The head of Syria's largest exile opposition group said Saturday he would welcome Arab military action aimed at ending attacks by Bashar Assad's regime against Syrian rebel forces and civilians.

Burhan Ghalioun, head of the Syrian National Council, made the comments before a meeting of Arab League foreign ministers in Doha.

When country superstars Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw kick off their highly anticipated 22-city stadium tour Saturday in Tampa, it will be the high point of their careers and friendship.

The two men met at a bar in Nashville more than 20 years ago. Chesney had just moved to the city and didn't know anyone. McGraw had a record contract but had yet to put out a single.

Andy Samberg has wrapped his seven-season run on "Saturday Night Live," a spokeswoman for the actor-comedian said Friday.

Samberg won't return as a cast member next season, according to his publicist, Carrie Byalick. Samberg's exit follows that of "SNL" cast member Kristen Wiig.

Oprah Winfrey is back in the book club business, updated for the digital age.

"Oprah's Book Club 2.0," a joint project of Winfrey's OWN network and her O magazine, begins Monday with Cheryl Strayed's popular memoir "Wild." Along with the traditional paper version, featuring the circular Oprah book club logo, special e-editions will be made available that include Winfrey's comments and a reader's guide.

An Israeli soldier and a Palestinian militant died in a shootout between the militant and troops near the border with the Gaza Strip early Friday, the military said.

The exchange of fire began after the militant crossed the fence separating the Hamas-run coastal strip and southern Israel.

The villain in Lebanon's new hit war movie: a cigar-smoking Israeli army colonel who sports a cowboy hat and a handlebar mustache and repeatedly orders troops to shell Lebanese villages. The heroes: residents of one such village who band together to fight Israeli troops.

The film, 33 Days, tells the story of the 2006 war between Israel and the Lebanese group Hizbullah in one front-line village and glorifies "the resistance" — shorthand among many Lebanese for Hizbullah and other groups that fight Israel.

Grimacing in pain with almost every step, Andy Murray nearly had to call it quits Thursday because of a bad back at the French Open.

Instead, the fourth-seeded Brit rebounded from an awful first set to beat Jarkko Nieminen 1-6, 6-4, 6-1, 6-2 and reach the third round.

The Vatican's official newspaper is for the first time in its more than 150-year history printing a special supplement for women, the publication said Wednesday.

The four-page color supplement, which will appear in Italian every last Thursday of the month in the L'Osservatore Romano, aims to promote better understanding of the "under-appreciated treasure" of women in the Church, the paper's director Giovanni Maria Vian told reporters.

The world's air has reached what scientists call a troubling new milestone for carbon dioxide, the main global warming pollutant.

Monitoring stations across the Arctic this spring are measuring more than 400 parts per million of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere. The number isn't quite a surprise, because it's been rising at an accelerating pace. Years ago, it passed the 350 ppm mark that many scientists say is the highest safe level for carbon dioxide. It now stands globally at 395.

It used to be that Venus Williams was the one who was highly ranked, the one considered a title contender, the one who would dominate foes so thoroughly that matches would be tidily wrapped up in an hour.

Now 31, and figuring out from day to day how to handle an illness that saps her strength, Williams was on the wrong end of a lopsided 60-minute defeat in the second round of the French Open on Wednesday.