MOSCOW (AP) ― Finance chiefs from the world’s 20 leading industrial and developing countries attempted Saturday to calm fears that governments are using foreign exchange as an economic weapon by pledging not to weaken their currencies to gain an advantage in global trade. The two-day meeting in Moscow ended Saturday with a joint communique that included a promise that the G20 members would “refrain from competitive devaluation” and “resist all forms of protectionism and keep our markets open.”Th

VATICAN CITY (AP) ― The Vatican raised the possibility Saturday that the conclave to elect the next pope might start sooner than March 15, the earliest date possible under current rules that require a 15 to 20 day waiting period after the papacy becomes vacant.Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said that Vatican rules on papal succession are open to interpretation and that “this is a question that people are discussing.”Any change to the law itself would have to be approved by the pope

 As a small army of people worked to replace acres of windows shattered by the enormous explosion from a meteor, many joked on Saturday about what had happened in this troubled pocket of Russia.One of the most popular jests: Residents of the meteor were terrified to see Chelyabinsk approaching. The fireball that streaked into the sky over this tough industrial city at about sunrise Friday was undeniably traumatic. Nearly 1,200 people were reported injured by the shock wave from the explosion, es

An Idaho man was charged with assaulting a minor after allegedly slapping a crying toddler on an airplane and calling the boy a racial epithet.Joe Rickey Hundley of Hayden was seated next to Jessica Bennett, 33, and her 2-year-old son. As the Delta plane, inbound to Atlanta from Minneapolis, began to descend the altitude change hurt the young boy‘s ears and he began to cry.Fellow passengers told CNN as Bennett tried to calm her child, Hundley told her to “shut that [expletive] baby up,” -- a ref

BIG BEAR LAKE, California (AP) ― Officials said Thursday that the burned remains found in a California mountain cabin have been positively identified as a fugitive former cop who launched a deadly revenge campaign against the Los Angeles Police Department. Jodi Miller, a spokeswoman for the San Bernardino County sheriff-coroner, said the identification was made through Christopher Dorner’s dental records. Miller did not give a cause of death. The search for Dorner began last week after authoriti

MOSCOW (AP) ― A meteor streaked across the sky above Russia’s Ural Mountains on Friday morning, causing sharp explosions and injuring more than 400 people, many of them hurt by broken glass. “There was panic. People had no idea what was happening. Everyone was going around to people’s houses to check if they were OK,” said Sergey Hametov, a resident of Chelyabinsk, about 1500 kilometers east of Moscow, the biggest city in the affected region. “We saw a big burst of light then went outside to see

LONDON (AP) ― American philosopher and constitutional law expert Ronald Dworkin, a liberal scholar who argued that the law should be founded on moral integrity, has died at the age of 81.His family said Dworkin died of leukemia in London early Thursday.Dworkin was a professor of law at New York University and emeritus professor at University College London.He was one of the best known and most quoted legal scholars in the U.S. and also an expert on British law.NYU Law School Dean Richard Revesz