MOSCOW (AFP) ― A woman took command of the International Space Station for just the second time Monday, after three U.S. and Russian colleagues left the orbiting space lab and landed safely in the Kazakh steppe.The Soyuz TMA-04M capsule touched down with U.S. astronaut Joe Acaba and the Russians Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin aboard after deploying a huge white parachute and making a pin-point descent with helicopters tracking its progress.NASA television footage showed the men relaxing in lou

(123rf)A day after watching a film about being lost at sea, Toakai Teitoi was trapped in his own nightmare, drifting in a wooden boat for 15 weeks -- before a shark helped to rescue him.The 41-year-old Kiribati policeman and father-of-six relived his harrowing voyage in the central Pacific when he arrived in Majuro on Saturday on the Marshall Islands fishing boat which picked him up last week.He t

It‘s been almost a year since Maritza Ramirez-Cruz bled to death when her full-term fetus was cut from her womb, and her three surviving children don’t go a day without asking about her.The children and their father, Christian Mercado, are getting psychiatric help to deal with the horrors, which will be rehashed at the trial that starts Monday of the woman charged in the killing.Carlos Mercado, and his fiancee, Darla Gutierrez, moved into the apartment below his son‘s shortly after the October 2

Violent anti-American protests over an anti-Muslim film ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad have spread across the Middle East, North Africa and Southeast Asia over the weekend, causing at least six deaths.The demonstrations spread even to Australia where some 500 protesters clashed with riot police outside the U.S. consulate in Sydney on Saturday.In Egypt where the first Islamic anger erupted, police on Saturday cleared out protesters who have clashed with security forces near the U.S. Embassy.By K

BEIRUT (AFP) ― Pope Benedict XVI urged Middle Eastern Christians and Muslims on Saturday to forge a harmonious, pluralistic society in which the dignity of each person is respected and the right to worship in peace is guaranteed.Speaking to political and religious leaders on the second day of a three-day trip to Lebanon, he stressed that people must repudiate vengeance, acknowledge their own faults and offer forgiveness to each other.Thousands of people, mostly Christians and including many chil

YANGON (AFP) ― Democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi leaves Myanmar Sunday for her first visit in two decades to the United States, where she will be garlanded by supporters keen to discuss the progress of reforms in the former junta-ruled nation.The Nobel laureate, who was elected to parliament this year, will travel to Washington to meet U.S. President Barack Obama whose government has been at the forefront of Western re-engagement with the long-time military dominated country.She will also be s

MOSCOW (AFP) ― Tens of thousands of Russian opposition supporters thronged the streets of Moscow on Saturday to keep up the pressure on President Vladimir Putin four months into his new mandate.A sea of protesters, brandishing the red flags of socialism, nationalist tricolors or liberal slogans, filled the avenue in Moscow named after the great Soviet physicist and celebrated dissident Andrei Sakharov.Some 40,000 people turned out for the “March of Millions,” according to an AFP estimate, in lin

PHILADELPHIA (AP) ― Boxing great Muhammad Ali was honored Thursday with the Liberty Medal for his longtime role outside the ring as a fighter for humanitarian causes, civil rights and religious freedom. Hundreds of people gathered on the lawn of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia to watch the three-time heavyweight title holder receive an honor that his wife, Lonnie Ali, called “overwhelming.” “It is especially humbling for Muhammad, who has said on many occasions, ‘All I did was t

LONDON (AFP) ― Britain’s royal family were struggling Sunday to prevent the spread of topless photographs of Prince William’s wife Catherine, after the threat of legal action failed to intimidate Irish and Italian titles.In a fresh blow to the royals a day after they began legal proceedings against French magazine Closer, the first to publish the long lens pictures of Catherine sunbathing in her bikini bottoms, the images appeared again in Saturday’s Irish Daily Star.“There can be no motivation