Evening Edition

Activists had called for Friday’s demonstrations on Facebook group The Syrian Revolution 2011, a driving force behind more than four months of anti-regime protests, to show support for the flashpoint city of Homs.

More than 50 people have been killed since Saturday in central Homs, activists have said, accusing the regime of sowing sectarian strife among the city’s Christian and Muslim inhabitants.

Hadzic was bundled aboard a plane at Belgrade airport after being granted a final wish to visit his ailing mother and other family members under police escort earlier Friday.

“At this moment his plane is on its way to The Hague,” Serbian Justice Minister Snezana Malovic told a press conference.

After weeks for market pressure and pleas from the US and the International Mmonetary Fund to contain the year-long debt drama, the eurozone poured another 159 billion euros ($229 billion) into Greece with private creditor help and deployed a safety net for future crises.

The deal was cheered in Asian and European stock markets in early trade on Friday and gave the euro a boost after weeks of turbulence that sucked Italy and Spain into the debt spiral.

With time running out before August 2, when the cash-strapped government of the world’s richest nation will be unable to pay all of its bills, top economic officials huddled to weigh the implications of an unprecedented default.

But Obama assured a town hall-style audience at the University of Maryland just outside Washington that “the United States of America does not run out without paying the tab.”

Every hamlet around Yafran bears the mark of the Libyan Jews, who arrived in the country 2,300 years ago and, until their departure soon after Israel’s creation in 1948, constituted half the city’s population.

Everywhere, the ruins of their homes still cling to the mountainside. Some were lived in, others subsumed by the Berber population. Time has taken its toll, but the houses remain untouched and uninhabited.

The 34-year-old Australian, who won the last race on the circuit in 2009, clocked a fastest time of one minute and 31.770 seconds to outpace Fernando Alonso of Ferrari by one-tenth of a second.

The Spanish two-times champion, who won last year’s German race held at Hockenheim, was himself two-tenths of a second clear of Webber’s team-mate and German defending champion Sebastian Vettel.

“This is the biggest one,” founder and curator Sigurdur Hjartarson told AFP, patting an enormous plastic canister. Inside was a liquid-immersed greyish-white mass as wide as a small tree trunk and as tall as a man.

Weighing 70 kilos (154 pounds) and measuring around 170 centimetres (5 feet 7 inches), the Sperm Whale specimen “is just the front tip,” he explained.

But the agency pledged to give Greece a higher, “low speculative grade” after its bonds had been exchanged and said Athens now had some hope of tackling its debt mountain, which most economists still expect to force a deeper restructuring in the future.

An emergency summit of leaders of the 17-nation currency area agreed a second rescue package on Thursday with an extra 109 billion euros ($157 billion) of government money, plus a contribution by private sector bondholders estimated to total as much as 50 billion euros by mid-2014.

With the deadline to raise the debt ceiling now just 11 days away, the Democratic president appealed for compromise by both parties as he and the top Republican in Congress, House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, pursued a plan for up to $3 trillion in spending cuts.

“I’m willing to sign a plan that includes tough choices I would not normally make, and there are a lot of Democrats and Republicans in Congress who I believe are willing to do the same thing,” Obama said at a town hall-style meeting at the University of Maryland.

Prime Minister David Cameron, criticized for his close ties to senior figures at News Corp, said that Murdoch had “clearly got questions to answer in parliament.”

Police received a letter Friday from opposition legislator Tom Watson asking whether Murdoch was involved in illegal efforts to cover up phone hacking.

In the second quarter, Verizon Wireless, the No. 1 U.S. mobile service, signed up 1.3 million fewer iPhone customers than AT&T, dashing high hopes of investors who sent its shares down almost 3 percent.

On top of this, Verizon Wireless customers spent less per month than expected as the company changed its data service price plans, further disappointing Wall Street on Friday.

In the biggest such attack in western Europe since the London transport bombings in 2005, seven died when the bomb exploded on the Norwegian capital in mid-afternoon scattering glass, shattered masonry and twisted steel across the streets.

Shortly afterwards, a gunman opened fire at the youth camp of the ruling political party on Utoeya island, north-west of Oslo. Police said nine or 10 people were killed and they believed the two attacks were linked. The gunman was arrested.

The maker of equipment used in mining and construction also said economic growth in the United States and other developed economies was weaker than expected and reported signs of a slowdown in China.

Although Caterpillar raised its full-year sales and profit forecast, the midpoint of its new range was below analysts’ average estimate. Shareholders also noted a more cautious tone in the company’s economic commentary, closely watched by investors in economically sensitive manufacturing and transport stocks.

Oslo police said 9 or 10 people were killed at the camp on Utoya island, where the youth wing of the Labor Party was holding a summer camp for hundreds of youths. Acting Police Chief Sveinung Sponheim says a man was arrested in the shooting, and the suspect had been observed in Oslo before the explosion there.

Sponheim said police were still trying to get an overview of the camp shooting and could not say whether there was more than one shooter.

As most lawmakers left the sweltering city for the weekend – temperatures soared past 100 degrees and some tempers seemed close behind – there was vague talk but few details of backup plans in both houses of Congress to raise the nation’s 14.3 trillion debt limit before the critical Aug. 2 deadline.

Boehner said he was “frankly not close to an agreement” with Obama in talks to cut deficits by up to $4 trillion and ease the government’s ability to keep borrowing.

The allegation raises questions not only about his succession to the helm of the media empire but what he may have relayed to Rupert Murdoch, the CEO and controlling shareholder. One media expert said that, as far as the leadership was concerned, James was already out of the running.

“When Rupert Murdoch is replaced, we now know it’s not going to be James Murdoch,” newspaper analyst Ken Doctor of Outsell Inc. said. “James Murdoch’s name is now clouded and he is not going to be moving up in News Corp.”

Frustrated aid groups said they want to deploy more food assistance in Somalia but don’t yet have the necessary safety guarantees to do so. The anarchic country has been mired in conflict for two decades and its capital is a war zone.

The renewed threat from al-Shabab means only a handful of agencies will be able to respond to the hunger crisis in militant-controlled areas of southern Somalia. And the largest provider of food aid – the U.N. World Food Program – isn’t among those being allowed inside.

As it is, clubs already were being told not to expect players to begin arriving at facilities Saturday, the day owners said gates would open.

“Now it’s just waiting,” Carolina Panthers general manager Marty Hurney said at an Atlanta hotel where team executives were being briefed on new rules for next season. “Be flexible and wait and see what happens.”

The 51-46 party-line Senate vote, and a decision by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to cancel weekend Senate sessions, left unresolved the urgent issue of how to lift the nation’s borrowing powers to avoid a first-ever U.S. default on Aug. 3.

The moves also cleared the way for private negotiations between the president, Boehner and other key players.