Michael Schumacher may be closing in on his first pole position in six years after setting the fastest practice time at the Chinese Grand Prix on Friday.

The Mercedes driver's time was a tenth of a second faster than McLaren's Lewis Hamilton, who took back-to-back poles to start the season at the Australian GP and Malaysian GP.

After the death of their spiritual leader, more than 2,000 Egyptian Copts have poured into the Holy Land for the Easter holidays, defying a ban he imposed on visiting Jerusalem and other Israeli-controlled areas.

The influx — after decades when Egyptian pilgrims were a rarity — adds a new element to the already diverse mix of languages and faiths in Jerusalem's Old City during the holy season. The pilgrims are clearly distinguished by the Egyptian accent of their Arabic and long cotton robes worn by many of the men.

C.J. Watson scored 16 points, including the game-tying 3-pointer at the end of regulation, and the Chicago Bulls pulled away in overtime to beat the Miami Heat 96-86 on Thursday night.

Carlos Boozer led the Bulls with 19 points and Kyle Korver added 17 points for the Bulls, who outscored Miami 12-2 in overtime to boost their lead in the Eastern Conference to four games.

Barnes & Noble Inc. said Thursday it is tackling one of the shortcomings of black-and-white e-readers with a screen that lights up so it can be read in the dark.

E-readers with black-and-white screens, made by Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Sony and others, are easily readable in bright light but don't come with their own light sources and can't be read in darkness. The ones with color screens, such as the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet, do have their own light sources but are barely legible in sunlight.

Madonna says she's happy that Malawi's former vice president is now leading the country.

Joy Banda became president Saturday and is the country's first women leader. Former president Bingu Wa Mutharika died of a heart attack on April 5.

Clashes between the Syrian army and rebel fighters broke out Friday for the first time since a hard-won U.N.-backed ceasefire came into force a day earlier, a monitoring group said.

"Fighting with heavy machineguns took place in Khirbet al-Joz, located on the Turkish border, between regime soldiers and (army) deserters," Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told Agence France Presse.

North Korea's much-anticipated rocket launch ended quickly in an embarrassing failure early Friday, splintering into pieces over the Yellow Sea soon after takeoff.

Within minutes of the early morning launch, the U.S. and South Korea declared it a failure. North Korea acknowledged that hours later in an announcement broadcast on state TV, saying the satellite had failed to enter into orbit.

Faced with mounting losses, Sony Corp. said Thursday it will slash 10,000 jobs, or about 6 percent of its global workforce, and turn around its money-losing TV business over the next two years.

New CEO and President Kazuo Hirai outlined his business strategy at a press conference where he pledged to revive the electronics and entertainment company. Sony earlier this week more than doubled its annual net loss projection for the fiscal year through this past March to 520 billion yen, or $6.4 billion. That would be its fourth straight year of red ink and worst loss ever.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. previewed its "Disc to Digital" service for converting DVDs into an online library on Wednesday. Based on my experience, I'd give it a six out of 10.

That's the number of discs I was able to convert from a completely unscientific sampling of my personal DVD library.

Scientists are blaming slightly higher levels of carbon dioxide in Pacific Ocean waters linked to global warming for the failure of oyster larvae to survive in an Oregon hatchery.

They say higher acidity of the water that comes with more carbon dioxide makes it harder for young oysters to form their shells, dooming them in a matter of days, even if they are moved to more favorable environments.