JOHANNESBURG (AP) -- A rescue official says one man is dead and a local tour guide is missing after a boat capsized off Hout Bay near the western city of Cape Town.
Craig Lambinon of the National Sea Rescue Institute said there were 38 people onboard the charter boat Miroshga on Saturday, not 41 as previously assumed, and that there was one fatality. At least 24 of the survivors were hospitalized with serious or minor injuries.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A closely divided Supreme Court. Four justices in their 70s. Presidential candidates with dramatically different views of the ideal high court nominee.
And yet, until late in Thursday's debate between Vice President Joe Biden and Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan, hardly a word about the court had passed the candidates' lips. When the presidential candidates debated a week earlier, the Supreme Court was not mentioned even once.
Neither President Barack Obama nor Republican challenger Mitt Romney talks about the court in campaign speeches.
CAIRO (AP) -- Egypt's new president backed down Saturday from his decision to remove the country's top prosecutor, keeping him in his post and sidestepping a potential clash with the country's powerful judiciary.
The two-day standoff between President Mohammed Morsi and Prosecutor General Abdel-Meguid Mahmoud escalated with a backlash from a powerful group of judges who said Morsi's move had infringed upon their authority.
The standoff, which both sides later described as a "misunderstanding," exposed the enduring strength of an establishment packed with holdovers from the days of former President Hosni Mubarak, and underlined Morsi's limitations in challenging long-standing institutions.
BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan (AP) -- The fugitive son of Kyrgyzstan's deposed president has been arrested by police in London on a U.S. extradition warrant on suspicion of fraud, British and Kyrgyz authorities said Saturday.
London's Metropolitan Police said 34-year-old Maksim Bakiyev was arrested Friday afternoon and faces charges of conspiracy to defraud and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice between 2010 and 2012.
He was detained by officers from the force's extradition unit after agreeing to go to a police station in the upmarket Belgravia area of the city, and released on bail until his next court hearing on Dec. 7, it said.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Soda makers, restaurateurs and other businesses sued Friday to try to block the city's unprecedented move to restrict sales of super-sized, sugary drinks, an effort the city called a coup for public health but the industry views as unfair and undemocratic.
"For the first time, they're telling New Yorkers how much of certain safe and lawful beverages they can drink," said Caroline Starke, a spokeswoman for the business groups, whose complaint also faults the city for making the decision through an unelected board. The groups include the American Beverage Association, the National Restaurant Association, a soft drink workers union and groups representing interests ranging from movie theater owners to Korean-American grocers.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Is the mortgage market really back?
The country's two biggest mortgage lenders, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase, reported Friday that a surge in home lending pushed them to record profits.
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon declared that the housing market "has turned the corner." Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf said that "every quarter, we have more confidence."
Wells said it issued $139 billion in mortgages from July through September, compared with $89 billion in the same period last year. JPMorgan wrote $47 billion in mortgages, compared with $37 billion last year.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Best Buy said Friday that it has authorized its store staffers to match online prices of competitors in some cases, as it ramps up for the all-important holiday season.
Best Buy and others already offer price-matching guarantees for local competitors' brick-and-mortar stores. But stores don't usually match online prices, since those tend to be lower.
Competition between online merchants and discount stores is expected to be fierce during the crucial holiday period - when a retailer can make up to 40 percent of annual sales.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan is a fiscal conservative, champion of small government and critic of federal handouts. But as a congressman in Wisconsin, Ryan lobbied for tens of millions of dollars on behalf of his constituents for the kinds of largess he's now campaigning against, according to an Associated Press review of 8,900 pages of correspondence between Ryan's office and more than 70 executive branch agencies.
For 12 years in the House, Ryan wrote to federal agencies supporting expansion of food stamps in his Wisconsin district. He supported city officials and everyday constituents who sought stimulus grants, federally guaranteed business loans, grants to invest in green technology and money under the health care law he opposes.
BALI, Indonesia (AP) -- A decade after bombs ripped through two Bali nightclubs, Friday was filled with reminders of what was lost in this tropical paradise, and what was not. Tears fell as victims' names were read at a memorial, but not far away, surfers paddled for world-class waves and vacationing shoppers lined busy sidewalks haggling for souvenirs.
Suicide bombers killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists, when one blew himself up inside and another set off a car bomb at the popular Sari Club and Paddy's Pub in Kuta that sultry Saturday night in 2002. But radicalism did not take over this moderate Muslim nation, and the visitors terrorists once scared away from the resort island have come flooding back.
NEW YORK (AP) -- The Craigslist ad offered black-market Percocet pills for sale but warned potential customers: "No LE please." Meaning: No law enforcement.
Like that made a difference.
The 40-year-old man accused of placing the ad was among 21 people arrested in an attempt by the New York Police Department to make an example out of some of the smallest of small-time drug dealers: students, young professionals and others who clean out the medicine cabinet and then are brazen enough - and foolish enough - to offer the pills for up to $20 a pop over the Internet.
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) -- Escalating tensions with Russia, Turkey defended its forced landing of a Syrian passenger jet en route from Moscow to Damascus, saying Thursday it was carrying Russian ammunition and military equipment destined for the Syrian Defense Ministry.
Syria branded the incident piracy and Russia called the search illegal, saying it endangered the lives of Russian citizens aboard the plane.
The accusation by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan contradicted denials by both Russia and Syria that anything illegal had been aboard the Airbus A320 that was intercepted over Turkish airspace late Wednesday.
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- A federal appeals court has sided with Samsung Electronics Corp. in one aspect of its ongoing patent dispute with Apple Inc.
The Washington, D.C.-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Thursday overturned a judge's order blocking Samsung from selling its Galaxy Nexus smart phone pending a patent lawsuit by Apple.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Worldwide shipments of PCs fell sharply in the third quarter, as some consumers spent their electronics dollars on smartphones and tablets and others held off for a new version of Windows.
One research firm also estimated Wednesday that Chinese PC maker Lenovo Group Ltd. outsold Hewlett-Packard Co. for the first time to become the world's largest seller of PCs.
Gartner said global PC shipments fell 8.3 percent to 87.5 million, while IDC said the decline was 8.6 percent to 87.8 million. Their reports came hours after a third research firm, IHS iSuppli, projected that PC shipments are bound for their first annual decline in 11 years.
TOKYO (AP) -- Plagued by uncertainty and fresh setbacks, the world economy has weakened further and will grow more slowly over the next year, the International Monetary Fund says in its latest forecast.
Advanced economies are risking recession, the international lending organization said in a quarterly update of its World Economic Outlook, and the malaise is spreading to more dynamic emerging economies such as China.
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Mitt Romney may want to reconsider his campaign strategy involving the pint-size voters of tomorrow.
The Republican presidential candidate skipped the chance to take part in Nickelodeon's "Kids Pick the President" special that includes President Barack Obama, said Linda Ellerbee, the show's host and executive producer. The decision "disses" children, she said.
During last week's presidential debate, Romney vowed to cut federal funding for PBS while acknowledging it's the home of popular "Sesame Street" character Big Bird.
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- During his re-election campaign, President Hugo Chavez promised to deepen the "21st century socialism" that has meant an ever-greater state role in the economy. That message won him a surprising 11-percentage point win in what many had thought would be a tight race.
Still, he's set to start a fourth presidential term under challenging economic circumstances. The government's free-spending ways, bankrolling the generous social programs that aided his re-election, may be seriously crimped.
Chavez faces immediate economic time bombs beginning with a rapidly expanding public debt, one of Latin America's highest inflation rates and a weakening currency.
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (AP) -- Nigerian soldiers angry about the killing of an officer shot dead more than 30 civilians Monday in a northeastern city long under siege by a radical Islamist sect.
The attack came from soldiers attached to a special military unit on guard in Maiduguri, the spiritual home of the sect known as Boko Haram, in an effort to supposedly protect its citizens from the violence gripping the city. The killings likely will further antagonize a population already alienated by checkpoints, security force harassment and the threat of being killed by soldiers who are targets for the sect's increasingly bloody guerrilla attacks.
UnitedHealth Group Inc. will spend about $4.9 billion to buy a majority stake in Brazilian health benefits and care provider Amil Participacoes SA, as the largest U.S. health insurer leaps into an international market it says is primed for growth.
UnitedHealth, based in Minnetonka, Minn., said Monday that the deal gives it better access to a country of 200 million people where only 25 percent of the population is covered by private health insurance. In contrast, about 78 percent of the U.S. market has private health benefits, as opposed to government coverage like Medicaid or Medicare.
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) -- Devastating spring freezes and a historic drought have stripped some charm from rustic fall destinations, leaving some corn too short to create mazes, orchards virtually devoid of apples and fall colors muted.
Extreme weather has forced agritourism ventures in the heart of the country to scramble to hold onto their share of an industry that generates hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
Pat Schaefers, who runs Schaefers Corn Maze near Lollie, Ark., hopes visitors to the farm's two mazes won't mind that the corn is just 6 to 8 feet this fall - up to 4 feet shorter than the wall of corn families and school groups normally pay to get lost and turned-around in.
VATICAN CITY (AP) -- A painful and damaging chapter in Pope Benedict XVI's papacy closed Saturday with the conviction of his former butler on charges he stole the pontiff's private letters and leaked them to a journalist. But questions remain as to whether anyone else was involved in the plot, and when the pope will pardon his once-trusted aide.
Paolo Gabriele, until recently affectionately dubbed "Paoletto" by his intimate pontifical family, stood stone-faced as Judge Giuseppe Dalla Torre read out the conviction and sentenced him to 18-months in prison for the gravest Vatican security breach in recent memory.
ISLAMABAD (AP) -- Thousands of Pakistanis joined by a group of U.S. anti-war activists headed toward Pakistan's militant-riddled tribal belt Saturday to protest U.S. drone strikes - even as a Pakistani Taliban faction warned that suicide bombers would stop the demonstration.
The motorcade march was led by Imran Khan, an ex-cricket star-turned-populist politician who heads the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party. Militants have dismissed Khan as a tool of the West despite his condemnations of the drone strikes, which have killed many Islamist insurgent leaders.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- A North Korean soldier killed two of his officers Saturday and defected to South Korea across the countries' heavily armed border in a rare crossing that prompted South Korean troops to immediately beef up their border patrol, officials said.
The soldier shot his platoon and company commanders before crossing the western side of the Demilitarized Zone at around noon, a Defense Ministry official said, citing the soldier's statement after he was taken into custody by South Korean border guards.
ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) -- North Carolina's population has nearly doubled since 1970, fueled by an economic expansion that brought an influx of Midwesterners, Northeasterners and nonwhites and turning the state from a Republican presidential stronghold into a battleground.
Among the new residents: Carol Fentiman, 66, a Chicago native who retired with her husband to the western Carolina mountains seven years ago from California and is a Democratic Party volunteer. And Piper Phillips, 18, a college student who moved here a year ago from Ohio and who will cast her first presidential ballot this year for Barack Obama.
BAYAMO, Cuba (AP) -- A Spanish political activist was tried Friday on charges of negligently causing the car crash that killed a prominent Cuban dissident. Several government opponents including noted blogger Yoani Sanchez were detained around this eastern city where the proceedings were taking place.
Defendant Angel Carromero's trial wrapped up in the evening in Bayamo, about 500 miles (800 kilometers) east of the capital and near the site of the July 22 highway crash in which Oswaldo Paya and another dissident, Harold Cepero, died.
BEIRUT (AP) -- The Syrian military opened a second urban front Friday, attacking the rebel stronghold of Homs with the most intense artillery barrage in months and putting opposition fighters there and in Syria's largest city, Aleppo, increasingly on the defensive.
Syria's civil war has been locked in a bloody stalemate, and embattled President Bashar Assad could extend his hold on power if he retakes Aleppo and Homs. Amateur video from Homs, a symbol of resistance, showed black columns of smoke rising from the city, as loud explosions went off every few seconds.
While Assad stepped up attacks at home, tensions with neighboring Turkey flared again Friday, reviving fears that the 18-month-old conflict in Syria could ignite a regional conflagration.
JERUSALEM (AP) -- A young American shot and killed a chef at a hotel in the Red Sea resort city of Eilat Friday, before forces from an anti-terror unit shot the gunman dead, police said. The incident appeared to be based on a personal dispute.
The attacker was on a Jewish work and study program and was employed at the hotel until earlier this week.
Eilat police official Eitan Gedassis told Israel Radio the attacker snatched a gun from a hotel security guard and fired a number of shots at the Leonardo Club hotel in the Red Sea resort city, killing the chef.
BRUSSELS (AP) -- The cost of needed improvements to the 145 nuclear reactors in the European Union could run as high as (EURO)25 billion ($32 billion) over the coming years, the bloc's energy commissioner said Thursday.
A new EU report released Thursday said that stress tests carried out in the wake of the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan showed that almost all of the EU plants needed safety improvements.
Officials said earlier that the tests did not reveal the need to close any of the EU nuclear plants immediately.