AP - John Travolta was onto something. Women are most attracted to male dancers who have big, flamboyant moves similar to the actor's trademark style, British scientists say in a new study.

Reuters - In the rush to develop America's biggest new source of domestic energy, one community is fighting to protect its rural way of life from the environmental strains that accompany shale gas drilling.

AP - Hundreds of angry Afghans burned a U.S. flag and chanted "Death to the Christians" on Thursday to protest plans by a small American church to torch copies of the Muslim holy book on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

AP - Cuba's communist economic model has come in for criticism from an unlikely source: Fidel Castro.

AP - A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that Hazleton, Pa., may not enforce its crackdown on illegal immigrants, dealing another blow to 4-year-old regulations that inspired similar measures around the country.

AP - First came the outrage over plans for a mosque near ground zero. Now there's anger over a Florida church's plan to burn copies of the Quran.

AP - President Barack Obama implored a Florida minister to call off his Quran-burning "stunt," saying it would jeopardize U.S. troops abroad.

AP - A Christian minister in Florida is canceling plans to burn Qurans on Sept. 11, heeding an international outcry that drew criticism from President Barack Obama and religious and political leaders across the Muslim world.

AP - A rare copy of John James Audubon's "Birds of America," billed as the world's most expensive book, is up for sale alongside a first edition of Shakespeare's plays at an auction to set book lovers' pulses racing, Sotheby's said Thursday.

Reuters - U.S. Marines boarded and seized a commercial German vessel in the Gulf of Aden that had been attacked and boarded by pirates a day earlier, the U.S. Fifth Fleet said in a statement on Thursday.

AP - Winds expected to reach 60 mph Thursday are forcing authorities to call off plans for residents to return to their homes after they fled a wildfire that has destroyed at least 169 houses near Boulder.

Reuters - Switzerland remains the world's most competitive economy, while the United States has fallen from second to fourth after losing the top spot last year, according to the World Economic Forum's annual rankings issued on Thursday.

AFP - The former US commander in Afghanistan, sacked over a disastrous magazine interview, plans to teach Yale University students about "coping with failure" and the "media environment" in his course on leadership.

AP - The father of a U.S. soldier serving in Afghanistan says he tried nearly a half dozen times to pass an urgent message from his son to the Army: Troops in his unit had murdered an Afghan civilian, planned more killings and threatened him to keep quiet about it.

AP - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin blamed extremists "without souls, without hearts" for a suicide car bombing that killed 17 people Thursday in the crowded central market of a city in the North Caucasus.

AP - Something was wrong.