NKOREA-DETAINED AMERICAN — North Korea's highest court sentences an American tourist to 15 years in prison with hard labor for subversion, weeks after authorities presented him to media and he tearfully confessed that he had tried to steal a propaganda banner. 

PAKISTAN — A bomb rips through a bus carrying Pakistani government employees in the volatile northwestern city of Peshawar, killing 15 people. 

PAKISTAN-MUSHARRAF — Pakistan's Supreme Court lifts a travel ban imposed on the country's former president, Pervez Musharraf. 

AFGHANISTAN-NATO — The head of NATO is predicting a difficult fight ahead for Afghanistan as the government continues to battle the Taliban and other militant factions trying to assert their presence in the war-ravaged country. 

MISSING MALAYSIAN PLANE — A piece of debris recently found on an Indian Ocean island where a wing fragment from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 had previously washed ashore is unlikely to be from the missing plane. 

CHINA-FOREIGN RELATIONS — China sees no contradiction between its insistence on safeguarding territory it claims and its desire for peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region, Premier Li Keqiang says.