Aaron's Daily WWW Newspaper

JERUSALEM - Pope Benedict XVI assured his followers in the Holy Land that peace is possible, as he ended his Mideast visit Friday by putting aside the contentious issues he has confronted and coming as a pilgrim to the site of Jesus' crucifixion.

MINGORA, Pakistan - Pakistani forces killed 55 Taliban in the northwestern valley of Swat on Friday, the army said, and lifted a curfew to allow thousands of civilians to flee before troops assail the Taliban-held main town.

NEW YORK - How hip is the room at "30 Rock" these days? Hip enough to bring in Mary J. Blige, Clay Aiken, Elvis Costello, Norah Jones, Cyndi Lauper, Sheryl Crow, Wyclef Jean, Moby, Ad-Rock, Steve Earle and a backstage party's worth of other musicians for a "benefit concert" during the show's season finale.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Michael Phelps is in North Carolina for his first meet since his record triumph at the Beijing Olympics. He is coming off a three-month suspension resulting from a picture showing him with a marijuana pipe. Phelps is pointing toward the 2012 Olympics and plans to retire after the London Games.

HOUSTON - Kobe Bryant relishes Game 7s, but this is one he probably didn't expect to be playing. Aaron Brooks scored 26 points, Luis Scola added 24 points and 12 rebounds, and the scrappy, undermanned Houston Rockets pushed the Los Angeles Lakers to the limit in their Western Conference semifinal series with a 95-80 win in Game 6 on Thursday night.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. consumer prices were unchanged in April as expected, but recorded their largest 12-month drop since 1955, government data showed on Friday, as sluggish consumer demand limited companies' pricing power.

(Reuters) - Under the direction of the U.S. Treasury, General Motors Corp is close to a deal with the United Auto Workers that would cut its hourly labor costs by more than $1 billion a year, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter.

KOTA, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani authorities temporarily lifted a curfew Friday to enable thousands of people to flee the fighting in the militant bastion of Swat and join more than 800,000 who have already left.

ATLANTA (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama will name Dr. Thomas Frieden as the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a spokesman for the organization said on Friday.

GENEVA (Reuters) - The World Health Organization warned on Friday against a false sense of security from waning and apparently mild outbreaks of H1N1 flu, saying the worst may not be over.

KABUL (Reuters) - U.S. forces in Afghanistan should have known there were large numbers of civilians in a village they bombed this month, and need to change their procedures to prevent civilian casualties, Human Rights Watch said on Friday.

VIENNA (Reuters) - U.S.-born journalist Roxana Saberi arrived in Austria on Friday from Iran after authorities there freed her from a Tehran prison and quashed her eight-year sentence for spying in a diplomatically fraught case.

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Sri Lankan troops advanced on the Tamil Tigers on Friday and more civilians fled the shrinking war zone, signaling a military finish to Asia's longest modern war despite strong diplomatic pressure for a negotiated end.

SHAGUNA NAKA, Pakistan (AFP) - Pakistan's military suspended a curfew Friday in a northwest city where it is fighting Taliban guerrillas, officials said, allowing tens of thousands of civilians to flee the area.

VIENNA (AFP) - Iranian-US reporter Roxana Saberi said Friday she will soon tell the story of her detention in an Iranian jail after she arrived in Vienna following her release.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - President Barack Obama's administration is to announce Friday it will retain Bush-era military commissions to try some terror suspects, but with improved legal safeguards, an official said.

COLOMBO (AFP) - The Sri Lankan government vowed Friday to capture all Tamil Tiger-held territory within 48 hours, despite international calls for a truce and accounts of a "humanitarian catastrophe."

NEW YORK (AFP) - New York City authorities on Friday closed three schools following a swine flu outbreak as the World Health Organisation reported more than a 1,000 new cases around the globe in 24 hours.

PARIS (AFP) - Recession storms barrelled across Europe on Friday as data revealed the extent of the damage to Germany and France, but the IMF forecast that the world economy would turn the corner by year's end.

VIENNA (AFP) - IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn said Friday that he expected the global economy to recover in the first half of next year.