UNITED STATES

Two of Rupert Murdoch's most trusted lieutenants resigned on Friday, leaving the Australian media mogul as vulnerable as ever.

Barclays Plc is appealing a judge's ruling that handed the trustee for Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc's brokerage arm about $4 billion related to the rushed purchase of the failed investment bank's North American business.

Standard & Poor's on Friday put a broad range of financial companies on negative credit watch, warning they could all be downgraded soon if the United States has its credit rating cut.

In Eva Longoria's latest film Without Men, she plays a leader in charge of a Latin American village where all its men have been forcibly recruited by guerilla revolutionaries.

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minnesota, and a candidate for the 2012 Republican Party's presidential nomination, has officially quit her home church in Minnesota that has been accused of holding anti-Catholic views.

Google's blowout quarter led the Nasdaq higher on Friday, but mounting uncertainty about the government's ability to reach a debt-reduction deal may keep investors at bay in the coming week.

Citigroup Inc's second-quarter profit jumped 24 percent as the bank lost less money than expected on bad U.S. loans.

Elin Nordegren has been seen around town with a new main squeeze Jamie Dingman, the investor son of billionaire Michael Dingman.

The Centerbridge hedge fund does not think Lehman Brothers Holding Inc's plan to exit bankruptcy can be confirmed by a judge and it plans to mount a fight against it, according to court documents.

As a picture emerges of a notorious crime figure, some residents of his old neighborhoods have offered a different perspective.

Levi Aron's confession could lead to an insanity defense, as his lawyer is saying Aron, who allegedly admitted to murdering Leiby Kletzky, the eight year old Brooklyn boy who went missing on Monday, hears voices, hallucinates and should get his head checked.

Score Day 6 of the debt talks a wash: House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said President Barack Obama, D-Ill., hasn't presented a real deficit reduction plan, but Obama countered that he not only has, but that the American people support his plan, which includes both revenue increases as well as spending cuts.

Consumer sentiment dropped to its lowest reading since the Great recession, amid high unemployment and the federal government's inability to deal with its debt problem as a deadline to raise the debt ceiling looms.

Scientists are using the U.S. and Australian navies to fight off threats from Somali pirates.

Bin Laden was plotting his next attack on the United States from the Pakistani compound.

Eight European banks have failed a test of their ability to withstand a long recession and will have to raise just 2.5 billion euros ($3.5 billion) of capital, a significantly lower figure than expected.

Stocks advanced slightly in volatile trading on Friday after results from the European banks' stress tests came out slightly better than expected.

U.S. consumer confidence hit a near 2-1/2 year low in early July and manufacturing output stalled in June, further frustrating expectations of a quick economic growth rebound in the second half of the year.

Citigroup Inc's second-quarter profit jumped 24 percent as the bank lost less money than expected on bad U.S. loans.

Consumer sentiment deteriorated in early July to the lowest level since March 2009 on increasing pessimism over falling income and rising unemployment, a survey released on Friday showed.

Citigroup Inc posted higher-than-expected net income in the second quarter, helped by falling credit losses.