AP - An American al-Qaida suspect detained in Yemen fooled his hospital guards into unshackling him by asking to join them for prayers, security officials said Saturday. He then killed a guard who laid down his weapon as he went ahead at prayer time.

AP - President Barack Obama says he wants projects helping specific states yanked from the health care bill Congress is writing. Democratic senators, being senators, beg to differ.

AP - A suicide squad detonated bombs at a newly fortified prison, police headquarters and two other locations late Saturday, killing at least 30 people in the largest city of the southern Taliban heartland.

AP - Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's political coalition took an early vote lead Saturday in the election's all-important battleground of Baghdad, pulling away from its two closest rivals in the latest indication that Iraqis want a moderate government instead of Shiite religious hard-liners leading the postwar nation.

AP - The Vatican on Saturday denounced what it called aggressive attempts to drag Pope Benedict XVI into the spreading scandals of pedophile priests in his German homeland. It also insisted that church confidentiality doesn't prevent bishops from reporting abuse to police.

AP - Jamie Paulin-Ramirez was a straight-A nursing student when she abruptly left Colorado last fall with her 6-year-old son and turned up in Ireland, where her parents say she was arrested this week in an alleged plot to assassinate a Swedish cartoonist.

AP - Newly arrived Republican Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts accused President Barack Obama and Democrats on Saturday of a "bitter, destructive and endless" drive to pass health overhaul legislation that Brown warned would be disastrous.

AP - Jene Newsome played by the rules as an Air Force sergeant: She never told anyone in the military she was a lesbian. The 28-year-old's honorable discharge under the "don't ask, don't tell" policy came only after police officers in Rapid City, S.D., saw an Iowa marriage certificate in her home and told the nearby Ellsworth Air Force Base.

AP - Utah's House majority leader resigned from the Legislature Saturday, two days after acknowledging he paid a woman $150,000 to keep quiet about a nude hot-tubbing incident that took place a quarter century ago when she was a teenager.

AP - Evan Turner rescued No. 6 Ohio State for the second straight day in the Big Ten tournament.

Reuters - The foreign ministers of Turkey and Sweden condemned on Saturday a vote in the Swedish parliament that defined the early 20th-century killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as genocide.

Reuters - A Taliban suicide bomber targeting security forces killed at least 11 people on Saturday, Pakistani police said, part of a renewed push against the state after one of the biggest security crackdowns in years.

Reuters - Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki held a wide lead on Saturday in early results from Baghdad, the major prize in a tight election race that Iraqis hope will bring stability after years of sectarian conflict.

Reuters - Irish police have released three of the seven people arrested on Tuesday in connection with an alleged plot to murder a Swedish cartoonist over a drawing depicting the Prophet Mohammad with the body of a dog.

AFP - A series of suicide attacks in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar killed at least 27 people on Saturday, a senior official said, in the country's deadliest assault so far this year.

AFP - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered an inquiry Saturday into why a contested settlement plan was announced during a landmark visit by US Vice President Joe Biden, a spokesman said.