A spokesman for Iran"s mission to the U.N. says the American hiker who will be freed this weekend is the only woman among the three.

The Mexican police officers who arrested infamous drug suspect Edgar Valdez Villarreal, alias "La Barbie," did not initially know who they had caught, according to a booking report obtained Thursday.

Protests by thousands of angry Afghans over plans by an obscure U.S. church to burn copies of the Quran grew on Friday, with demonstrations spreading to the capital and at least five provinces, officials said.

An animal-rights activist says an endangered right whale stranded on a beach in southern Brazil for two days is too weak to be rescued and returned safely to the sea.

A suicide car bomber exploded at the gate to Mogadishu"s airport Thursday, and suicide bombers in a second vehicle rushed toward the terminal before exploding themselves short of their goal, officials said. Up to 14 people were killed, including five attackers.

Terrified Somalis fleeing an offensive by Islamist insurgents in their capital described a hellish scene of putrefying corpses, graves hastily dug in gardens and neighborhoods flattened by mortars.

U.S. Marine commandos stormed a pirate-held cargo ship off the Somalia coast Thursday, reclaiming control and taking nine prisoners without firing a shot in the first such boarding raid by the international anti-piracy flotilla, U.S. Navy officials said.