French President Francois Hollande said Friday that no solution is possible in Syria without "the departure of Bashar Assad.”

He spoke at a press conference with Russia's Vladimir Putin.

A judge sentenced former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak to life in prison on Saturday after convicting him of involvement in the murder of protesters during the uprising that ousted him last year.

A senior lawyer for Mubarak's defence team told Agence France Presse the strongman, who was taken to a Cairo prison after the hearing, will appeal the sentence.

The United Nations said Friday the Syrian government has released 223 prisoners, but stressed that many more must still be freed.

U.N. monitors on Thursday saw 210 detainees released in Damascus and 13 in the southern city of Daraa, U.N. deputy spokesman Eduardo del Buey said.

The rebel Free Syrian Army on Friday announced it was resuming "defensive operations" after the expiry of its ultimatum for the regime to respect international envoy Kofi Annan's six-point peace plan.

"We will now resume defensive operations," FSA spokesman Qassem Saadeddine told Agence France Presse via Skype. "We will not go on the offensive because we do not want to be singled out as the ones responsible for breaking the peace initiative."

The U.N. Human Rights Council ordered Friday an independent probe to hunt those guilty of the massacre in Houla, Syria, which rights chief Navi Pillay said could constitute a "crime against humanity".

Forty-one of the 47-member council backed a call urging an investigation by the Commission of Inquiry on Syria, set up by the council last year to gather evidence on alleged rights abuses there.

Germany and Russia agreed on the need for a political solution to end the bloodshed in Syria, their leaders said after talks here Friday, as Vladimir Putin warned the country could be on the brink of civil war.

The Russian president said the situation in strife-wracked Syria was "extremely dangerous" but underlined his opposition to military intervention, after meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the second leg of his first foreign tour since returning to the Kremlin.

The opposition Syrian National Council on Friday accused Iran of "interference in Syrian affairs" by providing Damascus with military aid, and called for an Arab League and U.N. probe.

"Despite the Syrian regime's crimes... the Iranian regime seems determined to provide it with full military, security, economic and political support," the SNC said in a statement.

Spain's debt risk premium shattered euro-era records Friday as the government scrambled to find the money to rescue crisis-torn regions as well as the banks.

Investors fearing imminent financial breakdown sent the interest rate on Spanish 10-year government bonds spiking to 6.621 percent -- a rate considered unsustainable for Madrid over the longer term.

India's central bank warned Friday economic growth could fall further after the country's worst quarterly figures in nine years, as business leaders and newspapers blasted the government over the slump.

Data for the January-March quarter released on Thursday showed growth in gross domestic product of just 5.3 percent, high by the standards of developed countries but a severe disappointment in once-booming India.

Cricket Communications said Thursday it would be the first U.S. carrier to offer the iPhone to customers under a prepaid plan, a move expanding the footprint of the wildly popular Apple device.

Cricket, a unit of Leap Wireless International, will offer the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 with its $55 per month, all-inclusive plan.