Large seizures of elephant tusks make this year the worst on record since ivory sales were banned in 1989, with recent estimates suggesting as many as 3,000 elephants were killed by poachers, experts said.

"2011 has truly been a horrible year for elephants," said Tom Milliken, elephant and rhino expert for the wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC, on Thursday.

The Obama administration has hit two men with sanctions for allegedly laundering money on behalf of Mexican and Colombian drug cartels.

The move blocks any assets in the U.S. belonging to Lebanese-Colombian nationals Jorge Fadlallah Cheaitelly and Mohamad Zouheir El Khansa, and blocks Americans from doing business with them.

Ali al-Saadi gave Lebanon a 1-0 lead against South Korea and the sectarian chants echoing across Cite Sportive stadium suddenly gave way to a more hopeful cheer.

The roars of "Minshan Allah, Libnan yallah" — "For God's Sake, Lebanon Come On" — filled the 60,000-seat stadium and grew louder as the team closed in on a historic 2-1 win over their favored Asian opponents.

Rafael Nadal says he plans to take several weeks off after the Australian Open to recover from a nagging shoulder injury.

The second-ranked Nadal said the injury surfaced during the ATP World Tour Finals in London and that he was still "not 100 percent."

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is questioning the rash of cancer cases among Latin American leaders and asking if somehow the U.S. might have a way to induce the illness.

Chavez has long questioned whether the U.S. government could be plotting to oust him, but his latest remarks went far beyond any such theories.

Avastin, the blockbuster drug that just lost approval for treating breast cancer, now looks disappointing against ovarian cancer, too. Two studies found it did not improve survival for most of these patients and kept their disease from worsening for only a few months, with more side effects.

The Genentech drug won approval in Europe last week for advanced ovarian cancer. But its maker has no immediate plans to seek the same approval in the United States. After talking with the Food and Drug Administration, "we do not believe the data will support approval" although no final decision has been made, said Charlotte Arnold, a spokeswoman for Genentech, part of the Swiss company Roche.

The New Year's countdown to the moon has begun.

NASA said Wednesday that its twin spacecraft were on course to arrive back-to-back at the moon after a 3½-month journey.

One of America's most widely planted crops — a genetically engineered corn plant that makes its own insecticide — may be losing its effectiveness because a major pest appears to be developing resistance more quickly than scientists expected.

The U.S. food supply is not in any immediate danger because the problem remains isolated. But scientists fear potentially risky farming practices could be blunting the hybrid's sophisticated weaponry.

Here's one way to sum up 2011: I added 71 people as Facebook friends, shared 26 links and commented on 98 of my friends' status updates. I was tagged in 33 photos and added 18 of my own to the site.

I also attempted to keep up with Facebook's endless redesigns, most recently with the introduction of Timeline. With it, your Facebook profile offers highlights from your past, not just your recent happenings. Last week, I urged all of you to carefully curate your Timelines to avoid coming across as vain or revealing forgotten skeletons.

This tiny village of 37 gray homes and farm buildings clustered along the main road in a wind-swept corner of rural eastern Germany seems an unlikely place for a revolution.

Yet environmentalists, experts and politicians from El Salvador to Japan to South Africa have flocked here in the past year to learn how Feldheim, a village of just 145 people, is already putting into practice Germany's vision of a future powered entirely by renewable energy.