The head of the Arab League's observation team to Syria has struck back at critics who say the mission has failed to stop violence between security forces and opposition groups seeking to oust President Bashar Assad.

Gen. Mohammed Ahmed al-Dabi told reporters in Cairo Monday that the mission's job was to never to stop the violence, but to document progress on the League's peace plan.

European finance ministers will try on Monday to give new momentum to talks on a Greek debt relief deal that is crucial to avoid a default, but a European diplomat warned that a final agreement may have to wait until a leaders' summit next week.

A deal would see Greece's private creditors — banks and other investment firms — swap their Greek bonds for ones with a 50 percent lower value, thereby cutting the country's debt pile by some €100 billion ($129 billion). The new bonds will also have much longer maturities, pushing repayments decades into the future, and a much lower interest rate then Greece would currently have to pay on the market.

The federal government now says a 101-year-old Detroit woman it promised could move back into her foreclosed home four months ago can't return because the building's unsanitary and unsafe.

Texana Hollis was evicted Sept. 12 and her belongings placed outside after her 65-year-old son failed to pay property taxes linked to a reverse mortgage and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development foreclosed on the home.

A crude new method of making methamphetamine poses a risk even to Americans who never get anywhere near the drug: It is filling hospitals with thousands of uninsured burn patients requiring millions of dollars in advanced treatment — a burden so costly that it's contributing to the closure of some burn units.

So-called shake-and-bake meth is produced by combining raw, unstable ingredients in a two-liter soda bottle. But if the person mixing the noxious brew makes the slightest error, such as removing the cap too soon or accidentally perforating the plastic, the concoction can explode, searing flesh and causing permanent disfigurement, blindness or even death.

Serena Williams' 17-match winning streak at the Australian Open ended Monday in a stunning 6-2, 6-3 loss to Ekaterina Makarova, the lowest-ranked woman in the fourth round.

The dominant force at Melbourne Park this century, Williams had lost only two matches at Melbourne Park since winning the first of her five Australian Open titles in 2003. After losing in the 2008 quarterfinals, she won titles in 2009 and 2010 before sitting out last year because of injury.

British adventurer Felicity Aston has crossed Antarctica, becoming the first woman to cross the icy continent alone.

Aston also set another record: the first human to ski across Antarctica using only her own muscle power.

One of the world's most endangered turtles has been released into a Cambodian river with a satellite transmitter attached to its shell to track how it will navigate through commercial fishing grounds and other man-made hazards.

The 75-pound (34-kilogram) southern river terrapin — one of only about 200 adults remaining in the wild — waddled into the Sre Ambel river in southwestern Cambodia this past week to the cheers of local residents and conservationists.

Tablets and e-readers were a popular gift over the holidays, so much so that the number of people who own them nearly doubled between mid-December and January, a new study finds.

A report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project set to be released Monday found that 29 percent of Americans owned at least one tablet or e-reader as of the beginning of this month. That's up from 18 percent who said the same in December.

Kei Nishikori keeps accumulating the tennis milestones for Japanese men, always remaining conscious of but not concerned about the expectations being heaped upon him.

Nishikori notched another mark Monday when he became the first Japanese man to reach the quarterfinals of the Australian Open since the Open Era began in 1968 with an exhausting 2-6, 6-2, 6-1, 3-6, 6-3 victory over former finalist Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France.

A quarter-century after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first prescription drugs based on the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, additional medicines derived from or inspired by the cannabis plant itself could soon be making their way to pharmacy shelves, according to drug companies, small biotech firms and university scientists.

A British company, GW Pharma, is in advanced clinical trials for the world's first pharmaceutical developed from raw marijuana instead of synthetic equivalents— a mouth spray it hopes to market in the U.S. as a treatment for cancer pain. And it hopes to see FDA approval by the end of 2013.