AP – A Muslim stonemason who spent nearly four decades helping to restore a Roman Catholic cathedral in France has been immortalized as a winged gargoyle peering out from its facade — with the inscription”God is great” written in French and Arabic.

HealthDay – WEDNESDAY, Sept. 8 (HealthDay News) — Elderly men are more likely to suffer memory problems than women, new research shows.

AP – President Alan Garcia says he doesn’t consider Lori Berenson a threat to Peru, suggesting he may be inclined to commute the New Yorker’s accomplice-to-terrorism sentence so she can go home.

AP – The nation’s largest pediatricians’ group is endorsing mandatory flu vaccinations for doctors, nurses and other health workers.

AP – Australia and New Zealand shared first place, and the United States tied for fifth, in a first-of-its kind survey ranking 153 nations on the willingness of their citizens to donate time and money to charity.

Reuters – Providing surgical treatment for people who are morbidly obese could save British taxpayer-funded health services and the wider economy hundreds of millions of pounds a year, leading surgeons said on Wednesday.

AP – Jeffrey Allen Weathers moved from Alaska to an oceanfront apartment in the Caribbean, but his new neighbors soon suspected the heavyset American hadn’t come for the sun. The FBI now says they were right.

Reuters – A splint may work just as well as a cast in helping children with non-severe wrist fractures heal, a study published Tuesday suggests.

AP – Germany, the European Union and a major human rights group slammed Iran on Wednesday for its plans to stone a woman convicted of adultery, increasing the global pressure on Tehran over a case it has tried to present as a criminal matter and not one of human rights.

HealthDay – (HealthDay News) — Here are the latest clinical trials, courtesy of ClinicalConnection.com:

AP – Pakistan will soon bring terrorism charges against three men alleged to have helped the failed Times Square bomber meet up with militant leaders close to the Afghan border and send him money to carry out the attack, a senior police officer said Wednesday.

AP – The peanut industry executive whose filthy processing plants were blamed in a salmonella outbreak two years ago that killed nine people and sickened hundreds more is back in the business.

AP – A Romanian Gypsy leader on Wednesday compared French President Nicolas Sarkozy to Romania’s pro-Nazi wartime leader, following the expulsion of hundreds of Gypsies from France.

AP – CVS Caremark Corp. said Wednesday it will give away up to $5 million in seasonal flu vaccinations to people without health insurance.

AP – U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met with Rwanda’s president Wednesday after he threatened to withdraw thousands of Rwandan peacekeepers if the United Nations publishes a report accusing Rwanda’s army of possible genocide in the 1990s.

HealthDay – (HealthDay News) — Teaching children to take precautions while waiting for, entering and exiting a school bus can help keep them safe.

Time.com – China has long been an unfriendly place for journalists, but two attacks on journalists in Beijing this summer serve as a reminder that the threats to the press can extend beyond censorship to outright violence

AP – Afghan election officials said Wednesday that scores of additional polling stations will have to remain closed during the Sept. 18 parliamentary vote because of the deteriorating security situation in the country.

AFP – Britain’s National Health Service could save millions of pounds a year by offering more weight-loss surgery for obese patients, a medical study said Wednesday.

AP – John Demjanjuk attends most sessions of his trial in a hospital bed set up in the courtroom, wearing dark sunglasses and a hat pulled down over his face.

AP – Trying to smooth over recently rocky relations before a visit to Washington, Chinese President Hu Jintao told American officials on Wednesday that he wants to see healthy and stable ties between the two countries.

AP – Tens of thousands of people have abandoned their homes across southern Mexico to escape flooding from weeks of torrential rains, and forecasts are predicting even more rainfall.

AP – Iraqi police and health officials say at least six people have been killed and 35 wounded in two separate attacks in Baghdad.

AFP – Israeli researchers have developed a new treatment for HIV that kills human cells infected with the virus and could lead to a breakthrough in treating AIDS, the Haaretz newspaper said on Friday.

AP – A house servant of the politically powerful clan accused in last year’s massacre of 57 people told a Philippine court Wednesday that the family members plotted the killings of rivals and journalists over dinner six days before the ambush.

AP – Men armed with assault rifles burst into a shoe factory and opened fire Tuesday, killing at least 18 workers and wounding five, Honduran authorities said.

AP – A magnitude-5.1 aftershock hammered New Zealand’s earthquake-hit city of Christchurch on Wednesday morning, freshly damaging buildings, sparking evacuations and prompting the extension of a state of emergency for another week.

AP – American movie star Angelina Jolie met flood victims in northwestern Pakistan and appealed to the international community to provide aid needed to help the country recover from its worst natural disaster.

AP – A car bomb ripped through a police compound in a northwestern Pakistani city, killing 14 women and children and three officers, the latest in a string of attacks proving that Islamist militants remain a potent force in the country.

AP – Iran’s nuclear chief said Tehran has the right to bar some U.N. inspectors from monitoring its disputed nuclear program, the semiofficial ISNA news agency reported.

AFP – The BBC World Service could face drastic budget cuts that may force it to withdraw from Myanmar, a move that critics fear would be a”gift to the military junta”, a report said Wednesday.

Reuters – Common allergies that bring on wheezing, sneezing and watery eyes could be next to join the list of factors linked to heart disease, suggests a large new study.

AP – Iraq displayed hundreds of recovered artifacts Tuesday that were among the country’s looted heritage and span the ages from a 4,400-year-old statue of a Sumerian king to a chrome-plated AK-47 bearing Saddam Hussein’s image.

AP – A federal judge has turned down the Justice Department’s request to temporarily delay his order that could shut down federal funding for some stem cell research.

AP – Fidel Castro criticized Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for what he called his anti-Semitic attitudes and questioned his own actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 during interviews with an American journalist he summoned to Havana to discuss fears of global nuclear war.