North Korea pushed back Tuesday at President Barack Obama's criticism of its plans to launch a satellite aboard a rocket, calling his stance confrontational and vowing to go forward with what it insisted was a peaceful mission.

Worries about the North's plans, which Washington and Seoul say are a cover to test long-range missile technology for a possible nuclear weapons program, have overshadowed a two-day nuclear security summit in Seoul that has drawn nearly 60 leaders.

Bolton midfielder Fabrice Muamba has started to eat again and has been able to leave his bed as he maintains "encouraging progress" in his remarkable recovery from a mid-game cardiac arrest.

A joint statement from Bolton and the London Chest Hospital on Monday said Muamba remains in intensive care "where his condition is serious but stable."

One of Japan's cultural treasures, a 30-scroll set of paintings from the 1700s, is being shown together outside of Japan for the first time in a rare display in Washington.

The paintings of birds and flowers on silk, created more than 250 years ago by artist Ito Jakuchu, will go on view Friday at the National Gallery of Art. The four-week exhibition marks the centennial of Japan's gift of 3,000 cherry trees to the U.S. as a symbol of friendship.

A prominent lawmaker and gay rights activist in Nepal says he has asked Facebook to include a third option for people who do not identify themselves as male or female.

Sunilbabu Pant said he has written to Facebook founders Mark Zuckerberg and Chris Hughes asking an option as "third gender" or "others" when signing up because people who do not identify as male or female continue to be sidelined by Facebook's options.

The Academy of Natural Sciences has never been one to brag.

Its 225,000 annual visitors may associate the oldest natural history museum in the U.S. solely with dioramas and dinosaurs, but behind the scenes there is groundbreaking research conducted by world-renowned scientists and an enviable collection of some 18 million specimens representing all manner of animal, vegetable and mineral.

The memories of a World War II-era Marine have renewed hopes of solving one of the greatest archaeological mysteries — the whereabouts of the lost Peking Man fossils, South African and Chinese scientists said.

In the March edition of a scientific journal published by Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand, renowned South African paleontologist Lee Berger and two Chinese colleagues say the fossils may be lying under a parking lot in China's northern port city of Qinhuangdao where the Marine said he saw two crates of bones in 1947.

On a recent busy afternoon at Kennedy Airport, a beagle with plaintive-looking eyes was lying on the floor of Terminal 4, oblivious to the chaos of rolling luggage and human activity teeming all around her.

There was no prying this dog off the ground — despite the best attempts of Officer Meghan Caffery, her closest companion and partner.

Oil prices fell slightly toward $106 a barrel Monday in Asia as investors mulled how much the conflict over Iran's nuclear program might disrupt global crude supplies.

Benchmark oil for May delivery was down 32 cents to $106.55 at midday Singapore time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose $1.52 to $106.87 per barrel in New York on Friday.

A Scottish newspaper on Sunday published previously undisclosed files on the 1988 Pan Am bombing that killed hundreds over Lockerbie, arguing it is in the public interest to ignore data protection laws that have kept the documents from the public.

The Sunday Herald newspaper posted an 800-page report by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission to its website. It said it had been authorized to publish the documents by Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the only man convicted over the bombing that killed 270, mostly Americans, and who has long insisted he did not carry it out.

When Phong Yang, a Hmong refugee from Laos, landed in California's Central Valley — via stops in Thailand and France — he was 14 years old. He learned to speak Hmong from his parents, but today he has a hard time teaching the language to his children, who are distracted by cell phones and computers.

Many Hmong are losing their language, Yang said, leading to fears that their cultural identity will be lost.