AP - Video recorded during the rescue of 15 hostages shows them filing grim-faced toward the helicopter that would fly them to safety, then hugging one another and crying tears of joy after they are aloft and realize they are free.

AFP - French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Friday he would press his Syrian counterpart Bashar Al-Assad to use "all the power" of his country to free a French-Israeli soldier held by Gaza militants.

AFP - Ashwell Prince told South Africa cricket fans not to worry about the form of Graeme Smith after the Proteas captain's first, and possibly only, innings before next week's first Test against England saw him make just 35 against Middlesex here Friday.

AP - Arriving to a hero's welcome in France, Ingrid Betancourt said Friday that she cried a lot during her six years as a prisoner in the Colombian jungle. Today, she said, "I cry with joy."

AP - A third autopsy on a teenage girl whose death sparked a riot last weekend in southwest China confirmed she died of drowning, while two more top local officials have been fired, state media reported Friday.

AP - Pakistan's army under President Pervez Musharraf supervised a shipment of uranium centrifuges to North Korea in 2000, the disgraced architect of Pakistan's atomic weapons program said Friday.

AP - Could Ingrid Betancourt become Colombia's next president?

AP - The Palestinian who went on a deadly rampage on a Jerusalem street this week had spent years in a romantic relationship with a Jewish Israeli woman, relatives said, a rarity in a city where such ties between Arabs and Jews are nearly nonexistent.

AP - Nigeria. Rwanda. Uganda. Ethiopia. Gabon. Robert Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe has plenty of competitors for the title of "least democratic in Africa."