The Nations Weather

By SAYYID AZIM (AP)

Despite a fractured collarbone, a teenage girl clung to the wreckage of a plane for more than 13 hours before rescuers found her floating in the Indian Ocean, authorities said. The only known survivor of the crash, she was being flown back to Paris on Wednesday night.

The Yemenia Airbus 310 jet was carrying 153 people when it went down in howling winds early Tuesday in the sea north of the Comoros Islands.

French officials late Wednesday retracted claims that one of the plane\'s black boxes had been found. French Commander Bertrand Mortemard de Boisse told The Associated...

By SAYYID AZIM (AP)

A French official says the 14-year-old girl who is the only known survivor of a crashed Yemeni jetliner is headed home to Paris after being hospitalized in the Comoros with a fractured collarbone.

French minister Alain Joyandet said Wednesday that Bahia Bakari left this island nation on a chartered executive jet.

The Yemenia Airbus 310 jet was carrying 153 people when it went down in howling winds early Tuesday in the sea north of the Comoros Islands.

She is expected to be hospitalized immediately in Paris.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for...

By Mary Ann Chastain (AP)

Texas Gov. Rick Perry was raising money at campaign headquarters when an Associated Press reporter called his press staff to ask what he was doing. An hour later, he walked into AP\'s statehouse bureau to show he was alive and well and not, say, in South America for a romantic rendezvous.

Most of the nation\'s governors were willing _ even eager _ to prove they were on the job after revelations that South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford ditched his security detail and disappeared for a secret weeklong tryst with a mistress in Argentina.

The day after Sanford admitted his...

By Fred Beckham (AP)

Kenny Perry followed up his opening 61 with a 68 on Friday and held on to a two-stroke lead when thunderstorms halted the second round of the Travelers Championship.

Perry, who tied the course record Thursday, said he actually hit the ball better on Friday, but lost his touch with the putter. He had just three birdies despite hitting 16 greens.

He and the rest of the morning golfers played through off-and-on showers that slowed already soft greens.

Ryan Moore shot a 65 to move into second place and said conditions allowed him to go for the pin all day.

The sun...

By (AP)

Dr. Jerri Nielsen FitzGerald, who diagnosed and treated her own breast cancer before a dramatic rescue from the South Pole a decade ago, has died after the disease recurred. She was 57.

Her husband, Thomas FitzGerald, said she died Tuesday at their home in Southwick, Mass. Her cancer had been in remission until it returned in August 2005, he said Wednesday.

She was the only doctor among 41 staff at the National Science Foundation\'s Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in winter 1999 when she discovered a lump in her breast. At first, she didn\'t tell anyone, but the burden...

By (AP)

Dr. Jerri Nielsen FitzGerald, who diagnosed and treated her own breast cancer before a dramatic rescue from the South Pole, has died at age 57.

Her husband, Thomas FitzGerald, said she died Tuesday at their home in Southwick, Mass. Her cancer had been in remission until it returned in August 2005, he said Wednesday.

She was the only doctor among 41 staff at the National Science Foundation\'s Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in winter 1999 when she discovered a lump in her breast. At first, she didn\'t tell anyone, but the burden became too much to bear.

\"I got really...

By Miguel Tovar (AP)

Andres weakened from a tropical storm to a depression Wednesday as it headed out to sea after flooding homes and killing at least one person on Mexico\'s southwestern coast.

Andres briefly flared up into the Eastern Pacific season\'s first hurricane Tuesday, skirting the coast south of the tourist resort of Puerto Vallarta.

At 8 a.m. PDT (11 a.m. EDT, 1500 GMT), the center of the storm was located about 130 miles (20 kilometers) southwest of Cabo Corrientes and 230 miles (370 kilometers) southeast of the tip of Baja California, and moving to the northwest about 9 mph (15...

By (AP)

Dr. Jerri Nielsen FitzGerald, whose struggle against breast cancer during a winter at the South Pole captivated the world, has died. She was 57.

Her husband, Thomas FitzGerald, says she died Tuesday at their home in Southwick, Mass. The cause was cancer.

She was the only doctor at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in winter 1999 when she discovered a lump in her breast.

Weather conditions didn\'t permit a rescue, so she performed a biopsy on herself with the help of staff.

An air drop provided chemotherapy drugs, and she treated herself until conditions...

By Miguel Tovar (AP)

A weakening Tropical Storm Andres hit Mexico\'s coast south of the tourist resort of Puerta Vallarta with rain and wind on Wednesday, before heading out into the Pacific and brushing past the tip of Baja California.

Andres briefly flared up into the Eastern Pacific season\'s first hurricane on Tuesday, but quickly weakened back to a tropical storm after dealing a glancing blow to Mexico\'s southwestern coast, where it flooded homes and left at least one person dead.

Its winds weakened to 70 mph (110 kph) late Tuesday and it was expected to weaken even more over the next day...

By (AP)

Excerpts from recent editorials in newspapers in the United States and abroad:

June 25

San Antonio (Texas) Express-News, on readmitting Cuba to the Organization of American States:

The United States has no argument with the people of Cuba. It\'s the government of Cuba that five decades of American leaders from both parties have opposed. And the reason for that opposition is the Cuban government\'s treatment of its own citizens _ denying them the ability to select their leaders in a democratic process and consistently violating their basic human rights.

If the goal...

By (AP)

The Yemenia Airbus 310 that crashed into the Indian Ocean near Comoros may have been attempting a go-around in rough weather for another approach when it hit the sea, a pilots association says.

International Federation of Air Line Pilots Association, a group of over 100,000 pilots, made the claim in its daily newsletter late Tuesday. It did not give a source for this information, but it is a well-respected industry group whose members are very familiar with airports around the world.

The plane, which crashed in poor weather and high winds, was carrying 153 people from France...

By (AP)

The U.N.\'s food agency cannot feed millions of hungry women and children in impoverished North Korea because international donations have dried up and the communist regime has restricted its operations, an official said Wednesday.

The World Food Program has received only 15 percent of the $504 million it needs to feed 6.2 million vulnerable North Koreans as the food situation worsens during a lean growing season before the November harvest, according to Torben Due, the WFP\'s representative for North Korea.

Due would not give a reason for the funding shortfall but said he...

By (AP)

North Korea\'s economy grew in 2008 after good weather boosted agricultural production, South Korea\'s central bank said Sunday.

The North\'s gross domestic product for last year was estimated at $24.7 billion, a 3.7 percent increase from 2007, Seoul\'s Bank of Korea said in a news release. The impoverished North\'s economy shrank 2.3 percent in 2007 and 1.1 percent in 2006.

The central bank said the North\'s economic growth was mainly because of \"temporary factors\" such as favorable weather conditions that resulted in an increase in agricultural production, and the arrival...

By (AP)

Italy\'s Dolomite mountains and the Wadden Sea along the coasts of Germany and the Netherlands were among several sites added Friday to UNESCO\'s world heritage list.

The U.N. agency\'s World Heritage Committee announced the additions, most of them nature-related, at a meeting in Seville, Spain. Heritage sites, which are deemed as having outstanding universal value, can also be cultural, such as old quarters of cities or monuments.

The Wadden Sea coastline is a wetlands area rich in wildlife. UNESCO described it as one of the world\'s last, large-scale intertidal ecosystems...

By (AP)

The U.S. development agency said Thursday it has committed $1 million to a project that aims to help people living along southern Africa\'s Zambezi River cope with worsening natural disasters because of climate change.

The Zambezi River flows from Zambia to Mozambique, passing through places like Botswana and Zimbabwe on its way to the Indian Ocean.

For the 32 million people who live in the Zambezi\'s basin _ some of the world\'s poorest _ the river is a source of transportation, jobs and fertile soil for agriculture. But it also brings misery with a cycle of flood and...