HAVANA – Cuba’s foreign minister urged U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to keep his promise to ease restrictions on family travel and remittances to the island, saying it would be a positive step toward normalizing diplomatic relations. Felipe Perez Roque told reporters at the opening of Pakistan’s new embassy in Havana …

LAS VEGAS – A witness who acknowledged saving himself from a potential life sentence by testifying against O.J. Simpson conceded Tuesday that his memory of the hotel room confrontation at the center of the case hasn’t been the same since he suffered two heart attacks. Click here for photos. Click …

MILWAUKEE – A Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, man faces another charge after he wrote a letter from jail urging another man to kill a police informant and undercover sheriff’s deputy. Thirty-nine-year-old Raymond E. Krugel was arrested in July and charged in Ozaukee County with one count of cocaine possession and two …

Valleys on Mars were carved over long periods by recurring floods at a time when Mars might have had wet and dry seasons much like some of Earth’s deserts, a new study suggests. The research contradicts other suggestions that the large valley networks on the red planet were the result …

WASHINGTON – An undercover video shot at an Iowa pig farm shows workers hitting sows with metal rods, slamming piglets on a concrete floor and bragging about jamming rods up into sows’ hindquarters. On the video, obtained by The Associated Press, a supervisor tells an undercover investigator for People for …

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa – The fate of President Thabo Mbeki hung in the balance Friday, as the ruling African National Congress’s top decision-making body met to decide if he should be forced out of office. Mbeki was due to stand down after 10 years in office next year, but he …

NEW ORLEANS – Three years ago, corpses lay rotting in the streets outside the Morial Convention Center. It was a scene so chaotic and depraved, even the police dared not venture inside. During Hurricane Gustav, New Orleans police and the National Guard used the iconic building as a barracks and …

CLAYMONT, Del. – Delaware authorities charged a woman with plotting the real-life abduction of a boyfriend she met through the virtual reality Web site “Second Life.” Kimberly Jernigan, 33, originally of Durham, N.C., was returned to Delaware to face charges including attempted kidnapping after she was arrested in Maryland last …

Katie Holmes has apparently chopped her hair even shorter … again. Mrs. Tom Cruise, who made a huge hairstyle splash when she helped fuel Hollywood’s bob craze late last year, has been seen out and about in New York with a new pixie cut. Photos popping up on the Internet …

LOS ANGELES – It’s a puzzle worthy of The Riddler: Why is there no video game based on “The Dark Knight”? For the first time in the film franchise’s history, the caped crusader flew into movie theaters without a video game attached to his utility belt. Despite a plethora of …