AP - France and Afghanistan agree NATO should speed up by a year its timetable for handing all combat operations to Afghan forces in 2013, President Nicolas Sarkozy said Friday, raising new questions about the unity of the Western military alliance.
Reuters - Fighting sanctions with sanctions in a test of strength with the West over its nuclear ambitions, Iran warned on Friday it may halt oil exports to Europe next week in a move calculated to hurt ailing European economies.
Reuters - Facebook's initial public offering is likely to set a new standard for how low investment banks are willing to go on advisory fees to win big business.
Reuters - Security forces killed 37 people in Syria on Friday, activists and residents said, as people in Homs mourned 14 members of a family they said were slain by militiamen in one of the worst sectarian attacks in a revolt against President Bashar al-Assad.
AP - The defense lawyer for former dictator Efrain Rios Montt said Friday that a judge violated due process when she issued unprecedented genocide charges against Rios Montt for conduct during Guatemala's bloody civil war.
AP - Federal and state law enforcement officials announced Friday they have launched a fraud-fighting unit, starting with 55 prosecutors and investigators, to root out wrongdoing in the market for residential mortgage-backed securities.
AP - Police in Senegal fired tear gas in a square where hundreds have been protesting the constitutional court's decision to allow President Abdoulaye Wade to run for a third term in next month's election.
Reuters - The Obama administration on Friday expanded its main foreclosure prevention program and pushed to open it up to loans backed by mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a move that could meet resistance from their regulator.
AP - President Barack Obama fired a warning at the nation's colleges and universities on Friday, threatening to strip their federal aid if they "jack up tuition" every year and to give the money instead to schools showing restraint and value.
AP - Ron Paul braved Maine's snow and ice Friday in a quest to pick up delegates, vowing he and his loyal band of supporters would be a factor in the Republican nominating contest for weeks to come.
Reuters - Stocks trimmed losses to end little changed on Friday, as investors saw dips in the market as an opportunity to buy into what has been a strong first month of 2012.
Reuters - Vice President Joe Biden took a rare public swipe at Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich on Friday, criticizing them for comments about the poor and about the federal government's automaker bailout.
AP - Oil prices moved in a narrow range Friday, as Iran prepared to consider a ban on crude sales to European Union countries. Here's how energy contracts traded.
AP - President Barack Obama rallied House Democrats for an election-year fight, urging them to work with Republicans if they show some willingness to put politics aside but telling the rank and file to call them out if they stand in the way.
AP - Muslim Brotherhood supporters and secular protesters hurled bottles and rocks at each other and got into fistfights in Cairo's Tahrir Square on Friday as their political differences boiled over at a rally by tens of thousands marking an anniversary in the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak.
Reuters - Wal-Mart Stores Inc said on Friday that its U.S. marketing team would now work under the leadership of its chief merchandising officer rather than as a separate group as the world's largest retailer works on improving its communication with shoppers.
AP - Federal and state law enforcement officials announced Friday they have launched a fraud-fighting unit, starting with 55 prosecutors and investigators, to root out wrongdoing in the market for residential mortgage-backed securities.
Reuters - A serial thief nicknamed the "Barefoot Bandit" was sentenced on Friday in Seattle to 6-1/2 years in prison for his guilty plea to federal charges stemming from a sensational, two-year crime spree as a sometimes-shoeless teenage runaway.
AP - One of three siblings who was part of a multistate crime spree and nationwide manhunt planned to escape from a Colorado jail with his sister, telling the FBI in a letter that he had enjoyed his stay, authorities said in a document released Friday.
Reuters - Even as President Barack Obama is calling for more assistance for struggling mortgage borrowers, major banks are looking forward to spending less to handle problem home loans.
Reuters - A judge ordered Joshua Komisarjevsky to be executed this summer for the 2007 murders of a mother and her two daughters during a brutal home invasion in Connecticut, saying on Friday that he committed a crime of "unimaginable horror."
Reuters - French troops will start handing over security to the Afghan army in March and focus on training until pulling out of Afghanistan completely at the end of 2013, President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Friday.
AP - Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney pitched their ideas for reforming immigration law and pushing democracy into Cuba and across Latin America as the Republican presidential candidates vied for Hispanic votes Friday, entering the final, frenzied weekend before Florida's primary.
The Christian Science Monitor - A leading Syrian opposition figure says that as rebels become increasingly militarized, it is critical that disparate armed groups be integrated with the political opposition so that they are working in concert.
AP - A federal judge on Friday sentenced "Barefoot Bandit" Colton Harris-Moore to 6 1/2 years in prison for his infamous two-year, international crime spree of break-ins, and boat and plane thefts that ended in 2010.
Reuters - In an audio tape posted on the Internet, the purported leader of the violent Nigerian Islamist sect Boko Haram threatened to kill more security personnel and kidnap their families, and accused U.S. President Barack Obama of waging war on Islam.
Reuters - Fitch downgraded the sovereign credit ratings of Belgium, Cyprus, Italy, Slovenia and Spain on Friday, indicating there was a 1-in-2 chance of further cuts in the next two years.
Reuters - Greece expects to conclude difficult debt talks with private creditors within days and negotiations with the EU and the IMF on a new bailout deal by the middle of next week, Prime Minister Lucas Papademos told Reuters on Friday.
AP - California air regulators passed sweeping auto emission standards Friday that include a mandate to have 1.4 million electric and hybrid vehicles on state roads by 2025.
Reuters - The U.S. Secret Service is investigating the origins of a photo on an Arizona police officer's Facebook page that shows a group of armed youths posing in the desert with what appears to be a bullet-ridden image of President Barack Obama on a T-shirt.
AP - The two teens had a detailed plot, blueprints of the school and security systems, but no explosives. They had hours of flight simulator training on a home computer and a plan to flee the country, but no plane.
AP - Because Cyrano weighs more than 20 pounds, amputating his cancer-weakened leg was out of the question. So the tubby tabby's owners turned to doctors and engineers at North Carolina State University to get him back into mice-catching trim.