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Toronto, Canada
Torture Lawsuit: A Syrian-born Canadian citizen who was deported from the United States to Syria last year is filing a lawsuit accusing the governments of Jordan and Syria of torturing him, his attorney said this week.

Alhambra, California
Spector changed: Police have charged Phil Spector, a groundbreaking record producer, with the February murder of a B-movie actress in his California mansion.

Cincinnati
Archdiocese fined in coverup: Leaders of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati have pleaded no contest to charges of covering up five cases of child molestation between 1978 and 1982, marking the first time a U.S. diocese has been convicted of a crime connected to the church's sexual-abuse scandal.

East Rutherford, New Jersey
Basketball star retires: NBA New Jersey Nets center Alonzo Mourning said this week that he was quitting basketball because he needs a kidney transplant.

Lima, South America
President says sorry: President Alejandro Toledo apologized to the Peruvian people this week for the political violence that terrorized the nation until a few years ago.

New York
Life at ground zero: A train station for commuters reopened this week in part of the pit where the World Trade Center once stood.

London
E.U. militia: France and Britain agreed this week to create a European rapid reaction force that could respond quickly to crises in the region.

Paris
Students revolt: Students and professors at more than a dozen French universities went on strike this week to protest the imposition of a Europewide degree-granting program.

Brussels
Anti-Semitism is mostly Muslim: An E.U. group refused to release a report it commissioned on the recent resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe, because the report concluded that Muslims were to blame for most incidents, the Financial Times reported this week.

Kiev
Famine remembered: The U.N. has recognized for the first time that Ukraine's devastating famine of the 1930s was engineered by Stalin.

Zagreb, Croatia
Nationalists back in power: Croatins voted out their pro-Western prime minister this week and returned a nationalist party to power.

Istanbul
Protest against bombers: Thousands of Turks marched solemnly through the streets of Istanbul to protest last week's near-simultaneous suicide truck bombings of the British Consulate and a British-owned bank.

Tbilisi, Georgia
Shevardnadze toppled: Georgians forced their president to resign this week, in a bloodless revolution led by a U.S.-trained lawyer.

Vietiane, Laos
Remains of Dean's brother: The government of Laos has sent back to the U.S. what are believed to be the remains of the brother of presidential candidate Howard Dean.

Hong Kong
Blow to Beijing: Hong Kong voters turned out to record numbers this week and trounced the pro-Beijing party in local elections.

Jerusalem
Is Sharon softening?
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon caused a ruckus in his conservative Likud Party this week when he said Israel would have to give up some of the Jewish settlments in the West Bank.

Pretoria
Facing AIDS: South Africa has announced a bold new program to treat its mounting AIDS epidemic. Over the next five years, the government will spend several billion dollars building clinics and training thousands of doctors, nurses, and counselors.

Baghdad
Iraq's American diplomat: Iraq's new ambassador to the U.S. is a woman and an American citizen.