WORLD BRIEFS

IRAN: Hiker's release held

Iran on Friday postponed the planned release of an American woman jailed along with two friends for more than a year, state media reported, dealing a blow to the hopes of three U.S. mothers who have pleaded for the trio's release. Iranian officials had said that Sarah Shourd, who was detained with her friends near Iran's border with Iraq, would be released on Saturday. But the IRNA state news agency quoted the deputy chief of communication for the Iranian president's office as saying that would not happen. He said details would be announced later, but Tehran's chief prosecutor, Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, blamed the fact that "judicial procedures have not been done," according to the semiofficial ILNA news agency. Shourd and Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal were arrested along the Iran-Iraq border in July 2009 and accused of spying.

RUSSIA: 1 day after fatal bombing, 10 killed in clashes

Clashes between police and alleged militants left 10 more people dead Friday in Russia's volatile North Caucasus, even as stunned residents laid flowers in a square where a suicide car bombing killed 17 people and wounded more than 140 a day earlier. The bombing on Thursday near the central market of Vladikavkaz, the capital of the North Ossetia republic, was the most serious attack in Russia since the March subway bombings in Moscow that killed 40 people. Russia's ethnically diverse North Caucasus region has been gripped by violence stemming from two separatist wars in Chechnya and fueled by poverty, rampant official corruption and alleged extrajudicial killings, kidnappings and torture by law enforcement officials.

MEXICO: Killings mark deadliest border city toll since 2008

Gunmen killed 25 people in a series of drug-gang attacks in Ciudad Juárez, marking the deadliest day in more than two years for the Mexican border city, authorities said Friday. Thursday's toll included 15 people killed when attackers stormed four homes in three hours, said Arturo Sandoval, a spokesman for the attorney general's office of Chihuahua state, where Ciudad Juárez is located. Sandoval said it was the highest single-day murder toll in the city across from El Paso, Texas, since March 2008. Ciudad Juárez, population 1.3 million, has become one of the world's most dangerous cities amid a turf war between the Sinaloa and Juárez cartels. More than 2,100 people have been killed this year, on pace to surpass the previous high of 2,700 set last year.

WORLDWIDE: Muslims celebrate end of Ramadan

Far from the din and controversy roiling interfaith relations in the West, Muslims worldwide thronged mosques, cafes and parks Friday in a solemn and joyful end to the fasting month of Ramadan. Authorities increased security in some countries due to fears that violence could intrude on the celebrations, but for most Muslims it was a day of peace, family and food. During Ramadan, the faithful are supposed to abstain from food, drink, smoking and sex in a dawn-to-dusk period of self-sacrifice to commemorate the revelation of the Quran to the Prophet Muhammad. The three-day Eid ul-Fitr festival celebrates the end of that period.