Blast near aid office wounds 1 in NW Pakistan
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) -- An explosion struck the office of an aid organization in northwestern Pakistan near the Afghan border on Saturday, wounding a security guard, police said....

6 world powers press Iran on nuclear issue
BRUSSELS (AP) -- Representatives of six world powers urged Iran on Friday to accept a U.N. plan aimed at delaying its ability to build a nuclear weapon, as the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency warned Tehran not to miss the opportunity to resolve the dispute....

China says 23 dead, 90 trapped in mine explosion
BEIJING (AP) -- A gas explosion tore through a coal mine in northern China on Saturday, killing 23 people and trapping another 90 nearly a third of a mile under ground, central government authorities said....

Afghan police are weak link in security force
KABUL (AP) -- Underpaid, under-equipped and under-trained, Afghanistan's 93,000-member police force is the weak link in an ambitious security strategy to hand over defense of the country to Afghans so American and other foreign troops can go home....

Researcher: Faint writing seen on Shroud of Turin
ROME (AP) -- A Vatican researcher has rekindled the age-old debate over the Shroud of Turin, saying that faint writing on the linen proves it was the burial cloth of Jesus. Experts say the historian may be reading too much into the markings, and they stand by carbon-dating that points to the shroud being a medieval forgery....

Museum: Galileo's fingers, tooth are found
ROME (AP) -- Two fingers and a tooth removed from Galileo Galilei's corpse in a Florentine basilica in the 18th century and given up for lost have been found again and will soon be put on display, an Italian museum director said Friday....

Argentina forces dirty war orphans to provide DNA
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) -- Valuing truth over the right to privacy, Argentina's Congress has authorized the forced extraction of DNA from people who may have been born to political prisoners slain a quarter-century ago - even when they don't want to know their birth parents....

The new EU chiefs: Rompuy-pumpy and Cathy Who?
LONDON (AP) -- Catherine Ashton: International woman of mystery....

Kidnapped Britons say Somali pirates may kill them
LONDON (AP) -- A retired British couple snatched from their yacht by Somali pirates said in an interview broadcast Friday they fear they could be killed within a week or handed to a terrorist group if a ransom demand is not paid....

Resort island reels after deadly attack by gunman
SAIPAN, Northern Mariana Islands (AP) -- After going on a shooting rampage that left a trail of victims on the Pacific resort island of Saipan, the gunman drove to a scenic, rocky cliff where untold numbers of Japanese men, women and children plunged to their deaths to avoid capture during World War II, according to police and witness accounts....