AP - Orangutan numbers have declined sharply on the only two islands where they still live in the wild and they could become the first great ape species to go extinct if urgent action isn't taken, a new study says.

AP - Colombian military intelligence agents posing as aid workers and a media crew flew to the jungle aboard a white helicopter, staging a mock humanitarian mission that rebels were told would ferry their hostages to another camp for talks on a prisoner swap.

AP - Oil companies once viewed drilling in the deep waters off Florida as cost prohibitive. Politicians feared even the slightest sign of support would be career suicide.

AP - Auto industry cutbacks, double-digit unemployment and one of the nation's highest home foreclosure rates have left Detroit with a dreary economic future.

AP - The nation's largest fireworks display exploded in a spectrum of color over the East River, temporarily stealing the spotlight from New York's world-famous skyline and helping to create a brilliant end to a day of July Fourth celebrations nationwide.

AP - Moving from celebrity to senator isn't exactly an untraveled path. But that doesn't mean comedian Al Franken, who is vying for a Senate seat in Minnesota, will coast to Capitol Hill on a wide, smooth road.

AP - Former Sen. Jesse Helms, an unyielding champion of the conservative movement who spent three combative and sometimes caustic decades in Congress, where he relished his battles against liberals, Communists and occasionally a fellow Republican, died on the Fourth of July. He was 86.

AP - Weary firefighters got no Independence Day reprieve from a pair of out-of-control wildfires that roared along California's central coast, chewing through opposite ends of an arid forest in the Los Padres National Forest.

AFP - Robert Mugabe ruled out the prospect of talks with his opponents on ending Zimbabwe's political crisis Friday unless they acknowledged his victory in a one-man presidential election.

AFP - Freed Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt said Friday she owed her life to France as President Nicolas Sarkozy gave her a hero's welcome to Paris, turning the page on her six-year hostage ordeal.

Reuters - G8 leaders aim to present a united front against global inflation, driven by soaring oil and food prices, at a summit in Japan next week, but solving the problem requires more than just a strong message from rich nations.

Reuters - Poland spurned as insufficient on Friday a U.S. offer to boost its air defenses in return for basing anti-missile interceptors on its soil but said it remained open to talks with Washington.

Reuters - Iran responded on Friday to an incentives package offered by six world powers aimed at resolving a standoff over the Islamic Republic's disputed nuclear ambitions, the official IRNA news agency said.

Reuters - Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, defiant despite growing African condemnation of his re-election, said on Friday the opposition must drop its claim to power and accept that he was the rightful head of state.

Reuters - French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt landed in Paris on Friday to an emotional welcome from President Nicolas Sarkozy, who had made her release from captivity in the Colombian jungle a foreign policy priority.