PROCESSION FOR SLAIN POLICE OFFICER IN CALIF.

Procession for slainpolice officer in Calif.
SAN FRANCISCO -- More than 1,500 police officers took part in a funeral procession in San Francisco Friday for a slain police officer. Bryan Tuvera, the 28-year-old officer, was shot and killed Dec. 22 while apprehending an escaped prison inmate.
WTC search expands
NEW YORK -- The search for human remains at the World Trade Center site will be expanded, a city official said Friday, hours before searchers found what may be more bone fragments at the site. In a memo to Mayor Michael Bloomberg about the search for remains, Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler said debris believed to be from the towers had been dug up from under a service road on the site's western edge and said more of the road would be excavated. Crews sifting through the material have reported finding computer parts, office carpet, electrical wires and steel from the building.
No second chancefor Miss Nevada
NEW YORK -- Miss Nevada USA Katie Rees is not getting her tiara back after losing it because she appeared in a slew of prurient pictures -- and that's final, pageant officials said Friday in response to speculation stirred up by pageant co-owner Donald Trump. "The Miss Universe Organization has thoroughly considered the request of Ms. Katie Rees to be reinstated as Miss Nevada USA 2007," Paula M. Shugart, president of the Miss Universe Organization, said in a statement released to The Associated Press. "In light of the serious nature of the circumstances, there is no recourse but to stand by our decision." Trump, who owns the Miss Universe Organization and Miss USA with NBC, told the television show "Extra" in a segment broadcast Thursday that he was looking at the Dec. 21 decision to fire Rees, fueling buzz that the beauty queen might be reinstated. Rees was stripped of her title after racy photos of her appeared on the Internet.
Study: Propecia skewsprostate test results
The popular hair growth drug Propecia, taken by millions of balding men, artificially lowers the results of the screening test for prostate cancer by about half, according to a recent study. The study involved 306 men ranging in age from 40 to 60 recruited at 12 medical centers around the United States. It was released online by the British medical publication Lancet.Oncology this month, and will be in print early next year. The drug, also known as finasteride, was originally developed as a treatment for enlarged prostates. But the Food and Drug Administration later approved it at a lower dose as a treatment for male pattern baldness since tests showed men taking it for their prostate re-grew hair as a side effect.
Taliban chief vowsto drive out troops
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Fugitive Taliban chief Mullah Omar pledged to drive foreign troops out of Afghanistan in a statement released Friday, as NATO and Afghan forces killed more than 12 of his fighters in the volatile south. The purported message from Omar, the authenticity of which could not be immediately confirmed, urged the Taliban to "sacrifice" their lives and "never submit or accept defeat." "I am confident that blood of innocent people and mujahedeen will yield results," said the statement, timed for the Muslim religious festival of Eid al-Adha.
Nazi archives
WASHINGTON --The incoming head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and other U.S lawmakers are pressing governments to speed up ratification of an agreement that will open up access to millions of documents from the Nazi era in Germany. Earlier this month, Sen. Joseph Biden, who takes over as head of the committee when Congress reconvenes Jan. 4, urged countries that have to go through a ratification process to move quickly so that the public can view the vast war-era archive.
Combined dispatches