BANGLADESH-BLACKOUT

DHAKA, Bangladesh - Power is restored in most of Bangladesh a day after the worst nationwide blackout in years exposed inefficient and dated infrastructure that has held back development in this South Asian nation.

PHILIPPINES-ABU SAYYAF

MANILA, Philippines - The Philippine military says Abu Sayyaf guerrillas have killed at least six soldiers who were guarding a road project that has been delayed by militant attacks in the country's impoverished southern region. 

EARTHQUAKE-PACIFIC

HONOLULU - The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii says there is no threat of a tsunami from a magnitude-6.9 earthquake that struck off the coast of Tonga and Fiji. 

ELECTIONS

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama and the top Senate Republican offer clashing views about America's trajectory in the final weekend before a national election in which control of Congress and 36 governorships will be at stake. 

NIGERIA-VIOLENCE

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria - With a malevolent laugh, Nigeria's Islamic extremist leader tells the world that more than 200 kidnapped schoolgirls all have converted to Islam and have been married off, dashing hopes for their freedom. Abubakar Shekau sneers at the parents of the girls and young women kidnapped more than six months ago saying they would die of grief if they knew the conditions the hostages were in. He denies agreeing to a cease-fire, and threatens to kill an unidentified German hostage. 

EBOLA-HOW BAD CAN IT GET

STANFORD, Calif. - Top medical experts projecting how bad Ebola might get in the United States by year-end say the public should expect more cases as U.S. doctors and nurses return from expeditions to West Africa, along with people visiting or immigrating from the region where the virus is epidemic. But how many? In the most optimistic of scientific projections, the United States could have two or three Ebola-infected patients by the end of 2014. Worst case scenarios point to 130 cases, according to infectious disease forecasters who simulate how the virus might move. 

SPACE TOURISM-HISTORY

WASHINGTON - Fiery failures are no stranger to the space game. It's what happens when you push the boundaries of what technology can do, where people can go. And it happened again to Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo. In the past decade, the space industry has tried to go from risky and government-run to routine private enterprise - so routine that if you have lots of money you can buy a ticket on a private spaceship and become a space tourist. More than 500 people have booked a flight, including Justin Bieber, Ashton Kutcher and little known space scientist Alan Stern. But it all depends on flying becoming safe and routine. This week hasn't helped. 

UN-CLIMATE REPORT

COPENHAGEN, Denmark - The United Nations' expert panel on climate science finishes a report on global warming that the UN's environment agency says offers "conclusive evidence" that humans are altering the Earth's climate system. The document, which combines the findings of three earlier reports, is adopted after all-night talks by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and is scheduled to be released to the public on Sunday. By Karl Ritter. 

BURKINA FASO-POLITICS

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso - Burkina Faso's army appoints a military colonel as transitional leader, it says, after the West African country's president resigned from 27 years in office amid violent protests against his continued power. Lt. Col. Isaac Yacouba Zida is unanimously appointed by the army to lead Burkina Faso, the army says in a declaration. "The period of transition" and its "form and duration will be determined later," says the declaration that was drafted and signed after senior officers met with the joint chief of staff.

SALVADOR-DIGGING UP THE DEAD

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador - A hundred yards below a private cemetery where generals have gathered for a military funeral, ghostly figures in white protective suits dig up a clandestine grave next to a fetid river. It is painstaking labor in a land littered with secret graves. This is the 30th excavation this year for criminologist Israel Ticas, who leads the teams that search for bodies still missing from a decades-old civil war, and for those killed more recently by street gangs who hold most of El Salvador in their clutches. Some would argue that digging up graves is a fool's errand in El Salvador, a country with the world's second highest per capita homicide rate after neighboring Honduras. But this is a vocation for Ticas, who calls himself the "lawyer for the dead. 

TUNISIA-REGIONAL MODEL OR PAWN?

TUNIS, Tunisia - Tunisia's orderly parliamentary elections are being hailed as a model of democracy for a region torn by strife and full of dictatorships. Regional rivalries, however, may put pressures on this fledgling democracy to move away from the dialogue and consensus that has made the country's transition a success so far.