AFP - Pope Benedict XVI warned Christian leaders Friday the push to unite Christian churches was at a "critical juncture", as Anglicans met to avert a schism over the ordination of women and gays.

AP - Airlines are being told to stay away from Beijing's airport during the opening ceremony of the Olympics and further scrutiny is being applied to foreign entertainers in the latest security moves ahead of next month's games.

Reuters - World powers should heed the worries of African and Arab states in responding to genocide charges against Sudan's president, China's envoy on Darfur said, warning that the court steps could imperil peace efforts.

AP - Hurricane Elida weakened to a Category 1 storm off Mexico on Thursday, while Tropical Storm Fausto continued to gain strength.

AP - Thousands of Israelis prayed and cried at funerals Thursday for two soldiers whose return from Lebanon in black coffins touched off a nationwide wave of anguish.

AFP - Sprinter Dwain Chambers will discover on Friday if he can compete in next month's Beijing Olympics as the High Court prepapres to give its ruling over his bid to get a temporary injunction against his lifetime Olympic ban.

AP - Top diplomats from the U.S. and North Korea will meet next week along with their counterparts from regional nuclear talks, a South Korean official said Friday, the highest level of contact between the countries amid recent progress on Pyongyang's disarmament.

AP - Iraq's government hopes to bring the entire country under its security control by year's end. But one critical area stands in the way: the western province of Anbar, where the Sunni insurgency was born and later received its first blows from a civil uprising.

AP - Salim Hamdan is a small player with a big role. A former driver for Osama bin Laden, he is about to become the first Guantanamo prisoner to be tried for war crimes in a major test of the U.S. system for prosecuting alleged terrorists.

AP - Inferior electrical work by private contractors on U.S. military bases in Iraq is more widespread than the Pentagon has acknowledged, according to a published report.

AP - Pope Benedict XVI on Friday urged religious leaders of all kinds to unite against those who use faith to divide communities — an apparent reference to terrorism in the name of religion.

Reuters - Pope Benedict on Thursday told a huge gathering of young people that they were inheriting a planet whose resources had been scarred and squandered to fuel insatiable consumption.

Reuters - Talks to resolve Zimbabwe's political crisis have stalled after opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai refused to sign a framework for negotiations, his party said on Thursday.