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THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. - Tiger Woods said he let his family down with "transgressions" he regrets "with all of my heart," and that he will deal with his personal life behind closed doors. His statement Wednesday follows a cover story in Us Weekly magazine that reports a Los Angeles cocktail waitress claims she had a 31-month affair with the world's No. 1 golfer.

ROME - An Italian who lost his left forearm in a car crash was successfully linked to a robotic hand, allowing him to feel sensations in the artificial limb and control it with his thoughts, scientists said Wednesday.

CHICAGO - Fears that the voracious Asian carp will enter the Great Lakes and wipe out other fish have led to demands that the government close the waterways connecting the lakes and the Mississippi River.

CAIRO - A 26-year-old doctor who exposed the torture of jailed protesters in Iran died of poisoning from a delivery salad laced with an overdose of blood pressure medication, prosecutors say. The findings fueled opposition fears that he was killed because of what he knew.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - When work began in 2004 to build the world's tallest tower, Dubai's confidence also was sky high with a host of mega-projects on the drawing board or rising from the sands.

NEW YORK - Meredith Baxter, who played mother Elyse Keaton on the 1980s TV series "Family Ties," has revealed that she is a lesbian. "I am a lesbian, and it was a later-in-life recognition of that fact," the 62-year-old actress said in an interview Wednesday on NBC's "Today" show.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government approved the first 13 batches of human embryonic stem cells on Wednesday, enabling researchers using them to get millions of dollars in federal funding as promised by President Barack Obama in March.

WASHINGTON - A deeply skeptical Congress on Wednesday resigned itself to President Barack Obama's escalation of the Afghanistan war, even as the president's chief military and diplomatic advisers sought to cool any expectations that the war would end in two years.

All supernova explosions are violent affairs, but this one takes the cake. Astronomers have spotted a new type of extremely bright cosmic explosion they think originates from an exceptionally massive star.

Beefing up the Afghan security forces may be the key to his exit strategy, but the President's speech had little to offer in specifics on how this could get done

WASHINGTON - Copies of e-mails between the White House party crashers and a Pentagon official undermine their claims that they were invited to President Barack Obama's first state dinner.

Every year, millions of shark fins are sold at Chinese markets to satisfy the demand for shark fin soup, a dish considered a delicacy, but it has been impossible to pinpoint which sharks from which regions are most threatened by this trade.

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 2 (HealthDay News) -- New research provides evidence that the average cigarette is crawling with germs, including bacteria that cause respiratory disease.

NEW YORK - Move over Beyonce. Step aside Taylor Swift. There's a new queen of pop, and her name is Susan Boyle.

VIENNA - In a defiant speech, Iran's president declared Wednesday that his country will enrich uranium to a much higher level — a fresh rejection of an international plan to curb Tehran's nuclear program.

SYDNEY - Australia's Senate on Wednesday defeated the government's plan to implement a carbon pollution trading system to fight global warming, dashing hopes of setting an example for other nations at U.N. climate change talks next week.

NEW YORK - Electronics sellers and online merchants thrived in November, particularly on Black Friday, but clothing and luxury merchants struggled, according to estimates released Wednesday.

WASHINGTON - The economic recovery gained traction in late fall as shoppers spent a bit more and factories bumped up production. That assessment Wednesday by the Federal Reserve marked its most upbeat view since the economy tumbled into recession two years ago.

SEATTLE - With an ex-convict suspected in the coffee-shop ambush killings of four police officers now dead, authorities focused on pursuing those who may have helped him escape and stay on the lam for two days amid a frantic manhunt.

Astronomers have discovered hundreds of Jupiter-like planets in our galaxy. However, a handful of the planets found orbiting distant stars are more Earth-sized. This gives hope to astrobiologists, who think we are more likely to find life on rocky planets with liquid water.

NEW YORK - Much like the Muppets took Manhattan, they have taken the Web.

PARIS - European leaders and top diplomats hailed President Barack Obama's speech defining the new U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, but few countries were forthcoming Wednesday with pledges of fresh troops.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury on Monday set long-awaited guidance on a plan for mortgage companies to speed "short sales" of homes and other loan modification alternatives to stem a rising tide of foreclosures.

Not many people know that four non-nuke states in Europe host nuclear bombs and have air forces ready to drop them. It's time to rid Europe of this anachronism

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Court officials say a Birmingham woman who changed her name to Jesus Christ didn't live up to it when she reported for jury duty this week. The woman, previously named Dorothy Lola Killingworth, was sent to Judge Clyde Jones's courtroom for a criminal case Monday.

BOSTON - President Barack Obama's aunt buried her face in her hands and sobbed as she described her anguish over no longer having contact with him and his family after the revelation she had been living illegally for years in the United States in public housing.

Creators Syndicate - "The science is settled," we've been told for decades by zealous proponents of manmade global warming hysteria. Thanks to an earth-shaking hacking scandal across the pond, we now have mountains of documents from the world's leading global warming advocacy center that show the science is about as settled as a southeast Asian tsunami. You won't be surprised by the Obama administration's response to Climategate.

While searching for work alongside 16 million people who are angling for the same openings, getting a hiring manager to tell you why you didn't get hired is about as easy as actually getting the job. But one of the best things you can do is examine your job search with a critical eye: Is your résumé really a good advertisement for your skills? Does your nail-gnawing habit turn off prospective employers? Do you tend to make your interviewers a little nervous?

PARIS - The Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President George W. Bush in Baghdad last year had a taste of his own medicine Tuesday when he nearly got beaned by a shoe thrower at a news conference in Paris.

In the film, "The Day After Tomorrow," the world gets gripped in ice within the span of just a few weeks. Now research now suggests an eerily similar event might indeed have occurred in the past.