Reuters - Volunteers worked on Friday to fortify levees strained by the worst Midwest flooding in 15 years as the swollen Mississippi River moved toward an expected weekend crest after causing huge losses.

AP - Doctors who treat the kinds of knee and leg injuries that ended Tiger Woods' victorious season have one word for his U.S. Open victory — remarkable.

AP - Scientists believe NASA's Phoenix Mars lander exposed bits of ice while recently digging a trench in the soil of the Martian arctic, the mission's principal investigator said Thursday.

AP - Jamie Lynn Spears gave birth to a baby girl Thursday morning at a south Mississippi hospital, according to a friend of the Spears family. The friend, who asked not to be identified because the family had not yet announced the baby's birth, told The Associated Press that the baby was named Maddie Briann and weighed 7 pounds, 11 ounces.

AP - Juli Parks didn't worry when water began creeping up the levee that shields this town of about 750 from the Mississippi River — not even when volunteers began piling on sandbags.

AP - After decades of denials, the Chinese have acknowledged burying an American prisoner of war in China, telling the U.S. that a teenage soldier captured in the Korean War died a week after he "became mentally ill," according to documents provided to The Associated Press.

AP - Two former Bear Stearns hedge fund managers were hauled into jail Thursday and charged with lying to investors about the collapse of the subprime mortgage market, perhaps signaling the start of a wave of prosecutions arising from the housing meltdown.

AP - China raised prices for fuel by as much as 18 percent on Friday in a move intended to cool the nation's surging energy consumption.

AP - Police held back thousands of protesters attempting Friday to punch through a cordon around Thailand's government offices, which demonstrators vowed to peacefully besiege until the prime minister resigns.

AP - For months the debate over whether telecommunications companies should face lawsuits for cooperating with the government's warrantless wiretapping program has been the sticking point for updating a surveillance law.

AP - Barack Obama faced two critical questions: where to play and how to pay. To answer both, the Democrat reversed course to become the first candidate to reject $85 million in public money for the general election.

AFP - The Zimbabwe opposition's number two was charged with subverting government on Thursday and faces a potential death penalty, as more violence was reported before next week's presidential run-off.

AFP - A fragile truce came into force in the Gaza Strip on Thursday amid scepticism over how long the Egyptian-brokered deal between Israel and the Islamist Hamas movement would hold.

Reuters - Americans cut down on the number of miles they drove for the sixth straight month in April, resulting in the biggest six-month decline since the oil shock of the 1979-80 Iranian revolution, new government data shows.

Reuters - The world has recognized that violence against women during conflicts affects nations' security and stability, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the U.N. Security Council on Thursday.