Universal Orlando Resort opened its new, richly detailed Harry Potter-themed area to media and other travel industry insiders on Wednesday night.

The new park zone, called The Wizarding World of Harry Potter-Diagon Alley, will delight fans of the hit book and movie series with a marquee ride, Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts.

Amazon unveiled its first smartphone ever on Wednesday, a device that assists shoppers by using six cameras that can make sense of its user's face and the world around it.

The phone's most significant feature, called "Firefly," employs audio and object recognition technology to identify products and present the user with ways to purchase the items through Amazon. Users can simply snap a photo of a book, for instance, and Firefly will offer up its title and author, give more information about it and provide ways to buy it.

Building work in quake-damaged Christchurch helped drive New Zealand's economy to its fastest rate of growth in more than six years, according to figures released Thursday.

Government agency Statistics New Zealand said the economy grew 3.8 percent in the first quarter from the same quarter a year ago.

An international rights group says Kurdish authorities ruling three enclaves in northeastern Syria have committed abuses, included arbitrary arrests of political opponents.

Human Rights Watch says the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or PYD, has abused its opponents in detention, and has failed to address abductions and unresolved killings in areas it controls.

Afghan officials say three Taliban suicide bombers targeted NATO fuel trucks at the border with Pakistan, setting off a gunbattle with police guards.

A spokesman for the border police in eastern Nangarhar province, Idris Momand, says the attack took place early on Thursday at the parking lot of the NATO outpost near the Torkham border crossing, a key supply route for the alliance.

Argentina's government has finally agreed to try to negotiate a payment plan for the $1.5 billion in bad debts and interest it owes to the U.S. hedge funds it demonizes as "vultures."

But before both sides sit down for talks in New York next week, President Cristina Fernandez wants everyone to know she still has some cards to play.

An 89-year-old Philadelphia man was ordered held without bail Wednesday on a German arrest warrant charging him with aiding and abetting the killing of 216,000 Jewish men, women and children while he was a guard at the Auschwitz death camp.

The man, retired toolmaker Johann "Hans" Breyer, was arrested by U.S. authorities Tuesday night. Breyer spent the night in custody and appeared frail during a detention hearing in federal court, wearing an olive green prison jumpsuit and carrying a cane.

Israel further tightened its grip on the West Bank Wednesday, arresting another 65 people, as Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas lashed out at those behind the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers.

As the hunt for the youths entered its sixth day, there was no let-up in Israel's drive to deal a crushing blow to the West Bank infrastructure of Islamist movement Hamas, which it has blamed for the kidnapping.

Borussia Dortmund announced that midfielder Ilkay Gundogan has undergone a back operation after missing most of last season through injury and should be able to make his comeback in three months.

Dortmund said on Wednesday that Gundogan, whose injury problems ruled him out of Germany's World Cup campaign, had "minimally invasive" surgery in Munich this week.

Ihor Lakatosh struggles to describe his life before the surgeries, when his severe burns went untreated for years in his native Ukraine, leaving him with one arm fused to his body, unable to walk and abandoned by his mother.

The 11-year-old boy, however, smiles widely and repeatedly makes the sign of the cross when he describes how he feels now, after a series of surgeries and physical therapy at a Boston charity hospital. "Thank you I can walk. Thank you I can walk. Thank you Lord, I can walk," he said recently through an interpreter.