Ashraf Ghani, a one-time U.S.-based academic, was sworn in as new president of Afghanistan on Monday and used his inaugural speech to call for Taliban insurgents to join peace talks after 13 years of war.

Officials said Ghani's first major policy move would be the signing of a long-delayed agreement allowing 12,500 U.S.-led troops to remain in Afghanistan into 2015 to support and train the national police and army.

The leader of al-Qaida's Syria affiliate, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, has called on Lebanon's Sunnis to defect from the army.

"Sunnis, take your sons away from the army that serves your enemy, and make them join the ranks of the jihadists," al-Jolani, who heads al-Nusra Front in Syria, said in an audio recording on Sunday.

Rafael Nadal says the injured right wrist that sidelined him for two months and caused him to miss the U.S. Open is feeling better and he's ready to compete again.

Nadal hasn't played a match since losing in the fourth round of Wimbledon to Australian Nick Kyrgios. He injured his wrist while practicing on his home island of Mallorca in late July.

Dr. Rick Sacra knew what he was getting into when he went to Liberia in early August to treat very ill pregnant women and deliver babies at a time when the West African nation was dealing with an outbreak of Ebola.

But Sacra, who contracted Ebola and was treated successfully in an isolation unit at the Nebraska Medical Center before returning home to Massachusetts, shrugged off any suggestion that he was a hero. He said there are many people, including firefighters, police officers and military personnel, who head toward dangerous situations instead of steering away.

Unregulated genetically modified wheat has popped up in a second location in the United States, this time in state of Montana, the Agriculture Department said Friday.

No genetically engineered wheat has been approved for U.S. farming, and the discovery of unapproved varieties can pose a potential threat to U.S. trade with countries that have concerns about genetically modified foods.

The U.S. economy's bounce-back last quarter from a dismal winter was even faster than previously thought, a sign that growth will likely remain solid for rest of the year.

The economy as measured by gross domestic product grew at a 4.6 percent annual rate in the April-June quarter, the Commerce Department said Friday. It was the fastest pace in more than two years and higher than the government's previous estimate of 4.2 percent.

An excruciating mosquito-borne illness that arrived less than a year ago in the Americas is raging across the region, leaping from the Caribbean to the Central and South American mainland, and infecting more than 1 million people. Some cases have already emerged in the United States.

While the disease, called chikungunya, is usually not fatal, the epidemic has overwhelmed hospitals, cut economic productivity and caused its sufferers days of pain and misery. And the count of victims is soaring.

A Lebanese-born U.S. Marine who vanished from his unit in Iraq and later wound up in Lebanon for eight years will face trial on desertion and other charges, the military said Friday.

Maj. Gen. William D. Beydler has referred 34-year-old Cpl. Wassef Hassoun for a general court-martial on charges of desertion, larceny and destruction of government property, according to a news release from the Marines. No date has been set for Hassoun's trial at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, where he is being held.

A contract employee set a fire at a suburban Chicago air traffic control center where he worked, bringing two of the nation's busiest airports to a halt Friday, according to a criminal complaint.

The complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago charges Brian Howard, 36, with one count of destruction of aircraft or aircraft facilities, a felony. The FBI said Howard remains hospitalized due to his injuries and that no court date for him has been scheduled. When paramedics found him, he was trying to cut his own throat, the complaint said.

Uzbek gymnast Oksana Chusovitina was winning gold medals at international meets before many of her rivals at the Asian Games were even born. At 39 years of age, she's not done yet.

Having taken silver in the vault at Incheon, Chusovitina has her aim firmly set on the 2016 Rio Olympics, when she'll be 41. That would be her seventh appearance at an Olympic Games, an amazing feat for almost any athlete, much less one competing in a sport like gymnastics that so favors the young.