AP - Fumes from chemicals mixed by a maintenance crew sent seven factory workers to hospitals Thursday and forced 150 to evacuate, officials said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - UAL Corp.'s bankrupt United Airlines is preparing to hire 2,000 flight attendants, the Washington Post reported on Friday, citing sources familiar with the plan.

AP - Susan Jones knew she had to leave her remote southeast Alaska village when she came home to find her husband clutching his loaded rifle. In his other hand, she said, was the crumpled restraining order she had filed against him a day earlier after he sent several bullets whining past her head.

AP - In 1944, a young Navy band of brothers engaged in an epic sea battle and made naval history when they sank the Japanese battleship Fuso. Now, the aging crew is waging another battle — to honor their captain.

AP - Moustapha Akkad, the Syrian-born producer of the "Halloween" horror films, died Friday from wounds sustained in the triple hotel bombings, a hospital official said.

AP - A man was executed by lethal injection early Friday for the 1990 shooting deaths of his mother and stepfather.

AP - Azerbaijan's ruling party took an early lead in Sunday's parliamentary elections in this oil-rich, strategically located former Soviet republic that has been led by the same family for years, but the opposition charged widespread fraud.

AP - When Elodie Irvine was diagnosed with a deadly kidney and liver disease, doctors at UCI Medical Center told her she would have a new liver within six months — possibly even a week.

AP - A man who sued Home Depot Inc. claiming that a prank left him glued to a restroom toilet seat has passed a lie detector test with questions about allegations that he made previous a similar claim in another town, a newspaper reported.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, seeking to avert a possible controversy, said on Thursday he never to his knowledge ruled in a case in which he had an obligation to recuse himself -- and had been 'unduly restrictive' in a 1990 vow on possible conflicts of interest.

AMMAN (Reuters) - Two U.S. citizens are among the dead in Wednesday's hotel blasts in the Jordanian capital that killed at least 56 people, an embassy spokesman said on Friday.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - The Loews theater chain pulled rapper 50 Cent's new film 'Get Rich or Die Tryin'' from a theater near Pittsburgh after a man was shot to death in the lobby Wednesday night.

AP - The handwritten pages of the book are decorated with carefully drawn flags and little traced hands. They contain prayerful wishes and innocent questions.

AP - Police made 846 arrests during a statewide roundup of people accused of violating the requirements of Michigan's sex offender registry law, authorities say.

AP - Deborah Champeau-Felder stood silently as the bell of the Edmund Fitzgerald clanged in memory of her father, one of 29 mariners who perished when the ore carrier sank in a vicious Lake Superior storm 30 years ago.

AP - Federal prosecutors are threatening to sue Southern Illinois University over three small graduate school scholarship programs aimed at women and minorities, saying they were discriminatory.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A young woman robbed four banks in Washington's suburbs without ever interrupting conversations her cell phone, a sheriff's spokesman said on Friday.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - K-Sea Transportation Partners on Friday said one of its barges hit a submerged object in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico and leaked an unknown quantity of fuel oil from a breach in the hull.

ROME (Reuters) - The lawyer for a fugitive American priest wanted in the United States on charges of sexually molesting boys urged an Italian court on Friday not to send his client home because he risked being killed in prison.

ROME (Reuters) - Italy welcomed home on Friday three disputed art works from Los Angeles' J. Paul Getty Museum in the latest chapter of a saga that put the spotlight on the international trade in stolen art.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - He was one of Hollywood's and Broadway's greatest directors and the canon of American literature owes him mightily for being the midwife who brought 'Death of a Salesman' and 'A Streetcar Named Desire' to life.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales travels to Asia next week hoping to explain the U.S. war on terrorism, and said he will talk about information sharing and joint law-enforcement efforts.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Procter & Gamble is looking into a report that an Iowa woman found a dead turtle in a package of its Folgers coffee, the company said on Friday.

AP - These days it seems that some people just can't go anywhere or do anything without a cell phone in their ear.

AP - Protesters led by a veterans post tried to remove a flag display placed by peace activists at a veterans cemetery, and five were charged with criminal trespass.

AP - A journalist accused of poisoning his wife by spiking her Gatorade with antifreeze told a friend he planned to spend his life insurance money on a house and a BMW convertible, according to prosecutors.

AP - Six juvenile detention center employees were fired and five others disciplined after police said a mentally retarded boy was raped by a sex offender who was allegedly assigned to bathe and change his diaper.

AP - A reputed mobster being held under house arrest while awaiting trial was filmed for a TV comedy cavorting with topless dancers, visiting posh restaurants and trying to break into a church, prosecutors charged.

AP - Gov. Mitt Romney was introduced at a Washington luncheon as the head of a state run by the 'modern-day KKK ... the Kennedy-Kerry Klan,' drawing rebukes from Democrats and Romney himself.

AP - It was the ultimate food fight, the streetfood showdown.

AP - A man on death row for murdering a prosecutor 17 years ago has died of natural causes, leaving some close to the victim lamenting that he was never executed.

AP - A handcuffed drug suspect ran out an open garage door at the troubled Fulton County Jail, sparking a brief manhunt months after another inmate fled from the county courthouse and allegedly killed four people.

AP - An international panel of Anglican bishops called upon a gathering of their conservative American counterparts Friday to split from the rest of the U.S. Episcopal Church.

AP - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has dropped his fight with California nurses over hospital staffing levels after a bitter feud that escalated last year when he boasted, "I'm kicking their butts."

AP - A man who spent 18 years in prison for a rape he didn't commit will be charged with killing a woman whose vehicle was found near his home, a prosecutor said Friday.

AP - A Roman Catholic civil rights group called off a boycott of Wal-Mart on Friday after the world's largest retailer apologized for an employee's e-mail that called Christmas a mix of world religions.

AP - LeRoy Beckman went to secondhand stores for hearing aids and heated only one room of his small Montana house. He got around in an old panel truck, favored bib overalls and found Social Security adequate in his old age.

AP - Clutching a goodbye card, a 4-year-old girl whose tragic story captured the city's collective heart attended a funeral Mass on Friday for her mother, whose battered body was found in a landfill.

AP - A journalist accused of poisoning his wife by spiking her Gatorade with antifreeze told a friend he planned to spend his life insurance money on a house and a BMW convertible, according to prosecutors.

AP - An international panel of Anglican archbishops called upon a gathering of their conservative American counterparts Friday to split from the rest of the U.S. Episcopal Church.

AP - One after another, cities and towns across Iowa are rushing to shut the door to child molesters.

AP - In one of the biggest and boldest such programs in the nation, an anonymous group of benefactors is offering college scholarships for at least the next 13 years to nearly all of Kalamazoo's high school graduates.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has ended a year-long fight with the state's nurses' union, one of his fiercest critics, after getting chastened at the ballot box, officials said on Friday.

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - A man was shot to death in the lobby of a movie house where gangsta rapper 50 Cent's movie 'Get Rich or Die Tryin'' had just played, prompting the theater near Pittsburgh to stop showing the film, police said on Friday.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - Critics have dubbed it 'Bald Ego,' 'Murky's Turkey' and 'Incontinental Airlines,' but Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski finally has the sleek executive jet he says he and other state officials need.

MONTREAL (Reuters) - Canada and the United States have widened their 'Open Skies' agreement to allow airlines from each country to pick up passengers or cargo in the other and then fly on to a third.

AP - Police next week plan to roll out another anti-terrorism tool designed to stop bombers from attacking the city's subway system: portable explosive detection devices sometimes used at airports.

AP - Worshippers at black churches in 20 states will be urged this weekend to consider organ donation.

AP - Hurricane Katrina evacuees living in their own travel trailers in a south Mississippi state park are being billed for campsite rental, but some are angry because they thought the federal government was paying the fees.

AP - Oystermen have returned to the bays of southeast Louisiana. The hurricane-ravaged industry celebrated a victory Friday when two boats arrived at the Old Hopedale Seafood Plant and unloaded hundreds of sacks of oysters.

SAN DIEGO (Reuters) - San Diego mayor elect Jerry Sanders on Friday pledged to bring transparency to the city's troubled finances in the midst of government probes and a $1.7 billion city pension fund shortfall.

USATODAY.com - Rafting through the Grand Canyon - one of the West's premier whitewater experiences - is being overhauled in a way that should result in less congestion during peak summer months.