The fund seeks to soften effects of the financial collapse, but many Asian leaders - citing bad advice from the '97 crisis - are wary of conditions attached to assistance.
AP - President-elect Barack Obama is likely to name Timothy Geithner, president of the New York Federal Reserve, as Treasury Secretary in a time of intense economic turmoil as he rounds out the upper echelon of his Cabinet, a senior Democratic official familiar with the deliberations said Friday.
AP - Wall Street staged a surprising comeback Friday, with the major indexes jumping more than 5 percent and the Dow Jones industrials surging nearly 500 points in a late afternoon rally, ending another volatile week that saw stocks reach six-year lows.
AP - Gov. Dave Heineman signed into law Friday a bill adding a 30-day age limit to a safe-haven law that allowed 35 children — including teenagers as old as 17 — to be abandoned at state hospitals. The law, approved hours earlier by the Legislature in a 45-3 vote, goes into effect Saturday, and makes Nebraska the 14th state with a 30-day age cap. It had been the only state with a safe-haven law without an age limit.
Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico is a serious contender for commerce secretary, but he could be tapped for another senior post, two sources close to the transition told CNN Friday.
Armed men entered a Congolese camp for displaced people Friday to kidnap and rape a girl, but when the girl screamed, the gunmen fired shots, killing a 20-year-old woman, a U.N. spokesman said.