AP - With no end in sight to economic bad news, President George W. Bush on Friday ensured that millions of laid-off workers will keep getting their unemployment checks as the year-end holidays approach.

AP - Attorney General Michael Mukasey was conscious and alert early Friday — and took a get-well call from President Bush — just hours after he collapsed during a speech to a black-tie dinner.

AP - Wall Street found some relief Friday from a report that a pounded-down Citigroup Inc. might put itself up for sale. That prospect, along with the possibility that low prices will draw in bargain-hunters after two days of steep selling, sent stock futures sharply higher.

AP - Followers of a Shiite cleric on Friday stomped on and burned an effigy of President George W. Bush in the same central Baghdad square where Iraqis beat a toppled statue of Saddam Hussein with their sandals five years earlier.

AP - Somali pirates have collected more than $150 million in ransoms over the past year, Kenya's foreign affairs minister said Friday, calling on ship owners not pay when their vessels are hijacked.