NEW YORK – New York City police say a minister has been arrested on charges of raping a teenage relative. The Rev. Dr. Phillip Charles Joubert Sr. was charged last month after the victim came forward to police. He pleaded not guilty last week in a Queens court on first-degree …

The U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, recently held an “explosive” meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai over the country’s presidential election, according to several news reports. At a private lunch held on August 21, one day after the election, Holbrooke reportedly pressed Karzai on widespread state-engineered ballot-rigging alleged …

British surgeons are pioneering a new technique which uses stem cells to repair damaged bones. The procedure could prevent thousands of people from needing to have an artificial hip replacement. Sky News was given exclusive access to one of the first operations, which was done at the Spire Hospital in …

Breathing coal dust worsens emphysema independently of cigarette smoking, suggest results of a study published this month. The current findings, are particularly relevant today given the boom in coal production and the millions of people who are still being exposed to high levels of coal dust, Dr. Benoit Nemery, of …

BAGHDAD – A homicide car bomber struck a police checkpoint in a small town west of Baghdad on Monday, killing at least three people in the latest attack in a region that had once been a Sunni insurgent stronghold but later became key to a nationwide drop in violence. It …

TWIN FALLS, Idaho – Authorities in Twin Falls County say a father and his son are being held on separate charges of sexual assault. They say 43-year-old Franklin Ward Osterhoudt and his 20-year-old son, Franklin Scott Osterhoudt, are being held early Saturday at the county jail. The elder Osterhoudt faces …

CHICAGO – A blogger accused of threatening the lives of three Chicago-based federal judges by saying they “deserve to be killed” has been ordered held without bond. U.S. Magistrate Judge Martin Ashman says Hal Turner of North Bergen, New Jersey, is too great a danger to the community to be …

WOOTTON BASSETT, England – Thousands of mourners bowed their heads in tribute Friday to the passing coffins of British soldiers killed in a new offensive in Afghanistan, where the climbing toll has created doubts in Britain about the human cost of the war. News of 15 battlefield deaths in 10 …

BAGHDAD – A car bomb exploded near a church as worshippers left Sunday Mass, killing at least four civilians and injuring 18 in one of several attacks on Iraq’s beleaguered Christian minority. The coordinated assault came as the Iraqi military predicted that insurgent attacks, though declining, could continue for a …

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea has not yet sent two convicted U.S. journalists to a prison labor camp in a possible attempt to seek talks with Washington on their release, a scholar who visited the North said in an interview published Friday. Laura Ling and Euna lee, who work …