AP - Mexican soldiers killed at least 30 suspected cartel members in two shootouts near the U.S. border in a region that has become one of biggest battlegrounds in the country's drug war, authorities said Friday.

Reuters - Wall Street was set to close out its best week in six on Friday after recent economic data, including a stronger-than-expected jobs report, showed the U.S. economy may be in better shape than thought.

AP - The new top commander in Afghanistan is talking up a weapon that has been kept in the shadows for years — special operations missions to kill or capture key insurgents — to try to convince skeptics the war can be won.

AP - A suicide bombing claimed by the Pakistani Taliban killed at least 43 Shiite Muslims at a procession in southwest Pakistan on Friday. The assault sharply drove up the toll of sectarian assaults in a country battered by massive flooding.

AP - Seven people were convicted of child sex abuse in Portugal on Friday in a major trial that lasted nearly six years and shocked the country.

AP - A thumbnail-sized clam blamed for clouding the azure bays of Lake Tahoe high in the Sierra Nevada has now turned up in a mountain-ringed Adirondack lake renowned for its limpid, spring-fed waters.

AP - Hezbollah's leader said Friday he will not respond to a U.N.-appointed prosecutor's demand for the group to hand over all information relevant to the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

AP - Investigators on Friday released a scientist detained at Miami International Airport after screeners spotted a metal canister in his luggage that looked like a pipe bomb, prompting an evacuation, a senior law enforcement official.

Reuters - President Barack Obama will outline new measures next week to boost the U.S. economy after August data on Friday showed again that jobs -- the central issue in November elections -- were being created too slowly.

AP - Hurricane Earl sideswiped North Carolina's Outer Banks early Friday, flooding the vacation islands but causing no injuries and only modest damage, then took aim at New England as a weaker but still dangerous storm.

AP - When Ruth Garcia's twins are born in two months, they'll have all the rights of U.S. citizens. They and their six brothers and sisters will be able to vote, apply for federal student loans and even run for president.

Time.com - Nine weeks before the midterm elections, Barack Obama finds himself on the wrong side of the polls. Where did all that adoration go -- and is a Republican sweep next?

AP - Is the global economy out of the woods? Two years after near-meltdown, with the U.S. looking sluggish, equity markets groggy and Europeans fighting a debt crisis, experts gathered in Italy offered a generally gloomy outlook — especially for the United States and much of the industrialized world.

AFP - World tourism rebounded strongly this year from the global financial crisis, led by Asia and the Middle East, the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) said Friday.

AP - President Barack Obama welcomed news Friday of better-than-expected private sector job growth. But with the unemployment rate ticking upward nevertheless, he said he'd roll out new plans next week to spur the economy.

AP - Whether or not she emerges as winner following recent elections, Australia's first woman prime minister will have led the nation's oldest political party to one of the lowest points in its 119-year history.

Reuters - U.S. employment fell for a third straight month in August, but the drop was far less than expected and private hiring surprised on the upside, easing pressure on the Federal Reserve to prop up economic growth.

Reuters - Campbell Soup Co posted lower-than-expected quarterly sales and forecast sales growth for the new fiscal year below its long-term target as the world's largest soup company grapples with a weak economy.

AP - Unlike the blast that led to the massive BP spill, the latest oil platform fire in the Gulf of Mexico killed no one and sent no crude gushing into the water.

AP - Pro-government militiamen attacked the home of an Iranian opposition leader with homemade bombs and beat one of his bodyguards unconscious, an opposition website reported, in an apparent attempt to keep him from attending a key rally on Friday.

AP - U.S. Agriculture Department employees worked full-time at two Iowa egg farms at the center of a salmonella outbreak and massive recall, but two former workers said they ignored complaints about conditions at one site.