Reuters - Americans Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar and Finland's former president Martti Ahtisaari are among late tips to win the Nobel Peace Prize, though there is no clear favorite, Norwegian NRK television reported on Thursday.

Reuters - Trailing in opinion polls, Republican presidential nominee John McCain pressed his effort to raise doubts about Barack Obama's character on Thursday with a fresh attack on his Democratic rival's contacts with a former radical who became a college professor.

Reuters - Warren Buffett has overtaken Bill Gates to become the richest American in the Forbes 400 list, Bloomberg said, citing a recalculated list to be published later this month.

Reuters - The United States and North Korea are near a compromise to save a crumbling nuclear deal, news reports said on Friday, while Japan said it could accept rewarding the North by taking it off a U.S. terrorism blacklist.

Reuters - Democrat Barack Obama has opened a 5-point lead over Republican rival John McCain in the White House race and expanded his support among women voters, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released Friday.

Reuters - Europe joined Asia's panic selling in stocks on Friday, knocking the benchmark world equity index to a 5-year trough, while the low-yielding yen jumped as fears grew that efforts by policymakers are insufficient to contain the global financial crisis.

Reuters - The U.S. government is weighing guaranteeing billions of dollars in bank debt and temporarily insuring al U.S. bank deposits, in a bid to unfreeze bank lending and staunch massive losses in equity markets, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

Reuters - The world's economic powers faced huge pressure on Friday to devise drastic remedies to revive the banking system and end panic selling in global financial markets.

AP - A World War II-era air traffic network that often forces planes to take longer, zigzagging routes is costing U.S. airlines billions of dollars in wasted fuel while an upgrade to a satellite-based system has languished in the planning stages for more than a decade.

AP - A newspaper report Thursday said tens of thousands of eligible voters have been removed from rolls or blocked from registering in at least six swing states. Election officials lined up to defend their registration procedures and said they had done nothing wrong.

AP - Pat Burrell and Chase Utley cleared the wall with room to spare. Manny Ramirez's drive fell just short and stayed in the park.

AP - We've already seen the baby pictures — now see the photo of Angelina Jolie apparently breastfeeding on the cover of W magazine.

AP - Scientists have confirmed the second case of a "virgin birth" in a shark.

AP - The Bush administration is nearing a decision to remove North Korea from a terrorism blacklist and may do so as early as Friday in a bid to salvage faltering nuclear disarmament talks, The Associated Press has learned.

AP - The steel mills and coal mines of western Pennsylvania helped fuel the nation's economic engine. Today, old factory shells and boarded-up storefronts stand as bleak reminders of those once-prosperous times.