For the first time, lung cancer has passed breast cancer as the leading cause of cancer deaths for women in rich countries.
	The reason is smoking, which peaked years later for women than it did for men. Lung cancer has been the top cancer killer for men for decades.
	"We're seeing the deaths now" from lung cancer due to a rise in smoking by women three decades ago, said Lindsey Torre of the American Cancer Society. The society released a report Wednesday, based on new numbers from the International Agency for Research on Cancer.
	Globally, there were about 14 million new cancer cases and 8 million cancer deaths in 2012, the most recent year for which numbers are available.
	"Developing countries account for 57 per cent of cancer cases and 65 percent of cancer deaths," Torre said.
	For men, lung cancer has been the leading cause of cancer death globally for several decades. In poor countries, breast cancer remains the top cancer killer for women. Colon cancer has grown as a cause of ..

Lung cancer now top cancer killer for women in rich nations

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Rescuers used a crane to hoist the fuselage of a wrecked TransAsia Airways plane from a shallow river in Taiwan's capital late today as they searched into the night for 17 people missing in a crash that killed at least 26 others.
	Flight 235 with 58 people aboard, most of them travellers from China, banked sharply on its side shortly after takeoff from Taipei, clipped a highway bridge and then careened into the Keelung River.
	Rescuers in rubber rafts pulled 15 people alive from the wreckage during daylight. After dark, they brought in the crane, and the death toll was expected to rise once crews were able to search through submerged portions of the fuselage, which came to rest a few dozen meters (yards) from the shore.
	Dramatic video clips apparently taken from cars were posted online and aired by broadcasters, showing the ATR 72 propjet as it pivoted onto its side while zooming toward a traffic bridge over the river.
	In one of them, the plane rapidly fills the frame as its ...

Crashed Taiwan plane hoisted from river; 26 confirmed dead

Jordan's king rushed home today, cutting short a US trip, to rally public support for even tougher strikes against the Islamic State group after the militants released a video showing a captured Jordanian pilot being burned to death in a cage.
	The gruesome killing of 26-year-old Lt Muath Al-Kaseasbeh, captured while participating in airstrikes by a US-led coalition targeting the militants, sparked outrage across the Middle East and anti-Islamic State protests in Jordan.
	King Abdullah II, a staunch Western ally, returned home from a White House meeting with President Barack Obama during which both leaders affirmed their resolve to destroy the militants who have seized about one-third of Syria and Iraq.
	Jordan believes the international community must intensify the campaign against Islamic State, said government spokesman Mohammed al-Momani. "This evil can and should be defeated," he said.
	However, public opinion in Jordan has been ambiguous -- growing demands for revenge against ...

Jordan, shaken by Islamic State killing, executes 2 inmates

The monsignor who spearheaded the saint-making process for El Salvador's slain Archbishop Oscar Romero said today it was Pope Benedict XVI and not Pope Francis who removed the final hurdle in the tortured, 35-year process.
	Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia told reporters Benedict "gave the green light." Speaking a day after Francis declared that Romero died as a martyr for the faith, Paglia said Romero's beatification would likely be within a few months in San Salvador.
	Paglia says Benedict told him on Dec 20, 2012, the case had passed from the Vatican's doctrine office, where it had been held up for years over concerns about Romero's orthodoxy, to the saint-making office.
	From there it proceeded quickly, taking a mere two years for theologians, and then a committee of cardinals and bishops, to agree unanimously that Romero died as a martyr out of hatred for the faith.
	Romero was gunned down on March 24, 1980, as he celebrated Mass in a hospital chapel in San Salvador. He had spoken out .

Pope Benedict, not Francis, unblocked Romero sainthood case

China announced today that users of blogs and chat rooms will be required to register their names with operators and promise in writing to avoid challenging the Communist political system, further tightening control over Internet use.
	The announcement follows what technology companies say are official efforts in recent weeks to block virtual private networks that are used to circumvent China's extensive Internet filters.
	China has the world's biggest population of Internet users with 649 million people online but increasing censorship has chilled the popularity of social media.
	Beijing has required Internet companies since 2012 to obtain real names of some users.
	But compliance was uneven and the rules failed to specify what services were covered.
	The latest announcement extends that "real name" registration requirement to blogs, microblog services such as the popular Sina Weibo and website comment sections.
	Such settings offer many Chinese their only opportunity to express ...

China tightens rules on Internet use, online comments

Chinese and Argentine leaders today signed a batch of agreements, including collaboration on two new nuclear power plants, as Beijing is strengthening its relations with the South American country.
	On a state visit to China, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and the two countries signed 15 agreements covering travel visas, information technology, media, energy, space technology and financing. The financial amounts of the deals were not disclosed.
	Kirchner said two nuclear plants would be built in Argentina with transfer of technology from China, calling the move a "gateway for the deepening of this strategic relationship."
	China also is helping Argentina build infrastructure such as dams and railways. Beijing recently helped Buenos Aires stabilize its peso with a currency swap as Argentina struggles to shore up its foreign reserves.
	"Both sides are committed to strengthening our cooperation in various fields, especially our ...

China, Argentina agree on work for new nuclear power plants

Embattled Brazilian oil giant Petrobras says the company's CEO Graca Foster and five executive directors have stepped down.
	The corruption-wracked firm said in a one-line statement that the board will elect new executive members on Friday.
	Petrobras has been mired for months in a corruption case involving several top company officials as well as the heads of many of Brazil's main construction companies. The scandal is widely seen as among the biggest in Brazilian history.
	Speculation has been rife that Foster would be sacked, but her friend and ally Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff had been seen as defending her.
	Today's brief announcement comes a day after rumors of Foster's departure sent Petrobras shares soaring.

Petrobras says CEO stepping down amid corruption scandal

A federal jury has decided that the design of the 1996 Toyota Camry had a dangerous defect that was partly to blame for a fatal 2006 crash, and the automaker must pay nearly USD 11 million to victims.
	Jurors said the company was 60 per cent to blame for the accident, which left three people dead and two seriously injured. But they also found that Koua Fong Lee, who has long insisted he tried to stop his car before it slammed into another vehicle, was 40 per cent at fault.
	Lee, his family members, the family of a girl who died, and two people who were seriously injured sued Toyota Motor Corp in US District Court in Minneapolis.
	The lawsuit alleged the crash was caused by an acceleration defect in Lee's vehicle, but Toyota argued there was no design defect and that Lee was negligent.
	"No amount of money ... Will bring my life back, my life is not the same anymore," Lee said after the verdict, adding that he wanted the victims and their families to know: "I tried everything I could ..

Jury: Toyota must pay $11M to victims of fatal crash

The Philippine government says it has protested to Beijing after a Chinese coast guard ship allegedly rammed and damaged three Filipino fishing boats and endangered the lives of fishermen at a disputed shoal in the South China Sea.
	The Department of Foreign Affairs says it also lodged a separate protest with Beijing today over what it said was the illegal collection of endangered giant clams by Chinese fishermen, in the process destroying coral outcrops at Scarborough Shoal off the northwestern Philippines.
	The incidents are the latest in a long-running territorial dispute that has strained relations between the two Asian neighbours.
	China took effective control of Scarborough in 2012. Chinese coast guard ships have also surrounded Second Thomas Shoal, where Filipino marines are manning a grounded navy ship.

Philippines protests Chinese ramming of 3 Filipino boats

The Chinese maker of a drone that a hobbyist crashed at the White House says it is taking steps to ensure that cannot happen again.
	DJI Technology Co said today it will send a software update this week for its drones' navigation system that will block them from flying over Washington.
	The crash of the 50-centimeter-long Phantom quad-copter prompted questions about whether the White House and President Barack Obama were adequately protected against a potential threat.
	A DJI spokesman, Michael Perry, said the software update was planned for coming weeks but its release was moved up after the White House incident.
	DJI drones use a GPS-linked onboard navigation system that already is programmed to block them from "no fly" zones around some 700 airports worldwide, according to Perry.
	A US government intelligence agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, said the man who flew the drone into the White House was one of its employees but the flight was not work-related.
	His ...

Drone maker plans software to block Washington flights

A video purportedly showing Islamic State militants burning a captive Jordanian pilot to death brought an outpouring of grief and rage across the Middle East today, its brutality horrifying a region long accustomed to violence.
	Political and religious leaders offered angry denunciations and called for blood, while at least one wept on air while talking about the killing of 26-year-old Lt Muath Al-Kaseasbeh, whose F-16 crashed in Syria in December during a US-led coalition raid on the extremist group.
	The head of Sunni Islam's most respected seat of learning, Egypt's Al-Azhar, described the militants as enemies of God and the Prophet Muhammad, saying they deserved the Quran-prescribed punishment of death, crucifixion or the chopping off of their arms.
	"Islam prohibits the taking of an innocent life," Ahmed al-Tayeb, Al-Azhar's grand sheik, said in a statement, adding that by burning the pilot to death, the militants violated Islam's prohibition on the mutilation of bodies, even ...

Outrage in Mideast over IS killing of Jordan pilot

The US is about to begin destroying its largest remaining stockpile of chemical-laden artillery shells, marking a milestone in the global campaign to eradicate a debilitating weapon that still creeps into modern wars.
	The Pueblo Chemical Depot in southern Colorado plans to start neutralising 2,600 tons of ageing mustard agent in March as the US moves toward complying with a 1997 treaty banning all chemical weapons.
	"The start of Pueblo is an enormous step forward to a world free of chemical weapons," said Paul Walker, who has tracked chemical warfare for more than 20 years, first as a US House of Representatives staffer and currently with Green Cross International, which advocates on issues of security, poverty and the environment.
	The work starts less than a year after chlorine gas killed 13 people in Syria in April 2014. International inspectors concluded last month that the gas had been used as a weapon.
	Before the chlorine attack, 1,400 people were killed in a 2013 nerve gas ..

US to destroy its largest remaining chemical weapons cache

A Taiwanese flight with 58 people turned on its side in midair, clipped an elevated roadway and careened into a river today shortly after takeoff from the island's capital of Taipei, killing at least 15 people, local media and officials said.
	The death toll in the TransAsia Airways flight was expected to rise as rescue crews cleared the mostly sunken fuselage in the Keelung River a couple dozen meters (yards) from the shore. Teams of rescuers in rubber rafts clustered around the wreckage.
	The ATR 72 prop-jet aircraft was flying on its side, with one wing scraping past Taiwan's National Freeway No. 1 just seconds before it plunged into the river, local television images showed.
	It was the airline's second French-Italian-built ATR 72 to crash in the past year.
	Today's flight had taken off from Taipei's downtown Sungshan Airport en route to the outlying Taiwan-controlled Kinmen islands.
	Civil aviation officials said the flight took off at 10:53 am and lost contact with controllers ..

Taiwan plane with 58 aboard crashes in Taipei; 15 killed

No one can recall these kinds of odds for Tiger Woods at any tournament, certainly not one at Torrey Pines. He is listed at 50-to-1, which prompted a question that was even more shocking than the odds. Was that to win? Or to make the cut?
     Perhaps even more telling was an observation from Padraig Harrington.
     "Did you ever think you would hear a professional golfer genuinely and sincerely say, 'I hope Tiger Woods plays better,'" Harrington said over the weekend.
     No one ever imagined him playing worse. Woods didn't just miss the cut in the Phoenix Open last week. He missed it by 12 shots. More than posting an 82 -- the highest score of his professional career -- was how lost he looked on the golf course, especially around the greens.
     Yes, this was a really bad day at the office. But this was Tiger Woods, the guy with a short game that had no rival. The biggest break for Woods during his second round at the TPC Scottsdale was on the 17th hole, when Woods and Jordan ...

Tiger Woods now a subject of sympathy

Disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong hit two parked cars after a night of partying in Aspen but agreed to let his longtime girlfriend take the blame to avoid national attention, police reports show.
	Aspen police cited Armstrong with failing to report an accident and speeding weeks after the Dec 28 accident, but only after his girlfriend, Anna Hansen, admitted to lying for him.
	Armstrong declined immediate comment, and his attorney, Pamela Mackey, didn't immediately return a call.
	Hansen initially told police she had been driving home from an Aspen Art Museum party when she lost control of Armstrong's GMC Yukon on the icy roads, hitting the cars. She said she drove because "Lance had a little bit to drink," according to the reports.
	A man who had been renting one of the damaged cars told a police detective that Hansen came running up to his house in high heels, apologizing and promising to pay for the repairs.
	"She said, 'I'm Anna, we're the Armstrongs, my husband's Lance, he was ...

Police: Lance Armstrong hit parked cars, blamed girlfriend

Three children and an adult drowned in waters off western Guyana after performing a Hindu ritual for a dead relative.
	Police said today that Radika Persaud, her teenage son, a young nephew and a niece perished while swimming in the choppy Atlantic off a coastline in the country's Essequibo region.
	Authorities say the relatives had just participated in a religious ceremony on the beach marking the one-year anniversary of a loved one's death. Local Hindu families regularly gather at the beach in western Guyana for observances.
	Guyana is a mostly rural country on South America's northeastern shoulder. It is divided politically and ethnically between the descendants of people brought from Africa as slaves and the descendants of people brought as indentured workers from India, both Hindus and Muslims.

3 children, 1 adult drown in Guyana after Hindu rite

Numerous store brand supplements are not what their labels claim to be, an ongoing investigation of popular herbal supplements subjected to DNA testing has found, New York state's top law enforcement official said today.
	GNC, Target, Walmart and Walgreen Co sold supplements that either couldn't be verified to contain the labeled substance or that contained ingredients not listed on the label, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's office said.
	The supplements, including echinacea, ginseng, St John's wort, garlic, ginkgo biloba and saw palmetto, were contaminated with substances including rice, beans, pine, citrus, asparagus, primrose, wheat, houseplant and wild carrot. In many cases, unlisted contaminants were the only plant material found in the product samples.
	Overall, 21 per cent of the test results from store brand herbal supplements contained DNA from the plants listed on the labels. The retailer with the poorest showing was Walmart, where 4 percent of the products tested ...

NY attorney general targets popular herbal supplements

A senior police official says Canadian police have made another arrest and are announcing charges against three men related to an Islamic State recruiting terror cell in Ottawa.
	The official said today the case is linked to the arrest of three men in in Ottawa last month. It involves alleged recruiting for the Islamic State group and Canadian John Maguire, a fighter who appeared in an IS video overseas and who reportedly might have been killed recently.
	The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of the announcement today, says charges will be brought against Maguire, who police can't confirm is dead. The official says they will also announce charges against a third man.
	Suliman Mohamed, 21, was charged last month with participating in a terrorist group.

Canada police make IS terror cell arrest

The US defense intelligence chief is warning that America's technological edge over China is at risk because of cyber theft.
	Lt Gen Vincent Stewart, director of the US Defense Intelligence Agency, says the US retains technological superiority. But he also says China has stolen "a lot" of intellectual property from US defense contractors and that effort continues.
	He's declining to say publicly whether that has affected US defense capabilities.
	Stewart was speaking at a congressional hearing today on worldwide threats.
	He said Chinese training and weaponry, including missiles, aircraft and space defense capabilities, pose a significant threat to US forces in the western Pacific.

Intel chief warns US tech threatened by China cyber theft

Diplomats say the US and Iran are discussing a compromise that would let Iran keep much of its uranium-enriching technology but reduce its potential to make nuclear weapons.
	The two diplomats told The Associated Press that such a compromise could break the decade-long deadlock on attempts to limit Iranian activities that could be used to make nuclear weapons. Tehran has refused to meet US-led demands for deep cuts in the number of centrifuges used to enrich uranium, a process that can create material for the core of an atomic bomb.
	The diplomats are familiar with the talks but spoke only on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss them.

US, Iran discussing nuclear talks compromise

A mother of seven accused of spying for Ukraine was released from custody in Russia today following public outrage.
	Svetlana Davydova, 37, was arrested Jan 21 at her home in the town of Vyazma, west of Moscow. The Federal Security Service, the main KGB successor, had detained her on charges of treason that carry a prison sentence of up to 20 years.
	Even though released, Davydova's case is still pending. Her youngest child is a 2-month-old baby whom she was breastfeeding.
	Investigators haven't revealed details of the accusations, but her husband, Anatoly Gorlov, says Davydova called the Ukrainian Embassy after she had overheard a serviceman on a bus saying he and his comrades were preparing for a trip and decided he was talking about being sent to Ukraine.
	Gorlov attributed her release to a wave of public anger that followed Davydova's arrest, which rights defenders and opposition activists denounced as absurd.
	"I think it happened thanks to a clear stance taken by the civil ...

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