day, Israeli officials said.

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombian President Alvaro Uribe called on Thursday for a rerun of the 2006 presidential election in which he won a second term, after the Supreme Court ruled it was tainted by corruption.