AFP - Gerard Houllier was officially introduced as Aston Villa manager on Friday but the French coach does not expect to start working with the team for at least another week.

AFP - French second division side Metz on Friday awarded a professional contract to defender Yi Teng, making him the first Chinese footballer to turn professional after being trained in Europe.

AP - For almost a decade, the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks was marked by somber reflection and a call to unity, devoid of politics. Not this time.

Reuters - President Barack Obama accused Republicans on Friday of holding the middle class hostage as he defended his efforts to stimulate the sluggish economy and try to reverse Democrats' grim election prospects.

AP - Juan Mari Bras, an elder statesman of Puerto Rico's independence movement who gave up U.S. citizenship in an act that inspired hundreds of other activists, died Friday. He was 82.

AP - Fidel Castro says his comments about Cuba's communist economic model were misinterpreted by a visiting American journalist.

AP - Fire crews tried to douse the remnants of an enormous blaze and account for the residents of dozens of homes Friday after a gas line ruptured and an explosion ripped through in a neighborhood near San Francisco, killing at least four people and likely more.

AP - Search teams have recovered the bodies of two men missing in Texas floodwaters, bringing the death toll caused by the remnants of Tropical Storm Hermine (hur-MEEN') to six.

AP - President Barack Obama insisted Friday that the U.S. economy is digging itself out of the deepest recession in decades but conceded that "progress has been painfully slow" and many voters in November's elections may blame him.

AP - A federal judge said she will issue an order to halt the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, after she declared the ban on openly gay service members unconstitutional.

AP - Iran's president intervened to secure the release of Sarah Shourd, one of three Americans jailed for more than 13 months, in part because of her gender, a news agency reported Friday.

AP - Iran's president intervened to secure the release of Sarah Shourd, one of three Americans jailed for more than 13 months, in part because of her gender, a news agency reported Friday.

Reuters - Wholesale inventories surged the most in two years in July, adding to signs that economic growth in the third quarter of the year may prove a bit stronger than many forecasters had expected.

AP - Far, far away from a Chilean mine where 33 trapped men struggle to cope as they await rescue, 50 Spanish miners are also deep in the earth's bowels — but by their own choice.

AP - Fire crews held a wildfire outside of Boulder at bay Friday, allowing some 2,000 evacuees to return home with a warning to be prepared to flee again.

AFP - US President Barack Obama said Friday the "hole" left by the worst recession in decades was "huge" and admitted the recovery had been "painfully slow," but vowed his policies were working.

AP - Hundreds of sex abuse victims have come forward in Belgium with harrowing accounts of molestation by Catholic clergy that reportedly led to at least 13 suicides and affected children as young as two, a special commission said Friday.

AP - President Barack Obama says that if voters weigh his economic policies against those of Republicans, then "the Democrats will do very well" in November.

AFP - US President Barack Obama on Friday named Austan Goolsbee, an economics professor currently working in his administration, to chair the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA).

AP - President Barack Obama says his entire economic agenda is designed to stimulate growth and create jobs, despite his administration's reluctance to call his new proposals a "stimulus plan."

AP - Inventories held by wholesalers surged in July by the largest amount in two years while sales rebounded after two straight declines.

AP - Minutes after a woman was suspended from her job at a Kraft Foods Inc. plant and was escorted out, she returned with a handgun and opened fire, killing two people and critically injuring a third before being taken into custody, police said.

AP - As thousands of Afghans protested a tiny Florida church's plan to burn the Muslim holy book, the church's pastor said he won't follow through with the burning if he's able to meet Saturday with the organizers behind a mosque planned near ground zero in New York.

AP - A new mosque recently opened in this well-to-do suburb of Philadelphia, but not many people noticed.

AP - Convicted killer Cal Coburn Brown was executed early Friday by lethal injection for the rape, torture and murder of a Seattle-area woman, after delivering a statement complaining he was treated unfairly by the legal system.

AP - President Barack Obama has chosen one of his longtime economic advisers, Austan Goolsbee, to be the chairman of his Council of Economic Advisers, a White House official said.

AP - After three nights of violent protests, calm mainly prevailed over a gritty neighborhood where police fatally shot an illegal immigrant from Guatemala who was menacing officers with a knife.