Los Angeles - Firefighters battled a raging wildfire near the celebrity hideaway of Montecito Friday after more than 100 houses were destroyed by the wind-driven flames overnight.

The fire injured 13 people and forced residents from over 5,400 home to evacuate. Several college buildings were also destroyed in the inferno, including a dormitory and several laboratories. It was the worst fire of the current season in terms of property damage.

New Delhi - A moon impact probe launched from India's first lunar spacecraft successfully landed on the lunar surface Friday, an official of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) said.

The 35-kilogram probe, with the Indian flag painted on its sides, crash-landed at the Shackleton crater near the moon's south pole at 8:31 pm (1501 GMT).

"We have planted the moon probe successfully," ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair said at a press briefing.

Nice, France - If the United States and Russia cannot solve the row over their respective plans to site missiles in Europe and agree a new security treaty, Europe should do it for them.

That, at least, was the message French President Nicolas Sarkozy gave on Friday in his capacity as current holder of the European Union's rotating presidency.

"There should be no deployment in any enclave until we have discussed the new geo-political terms for pan-European security ... until then, please let's not talk about the deployment of missile shields, which don't bring security and which complicate things," Sarkozy said in a double-barrelled blast at Russia and the US.

Nice, France - If the United States and Russia cannot solve the row over their respective plans to site missiles in Europe and agree a new security treaty, Europe should do it for them.

That, at least, was the message French President Nicolas Sarkozy gave on Friday in his capacity as current holder of the European Union's rotating presidency.

Baghdad - Fiery Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called on his supporters Friday to pray and hold a peaceful demonstration against the US-Iraqi security pact in Baghdad next week.

"I hope that all Muslims in the Muslim and Arab worlds would support the demonstration morally by joining unified prayers in their countries," he said.

Baghdad - A kind of adhesive bomb has added a new dimension of terror to everyday life in Iraq.

Known by a variety of names - sticky bomb, magnetic bomb or glued bomb - the explosives are generally planted on a car's undercarriage and then detonated remotely. As their use surges, it's more and more common to see Iraqis checking the undersides of their vehicles lest they become the latest victim of this threat.

Hardly a day passes in Iraq without an explosion of a sticky device targeting an official, bus or private vehicle.