AP - Finally, China had an act of nature it could celebrate. After an Olympic year of freakish natural disasters, crowds of Chinese watched a total solar eclipse along the country's ancient Silk Road on Friday, one week before the start of the Summer Games in Beijing.

AP - A divided Federal Communications Commission has ruled that Comcast Corp. violated federal policy when it blocked Internet traffic for some subscribers and has ordered the cable giant to change the way it manages its network.

AP - Republican presidential candidate John McCain is warning an influential black organization that rival Barack Obama's ideas are not always as impressive as his rhetoric.

AP - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Friday pushed for a windfall profits tax to fund $1,000 emergency rebate checks for consumers besieged by high energy costs, a counter to Republican rival John McCain's call for more offshore drilling in coastal states like Florida.

AP - An Army scientist committed suicide before federal prosecutors could charge him with mailing anthrax-laced letters in the weeks following the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Authorities said Friday the letters may have been part of a warped plan to test his vaccine for the deadly poison.

AP - Lawmakers sped for the exits Friday as Congress was to begin a five-week recess after a summer session noteworthy for bitter partisanship and paralysis on the issue topmost in the minds of many voters: the cost of gasoline.

AP - General Motors Corp. posted a $15.5 billion second-quarter loss Friday, the third-worst quarterly performance in the company's nearly 100-year history.

AP - The nation's unemployment rate climbed to a four-year high of 5.7 percent in July as employers cut 51,000 jobs, dashing the hopes of an influx of young people looking for summer work.

AFP - Japan's embattled Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda was reshuffling his cabinet on Friday in a last-ditch bid to revive waning public support as elections loom against a rising opposition.

AFP - Insurgent attacks in Afghanistan have hit record highs this year with hundreds of civilians killed, including 19 aid workers, and spreading insecurity cutting back relief work, aid groups said Friday.

Reuters - Seven years after the September 11 attacks, the Pentagon on Thursday officially named "the long war" against global extremism as its top priority and pledged to avert any conventional military threat from China or Russia through dialogue.

Reuters - Chinese President Hu Jintao said his country would stand by pledges made when it was awarded the Olympics as Games officials deflected fire over Internet censorship on Friday by lifting restrictions.

Reuters - A man sleeping on a Greyhound bus as it rolled across the Canadian Prairies was killed and decapitated by his seatmate as horrified passengers fled to safety in the night, witnesses and police said on Thursday.

Reuters - Republican White House hopeful John McCain accused Democrat Barack Obama on Thursday of playing racial politics in some of the most biting back-and-forth of the presidential campaign.