STEVENAGE, England (AP) ― Eden Sawczenko used to recoil when other little girls held her hand and turned stiff when they hugged her. This year, the 4-year-old autistic girl began playing with a robot that teaches about emotions and physical contact ― and now she hugs everyone. “She’s a lot more affectionate with her friends now and will even initiate the embrace,” said Claire Sawczenko, Eden’s m...

CAIRO (AP) ― Thousands of Christians and Muslims clashed Tuesday, with one Christian man killed and scores wounded as anger rose over the burning of a church in a Cairo suburb. It was the second burst of sectarian fighting in as many days and the latest in a string of violent protests over a variety of topics as simmering unrest continues nearly a month after mass protests led to the ouster of P...

TOKYO (AP) _ A magnitude 7.3 earthquake hit off Japan's northeastern coast Wednesday, shaking buildings hundreds of miles away in Tokyo and triggering a small tsunami. There were no immediate reports of significant damage or injuries. The quake struck at 11:45 a.m. local time and was centered about 90 miles (150 kilometers) off the northeastern coast _ about 270 miles (440 kilometers) northeast ...

A Romanian woman is the world’s youngest grandmother, aged 23, British tabloid The Sun reported. Mother of two, Rifca Stanescu was 12 when she had her first child Maria. A year later she had a son, Nicolae. Stanescu was 11 when she married 13-year-old jewelry seller Ionel Stanescu. They eloped because Stanescu feared her father would want her to marry another man. Stanescu said she had been f...

Interim P.M. announces members of government, pledges to revive economy TUNIS (AFP) ― Tunisia on Monday scrapped its feared political police and named a new interim government free of any members of the regime of toppled strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Affirming a commitment “to apply the law and respect liberties and civic rights,” the interior ministry announced that it was abolishing the ...

Elephants quickly learned to cooperate to solve a problem, researchers report in Monday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The giant mammals are socially complex, explained lead researcher Joshua M. Plotnik. ``They help others in distress,'' he said. ``They seem in some ways emotionally attached to each other, so you would expect there would be some level of cooperati...

Tel Aviv (dpa) - She will soon celebrate her 100th birthday, but Luba Fishman has found a new career - as a poster woman for an international cosmetics company. The Latvian-born, Israel-domiciled great-grandmother was chosen as a new face for Dove Cosmetics' "real beauty" campaign, with the slogan "Does true beauty have an age limit?" The company says the campaign is designed to avoid "beauty s...

RAYNE, Louisiana (AP) – Officials worked Sunday to get people back into their homes a day after a tornado ripped through this southwestern Louisiana town, killing a mother shielding her child from the fierce winds and leaving 12 hurt. Many of the 1,500 residents who had been evacuated were being allowed to return to their homes in this community about 70 miles (112 kilometers) west of Baton Roug...

U.S. administration’s policy faces difficulty in framing consistent message WASHINGTON (AFP) ― As a wildfire of revolt whips through the Middle East and North Africa, the White House is embracing pragmatism and shying away from embroidering a grand “Obama doctrine” for a region in turmoil. For a politician as fond of the grand gesture as President Barack Obama, the idea of an eponymous school o...

The appearance of “two suns” in the Taiwanese sky has made people wonder whether the second one is an exploded Betelgeuse, the second biggest star in the constellation Orion. News.com.au reported in January that Betelgeuse was losing mass in its center and would explode when it ran out, creating a second sun in the night sky, citing Dr. Brad Carter, senior lecturer of Physics at the University o...