Detroit bankruptcy — Kevyn Orr, the emergency manager for Detroit, testified Friday that he was not hired by Michigan’s governor to lead Detroit into bankruptcy court. That accusation has been at the heart of the arguments by unions and retirees that they were never given a chance to negotiate for payments owed them by the city because of a calculated plan to take Detroit to a Chapter 9 filing. Orr, who was named to his post in March, was the final witness called by lawyers for the city, as part of a trial to determine whether the city meets federal eligibility requirements for bankruptcy.

Syrian rebel leader — Syrian state-run TV reported Friday that the leader of a powerful al-Qaida-linked rebel group has been killed — a claim that if confirmed would be a huge blow to fighters trying to topple President Bashar Assad. At least one rebel commander denied the report. Questions remained over whether Abu Mohammad al-Golani, head of Jabhat al-Nusra, or the Nusra Front, had indeed died. State TV said he was killed in the coastal province of Latakia, but did not say when or give details. Later Friday, it removed the report from its website without explanation.

Polio in Syria — U.N. officials said Friday that they were mobilizing to vaccinate 2.5 million young children in Syria and more than 8 million others in the region to combat what they fear could be an explosive outbreak of polio, the incurable viral disease that cripples and kills, which has reappeared in the war-ravaged country for the first time in more than a dozen years. The officials said the discovery a few weeks ago of a cluster of paralyzed young children in Deir al-Zour had prompted their alarm, and that tests conducted by both the government and rebel sides strongly suggested the children had been afflicted with polio.

7.3 quake in Japan — An earthquake of magnitude 7.3 struck early Saturday off Japan’s east coast, the U.S. Geological Survey said, triggering small tsunamis but causing no apparent damage. Japan’s meteorological agency said the quake was an aftershock of the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that struck the same area in 2011, killing about 19,000 people and devastating the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant. Tsunamis of up to 15 inches were reported Saturday at four areas along the coast, but a tsunami advisory was lifted less than two hours after the quake.

Fired Chinese professor — He lectured students about the trespasses of the Communist Party, publicly belittled the country’s mighty propaganda minister and issued frequent demands for an end to single-party rule in China. But in voting two weeks ago to dismiss economist Xia Yeliang from his teaching post at Peking University, university officials say they weighed only one criterion: his performance as an academic. “He just wasn’t a good teacher,” Sun Qixiang, dean of the school of economics, said Friday in an interview. In an interview Friday, Xia, 53, defended his academic performance and maintained his insistence that the vote was politically motivated.

Bangladesh protests — At least five people died and scores more were injured Friday as opposition activists clashed with law enforcement across Bangladesh, defying bans on rallies amid a dispute about upcoming elections, police said. Two opposition activists died when police fired upon protesters in Cox’s Bazar, about 250 miles southeast of Dhaka. Three others died in Chandpur, 100 miles south of the capital city. Members of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party attacked law enforcement authorities as they tried to prevent a procession in Cox’s Bazar Chakoria sub-district, said police officer Ranjit Kumar Barua.

European migration — European Union leaders agreed Friday on a timetable for overhauling the bloc’s policy on migration and asylum just hours after the scale and urgency of the challenge was brought into stark focus by the rescue of more than 700 refugees overnight near Sicily. The plan — to make an assessment of the bloc’s needs by early December and to review the rules by the middle of next year — was decided at the end of a two-day summit meeting in Brussels held in the wake of the deaths of about 360 Africans near the Italian island of Lampedusa this month.

Dr. Kim? — Make that Dr. Kim Jong-un. North Korea has long been known for its love of titles for its rulers. But now a university in Malaysia has bestowed upon the 30-year-old leader an honorary doctorate that allows him to spruce up his title count. If the North Korean state news agency has it right, the particular doctorate is perhaps as much of a surprise for those outside the isolated nation as the honor itself. Kim, it says, is now a doctor of economics. The news report does not mention that he oversees one of the world’s poorest and most dysfunctional economies.