Jane Freebairn once met Queen Elizabeth II. She curtsied, said hello, and like so many others who have encountered the monarch, came away a bit star-struck. It wasn't just the monarch's regal air and manners that impressed Freebairn when she recalled the meeting a few years ago during a memorial ceremony for war dead at Westminster Abbey. "I had the most awful urge to try and touch her," Freebairn said. "She has the most amazing skin. It looks so soft. Of course, one doesn't

The U.S. government released the most extensive list yet of the hundreds of detainees who have been held at the Guantanamo Bay prison — nearly all labeled enemy combatants, but only a handful of whom have faced formal charges. In all, 558 people were named in the list provided by the Pentagon on Wednesday in response to a Freedom of Information lawsuit by The Associated Press. They were among the first swept up in the U.S

A Mexican priest has confessed to strangling his pregnant lover after Easter Mass and cutting her body into pieces, a state attorney general said Wednesday. The Rev. Cesar Torres, 42, admitted killing the 22-year-old woman at his parish on Mexico City's eastern outskirts, Mexico state Attorney General Abel Villicana said

Fayruza's doll-size body leans limply across the forearm of her aunt, who became the infant's mother minutes after her birth. The death of the withered baby's natural mother during childbirth epitomizes the leading health crisis in Afghanistan, where U.N. officials say 600 infants and 50 mothers die on average each day. President Hamid Karzai, addressing a health conference Wednesday, called the appalling rates of infant and maternal mortality his nation's great tragedy

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari asked the Shiite alliance today to confirm his nomination for a second term, his party's spokesman said, shifting responsibility to the alliance leadership to decide the embattled leader's fate. Jawad al-Maliki, spokesman for the Dawa party, said the move by al-Jaafari did not mean the prime minister was stepping aside but that he was putting the decision into the hands of alliance leader Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim and others

In a sun-filled apartment in Paris' historic Marais district, Marie-Therese Lebeau and her four assistants are busy at work, their hands bobbing up and down at a dizzying pace as they use crochet needles to knot single hairs onto model wooden heads. From the master wig maker's atelier emerge meringuelike powdered perukes like those once worn by royalty, droopy whiskers for movie stars like Gerard Depardieu, glamorous screen siren coiffures

Consumer prices rose sharply in March, reflecting higher costs for everything from gasoline to clothes and hotel rooms. Most troubling, core inflation, which does not include energy and food, rose at the fastest pace in a year. The Labor Department reported Wednesday that its Consumer Price Index rose by 0.4 percent last month, up sharply from the modest 0.1 percent gain in February. A big jump in gasoline prices led the extra price pressures

Cuba agreed Wednesday to buy another $30 million in food from Nebraska, strengthening trade relations with a U.S. farm state already selling corn, wheat, soybeans and other products to the communist island. Nebraska Lt. Gov. Rick Sheehy and Agriculture Director Greg Ibach led the trade delegation, which included meat and other agriculture producers on the four-day trip. In August, Nebraska Gov

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said his country will withdraw from the Andean free trade association because Colombia and Peru reached free trade agreements with the U.S. that make the group obsolete. Chavez said in a press statement that the Andean Community of Nations, which groups Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela, is dead. Chavez is in Paraguay, attending a regional meeting. "It makes no sense," Chavez said, referring to the Andean group

A record 8.3 million American households had a net worth of $1 million or more in 2005, an increase of 800,000 from 2004, according to data released Wednesday. The survey by the Spectrem Group, a Chicago-based consulting firm specializing in the affluent and retirement markets, also found that the number of households with a net worth of $5 million or more rose to 930,000 in 2005