The World

THURSDAY

Confederate Civil War vessel H.L. Hunley, the world’s first successful combat submarine when it sank a Union ship in 1864, was unveiled in full and unobstructed for the first time.

A pair of French metal detector enthusiasts returned the lost dog tag of Private Kent Potter, an American Army soldier who fought in WWI, to his family in Kansas after unearthing it from its 90-year resting place. Private Potter, who worked on an Army supply train that consisted mostly of mules and horses, survived the war but returned home without the tag.

Authorities arrested a man who forced a 73-year-old grandmother to enter an Arkansas bank in a thwarted robbery attempt with what he told her was a bomb strapped to her ankle.

Sweden recognized the Church of Kopimism, a group that promotes file-sharing across the Internet, as a religion.

FRIDAY

Standard & Poor’s downgraded the credit ratings of nine euro zone countries, stripping France and Austria of their coveted triple-A status but not EU paymaster Germany.

A Russian tanker escorted by the U.S. Coast Guard reached the frozen Alaskan port of Nome with emergency fuel supplies after a 10-day voyage through ice-choked seas.

Late night comedian Stephen Colbert said he is exploring a run in the Republican presidential primary in South Carolina, although the deadline has passed to get on the ballot. He turned over administration of his SuperPAC to colleague Jon Stewart.

A Northern California tree trimmer was decapitated when he became entangled in a rope that was sucked into an industrial wood chipper.

WEEKEND

Iran officials cracked down on stores selling Barbie dolls in an effort to protect the public from what they see as pernicious western culture eroding Islamic values.

Manuel “Matty” Moroun, 84, the billionaire owner of the Ambassador Bridge, the busiest crossing between the United States and Canada, was released after one night in jail where a judge ordered him held for failing to complete a road construction project.

Divers recovered the bodies of two men Sunday whose snowmobile sank after hitting open water on a lake near the Twin Cities. Dozens of people have fallen into frigid waters around Minnesota this winter as unseasonably warm temperatures have weakened ice.

Texas Governor Rick Perry, scrambling to keep his U.S. presidential bid alive, accused the Obama administration of over-reacting by threatening criminal charges after seeing a videotape of four Marines urinating on dead Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

MONDAY

Thirty-one-year-old Rabita Sarkar, Harrison, N.J., gave birth to her first child on a PATH commuter train while trying to get to her doctor in New York City. PATH officials turned the train into an express, bypassing most stops so that it would get to its final stop, 33rd Street in midtown Manhattan, as soon as possible.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said the country’s largest rebel group was increasingly selling its cattle to finance South America’s longest-running insurgency as income from trafficking cocaine has dropped from U.S. military efforts.

Standard & Poor’s cut its credit rating of the euro zone’s rescue fund by one notch to AA+ from triple-A.

TUESDAY

Scientists confirmed 15 pounds of rock that fell in Morocco last July are meteorite pieces of Mars. The last time a Martian meteorite fell and was found fresh was in 1962. All the known Martian rocks on Earth add up to less than 240 pounds.

Snowshoer Yong Chun Kim, 66, Tacoma, emerged from Mount Rainier after being lost in a blizzard for two days. He stayed alive by digging a snow tunnel, dreaming of his wife and a sauna, praying, eating chocolate and rice and starting a fire with his last $6.

Los Angeles city council voted 9-1 to require porn stars to wear condoms during film shoots. Skin flick producers say they will move filming out of town over the requirement.

Officials in Del Rio, Texas, prepared to drop packets of rabies vaccine onto the area from airplanes to inoculate coyotes.

WEDNESDAY

Seattle residents braced for “Snowmageddon” - a storm front expected to drop up to 10 inches of snow.

Efforts to recover the remaining 23 people still missing from last Friday’s wreck of the capsized Italian cruise liner Costa Concordia were suspended after the 114,500-metric-ton cruise ship shifted under water. The ship had 4,200 passengers and crew onboard when it wrecked.

Japanese whalers and protesters clashed in the Southern Ocean, with activists saying three of their crew were injured by grappling hooks and a bamboo pole and Japan claiming the anti-whalers tried to cut ropes and tangle propellers.

Compiled by Gazette staff from a variety

of sources.