2012-05-23: The leaders of the 27 countries that make up the European Union are to meet in Brussels Wednesday to try and find a way to keep the debt crisis in Europe from spiraling out of control and promote jobs and growth.

2012-05-23: Officials say there is no evidence a US Airways jet traveling from Paris to North Carolina was ever in danger after it was diverted to Maine because a passenger handed a note to a flight attendant saying she had a surgically implanted device.

2012-05-23: A branch of city governments China set up to monitor everything from unlicensed street vendors to unauthorized construction is rife with abuse of power, stoking already high social tensions, a rights group said Wednesday.

2012-05-23: On a recent evening on Baku's seaside promenade, throbbing Euro-dance music blared out from an open-air concert as families strolled by. Cafes serving fragrant skewered meat served throngs of locals and foreigners.

2012-05-23: Egyptians on Wednesday and Thursday vote to elect their first president since the fall of Hosni Mubarak on Feb. 11, 2011 after 29 years of his authoritarian rule. A second round is likely to be held between the two top vote-getters on June 16-17. Here is a look at what's at stake in the election.

2012-05-23: Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has acknowledged the "large unfinished agenda" facing his government after three years in power, and vowed to tackle corruption and fiscal mismanagement.

2012-05-23: Fresh off back-to-back international summits, President Barack Obama is delivering the commencement address at the U.S. Air Force Academy, his annual speech to service academy graduates.

2012-05-23: Sri Lankan authorities have seized 1.5 tonnes of African ivory marked as plastic waste and addressed to a buyer in Dubai, a customs official in Colombo said Wednesday.

2012-05-23: Mitt Romney is wading into a new policy arena — the nation's education system — as he broadens his focus to appeal to general election voters still getting to know President Barack Obama's likely opponent.

2012-05-23: Oklahoma oil billionaire Harold Hamm didn't wait long to make a nearly $1 million donation to a group supporting Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney after he became one of Romney's top energy advisers in March. Just weeks after Hamm joined the Romney campaign, he gave $985,000 to a pro-Romney super PAC, according to campaign reports.

2012-05-23: The Roger Clemens perjury case resumes Wednesday after a day off, with prosecutors coming to the end of their case against the former baseball all-star.

2012-05-23: North Dakota's prosperity from an energy boom as the rest of the country slowly crawls out from under a collapsed economy is making a contest of a Senate race that Democrats had all but conceded.

2012-05-23: A private news magazine in Myanmar won a rare court victory Wednesday and will not have to reveal the name of a reporter who wrote about corruption at government ministries.

2012-05-23: Vampires, Transformers, singing high-schoolers: They can all be tough to outrun.

2012-05-23: Officials diverted a US Airways jet to Maine after a French passenger traveling from Paris to North Carolina handed a note to a flight attendant mentioning that she had a surgically implanted device, prompting concerns about possible terrorism.

2012-05-23: Several small groups of Secret Service employees separately visited clubs, bars and brothels in Colombia prior to a visit by President Barack Obama last month and engaged in reckless, "morally repugnant" behavior, Sen. Susan Collins says.

2012-05-23: Determined to end decades of authoritarian rule, millions of Egyptians on Wednesday waited patiently in long lines outside polling stations across the nation to freely chose their first president since last year's ouster of longtime ruler and close U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak.

2012-05-23: America's executions have changed dramatically over the years, morphing from daylong events in the town square to somber and tightly controlled affairs held deep inside prisons.

2012-05-23: The MacLaren brothers are third-generation dairy farmers, but they will likely be the last in their family.

2012-05-23: The Astrodome was once the envy of other cities, a fully air conditioned facility with a translucent roof that kept out the heat and humidity, gave synthetic grass its name, made Houston a sports entertainment destination and sparked the imaginations of baseball lovers, concert-goers and some of the country's most creative minds.

2012-05-23: At 26, Saed Qasrawi is among the oldest students at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank.

2012-05-23: Lady Gaga is as confused as anyone about whether she'll be allowed to perform in Indonesia.

2012-05-23: A San Francisco-based federal appeals court ruled in 2002 that every aspect of an execution should be open to witnesses, from the moment the condemned enters into the death chamber to his final heartbeat.

2012-05-23: Survivors of acid attacks whose plight became the focus of an Oscar-winning documentary now fear ostracism and reprisals if the film is broadcast in Pakistan.

2012-05-23: From rare audio interviews of former slaves to recordings by Donna Summer and the Grateful Dead, 25 sounds that shaped the American cultural landscape are being inducted into the National Recording Registry.

2012-05-23: The Free Syrian Army, which is seeking the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad's regime, on Wednesday denied abducting a group of Shiite Lebanese pilgrims inside Syria.

2012-05-23: Mazda Motor Corp. and Fiat SpA are working together on developing and manufacturing a roadster, or two-seater convertible, although the automakers will come up with different, distinctly styled models.

2012-05-23: Turkmenistan signed a natural gas deal with Pakistan and India on Wednesday, in a significant boost to the proposed construction of a 1,800-kilometer (1,100-mile) pipeline across Afghanistan.

2012-05-23: It's been a long, strange trip for what appears to be several tiny chips of lunar rock that found their way into a casino mogul's hands after being collected by the first men on the moon.

2012-05-23: CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptians began voting freely on Wednesday for the first time to pick their president in a wide open election that pits Islamists against men who served under deposed leader Hosni Mubarak.