Nevada gambling regulators on Thursday unanimously approved rules that allow companies in the state apply for licenses to operate poker websites, a move that puts Nevada in a position to capitalize if Congress reverses its ban on Internet gambling.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that the regulations would let casino companies operate Internet poker sites in the state, and some sites could begin operating by the end of 2012.

Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood denied on Saturday its involvement in the Damascus bombings, saying the regime had set up a website similar to its webpage to implicate it in the blasts that left 44 people dead a day earlier.

In remarks to al-Arabiya TV station, Brotherhood official Mohammed Farouq Tayfour said the Syrian authorities established the site to accuse the group of carrying out the twin suicide bombings.

There is a "gentlemen's agreement" between OPEC members to accommodate increasing output from Libya, the North African country's oil minister said Saturday.

The comments by Abdul-Rahman bin Yazzah indicate that while there is no formal deal among members of the 12-nation Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to cut output, the producer group is willing to take the step as Libya's production ramps up to pre-civil war levels of 1.6 million barrels per day.

Robert De Niro is a father again.

Stan Rosenfield, the 68-year-old actor's spokesman, said De Niro and his 56-year-old wife, Grace Hightower, welcomed a healthy 7-pound, 2-ounce (3.3 kilogram) baby girl named Helen Grace Hightower through a surrogate mother.

Czechs and world leaders paid emotional tribute to Vaclav Havel on Friday at a pomp-filled funeral ceremony, ending a week of public grief and nostalgia over the death of the dissident playwright who led the 1989 revolution that toppled four decades of communist rule.

Bells tolled from churches while a wailing siren brought the country to a standstill in a minute of silence for the nation's first democratically-elected president after the nonviolent "Velvet Revolution."

Fighting back tears, singer George Michael appeared outside his London home Friday to acknowledge that he had nearly died during his monthlong battle with pneumonia.

He said it had been "touch and go" while he was in the intensive care unit of a Vienna hospital battling an extremely dangerous form of pneumonia but that his representatives had "played it down" to avoid alarming his fans.

Richard Gere is getting a George Eastman Award in upstate New York for his contributions to movies and humanitarian causes.

The star of such films as "An Officer and a Gentleman" and "Pretty Woman" will be honored Feb. 16 during a ceremony at Rochester's George Eastman House, the restored home of the founder of photography pioneer Eastman Kodak Co., according to the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle newspaper.

Etta James' longtime manager says the terminally ill blues singer has been hospitalized after experiencing difficulty breathing.

Lupe De Leon says James' family is with her at a Southern California hospital where she was taken earlier this week.

President Raul Castro on Friday put on ice highly-anticipated plans to ease travel restrictions on Cubans, telling lawmakers the nation would not be pressured into moving too fast and citing continued aggression from the United States as the reason for his cautious approach.

Cuba has been awash in speculation the much-hated regulations, which prevent most Cubans from leaving the island, might be lifted during Friday's session of the National Assembly. But Castro said the time still wasn't right, despite a year of free-market reforms that has seen the Communist government legalize a real estate market and greatly increase private business ownership.

Police say 40,000 pounds (18,000 kilograms) of ice cream have spilled from a semitrailer in the state of Indiana, closing two lanes of an interstate highway at the start of the holiday weekend.

The Journal Gazette and WPTA-TV report the spill happened about 4 p.m. local time Friday and was expected to take as long as six hours to clean up completely. One southbound lane remained open.