Elephants quickly learned to cooperate to solve a problem, researchers report in Monday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The giant mammals are socially complex, explained lead researcher Joshua M. Plotnik. ``They help others in distress,'' he said. ``They seem in some ways emotionally attached to each other, so you would expect there would be some level of cooperati...

Tel Aviv (dpa) - She will soon celebrate her 100th birthday, but Luba Fishman has found a new career - as a poster woman for an international cosmetics company. The Latvian-born, Israel-domiciled great-grandmother was chosen as a new face for Dove Cosmetics' "real beauty" campaign, with the slogan "Does true beauty have an age limit?" The company says the campaign is designed to avoid "beauty s...

RAYNE, Louisiana (AP) – Officials worked Sunday to get people back into their homes a day after a tornado ripped through this southwestern Louisiana town, killing a mother shielding her child from the fierce winds and leaving 12 hurt. Many of the 1,500 residents who had been evacuated were being allowed to return to their homes in this community about 70 miles (112 kilometers) west of Baton Roug...

U.S. administration’s policy faces difficulty in framing consistent message WASHINGTON (AFP) ― As a wildfire of revolt whips through the Middle East and North Africa, the White House is embracing pragmatism and shying away from embroidering a grand “Obama doctrine” for a region in turmoil. For a politician as fond of the grand gesture as President Barack Obama, the idea of an eponymous school o...

The appearance of “two suns” in the Taiwanese sky has made people wonder whether the second one is an exploded Betelgeuse, the second biggest star in the constellation Orion. News.com.au reported in January that Betelgeuse was losing mass in its center and would explode when it ran out, creating a second sun in the night sky, citing Dr. Brad Carter, senior lecturer of Physics at the University o...

Quake-hit city concludes there are no more trapped survivors CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand (AFP) ― It will take at least 10 years to rebuild Christchurch, officials said Thursday, warning it would be months before they could even begin to reopen the quake-hit New Zealand city. The timeline, outlining the scale of damage to the country’s second largest city, came as the death toll from last week’s d...

WEST HOLLYWOOD, California (AP) _ Fresh from a stumble at the Grammys and muffing the national anthem at the Super Bowl, singer Christina Aguilera was arrested early Tuesday near the Sunset Strip on suspicion of being drunk in public but will not be prosecuted, authorities said. Aguilera, 30, was ``extremely intoxicated'' when a car driven by her boyfriend was stopped, Los Angeles County sheriff...

Iran threatened to boycott the 2012 London Olympic Games unless its logo is changed, insisting that the games’ logo symbolizes Israel, according to news reports. A formal letter of complaint was sent to the International Olympic Committee by the Iranian committee over the logo which it claims spells out “Zion,” a biblical term referring to Jerusalem. Iranian Students News Agency, a government-s...

SANAA (AP) ― Yemen’s embattled president Tuesday accused the U.S., his closest ally, of instigating the mounting protests against him, but the gambit failed to slow the momentum for his ouster. Hundreds of thousands rallied in cities across Yemen against the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, in the largest of the protests of the past month, including one addressed by an influential fir...

Arab protest wave hurts al-Qaida, Iran: U.S. WASHINGTON (AFP) ― U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Tuesday that protests across the Arab world have dealt a major setback to al-Qaida militants and Iran by endorsing democratic change. “It basically gives the lie to al-Qaida’s claim that the only way to get rid of authoritarian governments is through extremist violence,” Gates told report...

WASHINGTON (AP) _ Defense Secretary Robert Gates says any military action in Libya must be carefully weighed because it will have broad consequences on the region and the U.S. military, including the effort in Afghanistan. Gates says he ordered two ships into the Mediterranean, including the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge. And he is sending 400 Marines to the Kearsarge to replace some of ...

TEHRAN (AFP) ― Iranian opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi and their wives have been arrested and put in a Tehran jail, their websites said Monday in reports swiftly denied by a judicial official. The two had been under house arrest after judiciary chief Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani said earlier this month they had committed “treason” and MPs demanded they be hanged. “Mir Hoss...

Chimpanzee meat could be on sale illegally in restaurants and markets in Britain. So-called “bush meat” -- allegedly found by in a raid by U.K. Trading Standards officials -- is believed to have been traded from market stalls in the Midlands. An investigator from Trading Standards told British tabloid The Sun on Monday:“We’ve found things like rat in the past, but it’s really shocking to find...