DETROIT (AP) — It appears the appointment of an emergency manager to take over Detroit's failing finances is all but a done deal. But one question remains: Who will get the difficult, thankless job?

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syria and Iran said Saturday that Washington's decision to provide aid to rebels will only prolong the fighting aimed at toppling President Bashar Assad whose troops scored a major strategic victory in the country's heavily contested north.

CAIRO (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry says bickering Egyptian government and opposition leaders need to reach a political consensus to help their country emerge from an economic crisis.

PORT SAID, Egypt (AP) — Activists on Saturday accused police of using excessive force and running over protesters in two Egyptian cities, killing one person who was allegedly crushed to death by an armored vehicle.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Militants killed 136 Iraqis in February, fewer than the previous month, as the country continues to grapple with insurgents just over a year after U.S. troops withdrew, health ministry figures showed on Saturday. The country's precarious sectarian and ethnic balance has come under growing strain from the conflict in neighboring Syria, which is whipping up tensions between Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims in Iraq and the wider Middle East. The figures showed 88 civilians, 22 soldiers and 26 policemen were killed last month. A further 228 people were wounded. ...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Thousands of people marched through Moscow on Saturday in an orderly show of support for a ban on adoptions of Russian children by Americans, echoing President Vladimir Putin's demands for better care for Russian orphans in their homeland. Carrying signs with slogans including "Children are our future" and "America - hands off our children", activists mixed bitter criticism of the United States with calls for improvements in Russia's own care system. "These children are ours. ...

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syrian army officials say troops have regained control of several villages along a strategic highway near the embattled northern city of Aleppo.

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia voiced strong skepticism Saturday about the U.S. autopsy on a 3-year-old adopted Russian boy in Texas and demanded further investigation as thousands rallied in Moscow to support the Kremlin ban on U.S. adoptions of Russian children.

China announced Thursday (Feb. 28) that it will send three astronauts to space this summer on a docking mission to its orbiting lab, according to news reports.

BERLIN (AP) — A German property developer has rejected calls to halt work to remove one of the last remaining stretches of the Berlin Wall, despite angry protests against the plan.

The struggles a private cargo capsule faced in orbit Friday reinforce the notion that spaceflight remains a challenging proposition, experts say.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — He slipped it in at the end of his speech, and said it so quickly and softly it almost sounded like an afterthought.

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's ailing President Hugo Chavez has been undergoing "tougher" new treatment for cancer including chemotherapy at the military hospital where he has been for the last two weeks, his vice-president said. Speaking late on Friday after a Catholic Mass to pray for Chavez's health, Maduro described how the socialist president had personally given the order to leave Cuba in mid-February, two months after his latest cancer surgery there. ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Severe spending cuts now the law of the land, President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans refused Saturday to concede any culpability for failing to stave off what both parties acknowledged was a foolhardy way to slash $85 billion in federal spending.

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — In his Olympic year, Oscar Pistorius steadily became an avid firearms collector, joining a gun-collecting club and purchasing a collection of firearms that included a .500 Magnum pistol dubbed by its manufacturer as "the most powerful production revolver in the world" and a civilian version of a military assault rifle.

SEFFNER, Fla. (AP) — Engineers worked gingerly to find out more about a slowly growing sinkhole that swallowed a Florida man in his bedroom, believing the entire house could eventually succumb to the unstable ground.

ROME (Reuters) - Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana is not "running" for pope but he clearly has supporters who think enough of him that they have plastered posters with his picture around Rome. "Vote Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson at the conclave!," was written in bold on posters above a photograph of the cardinal, a favourite among bookmakers to succeed Benedict, who on Thursday became the first pope in six centuries to resign. The posters were plastered over banners that had been used for candidates in Italian elections earlier this week. ...