BERLIN (AP) - A 56-year-old anesthesiologist has been convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the death of a German porn star who had a heart attack during a breast-enlargement operation.

HAVANA (AP) - Cuba's Fidel Castro says Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is getting "much better" after undergoing a fourth cancer operation in December.

PARIS (AP) - If it isn't already daunting enough to pack for a trip to fashionable Paris, female visitors, beware: It's illegal to wear pants.

ISLAMABAD (AP) - Pakistan's interior minister says the government is ready to hold peace talks with Taliban militants who have been waging a bloody insurgency that has killed thousands of people in his country.

Iraqi officials have raised the death toll in a suicide attack against anti-al-Qaida fighters north of Baghdad to 18.

Ethnic Kachin rebels have reached an agreement with Myanmar's government to ease tensions that have led to bitter combat between them for the past month.

Qatar Telecom says it has increased its share in the Iraqi phone service provider Asiacell from 53.9 percent to 64.06 percent after a successful public offering for a quarter of the Iraqi company's shares.

The Kremlin says next year's summit of the leading industrial nations will take place in Sochi, the city on the Black Sea where Russia is preparing to host the 2014 Winter Games.

Russia says two Russians and an Italian kidnapped by Syrian rebels have been freed in exchange for captured militants.

A Pakistani girl shot by the Taliban has made her first video statement since she was nearly killed, saying she is recovering.

The Palestinian militant group Hamas says Israel has arrested 20 of its members, including three lawmakers, in a West Bank raid.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says he's ready to be the first Iranian astronaut sent into space as part of Iran's goal of manned space flight.

The Guardian newspaper says that London's Metropolitan Police Service stole the identities of dozens of dead children to use as aliases for undercover officers, learning the infants' personal histories and even issuing fake passports in their names.

Has Britain's lost king been found?

Venezuela's military chief says President Hugo Chavez is experiencing "his best moment" following cancer-related surgery in December.

Israel's defense minister is indicating that the Jewish state was behind an airstrike on Syria that U.S. officials say targeted anti-aircraft weapons bound for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

French troops have launched airstrikes on Islamic militant training camps and arms depots around two towns in Mali's far north.

The German newspaper Bild am Sonntag reports a man caught last month trying to enter Germany with a check worth about $70 million was Iran's former central bank chief.

More than 5,000 supporters of Greece's extreme-right Golden Dawn party have marched past the U.S. Embassy in Athens, chanting anti-Turkish, anti-U.S. and anti-immigrant slogans to commemorate a 1996 border incident that caused a crisis between Greece and Turkey.

The Yemeni military says it has wrested control of a southern town from al-Qaida fighters after three days of clashes that killed 17 people.

Hollande is visiting the fabled desert city in northern Mali six days after French forces parachuted in to free it from the radical Islamists who seized control 10 months ago.

Egypt's Interior Ministry has offered a rare expression of regret after riot police were caught on camera yesterday beating a protester who had been stripped of his clothes.

An Ohio toy maker says the inventor of the Etch A Sketch, the famous red toy that generations of children drew on, shook up and started over, has died in France.

A leftist militant group in Turkey has claimed responsibility for the suicide attack on the U.S. Embassy in Ankara.

Turkey's state-run news agency says a missing New York City woman has been found dead in Istanbul, and police have detained nine people in connection with the case.