Residents and rescue workers went house to house Saturday in a desperate search for survivors after tornados ripped open the U.S. heartland, killing 31 people and wiping out entire communities.

Even as stunned Americans grappled with the magnitude of the massive swath of destruction brought by Friday's twisters, the National Weather Service (NWS) issued new tornado warnings Saturday for parts of Georgia and Florida, in the country's southeast.

The U.S. Treasury on Friday slapped sanctions on a man they said was a top bomb-maker of the Taliban, aiming to further cut off his and the Afghan insurgency's access to financial support.

The Treasury said Abdul Samad Achekzai has a central role in Taliban operations building improvised explosive devices in western and southern Afghanistan.

Relatives of people killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States Friday welcomed moves by two former senators to link Saudi Arabia to the events as part of a huge lawsuit.

Ex-Florida senator Bob Graham and former Nebraska senator Bob Kerrey said in sworn affidavits to a New York court they were certain of the links between the Saudi government and the attacks.

The United States called Friday on all countries to condemn the "horrific" violence in Syria as President Barack Obama declared that leader Bashar al-Assad's days were numbered.

U.S. officials voiced outrage as the Red Cross said it was unable to gain access to the vanquished rebel stronghold of Baba Amr in Homs, where government forces were reported to be conducting reprisals after a month-long bombardment.

Egyptian newspapers angrily accused the ruling military on Friday of caving in to U.S. pressure to allow foreign NGO workers, including a number of Americans, to escape trial on charges of illegal funding.

One of them also accused the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) of trashing the concept of an independent judiciary, insinuating that it had strong-armed the courts into lifting a travel ban on the suspects.

Israel's state comptroller has questioned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over lavish private trips abroad he made that were financed by businessmen, the Haaretz newspaper reported on Friday.

It said he was questioned in secret for more than two hours at the start of the week, over an affair which broke out almost a year ago after an investigation by a private television station, Channel 10.

In the heat of a U.S. presidential election year, with Americans immune to the polarized and bitter nature of political discourse, it takes a lot to shock them, especially in Washington.

But one ad at a DC Metro station -- which starts off criticizing Obama's health care reforms and ends up telling the president to "go to hell" -- goes beyond the pale, says Jim Moran, a Democratic congressman from Virginia.

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Friday named former state premier Bob Carr as foreign minister as she asserted her authority following a leadership challenge.

Carr, the ex-leader of New South Wales, will become the nation's top diplomat after Kevin Rudd suddenly resigned last week in order to take on Gillard and Senator Mark Arbib quit in the wake of Labor Party infighting.

Engineering professor Donald Sadoway on Thursday used an old-school chalk board at the prestigious TED gathering to write the formula for a liquid battery that could one day cut the need for new power plants.

"The way things stand, electricity demand must be in constant balance with supply," Sadoway told the tech-savvy audience in southern California.

Iran on Friday voted for a new parliament in the first nationwide elections since a bitterly contested 2009 poll that returned President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power, posing a new test of his support among conservatives.

The elections, to fill the 290 seats in parliament, were being boycotted by Iran's main opposition and reformist groups, the leaders of which have been under house arrest for the past year.