NEW YORK – McClatchy Co. (MNI) said Wednesday it is selling four newspapers to MediaNews Group Inc., publisher of The Denver Post and dozens of other newspapers, for $1 billion in cash. The deal will strengthen MediaNews’s presence in northern California, where it already owns several papers in the San …

ORANJESTAD, Aruba – A suspect in the Natalee Holloway case on Monday was released from custody in Aruba. Geoffrey van Cromvoirt, 19, was accompanied by family members as he walked to a parked car after his release. Van Cromvoirt, who was identified by authorities only as “G.V.C.,” had been in …

VATICAN CITY – The Vatican is studying whether condoms can be condoned to help stem the tide of AIDS, but it has given no indication that a pronouncement is expected, officials said Tuesday. Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, who heads the Vatican office for health care, was quoted over the weekend …

LEOLA, Pa. – A young man has confessed to the gruesome bludgeoning and strangling murders of his grandmother and five other relatives in a tiny town in Pennsylvania’s Amish country, police said Thursday. Jesse Dee Wise, 21, was arrested and charged in the killings of his grandmother Emily Wise, 64; …

PURCELL, Okla. – About 1,000 people mourned 10-year-old Jamie Rose Bolin on Thursday, struggling to cope with her loss days after her abused body was found in the closet of a downstairs neighbor. “Maybe heaven needed another rose to add to its bouquet,” pastor Duane Elmore said at the funeral …

NAIROBI, Kenya – A Kenyan military plane carrying four members of parliament and a provincial commissioner crashed Monday in northern Kenya, killing 14 people, a local official at the scene said. The plane crashed into a hill near the town of Marsabit, 280 miles northeast of Nairobi, while carrying the …

PARIS – Students and unions staged new protests Tuesday across France, hoping to ride the momentum that led President Jacques Chirac to scrap a youth labor law and force the government to pull other contested reforms. Chirac’s retreat and school vacations that began this week were expected to deplete turnout …

ALBANY, Ga. – Wildlife biologists are searching one of the nation’s most primitive swamps for the ivory-billed woodpecker, which was believed extinct since 1944 until one was reported in an Arkansas swamp last year. A handful of biologists from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Fish & …

ORLANDO, Fla. – Walt Disney World reopened its “Mission: Space” attraction Thursday, a day after a woman who became ill after leaving the ride died at a hospital. It was the second death in less than a year related to the Epcot Center ride, which spins riders in a centrifuge …

LONDON – Rapper Snoop Dogg and five associates were arrested after a fracas at Heathrow Airport that injured seven police officers, British media reported Thursday. The Press Association news agency said members of the star’s entourage had hurled bottles of whisky and argued with staff at a duty free shop …