Reuters - The death toll in China's earthquake climbed past 13,000 on Tuesday and looked set to rise much higher after media said some 19,000 people were buried in rubble in just one area.

U.S. News & World Report - Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and defeated contender for the GOP presidential nomination, is currently at the top of John McCain's short list for a running mate. At least that's the word from a top McCain fundraiser and longtime Republican moneyman who has spoken to McCain's inner circle. The fundraiser is less than thrilled with the idea of Huckabee as the vice presidential nominee, and many economic conservatives--turned off by the populist tone of Huckabee's campaign and his tax record as governor--are likely to share that marked lack of enthusiasm. ...

Reuters - The Pentagon said on Tuesday it dropped charges against a Saudi who U.S. officials say intended to be the "20th hijacker" on September 11 but sent five others to trial for allegedly planning the 2001 attacks.

Reuters - In the classic Hollywood western, a cowboy portrayed by John Wayne gallops across the sagebrush steppe and rocky ridges of the American West with only his horse for a companion.

Reuters - Mexico's Manuel Uribe, once the world's most obese man, is now vying for a different record: the human who has lost the most weight.

Reuters - Heavy rains pelted homeless cyclone survivors in Myanmar's Irrawaddy delta on Tuesday, complicating the already slow delivery of aid to more than 1.5 million people facing hunger and disease.

Reuters - Lebanon's Sunni Muslim leader Saad al-Hariri pledged on Tuesday there would be no political surrender to what he called a bid by Hezbollah and its Syrian and Iranian backers to impose their will on the nation by force.

Reuters - "The Sound of Music," one of Hollywood's greatest money-spinners, will scale new heights when the original von Trapp family villa near Salzburg opens as a hotel in July.

Reuters - An attendant at a Canadian restaurant who was sacked for giving a bite-sized doughnut, worth 16 cents, to an agitated toddler was given her job back on Thursday after the case received wide media attention.

Reuters - Israeli police raided the offices of a government ministry on Tuesday, confiscating documents as part of a bribery investigation that could force out Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

AFP - More than 80 giant pandas at China's most famous panda park, the Wolong centre, were safe and well following a huge earthquake that struck the area, state press said Tuesday.

Reuters - Iran will soon put forward new proposals to resolve its dispute with the West over its nuclear program, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday.

AFP - US retail sales declined 0.2 percent in April, largely as American consumers put a brake on new vehicle purchases, a government report showed Tuesday.