WEST VALLEY CITY, Utah (AP) ― A stray cat that survived two trips to a Utah animal shelter’s gas chamber now has a new home.Officials at West Valley City’s animal shelter in Utah say the cat named Andrea hadn’t been adopted for 30 days when shelter officials tried to put her to death in October. She survived, so they gassed her again.Shelter officials detected no vital signs and presumed she was dead after the second try, so they put her in a plastic bag in a cooler. But when they checked the ba

WASHINGTON (AP) ― The White House says it is still considering a visa request for Yemen’s outgoing autocratic president.Spokesman Jay Carney says the request is being considered for the sole purpose of President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s coming to the U.S. for medical treatment. Carney says he has no timeline for when a decision will be made.Saleh’s aides said over the weekend that he had reversed his plans to leave Yemen and would be staying in the country. However, a senior administration official

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) ― An annual Wikipedia fundraising campaign ended Tuesday with donors around the world pumping a record $20 million into the foundation that runs the free online knowledge repository.Non-profit Wikimedia Foundation launched the campaign in November, getting an early boost in the form of a $500,000 grant from Google co-founder Sergey Brin and his wife. The total amount of money donated has climbed each year since Wikimedia began the fundraising campaigns in 2003. “Our model is

DES MOINES (AFP) -- Mitt Romney is still the favorite to win the U.S. Republican presidential nomination, but a quick knock-out of his more conservative rivals seems out of reach after a near-draw in Iowa, experts said Wednesday.“Iowa is a reminder that if Romney wins, it will be because he’s the last guy standing -- not because he has strong Republican support,” said Matt Dickinson, a political scientist at Middlebury College in Vermont.The former Massachusetts governor and millionaire venture

Mice bred to age too quickly seemed to have sipped from the fountain of youth after scientists injected them with stem cell-like progenitor cells derived from the muscle of young, healthy animals. Instead of becoming infirm and dying early as untreated mice did, animals that got the stem/progenitor

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- Mitt Romney was locked in a dead heat with Rick Santorum in Iowa’s Republican presidential caucuses, the opening contest in the campaign to pick a challenger to President Barack Obama.Romney, the longtime front-runner, and Santorum, whose campaign only recently gained momentum, each had about 25 percent of the vote with 99 percent of the state’s 1,774 precincts reporting.Texas congressman Ron Paul was running a close third in the caucuses -- evening meetings held at 809

With Europeans and Asians buying fewer $65,000 diamond necklaces and $10,000 amethyst earrings, Tiffany & Co. may be in for a less-than-glittering 2012. No U.S. luxury merchant is more exposed internationally. The world’s second largest jeweler generates almost half its sales outside of the Americas, up from 38 percent in 2006, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Tiffany’s foreign sales are concentrated in Europe, which is facing a sovereign debt crisis, and Asia, where China’s growth is sl

LONDON (AP) ― Olympic fencer and movie sword master Bob Anderson appeared in some of film’s most famous dueling scenes ― though few viewers knew it. Anderson, who has died at age 89, donned Darth Vader’s black helmet and fought light saber battles in two of the three original “Star Wars” films, “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi.” Anderson, who worked with actors from Errol Flynn to Antonio Banderas during five decades as a sword master, fight director and stunt performer, died ea

RIYADH (AP) ― Saudi Arabia said Monday it will begin enforcing a law that allows only females to work in women’s lingerie and apparel stores, despite disapproval from the country’s top cleric.The 2006 law banning men from working in female apparel and cosmetic stores has never been put into effect, partly because of view of hard-liners in the religious establishment, who oppose the whole idea of women working where men and women congregate together, like malls.Saudi women ― tired of having to de