Lawmakers on a special negotiating committee narrowing differences in the broader rewrite of financial regulation in generations agreed in principle Tuesday to create a new government agency to oversee credit products offered to consumers.

Senators on the conference committee late Tuesday accepted a host of House of Representatives amendments, all but clearing the way for creation of what will be called the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection to be housed at the Federal Reserve and partially funded by the central bank.

President Barack Obama ousted Gen. Stanley McChrystal as the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan on Wednesday, saying that his scathing published remarks about administration officials undermine civilian control of the military and erode the needed trust on the president's war team.

Obama named McChrystal's direct boss — Gen. David Petraeus — to take over the troubled 9-year-old war in Afghanistan. He asked the Senate to confirm Petraeus for the new post "as swiftly as possible."

Tehran said Monday it had banned two U.N. nuclear inspectors from entering the country because they had leaked "false" information about Iran's disputed nuclear program

The ban is the latest twist in Iran's deepening tussle with the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency and the West over its nuclear program. The United States and its allies warn that Iran's program is geared toward making nuclear weapons.

Tehran denies the charge saying its nuclear activities are only for peaceful purposes like power generation.

Former Marine Corps Cpl. Peter Devereaux was told about a year ago that he had just two or three years to live.

More than 12 months later, at 48, he still isn't ready to concede that the cancer that's wasting his innards is going to kill him. He swallows his pills and suffers the pain and each afternoon he greets his 12-year-old daughter, Jackie, as she steps off her school bus in North Andover, Mass.

he Pakistani Taliban paid $12,000 to attempted Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, according to a federal indictment released Thursday. Further evidence of their involvement showcases the lengthening reach of Pakistan-based militants.

A study has found that eggs from free-range chickens in industrialised Taiwan contain almost six times more cancer-causing dioxins than eggs from caged chickens.

"Because free-range hens spend most of their lives in an outside environment, they have a better chance of being exposed to contaminants from the environment," wrote researchers led by Pao-Chi Liao of the Environmental and Occupational Health department at National Cheng Kung University in Tainan, Taiwan.

A group calling for "resistance to the Islamization of France" is using Facebook to advertise an anti-Muslim party at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris Friday. Some 7,000 have RSVPed already.

French organizers of a so-called “pork sausage and booze” party in Paris – designed as a deliberate provocation against Muslims – will move it from a heavily Muslim neighborhood to the Arc de Triomphe on Friday.

The group, "Identity Block," called the new venue “Plan B,” after Paris police banned their bash this week on grounds of maintaining public order.

Federal regulators are reconsidering the rules that govern high-speed Internet connections — wading into a bitter policy dispute that could be tied up in Congress and the courts for years.

Over the objections of the agency's two Republican commissioners, the Federal Communications Commission voted Thursday to begin taking public comments on three different paths for regulating broadband. That includes a proposal by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, a Democrat, to define broadband access as a telecommunications service subject to "common carrier" obligations to treat all traffic equally.

Tens of thousands of black-clad ultra-Orthodox Jews staged mass demonstrations on Thursday to protest a Supreme Court ruling forcing the integration of a religious girls' school.

Protesters snarled traffic in Jerusalem and another large religious enclave, crowded onto balconies in city squares, and waved posters decrying the court's decision and proclaiming the supremacy of religious law.

There were a few small scuffles, and a police officer emerged from one of them holding his eye, apparently slightly injured.

A Turkish newspaper reported on Wednesday that Turkey would halt military cooperation with Israel and not send back the ambassador it withdrew after a deadly Israeli commando operation to stop a Gaza aid convoy.

The Turkish government has said it is working on a road map for future ties with once close ally Israel and has created a committee to assess the legal dimensions of the May 31 operation in which nine pro-Palestinian Turkish activists were killed.

Southern Ocean sperm whales are an unexpected ally in the fight against global warming, removing the equivalent carbon emissions from 40,000 cars each year thanks to their faeces, a study found on Wednesday.

The cetaceans have been previously fingered as climate culprits because they breathe out carbon dioxide (CO2), the commonest greenhouse gas.

But this is only a part of the picture, according to the paper, published in the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

As countless tar balls washed ashore on a beach along Alabama's Gulf Coast, cleanup workers sat and watched because they didn't have the proper plastic covers to protect their shoes. Elsewhere, a crew using shovels and garden rakes worked for hours on a long stretch of sand that a machine could have cleaned in minutes.

Almost two months after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, shortages of government-required protective gear and cleaning equipment are slowing work to remove the sticky mess and keep beaches and marshes along the Gulf Coast safe and oil-free.

The hardline spiritual mentor of Iran's president has made a rare public call for producing the "special weapons" that are a monopoly of a few nations — a veiled reference to nuclear arms.

The Associated Press on Monday obtained a copy of a book written by Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi in which he wrote Iran should not deprive itself of the right to produce these "special weapons."

Iran's government, as well as its clerical hierarchy, have repeatedly denied the country is seeking nuclear weapons, as alleged by the U.S. and its allies.

U.S. geologists have discovered vast mineral wealth in Afghanistan, possibly amounting to $1 trillion, President Hamid Karzai's spokesman said Monday.

Waheed Omar told reporters the findings were made by the U.S. Geological Survey under contract to the Afghan government.

"The result of the survey ... has shown that Afghanistan has mineral resources worth $1 trillion," Omar said. "This is not an overall survey of all minerals in Afghanistan. Whatever has been found in this survey is worth $1 trillion."