An international group seeking to preserve the legacy of Winston Churchill is announcing plans Thursday to create the first U.S. research center devoted to the longtime British leader.

The new National Churchill Library and Center will be established between 2013 and 2015 at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., with an $8 million (€6.23 million) pledge from the Chicago-based Churchill Centre.

It's high noon for the humble leap second.

After ten years of talks, governments are headed for a showdown vote this week on an issue that pits technological precision against nature's whims.

Russia will look into the possibility that a U.S. radar station could have inadvertently interfered with the failed Mars moon probe that plummeted to Earth, Russian media reported Tuesday, but experts argued that any such claims were far-fetched.

NASA spokesman Bob Jacobs also said the U.S. space agency was not using the military radar equipment in question at the time of the Russian equipment failure, but instead was using radar in the Mojave desert in the western United States and in Puerto Rico.

If a day without Wikipedia was a bother, think bigger. In this plugged-in world, we would barely be able to cope if the entire Internet went down in a city, state or country for a day or a week.

Sure, we'd survive. People have done it. Countries have, as Egypt did last year during the anti-government protests. And most of civilization went along until the 1990s without the Internet. But now we're so intertwined socially, financially and industrially that suddenly going back to the 1980s would hit the world as hard as a natural disaster, experts say.

Even though Jennifer Hudson has dropped more than 80 pounds (36 kilograms), the singer and actress said she would have no problem gaining weight for Hollywood if the proper movie role comes her way.

"When I do films, it has to be led by something through me — like my passion for it," Hudson said before a book signing in suburban Atlanta on Wednesday. "I just don't want to hop into anything. So if I commit myself to something, than it'll be worth it no matter what character it is."

YouTube is launching a film festival that will play out online and ultimately send 10 finalists to the Venice Film Festival.

The Google Inc.-owned video site announced Thursday that Your Film Festival will take submissions of short films up to 15 minutes in length between Feb. 2 and March 31. Fifty semi-finalists will be selected by Scott Free Productions, Ridley and Tony Scott's production company.

A former Israeli military intelligence chief said Iran has all the components to build a nuclear bomb, an Israeli newspaper reported Thursday.

It was not clear whether Amos Yadlin, who retired in November 2010, was referring to the mechanical elements of a bomb or implying the Iranians have sufficient weapons-grade uranium, a critical ingredient for bombmaking.

A Michigan beauty queen of Lebanese origin who made headlines two years ago by becoming the first Arab-American crowned Miss USA will stand trial in March on a drunken-driving charge unless a plea deal is reached, a judge said Wednesday.

Judge Brigette Officer set a March 14 trial date for Rima Fakih, who made her first court appearance since the Dec. 3 traffic stop in the Detroit enclave of Highland Park. Fakih, 26, has said she wasn't drinking that night, but two police breath tests put her blood alcohol content at over twice the legal limit.

Avalanches have killed at least 29 people in Afghanistan's mountainous northeast as rescuers struggled to reach the worst-hit areas cut off by heavy snows, officials said.

The Afghan National Disaster Management Agency said Thursday that at least 40 more people have been injured in a series of avalanches since Monday in Badakhshan province.

Photography icon Eastman Kodak has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, as it seeks to boost its cash position and stay in business.

The move comes as the ailing company has failed to find a buyer for its trove of 1,100 digital imaging patents. Kodak said in November that it could run out of cash in a year if it didn't sell the patents, for which it hoped to fetch billions.