Hurricane Bud, now a Category 2 storm, is headed toward Mexico and is on track to pound parts of the Pacific coast on Friday night, authorities said. The storm has 110-mile-per-hour winds and is expected to soak the states of Jalisco, Colima, Michoacán, Guerrero, and Guanajuato, reported the Mexican news agency Notimex. The storm is expected to weaken by late evening, but people were still warned to take precautions, as sea swells could cause “life-threatening surf and rip-current conditions."

Pedro Hernandez was formally charged Friday with second degree murder in connection to the 1979 death of Etan Patz. Hernandez was placed under suicide watch Friday morning at New York's Bellevue Hospital and will be arraigned from his hospital bed. In the wake of the charges late Friday, Hernandez's lawyer said his client is bipolar and schizophrenic. Hernandez confessed to strangling the six-year-old to death after luring him to the basement of a bodega with the promise of a soda. Friday was the 33-year anniversary of Patz's disappearance.

Despite the presence of United Nations monitors, violence continues to mar Syria. Activists say an estimated 50 people were killed on Friday by state troops at an antigovernment protest in Houla, a town in Homs province. The casualties include 13 children, and rebels say the total number could be as high as 83, while the Syrian government claims it’s only 17. Security forces began firing into the crowd, and antigovernment troops retaliated, leading to a bloody clash, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recently wrote a letter to the Security Council saying that progress was being made, but there is a “continuing crisis on the ground, characterized by regular violence, deteriorating humanitarian conditions, human rights violations and continued political confrontation.”

The privately owned Dragon capsule has successfully docked at the International Space Station on Friday. This is the first time a private company has launched a spacecraft that has been snared by the robotic arm at the International Space Station. The unmanned craft, owned by the California-based SpaceX, was on track to deliver a half ton of supplies. President Obama is pushing commercial companies to venture into space so that NASA can save money and focus on landing an astronaut on Mars.

Following two days of unproductive U.N. talks in Baghdad on Iran’s nuclear program, a U.N. nuclear watchdog agency reported Friday that inspectors found a surge in uranium levels at a nuclear plant in Iran. Enrichment levels were up 27 percent from 20 percent, the plant’s previous highest level, where uranium is usually used for research reactors but can also be used toward the 90 percent enrichment needed to build nuclear weapons. Iran argued that uranium levels “above the target value” can happen for “technical reasons beyond the operator’s control.” Talks over the country’s nuke program will resume on June 18. 

The youth charity started by disgraced Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky began the legal process of dissolving its operations on Friday. The charity, which has been in existence for more than 30 years, plans to transfer its programs and assets to Arrow Child & Family Ministries, a multimillion dollar charity that operates in Pennsylvania, Texas, Maryland and elsewhere. Donations to the charity dried up after Sandusky was arrested last year on allegations that he sexually abused young boys he met through the charity.

An armed standoff in Valparaiso, Ind., ended Friday evening after a gunman who had taken the employees of a Prudential real-estate office hostage for six hours shot himself in the head. The 10 hostages were all released unharmed. According to police, the man was angry with an office worker over a money issue and is currently in the hospital in critical condition.

This is where we give up faith in the criminal justice system, or fight the urge to gag. A female alternate juror has been batting her eyes at John Edwards in recent days, ABC News reports, and, naturally, Edwards has been shooting her coy looks across the courtroom in return. The young woman is one of four alternate jurors who have been making a scene in court, showing up in matching shirts to distinguish themselves from the 12 other jurors who have also heard all evidence in Edwards’ case for nearly a month. But for the last five days, the alternates have been sent to a holding room while the others deliberate Edwards’ felony charges, apparently seeing their dismissing as an excuse to clown around. Edwards’ attorneys are also getting a kick out of the obvious flirtation between the juror and their client.

A Disney cruise line worker suspected of stealing a passenger’s iPhone has been placed on “administrative leave” after photos he took of himself were uploaded to an iCloud account used by the phone’s owner. Katy McCaffrey put a name on the suspect, who took pictures of himself partying with crew members, after spotting his name tag in one of the photos. “We take these matters very seriously. We have a zero tolerance policy for this type of behavior,” a spokesman for Disney Cruises told reporters. “We recovered the phone and we’ve been in touch with the guest.” The iPhone’s iCloud auto-upload feature can be disabled using an on/off switch in the phone’s settings.

Now, this is an adult situation. Porn superstar Jenna Jameson was booked by police on suspicion of drunk driving after she ran her car into a pole at about 1:30 a.m. Friday, TMZ reports. The 38-year-old reportedly refused medical treatment for minor injuries sustained in the crash, according to the gossip website. Jameson allegedly failed a field sobriety test, though it is not clear where the accident took place, and police around her home in Huntington Beach, Calif., denied having made the arrest.

Al Gordon, an Emmy-winning comedy writer who worked most of his career for Jack Benny's show, has died at the age of 89. He died Wednesday of age-related causes in Los Angeles. His career began after World War II, and he became famous for teaming with his comedy partner Hal Goldman and working for Jack Benny for 24 years—they also wrote for stars like Carol Burnett and the Smothers Brothers.

Jeffrey Neely knows how to throw a happening party. Neely, a high-level General Services Administration official, was the guy who planned the conference in Las Vegas that cost tax payers more than $822,000. Now, after being put on administrative leave since April, Neely has left the GSA. An inspector general’s investigation found that the conference was an egregious waste of money. The controversy led to the resignation of GSA Administrator Martha Johnson and two of her top executives. Nine others had to take administrative leave.

Basketball player J.R. Smith was hauled in by Miami Beach police Thursday night after being pulled over with a bench warrant for not having a valid driver’s license. Police pulled Smith over around 9 p.m., according to officials. The reason Smith was first stopped was not known, but the Knicks guard was released on bond Friday after spending the night in jail. Records at Miami-Dade County Jail did not list an attorney for Smith, whose full legal name is Earl Joseph Smith.

Say it ain’t so! Levi Johnston, baby daddy to Bristol Palin’s one and only and poster-boy extraordinaire is living high and dry—off his mom—in Alaska. The Playgirl cover boy is reportedly broke and living with his mother after allegedly squandering more than $1 million on items like guns, boats, and four-wheelers. Sources revealed that Johnston hasn’t given any child support to Bristol in two years and has little contact with his son. With another bundle of joy on the way—he’s expecting a daughter with current girlfriend Sunny Oglesby—it’s unclear what he’ll do next to make ends meet. Chippendales?!

It’s been a rough week for Facebook. Its stock price has tumbled. Lawsuits have been filed. And now it looks like four of the top market makers for the initial public offering—Knight Capital, Citadel Securites, UBS, and Citi’s Automated Trading Desk—are going to collectively lose more than $100 million on the deal. The culprit was a technical glitch that delayed Facebook’s market debut by about 30 minutes, forcing thousands of orders from clients to be delayed. The Securities and Exchange Commission, along with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, is scrutinizing whether the IPO was handled properly.

First snakes, now monkeys. An escaped monkey held up a flight at New York's JFK airport for nearly four hours Thursday. There was a lot of monkey business in the cargo hold of the Air China Boeing 747, and Port Authority emergency-services officers and an airport worker had to go looking for the little guy. They caught the animal before it managed to get out of the jet’s cargo hold. But he was only one of about 60 monkeys being shipped to China for medical research.

New French President Francois Hollande made an unannounced visit to Afghanistan on Friday and he announced that all French combat troops will pull out of the country by the end of 2012. Hollande met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on his first visit to the country. France has a total of about 3,300 troops in Afghanistan, with 2,000 of them combat forces.

American stocks tanked Friday after a major Spanish lender announced that it will need nearly $23 billion in bailout funds. Meanwhile, Standard & Poor's cut the ratings of Spain's top two banks to "junk" status and downgraded two more. The Bankia debacle spells trouble for Spain's already fragile economy, and loan losses from the 2008 property crash could make the country seek international aid. Bankia is the country's fourth-largest bank with 10 percent of the people's deposits.

Papal butler Paolo Gabriele has been detained as one source of the VatiLeaks flow of documents, Daily Beast reporter Barbie Latza Nadeau has learned. “The inquiry carried out by Vatican police … allowed them to identify someone in possession of confidential documents,” Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi told reporters Friday. Lombardi confirmed that the person being questioned was Gabriele, and that he had been under surveillance for weeks. Lombardi told Ansa, an Italian news service, that the butler has been found “in illegal possession of confidential documents.” The Vatican’s maintains a judicial system separate from Italy’s.

Results of Egypt's presidential elections are trickling in on Friday. The final results will not be released until Tuesday, but Egyptian newspapers say the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamad Morsi is emerging as the frontrunner, after the Islamist group said Morsi had won nationwide exit polls conducted by the organization. But there's also strong showings by three other candidates: Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, a moderate Islamist, former prime minister Ahmed Shafiq, a secularist, and former foreign minister Amr Moussa, also a secularist.

A birth certificate and confirmation from Hawaii's Health Department may be enough to convince Arizona's Secretary of State that President Obama is a natural-born U.S. citizen, but Donald Trump's no fool. Recently, a former literary-agency assistant admitted that, at the time Obama's first book was published, she had mistakenly written he was born in Kenya. But Trump insists, "that's what he told the literary agent. That's the way life works ... he didn't know he was running for president, so he told the truth." He told The Daily Beast, "His mother never spent a day in the hospital."

Former British prime minister Tony Blair will testify Monday in Parliament’s Leveson Inquiry, the investigation into media ethics and standards at Rupert Murdoch’s News International. Blair will be joined by Britain’s culture minister, Jeremy Hunt, who is fighting for his survival after email evidence submitted to the Leveson Inquiry suggested Hunt’s office had been in contact with a senior New Corp. lobbyist during the months that Hunt was deciding about News Corp.’s controversial bid to take over broadcaster BSkyB. While the Leveson Inquiry has focused the hacking allegations—and the suspected cover-up and alleged payments to police by News Corp. executives—the investigation has also zeroed in on the alleged cozy relationship between the government and News Corp. employees, which is what Blair is expected to be questioned about.

It’s going to be a rough transition from the University of Exeter in idyllic Devon, England, to a London prison cell. Laura Johnson, the 20-year-old daughter of a British millionaire, was sentenced to two years in prison after being convicted in April of burglary and driving looters in her black Smart car on a crime spree during last summer’s riots in London. Johnson had previously admitted to stealing alcohol and cigarettes from a BP garage in Charlton on a separate occasion. Her parents own a profitable marketing business, Avongate Ltd.

Dancer Marysthell Polanco, 28, told an Italian court Friday that she danced in costume as President Barack Obama at one of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s notorious “bunga bunga” parties. The 75-year-old Italian media mogul is facing charges that he engaged in and paid for sex with an underage prostitute. Polanco also claimed that she dressed as prosecutor Ilda Boccassini to entertain Berlusconi. Though Berlusconi established close relations with Obama’s predecessor, relations with the Obamas soured after the Italian leader described the president and first lady as “suntanned.” While Polanco described the “bunga bunga” gatherings in tame terms, previous witnesses described parties that involved nudity and pole dancing.

The 175-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning Times-Picayune has announced that it will cut its print edition to three days a week in the face of declining circulation and due to the challenges of a 24-hour news cycle. Beginning this fall, the paper plans to begin to publish print editions on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, a schedule that is designed in part to appeal to advertisers, according to management. “We did not make these changes out of desperation—we have a very strong operation in New Orleans,” said Steven Newhouse, chairman of Advance Publications, which owns the Times-Picayune. The paper has become somewhat of a journalism legend after it continued to publish in the days following Hurricane Katrina, despite the grave danger to its staff and the city’s upheaval.