“When anything is blocking my head or there’s worry in my life, I just—whoosh—go sit on Mars or something and look back here at Earth.” That’s what an up-and-coming talent named Heath Ledger told Vanity Fair magazine in 2000, before he became one of Hollywood’s most respected actors, and eight …

NEW YORK – A General Motors dealership in New York has filed for bankruptcy protection, beginning the wave of court filings expected Monday as the automaker files for legal protection to complete its reorganization. Chevrolet-Saturn of Harlem Inc. filed the Chapter 11 petition early Monday. The court documents list the …

PARIS – About 30 animal rights activists dressed only in their underwear have protested bullfighting in front of a bull sculpture across from the Eiffel Tower. Supporters of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals group taped yellow, red, and white sticks that are used in bullfights to the …

BEIRUT – Sunni supporters of Lebanon’s prime minister-designate and Shiite rivals from the parliament speaker’s political faction traded gunfire in a Beirut neighborhood Sunday. Security officials said one civilian was killed and two others were wounded in the first outbreak of violence since this month’s elections. Automatic rifle fire and …

MONROEVILLE, Ala. – A 14-year-old Alabama girl might have helped arrange the gang rape of her ninth-grade classmate and could face charges as an accomplice based on her comments in a televised interview, a district attorney said. The girl told reporters last week that she and her 14-year-old classmate had …

French scientists mixed gene therapy and bone marrow transplants in two boys to seemingly halt a brain disease that can kill by adolescence. The surprise ingredient: They disabled the HIV virus so it couldn’t cause AIDS, and then used it to carry in the healthy new gene. The experiment marks …

NEW YORK – A 34-year-old man who tried to exit a stuck elevator died after falling five stories down a Brooklyn elevator shaft. Police say the man had been trying to jump out of a disabled elevator car when his clothing caught on something. The man was unconscious and unresponsive …

Julie Robson from the U.K. has had two life-saving kidney transplants, thanks to her mom and dad. Robson, 34, received her first transplant 10 years ago from her father, Bob Deighton. But two days before her wedding she collapsed when that kidney began to fail — so she was given …

VINCENNES, Ind. – Firefighters have found one body and rescued several people from a fire at a southwestern Indiana motel. The Vincennes Fire Department says two people suffering from smoke inhalation were taken to an Indianapolis hospital after the fire early Monday at a Days Inn near U.S. 41. One …

The mayor of the North Pole likened the U.S. Postal Service to the grinch who stole Christmas Friday after it decided to stop a 55-year-old “letters to Santa” program. “We are outraged that they would attack our children, attack our community in this way,” Doug Isaacson, the mayor of the …