WORLD IN BRIEF: Rice: No peace deal soon

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on a Mideast trip meant to secure the modest gains from a year of U.S.-sponsored talks between Israel and one part of the fractured Palestinian leadership, conceded Thursday that an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal by a year-end deadline is no longer possible. Separately, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni warned U.S. President-elect Barack Obama not to talk to Iran just yet because such dialogue could project “weakness.” And Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad congratulated Obama on his election, the first time an Iranian leader has offered such wishes to a U.S. president-elect since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

‘Face reality,’ Beijing tells Dalai Lama

A senior Chinese official who met this week with representatives of the Dalai Lama ruled out giving Tibet the kind of autonomy that Beijing grants Hong Kong, saying the Tibetan spiritual leader should “face reality.” The remarks by Du Qinglin, head of a government department in charge of the talks, were the first public comment by China since the two days of discussions ended Wednesday.

Storm gains power, heads to Caymans

Tropical Storm Paloma dumped rain on the remote Nicaragua-Honduras border Thursday before strengthening on its way to the Cayman Islands and Cuba. The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said the storm could make landfall over Cuba as a hurricane by Sunday, but warned Jamaica to also monitor its progress.

Foes say Mugabe targets them again

The opposition Movement for Democratic Change said hopes for a power-sharing government in Zimbabwe are doomed because President Robert Mugabe’s party has unleashed a new wave of violence against opposition supporters amid a two-month stalemate over allocating Cabinet posts. Southern African leaders are due to meet Sunday to discuss the breakdown of Zimbabwe’s power-sharing deal, which was signed in mid-September.

Explosion in restive region kills 11

An explosion hit a minibus unloading passengers in the capital of Russia’s North Ossetia province Thursday, killing 11 people in what officials called a terrorist attack. Prosecutors said the blast may have been set off by a female suicide bomber. The explosion was the deadliest in years in North Ossetia, which borders war-scarred Chechnya as well as Georgia’s breakaway South Ossetia region, the focus of the August war between Russia and Georgia.

Diplomat’s heroism in WWII wins honor

A Chinese diplomat who saved thousands of Jews from the Holocaust has been posthumously honored in the Austrian capital. Feng Shan Ho was Chinese consul-general in Vienna from 1938-1940 and issued visas to Austrian Jews, enabling them to escape the Nazis. He died in San Francisco in 1997 at the age of 96, before his deeds were recognized.

Pope urges amity, freedom of worship

Pope Benedict XVI urged Muslims and Christians to overcome misunderstandings and pressed for greater freedom of worship for non-Muslims in the Islamic world as a three-day conference of Muslim and Christian clergy and scholars wrapped up Thursday at the Vatican. “The discrimination and violence which even today religious people experience throughout the world, and the often-violent persecutions to which they are subject, represent unacceptable and unjustifiable acts,” the pope said.

Court finds Serb guilty in massacre

Bosnia’s top war-crimes court found Bosnian Serb military policeman Mladen Blagojevic guilty of war crimes during the 1995 Bosnian Serb attack on Srebrenica, during which 8,000 Muslim men and boys were massacred, and sentenced him to seven years in prison Thursday. Three others accused of crimes against humanity were acquitted.