AP Top News at 1:40 p.m. EDT

PARIS (AP) - The day after Francois Hollande rode to power in France on a slogan of "change now" the conversation in Europe is already different: Austerity has become a dirty word. In Greece, political parties who reject the extreme belt-tightening required by international bailouts were the big winners in parliamentary elections. German voters in a northern state ousted the coalition led by Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative party, which has pressed the case for austerity.

PARIS (AP) - When Nicolas Sarkozy bounded up the steps of France's presidential palace in jogging shorts and shoes on his first day in office five years ago, many French instantly sensed they were in for something new. In a country where King Louis XIV's phrase "L'Etat, c'est moi" - "I am the state" - resonated for later heads of state, the message from Sarkozy was clear: Tradition-bound France needed a self-image makeover.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Army investigators said Monday they found no bullet wound nor evidence of foul play in the death of a soldier in Afghanistan who died during a Skype video chat with his wife. Capt. Bruce Kevin Clark collapsed while speaking to his wife on May 1 from his base in Tarin Kot, Afghanistan, southwest of Kabul. His wife, Susan Orellana-Clark, has suggested that Clark was shot, citing a hole visible in the closet behind him that she believed was a bullet hole.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Republicans who control the House are using cuts to food aid, health care and social services like Meals on Wheels to protect the Pentagon from a crippling wave of budget cuts come January. The reductions, while controversial, are but a fraction of what Republicans called for in the broader, nonbinding budget plan they passed in March. Totaling a little more than $300 billion over a decade, the new cuts are aimed less at tackling $1 trillion-plus government deficits and more at preventing cuts to troop levels and military modernization.

SANAA, Yemen (AP) - Al-Qaida militants staged a surprise attack Monday on a Yemeni army base in the south, killing 22 soldiers and capturing 25 just hours after a U.S. drone strike killed a senior figure in the terror network wanted in connection with the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. It was not immediately clear if the pre-dawn attack on the military base in the southern Abyan province was in retaliation for the killing of Fahd al-Quso, an al-Qaida leader on the FBI's most wanted list.

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) - Syrians cast ballots Monday in parliamentary elections billed by the regime as key to President Bashar Assad's political reforms, but the opposition dismissed the vote as a sham meant to preserve his autocratic rule. There were scattered reports of violence, including accounts from activists and witnesses that security forces launched deadly attacks on villages in central Syria where opposition supporters were refusing to vote. The reports could not be indepedently confirmed.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - A Kentucky coroner says an autopsy revealed injuries on a body found in a barn at Churchill Downs just hours after the Kentucky Derby. But she refused to release more details. Jo-Ann Farmer, chief deputy coroner for Jefferson County, said Monday she was withholding information pending the investigation into the death of 48-year-old Adan Fabian Perez, a track worker whose body was discovered early Sunday morning.

NEW YORK (AP) - (at)BarackObama is on Twitter. So is (at)MittRomney. And so are all the voters following the 2012 presidential contest, whether they know it or not. Candidates, strategists, journalists and political junkies have flocked to Twitter, the social networking hub where information from the mundane to the momentous is shared through 140-character microbursts known as tweets.

NEW YORK (AP) - Russians prefer their Lay's potato chips dusted in caviar and crab flavors. The Chinese like their Oreos stuffed with mango and orange cream. And in Spain, Kellogg's All-Bran cereal is served floating in hot coffee instead of cold milk. Americans might get squeamish at the thought of their favorite snacks being tweaked. But what works in the U.S. doesn't always work everywhere.

GARDEN CITY, N.Y. (AP) - He's too good, and that's too bad. A 13-year-old New York boy who played field hockey growing up in Ireland has been told that after two years as a member of the Southampton High School girls' team, he is now too skilled to qualify for an exemption allowing him to compete with - and against - girls next season.

PARIS (AP) - The day after Francois Hollande rode to power in France on a slogan of "change now" the conversation in Europe is already different: Austerity has become a dirty word. In Greece, political parties who reject the extreme belt-tightening required by international bailouts were the big winners in parliamentary elections. German voters in a northern state ousted the coalition led by Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative party, which has pressed the case for austerity.

PARIS (AP) - When Nicolas Sarkozy bounded up the steps of France's presidential palace in jogging shorts and shoes on his first day in office five years ago, many French instantly sensed they were in for something new. In a country where King Louis XIV's phrase "L'Etat, c'est moi" - "I am the state" - resonated for later heads of state, the message from Sarkozy was clear: Tradition-bound France needed a self-image makeover.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Army investigators said Monday they found no bullet wound nor evidence of foul play in the death of a soldier in Afghanistan who died during a Skype video chat with his wife. Capt. Bruce Kevin Clark collapsed while speaking to his wife on May 1 from his base in Tarin Kot, Afghanistan, southwest of Kabul. His wife, Susan Orellana-Clark, has suggested that Clark was shot, citing a hole visible in the closet behind him that she believed was a bullet hole.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Republicans who control the House are using cuts to food aid, health care and social services like Meals on Wheels to protect the Pentagon from a crippling wave of budget cuts come January. The reductions, while controversial, are but a fraction of what Republicans called for in the broader, nonbinding budget plan they passed in March. Totaling a little more than $300 billion over a decade, the new cuts are aimed less at tackling $1 trillion-plus government deficits and more at preventing cuts to troop levels and military modernization.

SANAA, Yemen (AP) - Al-Qaida militants staged a surprise attack Monday on a Yemeni army base in the south, killing 22 soldiers and capturing 25 just hours after a U.S. drone strike killed a senior figure in the terror network wanted in connection with the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. It was not immediately clear if the pre-dawn attack on the military base in the southern Abyan province was in retaliation for the killing of Fahd al-Quso, an al-Qaida leader on the FBI's most wanted list.

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) - Syrians cast ballots Monday in parliamentary elections billed by the regime as key to President Bashar Assad's political reforms, but the opposition dismissed the vote as a sham meant to preserve his autocratic rule. There were scattered reports of violence, including accounts from activists and witnesses that security forces launched deadly attacks on villages in central Syria where opposition supporters were refusing to vote. The reports could not be indepedently confirmed.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - A Kentucky coroner says an autopsy revealed injuries on a body found in a barn at Churchill Downs just hours after the Kentucky Derby. But she refused to release more details. Jo-Ann Farmer, chief deputy coroner for Jefferson County, said Monday she was withholding information pending the investigation into the death of 48-year-old Adan Fabian Perez, a track worker whose body was discovered early Sunday morning.

NEW YORK (AP) - (at)BarackObama is on Twitter. So is (at)MittRomney. And so are all the voters following the 2012 presidential contest, whether they know it or not. Candidates, strategists, journalists and political junkies have flocked to Twitter, the social networking hub where information from the mundane to the momentous is shared through 140-character microbursts known as tweets.

NEW YORK (AP) - Russians prefer their Lay's potato chips dusted in caviar and crab flavors. The Chinese like their Oreos stuffed with mango and orange cream. And in Spain, Kellogg's All-Bran cereal is served floating in hot coffee instead of cold milk. Americans might get squeamish at the thought of their favorite snacks being tweaked. But what works in the U.S. doesn't always work everywhere.

GARDEN CITY, N.Y. (AP) - He's too good, and that's too bad. A 13-year-old New York boy who played field hockey growing up in Ireland has been told that after two years as a member of the Southampton High School girls' team, he is now too skilled to qualify for an exemption allowing him to compete with - and against - girls next season.

PARIS (AP) - The day after Francois Hollande rode to power in France on a slogan of "change now" the conversation in Europe is already different: Austerity has become a dirty word. In Greece, political parties who reject the extreme belt-tightening required by international bailouts were the big winners in parliamentary elections. German voters in a northern state ousted the coalition led by Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative party, which has pressed the case for austerity.

PARIS (AP) - When Nicolas Sarkozy bounded up the steps of France's presidential palace in jogging shorts and shoes on his first day in office five years ago, many French instantly sensed they were in for something new. In a country where King Louis XIV's phrase "L'Etat, c'est moi" - "I am the state" - resonated for later heads of state, the message from Sarkozy was clear: Tradition-bound France needed a self-image makeover.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Army investigators said Monday they found no bullet wound nor evidence of foul play in the death of a soldier in Afghanistan who died during a Skype video chat with his wife. Capt. Bruce Kevin Clark collapsed while speaking to his wife on May 1 from his base in Tarin Kot, Afghanistan, southwest of Kabul. His wife, Susan Orellana-Clark, has suggested that Clark was shot, citing a hole visible in the closet behind him that she believed was a bullet hole.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Republicans who control the House are using cuts to food aid, health care and social services like Meals on Wheels to protect the Pentagon from a crippling wave of budget cuts come January. The reductions, while controversial, are but a fraction of what Republicans called for in the broader, nonbinding budget plan they passed in March. Totaling a little more than $300 billion over a decade, the new cuts are aimed less at tackling $1 trillion-plus government deficits and more at preventing cuts to troop levels and military modernization.

SANAA, Yemen (AP) - Al-Qaida militants staged a surprise attack Monday on a Yemeni army base in the south, killing 22 soldiers and capturing 25 just hours after a U.S. drone strike killed a senior figure in the terror network wanted in connection with the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. It was not immediately clear if the pre-dawn attack on the military base in the southern Abyan province was in retaliation for the killing of Fahd al-Quso, an al-Qaida leader on the FBI's most wanted list.

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) - Syrians cast ballots Monday in parliamentary elections billed by the regime as key to President Bashar Assad's political reforms, but the opposition dismissed the vote as a sham meant to preserve his autocratic rule. There were scattered reports of violence, including accounts from activists and witnesses that security forces launched deadly attacks on villages in central Syria where opposition supporters were refusing to vote. The reports could not be indepedently confirmed.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - A Kentucky coroner says an autopsy revealed injuries on a body found in a barn at Churchill Downs just hours after the Kentucky Derby. But she refused to release more details. Jo-Ann Farmer, chief deputy coroner for Jefferson County, said Monday she was withholding information pending the investigation into the death of 48-year-old Adan Fabian Perez, a track worker whose body was discovered early Sunday morning.

NEW YORK (AP) - (at)BarackObama is on Twitter. So is (at)MittRomney. And so are all the voters following the 2012 presidential contest, whether they know it or not. Candidates, strategists, journalists and political junkies have flocked to Twitter, the social networking hub where information from the mundane to the momentous is shared through 140-character microbursts known as tweets.

NEW YORK (AP) - Russians prefer their Lay's potato chips dusted in caviar and crab flavors. The Chinese like their Oreos stuffed with mango and orange cream. And in Spain, Kellogg's All-Bran cereal is served floating in hot coffee instead of cold milk. Americans might get squeamish at the thought of their favorite snacks being tweaked. But what works in the U.S. doesn't always work everywhere.

GARDEN CITY, N.Y. (AP) - He's too good, and that's too bad. A 13-year-old New York boy who played field hockey growing up in Ireland has been told that after two years as a member of the Southampton High School girls' team, he is now too skilled to qualify for an exemption allowing him to compete with - and against - girls next season.

PARIS (AP) - The day after Francois Hollande rode to power in France on a slogan of "change now" the conversation in Europe is already different: Austerity has become a dirty word. In Greece, political parties who reject the extreme belt-tightening required by international bailouts were the big winners in parliamentary elections. German voters in a northern state ousted the coalition led by Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative party, which has pressed the case for austerity.

PARIS (AP) - When Nicolas Sarkozy bounded up the steps of France's presidential palace in jogging shorts and shoes on his first day in office five years ago, many French instantly sensed they were in for something new. In a country where King Louis XIV's phrase "L'Etat, c'est moi" - "I am the state" - resonated for later heads of state, the message from Sarkozy was clear: Tradition-bound France needed a self-image makeover.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Army investigators said Monday they found no bullet wound nor evidence of foul play in the death of a soldier in Afghanistan who died during a Skype video chat with his wife. Capt. Bruce Kevin Clark collapsed while speaking to his wife on May 1 from his base in Tarin Kot, Afghanistan, southwest of Kabul. His wife, Susan Orellana-Clark, has suggested that Clark was shot, citing a hole visible in the closet behind him that she believed was a bullet hole.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Republicans who control the House are using cuts to food aid, health care and social services like Meals on Wheels to protect the Pentagon from a crippling wave of budget cuts come January. The reductions, while controversial, are but a fraction of what Republicans called for in the broader, nonbinding budget plan they passed in March. Totaling a little more than $300 billion over a decade, the new cuts are aimed less at tackling $1 trillion-plus government deficits and more at preventing cuts to troop levels and military modernization.

SANAA, Yemen (AP) - Al-Qaida militants staged a surprise attack Monday on a Yemeni army base in the south, killing 22 soldiers and capturing 25 just hours after a U.S. drone strike killed a senior figure in the terror network wanted in connection with the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. It was not immediately clear if the pre-dawn attack on the military base in the southern Abyan province was in retaliation for the killing of Fahd al-Quso, an al-Qaida leader on the FBI's most wanted list.

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) - Syrians cast ballots Monday in parliamentary elections billed by the regime as key to President Bashar Assad's political reforms, but the opposition dismissed the vote as a sham meant to preserve his autocratic rule. There were scattered reports of violence, including accounts from activists and witnesses that security forces launched deadly attacks on villages in central Syria where opposition supporters were refusing to vote. The reports could not be indepedently confirmed.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - A Kentucky coroner says an autopsy revealed injuries on a body found in a barn at Churchill Downs just hours after the Kentucky Derby. But she refused to release more details. Jo-Ann Farmer, chief deputy coroner for Jefferson County, said Monday she was withholding information pending the investigation into the death of 48-year-old Adan Fabian Perez, a track worker whose body was discovered early Sunday morning.

NEW YORK (AP) - (at)BarackObama is on Twitter. So is (at)MittRomney. And so are all the voters following the 2012 presidential contest, whether they know it or not. Candidates, strategists, journalists and political junkies have flocked to Twitter, the social networking hub where information from the mundane to the momentous is shared through 140-character microbursts known as tweets.

NEW YORK (AP) - Russians prefer their Lay's potato chips dusted in caviar and crab flavors. The Chinese like their Oreos stuffed with mango and orange cream. And in Spain, Kellogg's All-Bran cereal is served floating in hot coffee instead of cold milk. Americans might get squeamish at the thought of their favorite snacks being tweaked. But what works in the U.S. doesn't always work everywhere.

GARDEN CITY, N.Y. (AP) - He's too good, and that's too bad. A 13-year-old New York boy who played field hockey growing up in Ireland has been told that after two years as a member of the Southampton High School girls' team, he is now too skilled to qualify for an exemption allowing him to compete with - and against - girls next season.

PARIS (AP) - The day after Francois Hollande rode to power in France on a slogan of "change now" the conversation in Europe is already different: Austerity has become a dirty word. In Greece, political parties who reject the extreme belt-tightening required by international bailouts were the big winners in parliamentary elections. German voters in a northern state ousted the coalition led by Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative party, which has pressed the case for austerity.

PARIS (AP) - When Nicolas Sarkozy bounded up the steps of France's presidential palace in jogging shorts and shoes on his first day in office five years ago, many French instantly sensed they were in for something new. In a country where King Louis XIV's phrase "L'Etat, c'est moi" - "I am the state" - resonated for later heads of state, the message from Sarkozy was clear: Tradition-bound France needed a self-image makeover.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Army investigators said Monday they found no bullet wound nor evidence of foul play in the death of a soldier in Afghanistan who died during a Skype video chat with his wife. Capt. Bruce Kevin Clark collapsed while speaking to his wife on May 1 from his base in Tarin Kot, Afghanistan, southwest of Kabul. His wife, Susan Orellana-Clark, has suggested that Clark was shot, citing a hole visible in the closet behind him that she believed was a bullet hole.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Republicans who control the House are using cuts to food aid, health care and social services like Meals on Wheels to protect the Pentagon from a crippling wave of budget cuts come January. The reductions, while controversial, are but a fraction of what Republicans called for in the broader, nonbinding budget plan they passed in March. Totaling a little more than $300 billion over a decade, the new cuts are aimed less at tackling $1 trillion-plus government deficits and more at preventing cuts to troop levels and military modernization.

SANAA, Yemen (AP) - Al-Qaida militants staged a surprise attack Monday on a Yemeni army base in the south, killing 22 soldiers and capturing 25 just hours after a U.S. drone strike killed a senior figure in the terror network wanted in connection with the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. It was not immediately clear if the pre-dawn attack on the military base in the southern Abyan province was in retaliation for the killing of Fahd al-Quso, an al-Qaida leader on the FBI's most wanted list.

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) - Syrians cast ballots Monday in parliamentary elections billed by the regime as key to President Bashar Assad's political reforms, but the opposition dismissed the vote as a sham meant to preserve his autocratic rule. There were scattered reports of violence, including accounts from activists and witnesses that security forces launched deadly attacks on villages in central Syria where opposition supporters were refusing to vote. The reports could not be indepedently confirmed.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - A Kentucky coroner says an autopsy revealed injuries on a body found in a barn at Churchill Downs just hours after the Kentucky Derby. But she refused to release more details. Jo-Ann Farmer, chief deputy coroner for Jefferson County, said Monday she was withholding information pending the investigation into the death of 48-year-old Adan Fabian Perez, a track worker whose body was discovered early Sunday morning.

NEW YORK (AP) - (at)BarackObama is on Twitter. So is (at)MittRomney. And so are all the voters following the 2012 presidential contest, whether they know it or not. Candidates, strategists, journalists and political junkies have flocked to Twitter, the social networking hub where information from the mundane to the momentous is shared through 140-character microbursts known as tweets.

NEW YORK (AP) - Russians prefer their Lay's potato chips dusted in caviar and crab flavors. The Chinese like their Oreos stuffed with mango and orange cream. And in Spain, Kellogg's All-Bran cereal is served floating in hot coffee instead of cold milk. Americans might get squeamish at the thought of their favorite snacks being tweaked. But what works in the U.S. doesn't always work everywhere.

GARDEN CITY, N.Y. (AP) - He's too good, and that's too bad. A 13-year-old New York boy who played field hockey growing up in Ireland has been told that after two years as a member of the Southampton High School girls' team, he is now too skilled to qualify for an exemption allowing him to compete with - and against - girls next season.

PARIS (AP) - The day after Francois Hollande rode to power in France on a slogan of "change now" the conversation in Europe is already different: Austerity has become a dirty word. In Greece, political parties who reject the extreme belt-tightening required by international bailouts were the big winners in parliamentary elections. German voters in a northern state ousted the coalition led by Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative party, which has pressed the case for austerity.

PARIS (AP) - When Nicolas Sarkozy bounded up the steps of France's presidential palace in jogging shorts and shoes on his first day in office five years ago, many French instantly sensed they were in for something new. In a country where King Louis XIV's phrase "L'Etat, c'est moi" - "I am the state" - resonated for later heads of state, the message from Sarkozy was clear: Tradition-bound France needed a self-image makeover.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Army investigators said Monday they found no bullet wound nor evidence of foul play in the death of a soldier in Afghanistan who died during a Skype video chat with his wife. Capt. Bruce Kevin Clark collapsed while speaking to his wife on May 1 from his base in Tarin Kot, Afghanistan, southwest of Kabul. His wife, Susan Orellana-Clark, has suggested that Clark was shot, citing a hole visible in the closet behind him that she believed was a bullet hole.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Republicans who control the House are using cuts to food aid, health care and social services like Meals on Wheels to protect the Pentagon from a crippling wave of budget cuts come January. The reductions, while controversial, are but a fraction of what Republicans called for in the broader, nonbinding budget plan they passed in March. Totaling a little more than $300 billion over a decade, the new cuts are aimed less at tackling $1 trillion-plus government deficits and more at preventing cuts to troop levels and military modernization.

SANAA, Yemen (AP) - Al-Qaida militants staged a surprise attack Monday on a Yemeni army base in the south, killing 22 soldiers and capturing 25 just hours after a U.S. drone strike killed a senior figure in the terror network wanted in connection with the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. It was not immediately clear if the pre-dawn attack on the military base in the southern Abyan province was in retaliation for the killing of Fahd al-Quso, an al-Qaida leader on the FBI's most wanted list.

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) - Syrians cast ballots Monday in parliamentary elections billed by the regime as key to President Bashar Assad's political reforms, but the opposition dismissed the vote as a sham meant to preserve his autocratic rule. There were scattered reports of violence, including accounts from activists and witnesses that security forces launched deadly attacks on villages in central Syria where opposition supporters were refusing to vote. The reports could not be indepedently confirmed.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - A Kentucky coroner says an autopsy revealed injuries on a body found in a barn at Churchill Downs just hours after the Kentucky Derby. But she refused to release more details. Jo-Ann Farmer, chief deputy coroner for Jefferson County, said Monday she was withholding information pending the investigation into the death of 48-year-old Adan Fabian Perez, a track worker whose body was discovered early Sunday morning.

NEW YORK (AP) - (at)BarackObama is on Twitter. So is (at)MittRomney. And so are all the voters following the 2012 presidential contest, whether they know it or not. Candidates, strategists, journalists and political junkies have flocked to Twitter, the social networking hub where information from the mundane to the momentous is shared through 140-character microbursts known as tweets.

NEW YORK (AP) - Russians prefer their Lay's potato chips dusted in caviar and crab flavors. The Chinese like their Oreos stuffed with mango and orange cream. And in Spain, Kellogg's All-Bran cereal is served floating in hot coffee instead of cold milk. Americans might get squeamish at the thought of their favorite snacks being tweaked. But what works in the U.S. doesn't always work everywhere.

GARDEN CITY, N.Y. (AP) - He's too good, and that's too bad. A 13-year-old New York boy who played field hockey growing up in Ireland has been told that after two years as a member of the Southampton High School girls' team, he is now too skilled to qualify for an exemption allowing him to compete with - and against - girls next season.

PARIS (AP) - The day after Francois Hollande rode to power in France on a slogan of "change now" the conversation in Europe is already different: Austerity has become a dirty word. In Greece, political parties who reject the extreme belt-tightening required by international bailouts were the big winners in parliamentary elections. German voters in a northern state ousted the coalition led by Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative party, which has pressed the case for austerity.

PARIS (AP) - When Nicolas Sarkozy bounded up the steps of France's presidential palace in jogging shorts and shoes on his first day in office five years ago, many French instantly sensed they were in for something new. In a country where King Louis XIV's phrase "L'Etat, c'est moi" - "I am the state" - resonated for later heads of state, the message from Sarkozy was clear: Tradition-bound France needed a self-image makeover.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Army investigators said Monday they found no bullet wound nor evidence of foul play in the death of a soldier in Afghanistan who died during a Skype video chat with his wife. Capt. Bruce Kevin Clark collapsed while speaking to his wife on May 1 from his base in Tarin Kot, Afghanistan, southwest of Kabul. His wife, Susan Orellana-Clark, has suggested that Clark was shot, citing a hole visible in the closet behind him that she believed was a bullet hole.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Republicans who control the House are using cuts to food aid, health care and social services like Meals on Wheels to protect the Pentagon from a crippling wave of budget cuts come January. The reductions, while controversial, are but a fraction of what Republicans called for in the broader, nonbinding budget plan they passed in March. Totaling a little more than $300 billion over a decade, the new cuts are aimed less at tackling $1 trillion-plus government deficits and more at preventing cuts to troop levels and military modernization.

SANAA, Yemen (AP) - Al-Qaida militants staged a surprise attack Monday on a Yemeni army base in the south, killing 22 soldiers and capturing 25 just hours after a U.S. drone strike killed a senior figure in the terror network wanted in connection with the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. It was not immediately clear if the pre-dawn attack on the military base in the southern Abyan province was in retaliation for the killing of Fahd al-Quso, an al-Qaida leader on the FBI's most wanted list.

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) - Syrians cast ballots Monday in parliamentary elections billed by the regime as key to President Bashar Assad's political reforms, but the opposition dismissed the vote as a sham meant to preserve his autocratic rule. There were scattered reports of violence, including accounts from activists and witnesses that security forces launched deadly attacks on villages in central Syria where opposition supporters were refusing to vote. The reports could not be indepedently confirmed.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - A Kentucky coroner says an autopsy revealed injuries on a body found in a barn at Churchill Downs just hours after the Kentucky Derby. But she refused to release more details. Jo-Ann Farmer, chief deputy coroner for Jefferson County, said Monday she was withholding information pending the investigation into the death of 48-year-old Adan Fabian Perez, a track worker whose body was discovered early Sunday morning.

NEW YORK (AP) - (at)BarackObama is on Twitter. So is (at)MittRomney. And so are all the voters following the 2012 presidential contest, whether they know it or not. Candidates, strategists, journalists and political junkies have flocked to Twitter, the social networking hub where information from the mundane to the momentous is shared through 140-character microbursts known as tweets.

NEW YORK (AP) - Russians prefer their Lay's potato chips dusted in caviar and crab flavors. The Chinese like their Oreos stuffed with mango and orange cream. And in Spain, Kellogg's All-Bran cereal is served floating in hot coffee instead of cold milk. Americans might get squeamish at the thought of their favorite snacks being tweaked. But what works in the U.S. doesn't always work everywhere.

GARDEN CITY, N.Y. (AP) - He's too good, and that's too bad. A 13-year-old New York boy who played field hockey growing up in Ireland has been told that after two years as a member of the Southampton High School girls' team, he is now too skilled to qualify for an exemption allowing him to compete with - and against - girls next season.

PARIS (AP) - The day after Francois Hollande rode to power in France on a slogan of "change now" the conversation in Europe is already different: Austerity has become a dirty word. In Greece, political parties who reject the extreme belt-tightening required by international bailouts were the big winners in parliamentary elections. German voters in a northern state ousted the coalition led by Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative party, which has pressed the case for austerity.

PARIS (AP) - When Nicolas Sarkozy bounded up the steps of France's presidential palace in jogging shorts and shoes on his first day in office five years ago, many French instantly sensed they were in for something new. In a country where King Louis XIV's phrase "L'Etat, c'est moi" - "I am the state" - resonated for later heads of state, the message from Sarkozy was clear: Tradition-bound France needed a self-image makeover.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Army investigators said Monday they found no bullet wound nor evidence of foul play in the death of a soldier in Afghanistan who died during a Skype video chat with his wife. Capt. Bruce Kevin Clark collapsed while speaking to his wife on May 1 from his base in Tarin Kot, Afghanistan, southwest of Kabul. His wife, Susan Orellana-Clark, has suggested that Clark was shot, citing a hole visible in the closet behind him that she believed was a bullet hole.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Republicans who control the House are using cuts to food aid, health care and social services like Meals on Wheels to protect the Pentagon from a crippling wave of budget cuts come January. The reductions, while controversial, are but a fraction of what Republicans called for in the broader, nonbinding budget plan they passed in March. Totaling a little more than $300 billion over a decade, the new cuts are aimed less at tackling $1 trillion-plus government deficits and more at preventing cuts to troop levels and military modernization.

SANAA, Yemen (AP) - Al-Qaida militants staged a surprise attack Monday on a Yemeni army base in the south, killing 22 soldiers and capturing 25 just hours after a U.S. drone strike killed a senior figure in the terror network wanted in connection with the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. It was not immediately clear if the pre-dawn attack on the military base in the southern Abyan province was in retaliation for the killing of Fahd al-Quso, an al-Qaida leader on the FBI's most wanted list.

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) - Syrians cast ballots Monday in parliamentary elections billed by the regime as key to President Bashar Assad's political reforms, but the opposition dismissed the vote as a sham meant to preserve his autocratic rule. There were scattered reports of violence, including accounts from activists and witnesses that security forces launched deadly attacks on villages in central Syria where opposition supporters were refusing to vote. The reports could not be indepedently confirmed.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - A Kentucky coroner says an autopsy revealed injuries on a body found in a barn at Churchill Downs just hours after the Kentucky Derby. But she refused to release more details. Jo-Ann Farmer, chief deputy coroner for Jefferson County, said Monday she was withholding information pending the investigation into the death of 48-year-old Adan Fabian Perez, a track worker whose body was discovered early Sunday morning.

NEW YORK (AP) - (at)BarackObama is on Twitter. So is (at)MittRomney. And so are all the voters following the 2012 presidential contest, whether they know it or not. Candidates, strategists, journalists and political junkies have flocked to Twitter, the social networking hub where information from the mundane to the momentous is shared through 140-character microbursts known as tweets.

NEW YORK (AP) - Russians prefer their Lay's potato chips dusted in caviar and crab flavors. The Chinese like their Oreos stuffed with mango and orange cream. And in Spain, Kellogg's All-Bran cereal is served floating in hot coffee instead of cold milk. Americans might get squeamish at the thought of their favorite snacks being tweaked. But what works in the U.S. doesn't always work everywhere.

GARDEN CITY, N.Y. (AP) - He's too good, and that's too bad. A 13-year-old New York boy who played field hockey growing up in Ireland has been told that after two years as a member of the Southampton High School girls' team, he is now too skilled to qualify for an exemption allowing him to compete with - and against - girls next season.

PARIS (AP) - The day after Francois Hollande rode to power in France on a slogan of "change now" the conversation in Europe is already different: Austerity has become a dirty word. In Greece, political parties who reject the extreme belt-tightening required by international bailouts were the big winners in parliamentary elections. German voters in a northern state ousted the coalition led by Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative party, which has pressed the case for austerity.

PARIS (AP) - When Nicolas Sarkozy bounded up the steps of France's presidential palace in jogging shorts and shoes on his first day in office five years ago, many French instantly sensed they were in for something new. In a country where King Louis XIV's phrase "L'Etat, c'est moi" - "I am the state" - resonated for later heads of state, the message from Sarkozy was clear: Tradition-bound France needed a self-image makeover.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Army investigators said Monday they found no bullet wound nor evidence of foul play in the death of a soldier in Afghanistan who died during a Skype video chat with his wife. Capt. Bruce Kevin Clark collapsed while speaking to his wife on May 1 from his base in Tarin Kot, Afghanistan, southwest of Kabul. His wife, Susan Orellana-Clark, has suggested that Clark was shot, citing a hole visible in the closet behind him that she believed was a bullet hole.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Republicans who control the House are using cuts to food aid, health care and social services like Meals on Wheels to protect the Pentagon from a crippling wave of budget cuts come January. The reductions, while controversial, are but a fraction of what Republicans called for in the broader, nonbinding budget plan they passed in March. Totaling a little more than $300 billion over a decade, the new cuts are aimed less at tackling $1 trillion-plus government deficits and more at preventing cuts to troop levels and military modernization.

SANAA, Yemen (AP) - Al-Qaida militants staged a surprise attack Monday on a Yemeni army base in the south, killing 22 soldiers and capturing 25 just hours after a U.S. drone strike killed a senior figure in the terror network wanted in connection with the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. It was not immediately clear if the pre-dawn attack on the military base in the southern Abyan province was in retaliation for the killing of Fahd al-Quso, an al-Qaida leader on the FBI's most wanted list.

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) - Syrians cast ballots Monday in parliamentary elections billed by the regime as key to President Bashar Assad's political reforms, but the opposition dismissed the vote as a sham meant to preserve his autocratic rule. There were scattered reports of violence, including accounts from activists and witnesses that security forces launched deadly attacks on villages in central Syria where opposition supporters were refusing to vote. The reports could not be indepedently confirmed.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - A Kentucky coroner says an autopsy revealed injuries on a body found in a barn at Churchill Downs just hours after the Kentucky Derby. But she refused to release more details. Jo-Ann Farmer, chief deputy coroner for Jefferson County, said Monday she was withholding information pending the investigation into the death of 48-year-old Adan Fabian Perez, a track worker whose body was discovered early Sunday morning.

NEW YORK (AP) - (at)BarackObama is on Twitter. So is (at)MittRomney. And so are all the voters following the 2012 presidential contest, whether they know it or not. Candidates, strategists, journalists and political junkies have flocked to Twitter, the social networking hub where information from the mundane to the momentous is shared through 140-character microbursts known as tweets.

NEW YORK (AP) - Russians prefer their Lay's potato chips dusted in caviar and crab flavors. The Chinese like their Oreos stuffed with mango and orange cream. And in Spain, Kellogg's All-Bran cereal is served floating in hot coffee instead of cold milk. Americans might get squeamish at the thought of their favorite snacks being tweaked. But what works in the U.S. doesn't always work everywhere.

GARDEN CITY, N.Y. (AP) - He's too good, and that's too bad. A 13-year-old New York boy who played field hockey growing up in Ireland has been told that after two years as a member of the Southampton High School girls' team, he is now too skilled to qualify for an exemption allowing him to compete with - and against - girls next season.

PARIS (AP) - The day after Francois Hollande rode to power in France on a slogan of "change now" the conversation in Europe is already different: Austerity has become a dirty word. In Greece, political parties who reject the extreme belt-tightening required by international bailouts were the big winners in parliamentary elections. German voters in a northern state ousted the coalition led by Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative party, which has pressed the case for austerity.

PARIS (AP) - When Nicolas Sarkozy bounded up the steps of France's presidential palace in jogging shorts and shoes on his first day in office five years ago, many French instantly sensed they were in for something new. In a country where King Louis XIV's phrase "L'Etat, c'est moi" - "I am the state" - resonated for later heads of state, the message from Sarkozy was clear: Tradition-bound France needed a self-image makeover.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Army investigators said Monday they found no bullet wound nor evidence of foul play in the death of a soldier in Afghanistan who died during a Skype video chat with his wife. Capt. Bruce Kevin Clark collapsed while speaking to his wife on May 1 from his base in Tarin Kot, Afghanistan, southwest of Kabul. His wife, Susan Orellana-Clark, has suggested that Clark was shot, citing a hole visible in the closet behind him that she believed was a bullet hole.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Republicans who control the House are using cuts to food aid, health care and social services like Meals on Wheels to protect the Pentagon from a crippling wave of budget cuts come January. The reductions, while controversial, are but a fraction of what Republicans called for in the broader, nonbinding budget plan they passed in March. Totaling a little more than $300 billion over a decade, the new cuts are aimed less at tackling $1 trillion-plus government deficits and more at preventing cuts to troop levels and military modernization.

SANAA, Yemen (AP) - Al-Qaida militants staged a surprise attack Monday on a Yemeni army base in the south, killing 22 soldiers and capturing 25 just hours after a U.S. drone strike killed a senior figure in the terror network wanted in connection with the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. It was not immediately clear if the pre-dawn attack on the military base in the southern Abyan province was in retaliation for the killing of Fahd al-Quso, an al-Qaida leader on the FBI's most wanted list.

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) - Syrians cast ballots Monday in parliamentary elections billed by the regime as key to President Bashar Assad's political reforms, but the opposition dismissed the vote as a sham meant to preserve his autocratic rule. There were scattered reports of violence, including accounts from activists and witnesses that security forces launched deadly attacks on villages in central Syria where opposition supporters were refusing to vote. The reports could not be indepedently confirmed.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - A Kentucky coroner says an autopsy revealed injuries on a body found in a barn at Churchill Downs just hours after the Kentucky Derby. But she refused to release more details. Jo-Ann Farmer, chief deputy coroner for Jefferson County, said Monday she was withholding information pending the investigation into the death of 48-year-old Adan Fabian Perez, a track worker whose body was discovered early Sunday morning.

NEW YORK (AP) - (at)BarackObama is on Twitter. So is (at)MittRomney. And so are all the voters following the 2012 presidential contest, whether they know it or not. Candidates, strategists, journalists and political junkies have flocked to Twitter, the social networking hub where information from the mundane to the momentous is shared through 140-character microbursts known as tweets.

NEW YORK (AP) - Russians prefer their Lay's potato chips dusted in caviar and crab flavors. The Chinese like their Oreos stuffed with mango and orange cream. And in Spain, Kellogg's All-Bran cereal is served floating in hot coffee instead of cold milk. Americans might get squeamish at the thought of their favorite snacks being tweaked. But what works in the U.S. doesn't always work everywhere.

GARDEN CITY, N.Y. (AP) - He's too good, and that's too bad. A 13-year-old New York boy who played field hockey growing up in Ireland has been told that after two years as a member of the Southampton High School girls' team, he is now too skilled to qualify for an exemption allowing him to compete with - and against - girls next season.