A study of mercury contamination from rampant informal gold mining in Peru's Amazon says indigenous people who get their protein mostly from fish are the most affected, particularly their children.

The new research detailed Monday by the Carnegie Institution for Science found mercury levels above acceptable limits in 76.5 percent of the people living in the Madre de Dios region, both rural and urban populations.

Who says superheroes aren't real?

When a West Virginia home caught fire, trapping a kitten inside, it was Batman and Captain America who came to the rescue.

President Barack Obama conceded Monday night he might lose his fight for congressional support of a military strike against Syria, and declined to say what he would do if lawmakers reject his call to back retaliation for a chemical weapons attack last month.

The president sought to use a glimmer of a possible diplomatic solution — including vaguely encouraging statements by Russian and Syrian officials on Monday — as fresh reason for Congress to back his plan. Syria welcomed a proposal to turn over all of its chemical weapons to international control.

The American public strongly opposes a U.S. military intervention in Syria, despite a majority believing that President Bashar Assad's regime gassed its own people, a poll showed Monday.

Almost six in 10 of the 1,022 adults questioned -- 59 percent -- said Congress should not pass a resolution authorizing even limited military action against Syria, a CNN/ORC International poll found.

Sony's next-generation video game machine PlayStation 4 won't go on sale in Japan until next year, meaning that it won't be on time for the key year-end holiday or New Year's shopping season.

Hiroshi Kawano, Sony Corp.'s chief of the game business in Japan and Asia, said Monday at a Tokyo event that the PlayStation 4 will go on sale Feb. 22, 2014, in Japan.

The U.N. human rights chief said Monday there is little doubt that chemical weapons were used in Syria but she did not specify which of the combatants was suspected of using them.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay spoke two days ahead of the expected update from a U.N. panel probing for war crimes and other human rights abuses in Syria, including the use of chemical weapons. The 47-nation U.N. Human Rights Council, which authorized the probe, is likely to consider a resolution on Syria before the end of its session.

The discovery of a World War II amphibious vehicle on the bottom of an Italian lake is raising hopes among a group of American veterans that the remains of two dozen of their comrades will be found and possibly recovered for burial in the U.S.

The Italian volunteer organization that found the truck on the bottom of Lake Garda last December believes it's the same one that sank in 1945, killing 24 of the 25 U.S. soldiers aboard the open-topped vehicle known as a DUKW (duhk).

The National Security Agency's spying targeted the private computer networks of Google, a company that facilitates most of the world's international bank transfers and Brazil's state-run oil firm Petrobras, according to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, a Brazilian TV report said Sunday night.

There were no details in Globo TV's report about what information the NSA may have obtained.

Microsoft is making its Xbox Music streaming service available for free on the Web — even to those who don't use Windows 8.

The expansion beyond Windows 8 devices and Xbox game consoles starting Monday is intended to bring new customers into the software giant's ecosystem of devices and services and could help it compete with other digital music offerings like Pandora, Spotify and iTunes. It's also an acknowledgement that the music service hasn't done much to drive sales of the Windows 8 operating system.

The Toronto International Film Festival greeted Matthew McConaughey with a rousing standing ovation for his performance in "Dallas Buyers Club."

The film premiered Saturday night, giving the moviegoing world its first glimpse of McConaughey's highly-anticipated performance as a Texas man diagnosed with HIV in the 1980s. Based on the true story of Ron Woodroof, the film follows his frustration with the Food and Drug Administration and his enterprising smuggling of more promising drugs.