Xtra!

AP - Two young goats wandered onto the thin ledge of a railroad bridge and spent nearly two days high above the ground until rescuers in a towering cherry picker plucked them from their perch, hungry but safe.

AFP - President Barack Obama should fire his top economic advisers and quit his "job-killing" policies, the top House Republican said after US unemployment jumped to 9.6 percent in August.

AFP - Greenpeace chief Kumi Naidoo on Friday likened Japan's treatment of two of its anti-whaling activists to the tactics of the former apartheid regime he once campaigned against in his native South Africa.

AP - Detroit Lions rookie defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh was fined $7,500 by the NFL on Friday for his roughing-the-passer penalty on quarterback Jake Delhomme in an exhibition game against the Browns.

AP - Worries about spying by the U.S. and Israel spurred plans to sharply limit BlackBerry services in the United Arab Emirates, Dubai's police chief said in comments that suggest a tough line in talks with the smart phone maker.

AP - Unemployment is stuck at high levels even though some companies are hiring. The problem, government data show, is that too few jobs are being created for the growing number of people looking for work.

The Week - A run on Kabul Bank — the nation's largest — is triggering fears of an Afghan financial meltdown. Should the U.S. step in?

Time.com - Nine weeks before the midterm elections, Barack Obama finds himself on the wrong side of the polls. Where did all that adoration go -- and is a Republican sweep next?

AP - Japanese fishermen herded dolphins into a cove made famous by an Oscar-winning documentary about the hunt but did not kill any Friday, as conservationist groups ramped up scrutiny of the annual slaughter.

AP - A powerful 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck much of New Zealand's South Island early Saturday and caused widespread damage, but there were just two reports of serious injuries. Looters broke into some damaged shops in Christchurch, police said.

AFP - President Barack Obama will next week make a new bid to stem ebbing political support over the slowing economic recovery, with visits to the struggling Midwest and a formal White House news conference.

AFP - Italy survived a scare as they came back from a goal down to escape from Tallinn with a 2-1 victory over Estonia in Euro 2012 qualifying Group C on Friday.

Reuters - A major earthquake hit New Zealand's second biggest city Christchurch early on Saturday, bringing down power lines, ripping up roads and wrecking building facades, but authorities reported no deaths.

AP - The new iPhone application mTrip is a travel guide and then some: It uses the latest in smart phone technology to make it easier to stay on track in a foreign locale.

Reuters - China on Friday offered a rare glimpse into its foreign exchange reserves, confirming that they are overwhelmingly allocated in dollars, while a central banker said the mountain of cash could face depreciation risks.

AP - The new top commander in Afghanistan is talking up a weapon that has been kept in the shadows for years — special operations missions to kill or capture key insurgents — to try to convince skeptics the war can be won.

AFP - Actress Catherine Zeta-Jones is "furious" that doctors failed to diagnose her husband, actor Michael Douglas's throat cancer earlier, she said in an interview published Thursday.

AFP - Some 600,000 Muslims crowded into the Grand Mosque in Islam's holiest city of Mecca for prayers on the last Friday of the Ramadan holy month, mosque officials said.

Reuters - A major earthquake hit New Zealand's second biggest city Christchurch early on Saturday, bringing down power lines, ripping up roads and wrecking building facades, but authorities reported no deaths.

Reuters - A well-known Australian Muslim cleric has called for the beheading of Dutch anti-Islamic politician Geert Wilders, a newspaper said on Friday.

Reuters - A weakened but still dangerous Hurricane Earl churned toward the Massachusetts coast on Friday, en route to Canada's Maritime provinces, after slapping North Carolina with heavy wind and rain but causing less damage than feared.

AP - "It's still the economy, stupid."

AP - Japanese fishermen herded dolphins into a cove made famous by an Oscar-winning documentary about the hunt but did not kill any Friday, as conservationist groups ramped up scrutiny of the annual slaughter.

AP - Allergan Inc., the maker of wrinkle-smoothing Botox, has agreed to pay $600 million to settle a yearslong federal investigation into its marketing of the top-selling, botulin-based drug.

The Atlantic Wire -

AP - Congress seems increasingly reluctant to let taxes go up, even on wealthier Americans.

AP - Kara DioGuardi is officially out at "American Idol."

AP - A Honduran who survived the massacre of 72 migrants in Mexico helped untie the only other survivor — a wounded Ecuadorean — and the two fled together, an official said Friday.

Reuters - God did not create the universe and the "Big Bang" was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, the eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book.

AP - A powerful 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck much of New Zealand's South Island early Saturday and caused widespread damage, but there were just two reports of serious injuries. Looters broke into some damaged shops in Christchurch, police said.

AP - A UPS cargo plane with two crew members on board crashed shortly after takeoff Friday outside Dubai, officials said.

AP - The new top commander in Afghanistan is talking up a weapon that has been kept in the shadows for years — special operations missions to kill or capture key insurgents — to try to convince skeptics the war can be won.

AP - From the mixture of hurt, anger and embarrassment on his face, Gordon seems like one of the last people who would want to open his life to cameras for a reality television show.

AFP - Shipowners are showing growing interest in a fabled trade route to Asia which climate change is beginning to open up at last as polar ice recedes.

Reuters - A well-known Australian Muslim cleric has called for the beheading of Dutch anti-Islamic politician Geert Wilders, a newspaper said on Friday.

AP - Is the global economy out of the woods? Two years after near-meltdown, with the U.S. looking sluggish, equity markets groggy and Europeans fighting a debt crisis, experts gathered in Italy offered a generally gloomy outlook — especially for the United States and much of the industrialized world.

AP - Federal investigators said Friday that a suspicious fire that damaged construction equipment at the site of a future mosque in Tennessee was arson and offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.

AP - The suspicions airport security officials had when they saw the metal canister grew when they learned about the man who brought it in from the Middle East: a scientist who sparked a bioterrorism scare after he reported missing vials of plague samples seven years ago.

AP - A thumbnail-sized clam blamed for clouding the azure bays of Lake Tahoe high in the Sierra Nevada has now turned up in a mountain-ringed Adirondack lake renowned for its limpid, spring-fed waters.

AP - As major U.S. combat operations in Iraq end, some families of soldiers and Marines convicted of crimes during battle hope the nation doesn't forget their sons.

AP - Unemployment is stuck at high levels even though some companies are hiring. The problem, government data show, is that too few jobs are being created for the growing number of people looking for work.

AP - Fidel Castro dusted off his full military uniform for the first time since stepping down as president four years ago, a symbolic act in a communist country where little signals often carry enormous significance.