Reuters - President Barack Obama accused Republicans on Friday of holding the middle class hostage as he defended his efforts to stimulate the sluggish economy and try to reverse Democrats' grim election prospects.

AP - Clashes between police and alleged militants left 10 more people dead Friday in Russia's volatile North Caucasus, even as stunned residents laid flowers in a square where a suicide car bombing killed 17 people and wounded more than 140 only a day ago.

AP - Fidel Castro says his comments about Cuba's communist economic model were misinterpreted by a visiting American journalist.

AFP - In far northeastern Badakhshan province, thousands of people gathered outside a small NATO base in the capital Fayzabad, where they threw rocks at the gate and burned an American flag, police said.

AP - President Barack Obama insisted Friday that the U.S. economy is digging itself out of the deepest recession in decades but conceded that "progress has been painfully slow" and many voters in November's elections may blame him.

AP - In the past, the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks was marked by somber reflection and a call to unity, devoid of politics. No more.

AP - Fire crews tried to douse the remnants of an enormous blaze and account for the residents of dozens of homes Friday after a gas line ruptured and an explosion ripped through in a neighborhood near San Francisco, killing at least four people and likely more.

AP - A two-stone ring with a stunning 10.95-carat triangular-shaped blue diamond purchased by a European businessman nearly 40 years ago as a gift to his wife is headed to the auction block.

AP - A federal judge said she will issue an order to halt the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, after she declared the ban on openly gay service members unconstitutional.

AP - Iran's president intervened to secure the release of Sarah Shourd, one of three Americans jailed for more than 13 months, in part because of her gender, a news agency reported Friday.

AP - Iran's president intervened to secure the release of Sarah Shourd, one of three Americans jailed for more than 13 months, in part because of her gender, a news agency reported Friday.

Reuters - Wholesale inventories surged the most in two years in July, adding to signs that economic growth in the third quarter of the year may prove a bit stronger than many forecasters had expected.

AP - Fire crews held a wildfire outside of Boulder at bay Friday, allowing some 2,000 evacuees to return home with a warning to be prepared to flee again.

AFP - US President Barack Obama said Friday the "hole" left by the worst recession in decades was "huge" and admitted the recovery had been "painfully slow," but vowed his policies were working.

AP - Hundreds of sex abuse victims have come forward in Belgium with harrowing accounts of molestation by Catholic clergy that reportedly led to at least 13 suicides and affected children as young as two, a special commission said Friday.

AFP - Teams from the Central African Republic's electoral commission have begun deploying throughout the country to prepare for a census that will begin on September 22, the organisation announced Friday.

AP - President Barack Obama says that if voters weigh his economic policies against those of Republicans, then "the Democrats will do very well" in November.

AFP - US President Barack Obama on Friday named Austan Goolsbee, an economics professor currently working in his administration, to chair the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA).

AP - President Barack Obama says his entire economic agenda is designed to stimulate growth and create jobs, despite his administration's reluctance to call his new proposals a "stimulus plan."

AP - Patients jammed rudimentary clinics and health workers in surgical masks sprayed anti-bacterial solution on muddy paths as the government struggled to contain a cholera epidemic that has killed nearly 800 Nigerians in two months.

AP - Authorities in Austin scaled back the search for a missing motorist Friday, a day after a central Texas official said hope was fading that another person swept away by floodwaters from the remnants of Tropical Storm Hermine would be found alive.

AP - Inventories held by wholesalers surged in July by the largest amount in two years while sales rebounded after two straight declines.

AP - Minutes after a woman was suspended from her job at a Kraft Foods Inc. plant and was escorted out, she returned with a handgun and opened fire, killing two people and critically injuring a third before being taken into custody, police said.

AP - As thousands of Afghans protested a tiny Florida church's plan to burn the Muslim holy book, the church's pastor said he won't follow through with the burning if he's able to meet Saturday with the organizers behind a mosque planned near ground zero in New York.

AP - A new mosque recently opened in this well-to-do suburb of Philadelphia, but not many people noticed.

AP - Convicted killer Cal Coburn Brown was executed early Friday by lethal injection for the rape, torture and murder of a Seattle-area woman, after delivering a statement complaining he was treated unfairly by the legal system.

AP - President Barack Obama has chosen one of his longtime economic advisers, Austan Goolsbee, to be the chairman of his Council of Economic Advisers, a White House official said.

AP - After three nights of violent protests, calm mainly prevailed over a gritty neighborhood where police fatally shot an illegal immigrant from Guatemala who was menacing officers with a knife.