News

AP - Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said Friday he hopes the Legislature considers reimposing a ban on gay foster parents, struck down a day earlier by the state Supreme Court.

AFP - The crisis surrounding the kidnapping of an Israeli army corporal by Palestinian militants has deepened with fresh demands by the hostagetakers and a claim that a second soldier has been seized.

AP - China on Saturday opened the first train service to Tibet across what it called the world's highest railway, a controversial engineering feat meant to bind the restive Himalayan region to China.

AP - The commander of the Utah Highway Patrol’s drunken driving unit resigned Friday, a week after being cited for driving under the influence.

AP - Militants holding an Israeli soldier demanded Saturday the release of 1,000 prisoners and a halt to Israel's Gaza offensive, complicating efforts to resolve the crisis before it boils over into major fighting.

AP - One of Boston's long streaks survived. Dontrelle Willis and the Florida Marlins ensured the Red Sox streak of greater importance did not.

AP - A group of American soldiers in an insurgent-riddled town allegedly noticed a young Iraqi woman when on patrol and later returned to rape her, according to U.S. officials Friday. In an apparent cover-up attempt, she and three members of her family then were killed and her body was set on fire.

AP - NASA chief Michael Griffin is taking a calculated gamble by going ahead with the launch of Discovery, overruling two top managers who fear foam flying off the fuel tank might harm the space shuttle.

AP - Famous "Newlyweds" Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey are single again. Papers filed Friday in Superior Court show the pop stars "are restored to the status of single, unmarried persons."

AP - A tired-sounding Osama bin Laden praised slain Iraq insurgent Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in an audiotape released Friday, and a Web site later said the terror leader would soon post a message about the fight by Islamic militants in Somalia and Iraq.

AFP - The Guantanamo camp may have only 30 to 40 "real" cases and the US detention center should be shut down by 2007, the president of the Belgian Senate, who headed a European inspection team there, said.

AFP - New York's former top cop, who nearly became US Homeland Security chief, pleaded guilty to accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts while in office.