AP - U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday he saw and heard evidence that the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy is taking hold in critical Kandahar province.

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?

AFP - President Barack Obama will next week make a new bid to stem ebbing political support over the slowing economic recovery, with visits to the struggling Midwest and a formal White House news conference.

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 - African Union peacekeepers say they have established nine new bases in Somalia's capital over the last several months.

AP - A scientist has been detained at the Miami International Airport after screeners spotted a metal canister in his luggage that looked like a pipe bomb, prompting an evacuation, a government official said.

Reuters - U.S. stocks opened higher on Friday after a better-than-expected jobs report lifted investor optimism on the economy.

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.

AFP - Brazil's state-run oil company Petrobras on Friday unveiled a huge share offering which could raise 64 billion dollars to help finance new exploration projects in the country.

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.

AFP - Azerbaijan will double gas exports to Russia in 2011 and increase them further from 2012, the countries said on Friday in a move that could undercut Europe's drive to secure Central Asian supplies.

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.

AP - Suicide bombings targeting religious minorities killed at least 44 people in Pakistan on Friday, sharply driving up the toll of sectarian assaults in a country already battered by massive flooding.

AP - A weakened Hurricane Earl delivered only a glancing blow to North Carolina's Outer Banks early Friday on its way up the East Coast, flooding roads on the narrow vacation islands and knocking out power but staying farther offshore than feared. There were no immediate reports of any injuries.

AP - Fidel Castro dusted off his full military uniform for the first time since stepping down as president four years ago, a symbolic act in a communist country where little signals often carry enormous significance.

Reuters - Chinese officials have ordered state-owned companies to meet with investment bankers to explore potential options to block BHP Billiton's $39 billion bid for Canada's Potash Corp, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter.

AP - A Portuguese court found six men and one woman guilty Friday of crimes relating to child sex abuse in a major trial that lasted nearly six years, a prosecution lawyer said.

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

AP - A Turkish Cypriot businessman who voluntarily returned to Britain after 17 years to face fraud charges learned Friday that he will have to wait more than a year for the trial he insists will vindicate him.

AP - The Campbell Soup Co. reported a larger fourth-quarter net income Friday, a time when the temperature rises and its soup sales traditionally drop.

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.

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.

AP - Mom is neutral. Everyone else has an opinion.

AP - Soldiers killed at least 25 suspected cartel members Thursday in a raid and gunbattle in a Mexican state near the U.S. border that has become one of the most dangerous battlegrounds in the country's drug war.

AFP - Retail sales across the 16 nations sharing the euro rose by a modest 0.1 percent in July, after a 0.2 percent increase in June, with drops in Germany and Spain, European Union data showed on Friday.

AP - Actor Paul Hogan, star of the "Crocodile Dundee" movie trilogy, has been cleared to return home to the United States after he was barred last month from leaving Australia because of a disputed tax bill, his lawyer said Friday.

AP - Former Dodger CEO Jamie McCourt was more concerned with protecting the couple's luxurious homes than dealing with baseball matters and didn't want to take the risk associated with buying one of baseball's most storied franchises six years ago, her estranged husband said.

AP - Like many other vets, Don Fosburg marked the anniversary of World War II's end reflecting on a victory dearly earned and on men who helped make that happen but never came home.

AP - With less than two weeks before Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn awards a lucrative, first-of-its-kind contract for the private management of the state's $2 billion-a-year lottery, some are criticizing the selection process as too secretive and questioning whether it favors one powerful bidder.