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.

Reuters - Several thousand people rallied on Saturday on the streets of central Sapporo, Japan, to protest against a Group of Eight summit due to start next week at a luxury hotel a two-hour drive away.

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 - Gunmen in a dangerous part of southern Afghanistan assassinated an Afghan lawmaker, while a roadside bomb militants were planting detonated prematurely, killing 10 Taliban, officials said Saturday.

AP - A man tore the head off an Adolf Hitler wax figure at Madame Tussauds' new branch in Berlin in what appeared to be a symbolic protest on the museum's opening day Saturday, police said.

Reuters - Leaders of the Group of Eight rich nations meet this week in northern Japan to grapple with a raft of problems from soaring food and fuel prices to African poverty and global warming amid doubts about how much the annual diplomatic pageant can achieve.

AP - It's Staff Sgt. Edgar Covarrubias' second Fourth of July in Iraq. No family barbecue, no fireworks, but Covarrubias says he'll call his mom, wife and kids to share the day anyway.

AP - Pakistan's Foreign Ministry insisted Saturday that its nuclear proliferation case was closed, a day after the disgraced architect of its atomic program claimed the army under President Pervez Musharraf helped spread the technology.

Reuters - The number of vehicles imported into Canada from the United States in 2008 is well on pace to break last year's record high, according to data compiled by the North American Automobile Trade Association.

AP - Pakistani security forces have halted an operation against militants in the country's volatile northwest to try negotiating peace through tribal elders, officials said Saturday.

AP - Lost scenes from the sci-fi classic "Metropolis," recently discovered in the archives of a Buenos Aires museum, were shown to journalists for the first time in decades on Thursday.

AP - For years Spain's famed Prado museum had its suspicions about one of its most prized Goyas. Now the museum says it is certain the painting is not by the 18th-century master.

AP - Nigeria. Rwanda. Uganda. Ethiopia. Gabon. Robert Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe has plenty of competitors for the title of "least democratic in Africa."

Reuters - A film secretly taken by a Zimbabwe prison guard and smuggled out of the country shows the extent of the rigging that took place for the June 27 presidential run-off vote, the Guardian said on Saturday.