Serena Williams won more quietly and quickly, and she'll play Sharapova for the title Saturday.

Sharapova, the defending champion, overcame 11 double-faults to win a semifinal shriekfest against Victoria Azarenka, 6-1, 2-6, 6-4. Williams then advanced to her first French Open final since 2002 by dispatching Sara Errani 6-0, 6-1 in 46 minutes of astounding power and precision.

Williams' win was the most lopsided women's semifinal at Roland Garros since 1984, when Chris Evert beat Camille Benjamin 6-0, 6-0.

Sharapova beat Errani in the final last year to complete a career Grand Slam, but she faces a tougher test this time. She's 2-13 against Williams, who has been on a mission after more than a decade of disappointment in Paris.

"Obviously whatever I did in the past hasn't worked," Sharapova said. "So I'll have to try to do something different and hopefully it will."

The top-ranked Williams, a 15-time Grand Slam champion, won her only Roland Garros title 11 years ago by beating her sister Venus in the final.

"I'm very happy to be back in the French Open final 11 years later," Williams told the crowd in French. "I'm still here 11 years later. It's so wonderful for me."

While Williams easily won her semifinal, Sharapova advanced past Azarenka with a clamor. The two most notorious grunters in tennis wailed on nearly every swing, matching pitch and volume as they swapped powerful shots from the baseline. They sounded as if they were pushing a stalled Peugeot across lanes of traffic in the Arc de Triomphe.

"Come on, Monica," a spectator yelled at Sharapova, referring to one of the game's great grunters, Monica Seles.

The aggressive swings resulted in a seesaw semifinal. Sharapova whacked 12 aces but was erratic with her second serve, and her groundstrokes were also unpredictable.

She needed five match points to seal the victory. Serving for the victory for the second time, she held at love and finished with an ace.

"Those last few points are the toughest," Sharapova said. I'm so happy that I regrouped and came out at 5-4 and served it out really well."

Following a 35-minute rain delay before the third set, Sharapova hit four double-faults in a single game, the last of them on break point, to make it 2-all. She struggled again with her serve at 5-2, losing a tense, sloppy 12-minute game when she squandered four match points and double-faulted on the final two points.

She was steadier at the end, however, and after accepting a cursory congratulatory handshake from Azarenka, Sharapova screamed through a grin.

"To come back as the defending champion, it's extremely special to get back on that stage where it comes down to the last two players of the tournament," Sharapova said.

She improved her record at Roland Garros to 43-9, best among active women. That includes victories in her past 13 French Open matches.

Azarenka, a two-time Australian Open champion, was playing in her first Roland Garros semifinal. She still believes she can win a clay-court Grand Slam title.

"Oh, sure," she said. "Not this year."

In the men's semifinals Friday, seven-time champion Rafael Nadal plays No. 1 Novak Djokovic for the 35th time, and Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga faces Spaniard David Ferrer.

Williams took control against Errani by winning 26 of 34 points in the opening set. The match was 37 minutes old before Errani won a game, and the crowd responded with a roar as the Italian raised her arms in mock jubilation.

Williams was undeterred and raced to the finish line. She won 28 of 33 points on her serve and had a 40-2 advantage in winners while losing only 16 points.

"I had to win this match," Williams said. "So I told myself, 'Serena, be focused today.'"

The result extended her career-best winning streak to 30 consecutive matches. She improved to 20-3 in major semifinals, and she's 6-0 against Errani.

"What she did today is unbelievable," Errani said. "She's very strong. She's an unbelievable player. She had great day."

Sharapova, who lost her opening set in the quarterfinals 6-0, started slowly again against Azarenka. Sharapova double-faulted twice in the first game and was broken at love.

But this time she quickly righted herself, temporarily finding the range with her serve and cracking ferocious returns. She won 22 of the final 26 points in the first set and closed it out with an ace.

"The serve is definitely something that you never know what to expect," Azarenka said.

Then Sharapova began to misfire while Azarenka found her timing. Consistently stepping into the court and smacking groundstrokes close to the baseline, Azarenka swept the final four games of the second set to even the match.

Next came rain, and when the match resumed both players struggled to find any rhythm. The tennis was louder than the crowd in the third set when subdued fans quietly endured a flurry of errors forced and unforced by the two big hitters.

Unless you're among the wealthiest Americans, chances are this week's headlines don't square with your reality. Wall Street is faring far better than Main Street, where the middle class is losing ground and hope.

Despite signs of a durable economic recovery, a recent Allstate/National Journalshows that middle-class Americans fear they're falling behind. Of all Americans, 59 percent say they're concerned about slipping out of their economic class in the next few years.

Meanwhile, Washington dithers.

The GOP-controlled House is fixated on President Obama rather than the economy, with one-third of the chamber's committees investigating White House controversies.

The president's economic agenda is designed to ease the middle-class squeeze, but he has failed to translate a populist reelection campaign message into legislative success.

Obama said Friday that the recovery can't be measured in stock prices alone, "it's about how much progress ordinary families are making. Are we creating ladders of economic opportunity for everybody who works hard?"

The answer is no.

Nearly two-thirds of jobs lost during the recession paid middle-class wages, according to the . Yet only 22 percent of jobs created under Obama are mid-wage occupations. That disparity is what Obama had in mind when he declared in his Inaugural Address, "We know that America thrives when every person can find independence and pride in their work, when the wages of honest labor liberate families from the brink of hardship."

In the same speech, Obama also promised to address income inequality. "We, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it," the president said.

The gap between middle-class and wealthy Americans has grown steadily since the 1970s. Therecently said that income inequality is reducing the ability of Americans to climb from one class to another, and documented evidence of "permanent inequality"wealthier Americans becoming permanently better-off  at the same time that the disadvantaged are becoming permanently worse-off.

A 2011found that between 1979 and 2007 the top 1 percent of American wage-earners saw their after-tax income grow by a whopping 275 percent. The next 19 percent experienced 65 percent growth.

The rest were left with table scraps: No more than 40 percent growth for anybody elseand only 18 percent growth for the bottom fifth.

While no GOP leader has broken through with a populist message appealing to Americans whose voting behaviors are motivated by these economic trends, Democrats are likely to follow Obama's rhetorical path.

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, a likely Democratic presidential candidate in 2016, told liberal activists Thursday that "America's middle class hasn't had a raise in 13 years."

Now, that's a headline that might resonate.

Nasdaq said in a statement on Thursday banks supporting the venture were BNP Paribas , Citi , Nomura , Royal Bank of Scotlandand UBS , while brokerages and traders included Newedge, DRW Trading and Getco Europe.

NLX, which gained regulatory approval this week to launch from Friday, will allow participants to trade a range of short-and long-term interest rate euro and sterling-denominated derivative products, such as futures in three-month Euribor or the 10-year Bund, on a single market.

Interest-rate derivatives have traditionally traded and cleared on two separate platforms, but NLX will allow clients to clear products on the same market as they trade.

"Regulatory change is driving the need for us to look closely at how we create capital efficiency in all parts of our business," Adrian Averre, global head of G10 flow rates trading at BNP Paribas, said in the statement.

"NLX has the potential to create significant margin savings in the short, medium and long term, which enables our clients to invest those savings into growth activities that support the global economic recovery and higher returns," Averre said.

(Reporting by Tommy Wilkes; Editing by David Holmes)

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There are certainly benefits to a bigger screen: Using thecompared with an iPhone's little window into the Internet. But there are also some obvious drawbacks, only one of which the new mini-er screen on the Galaxy S IV corrects: battery life.

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A larger screen with better performance means not-so-good battery life, . "A bigger phone allows for a bigger battery, which allows for a faster processor," he wrote. The Galaxy S IV reportedly had better staying power than its predecessor, the  S III. But an even smaller version should last longer and placate worries about the mid-day recharge. "Be warned," Manjoo writes. "The most powerful phones are going to be much more pleasant to use than everything else on the market — until about lunchtime, when you’ll need to recharge them." Still, the slighter body of the new S IV Mini won't house quite as much power when it begins to the UK market in July, with a less impressive processer than its big brother. Other than that, though, the Mini will look and pretty much act like the S IV — now with more juice.

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The other issue with a big screen, however, is an issue the still pretty large Mini does not fix: usability. Even with the iPhone 5's 4-inch screen, new users complained that they could no longer navigate with one hand. It's certainly not possible to do that with the Galaxy S IV's 5-incher, as Manjoo — a general Galaxy S curmudgeon — noted Wednesday on Twitter. "The most obvious, unsolvable problem is that you can't use it well with one hand, because your thumb can reach only about 70% of the screen," he wrote. And the Mini's 4.3-inch screen won't not solve that issue either, unfortunately, but at least it will fit in your pants pocket a little better.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican's new financial watchdog said on Wednesday it had detected six possible attempts to use the Holy See to launder money last year, citing this as proof of its commitment to transparency.

The head of the Vatican's Financial Intelligence Authority (FIA), presenting its first annual report, also said it would soon have stronger supervisory powers over the Vatican's scandal-plagued bank, the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), dubbed the world's most secretive bank by Forbes magazine.

The Vatican is trying to meet international standards to combat the financing of terrorism, money laundering and tax evasion, but the European anti-money laundering committee, Moneyval, said in July that the IOR still had some way to go. The FIA is due to report back in December.

Rene Bruelhart, the Swiss lawyer and anti-laundering expert who heads the FIA, said that of the six suspected cases of money laundering handled by his office in 2012, two were considered serious enough to be passed on to the Vatican's prosecutor.

He gave no details of any of the cases but said it was possible that some of the other four could also be passed on for formal investigation.

The Vatican has been trying to shed its image as a murky financial center since 1982, when Roberto Calvi, known as "God's Banker," was found hanging from London's Blackfriars Bridge.

Calvi was head of Banco Ambrosiano, then Italy's largest private bank, which was part-owned by the Vatican and collapsed in a fraudulent bankruptcy.

The IOR primarily handles funds for Vatican departments, Roman Catholic charities and orders of priests and nuns around the world, but has been abused by third parties in the past.

Bruelhart, formerly the top anti-money laundering expert in the tiny tax haven of Liechtenstein, held up the annual report and the press conference, both the first of their kind, as a sign that the Vatican was getting its house in order.

Conceding that "not everything is great and perfect," he said the Vatican was committed to meeting Moneyval's requirements, notably closer supervision, or "prudential vigilance," over the IOR.

"Over the next weeks we will come up with a new law and that is going to be one of the key competences of the FIA," he said.

He also said the FIA would put into place new procedures to screen account holders at the IOR.

In 2010, Rome magistrates froze 23 million euros ($33 million) held by the IOR in an Italian bank. The Vatican said its bank was merely transferring its own funds between its own accounts in Italy and Germany. The funds were released in 2011 but the money laundering investigation continues.

(Reporting By Philip Pullella; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

The comments by Walid al-Moallem marked the first direct confirmation that the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad is ready to send representatives to the U.N.-sponsored conference. Late last week, Syria ally Russia said the regime is willing to participate.

Sunday's statement puts more pressure on Syria's main opposition bloc, the Syrian National Coalition, to signal acceptance as well. The group was meeting in Istanbul for the fourth day Sunday to come up with a unified position on the proposed peace talks, elect new leaders and expand membership.

Much about the conference remains up in the air, including its date, agenda and list of participants. There are also still yawning gaps between the two sides on what the meeting should accomplish.

Syrian opposition leaders have said they are willing to attend the Geneva talks, but that Assad's departure from power must top the agenda of any political transition. Assad said earlier this month that his future won't be determined by international talks and that he will only step down after elections are held.

Louay Safi, a senior opposition member, said Sunday that those conditions still stand, but that the Coalition currently is bogged down with disagreements over expansion and can't issue a definitive statement on participation in the Geneva talks.

Al-Moallem said Sunday that talks in Geneva present a "good opportunity for a political solution for the crisis in Syria," but did not say under what terms the Assad government would dispatch representatives.

He spoke at a joint news conference with his Iraqi counterpart in Baghdad, where he was making an unannounced visit.

Despite such upbeat comments, the Syrian opposition's Western and Arab allies are skeptical about the regime's commitment to negotiations. They have warned Assad that they will step up aid to Syrian rebels if the regime does not negotiate in good faith.

At the same time, fighting has continued unabated inside Syria. For the past week, regime troops and allies from Lebanon's Hezbollah militia have waged an offensive against the strategic rebel-held town of Qusair in western Syria. They have gained ground amid heavy shelling, but rebels have held some positions.

The Qusair battle has laid bare Hezbollah's growing role in the Syrian conflict. Hezbollah, which has been fighting alongside Assad's troops, initially tried to play down its involvement, but could no longer do so after dozens of its fighters were killed in Qusair and buried in large funerals in Lebanon.