Reuters - A soldier serving with the British Army in Afghanistan has told of the moment he threw back a Taliban hand grenade, telling himself: "I've really only got one chance to do this."

AP - The executive director of the film academy said Tuesday that Farrah Fawcett wasn't included in the Academy Awards' In Memoriam segment because the actress was better known as a TV star.

AP - The government sent investigators Tuesday to examine a Prius that sped out of control on a California freeway, and Toyota said it wanted to interview the driver as the besieged automaker dealt with a high-profile new headache that raised questions about the safety of its beloved hybrid.

AP - Former Rep. Eric Massa, who resigned from Congress amid sexual harassment allegations, acknowledged Tuesday groping a staffer but denied it was sexual.

AFP - A dozen previously unknown shipwrecks, some of them believed to be up to 1,000 years old, were discovered in the Baltic Sea during a probe of the sea bed to prepare for the installation of a large gas pipeline, the Swedish National Heritage Board said Monday.

AP - The pope's brother said in a newspaper interview published Tuesday that he slapped pupils as punishment after he took over a renowned German boys' choir in the 1960s. He also said he was aware of allegations of physical abuse at an elementary school linked to the choir but did nothing about it.

AP - A suburban woman "desperate to do something" to help suffering Muslims has been accused of using the Internet to recruit jihadist fighters and help terrorists overseas, even agreeing to move to Europe to try to kill a Swedish artist, prosecutors said Tuesday.

AP - The government is preparing a safety warning about baby slings — those popular and fashionable infant carriers that parents strap around their chests to give the little ones a cuddle on the move.

McClatchy Newspapers - JERUSALEM — Hours after the arrival Tuesday of Vice President Joe Biden to help launch indirect Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Israel announced the construction of 1,600 homes in a settlement block in mostly Arab East Jerusalem, an open rebuff that led Biden to issue a sharply worded condemnation.

Reuters - Restorers using ultra-violet rays have rediscovered rich original details of Giotto's paintings in the Peruzzi Chapel in Florence's Santa Croce church that have been hidden for centuries.

The Newsroom - This time last week, Eric Massa was another low-profile House Democrat. Now his media profile has exploded—with the Washington Post reporting today that House investigators are looking into allegations that the New York Democrat groped some male aides in his office. (Update: Massa claims on "The Glenn Beck Show" that the latest charges arise from an incident where he tickled a staffer "until he could no longer breathe" at a birthday celebration, and says that he behaved wrongly. "I own this misbehavior. . . .," he told Beck. "It doesn't make any difference what my intentions were. It's how it's perceived." At the end of a digressive interview, Beck turned to the camera and said "America, I've got to be straight with you. I think this is the first time I've wasted an hour of your time," because the Massa exchanges didn't yield significant new revelations.)

AFP - Researchers said Tuesday that papaya leaf extract and its tea have dramatic cancer-fighting properties against a broad range of tumors, backing a belief held in a number of folk traditions.

AP - Detroit, the very symbol of American industrial might for most of the 20th century, is drawing up a radical renewal plan that calls for turning large swaths of this now-blighted, rusted-out city back into the fields and farmland that existed before the automobile.

LiveScience.com - The massive 8.8 magnitude earthquake that struck Chile more than a week ago moved the city of Concepción at least 10 feet (3 meters) to the west, seismological measurements indicate.

AP - President Barack Obama said Tuesday he'll bring in high-tech bounty hunters to help root out health care fraud, grabbing a populist idea with bipartisan backing in his final push to overhaul the system.

AP - Vice President Joe Biden condemned an Israeli plan to build hundreds of homes in disputed east Jerusalem on Tuesday — a disagreement that tarnished a high-profile visit that had been aimed at repairing ties with the Jewish state and kickstarting Mideast peace talks.

AP - An Ohio State University janitor who was about to lose his job walked into a maintenance building for his early morning shift Tuesday and shot two supervisors, killing one of them and fatally shooting himself. No students were hurt.

AP - President Barack Obama's health care bill would change federal policy on abortion, but it would not open the spigot of taxpayer dollars as some abortion opponents fear.

AP - Japan confirmed Tuesday secret Cold War-era pacts with Washington that tacitly allowed nuclear warships in Japanese ports in violation of a hallowed postwar principle, effectively acknowledging that previous governments had lied about them for decades.