Aaron's Daily WWW Newspaper

WARWICK, R.I. - Police in Rhode Island say an attempted robbery of a woman at a hotel may be linked to the slaying at an upscale Boston hotel of a woman who advertised massage on Craigslist.

HAVANA - Talks toward a thaw in U.S.-Cuba relations seemed to be a real possibility after the new presidents of both countries reached out to each other with surprisingly straightforward language about their desire to revive a relationship frozen by 50 years of cold war.

LOS ANGELES - Google Inc.'s YouTube said Thursday it is vastly expanding its library of full-length movies and TV shows it offers online, while also launching a new advertising service and adding about a dozen new content partners.

NEW YORK - Brady Green turned up at television studios from coast to coast in search of Tyra Banks and said he and the supermodel "had a thing together."

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Jonas Hiller coolly stopped every puck like a seasoned playoff veteran, showing all the postseason poise that the top-seeded San Jose Sharks still haven't found. Hiller made 35 saves in a sparkling playoff debut for eighth-seeded Anaheim, and Ryan Getzlaf had a goal and an assist in the third period of the Ducks' 2-0 victory over the Sharks on Thursday night.

PORT OF SPAIN (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama meets his counterparts in Latin America and the Caribbean on Friday, offering practical cooperation over the ideological differences that have strained U.S. ties with the region.

CUMANA, Venezuela (Reuters) - Cuba is open to talks with the United States about "everything" including political prisoners, President Raul Castro said on Thursday, a major softening of the communist island's stance toward its long-term foe.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Iran could respond to U.S. efforts to engage with Tehran if Washington turns the new tenor of its words into reality, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was quoted as saying by a Japanese newspaper.

SEOUL (Reuters) - Russia's foreign minister will visit North Korea next week, a source said on Friday, as regional powers try to prevent the state from restarting its nuclear arms plant and defuse tensions that have rattled regional security.

MIR GADKHEL, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Villagers in eastern Afghanistan wailed in grief and scrambled through rubble on Friday to recover the bodies of dozens of people feared killed by a 5.5 magnitude earthquake.

BEIJING (Reuters) - U.S. companies are concerned that they are not getting a fair chance at contracts linked to China's 4 trillion yuan ($585 billion) stimulus package, a leading U.S. business group said on Friday.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Two top Federal Reserve policy-makers took divergent views on the U.S. economy on Thursday, with the head of the Atlanta Fed seeing a return to growth later this year, while the head of the San Francisco Fed saw the potential for an even deeper contraction.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Efforts to overhaul the U.S. food safety system could suffer unless major gaps in state and local programs are repaired and integrated with changes taking place in Washington, experts said on Friday.

STOCKHOLM (AFP) - A Stockholm court on Friday found four men guilty of promoting copyright infringement by running The Pirate Bay, one of the world's top websites for illegal filesharing, and sentenced them to a year in prison.

MUMBAI (AFP) - The suspected Pakistani gunman on trial in India for last year's Mumbai attacks wants to retract his confession, claiming it was extracted by torture, his defence lawyer told reporters Friday.

TOKYO (AFP) - International donors pledged more than five billion dollars Friday to stabilise poverty-stricken Pakistan, seen as a frontline state in the battle against Islamic extremism.

PARIS (AFP) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy came under attack Friday despite denying he said US President Barack Obama was not "up to standard" and that Spain's prime minister was not very bright.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President Barack Obama has assured CIA agents involved in tough terror interrogations they will not be prosecuted as he released graphic memos detailing methods approved by the Bush White House.

NEW YORK (AFP) - Citigroup swung to profit in 2009 with first-quarter earnings of 1.6 billion dollars, coming back from massive losses in 2008, the troubled banking giant said Friday.

NEW YORK (AFP) - US conglomerate General Electric on Friday reported a 35 percent drop in first-quarter profit to 2.89 billion dollars, but beat expectations as its financial arm remained profitable.