A Russian judge has been fired after he caught 40 winks in court and then sentenced an outraged defendant to five years in prison.

Judge Yevgeny Makhno of Blagoveshchensk City Court in Russia's Far East was forced to resign Friday for obviously falling asleep several times while trying a businessman on charges of fraud.

U.S. employers added 157,000 jobs in January, and hiring was much stronger at the end of 2012 than previously thought, providing reassurance that the job market held steady even as economic growth stalled.

The Labor Department report Friday showed a jump in hiring in the final two months of last year, just when the economy was sputtering and facing the threat of deep government spending cuts and tax increases from the fiscal cliff. The department revised up the estimated job gains for November from 161,000 to 247,000 and for December from 155,000 to 196,000.

The film adaptation of Salman Rushdie's book "Midnight's Children" has opened in India with the cast in attendance.

The Booker Prize-winning novel chronicles the lives of two children who get switched at birth on the day of India's independence in 1947.

Tens of thousands of Sunni protesters blocked a major highway in western Iraq on Friday, as an al-Qaida-affiliated group called on Sunnis to take up arms against the Shiite-led government.

The protest comes at a time of mounting sectarian tensions in Iraq. Minority Sunnis complain of official discrimination against them, and the arrests of bodyguards of a senior Sunni politician in December have sparked weekly anti-government demonstrations.

Israeli warplanes flew over southern Lebanon Friday, two days after an airstrike near Damascus, as Syria's army chief of staff warned against testing his country's capabilities.

Gen. Ali Abdullah Ayoub made his comments Thursday during a visit to some military units in the country. The al-Baath newspaper, the mouthpiece of President Bashar Assad's ruling party, quoted Ayoub as saying Syria will never change its stance "no matter how much the enemy carries out provocative and hostile acts."

Israeli media on Friday warned that an alleged air strike on a convoy carrying arms from Syria to Hizbullah could set off a chain reaction, and reported troops on high alert in the country's north.

There was still no official Israeli comment on Syrian claims that Israeli warplanes bombed a military site near Damascus on Wednesday or on separate reports that its aircraft struck a weapons convoy along the Syria-Lebanon border.

Add those cute little hedgehogs to the list of pets that can make you sick.

In the last year, 20 people were infected by a rare but dangerous form of salmonella bacteria, and one person died in January. The illnesses were linked to contact with hedgehogs kept as pets, according to a report released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Chinese automaker that bought Sweden's Volvo Cars in 2010 has acquired the British manufacturer of the distinctive London cab.

Geely Holding Group said Friday it bought Manganese Bronze Holdings out of bankruptcy court administration. Geely said it paid just over 11 million pounds ($17.5 million).

Official figures show unemployment across the 17 European Union countries that use the euro steady at 11.7 percent in December.

The rate reported by Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, is a record high for the eurozone after November's original 11.8 percent estimate was revised down. Unemployment in the eurozone has been 11.7 percent now for three months.

Cape Verde coach Lucio Antunes pretended to be on the phone with Jose Mourinho on Friday after telling reporters the Real Madrid coach would help him in the African Cup quarterfinals.

Antunes could have been joking and engaging in Mourinho-like mind games when he smiled widely when answering a question on whether his good friend Mourinho had helped him guide the underdog team to the last eight.