LITTLE ROCK — Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO's new secretary general, met with Russia's envoy in Brussels, Belgium, and called for a closer strategic partnership with Russia to tackle security challenges.

Jon Huntsman, a Republican, resigned as governor of Utah to become U.S. ambassador to China, leaving Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert in control of the state.

Michael Jackson Apodaca, 18, a soldier at Fort Bliss, has been charged with capital murder in the El Paso, Texas, slaying of Jose Daniel Gonzalez Galean, a midlevel Mexican drug-cartel member who was also a U.S. informant.

Virginia Ramos

and two relatives were held in the Bristol, Va., jail over accusations that they punished Ramos' 6-year-old niece for taking food from the kitchen by repeatedly tying her up in a bedroom and leaving her surrounded by rubber snakes and spiders.

Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., underwent surgery for prostate cancer and was recuperating at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

Wallace Souza, an ex-police officer who hosts a Brazilian TV crime show, is being investigated in five killings and faces charges of drug trafficking and involvement with a gang in a plot that Amazonas state police say was meant to generate news for his program.

Ron Fithen, a police officer in Gahanna, Ohio, has filed a lawsuit against the city, its Police Department and two police officials, claiming that he endured "a humiliating and intolerable working environment" after his wife, Beth, appeared nude for Playboy magazine early last year.

Bryan Schuler, 5, who survived a wrong-way crash on the Taconic Parkway that killed eight people, including his mother, sister and three cousins, has been released from Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, N.Y., into the custody of his father.

Morgan Tsvangirai, the former opposition leader who is prime minister of Zimbabwe, was saluted by generals known as hard-line supporters of President Robert Mugabe as he attended his first Armed Forces Day ceremony, a gesture welcomed as a public boost for the country's struggling coalition government.

Josef Scheungraber, 90, was sentenced in Munich to life in prison for ordering the massacre of 10 Italian civilians in Falzano di Cortona as a World War II German army officer after locals killed two German soldiers in June 1944.

Daniel Schultz, head of the Food and Drug Administration's medical device division announced his resignation, months after scientists under his leadership said they were pressured to approve certain products.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 08/12/2009