Taliban representatives have concluded two days of meetings with a group of Afghan lawmakers and peace negotiators in the Norwegian capital Oslo, a Taliban spokesman and the Afghan president's office said on Friday.

In an email to media organizations, the Taliban's Zabihullah Mujahid said the discussions were informal and could not be categorized as "peace talks."

An effort to use a fake, life-sized orca to scare off hundreds of sea lions crowding docks off the Oregon coast ended, at least temporarily, Thursday night with the fiberglass creature belly-up after it was swamped by a passing ship.

Still, Port of Astoria Executive Director Jim Knight said the sea lions briefly "got deathly silent" when the orca sailed into view. That was just before it started listing and tipped over.

There's a new Chinese restaurant in Rochester. The name? I Don't Know.

Seriously, the I Don't Know Chinese Restaurant recently opened in the western New York city. Owner Jessie Dong tells the Democrat and Chronicle of Rochester (http://on.rocne.ws/1K98JYg ) that said she came up with the unusual name because whenever she would ask her three children what they wanted to eat, their response would be: "I don't know."

Sorry, baby, your picture isn't going to be on the front of any beer bottles in New Hampshire.

Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan on Tuesday vetoed a measure that would have allowed some images of minors to grace alcoholic beverage labels as long as they didn't encourage young people to drink.

North Pole residents can put marijuana on their Christmas list next year.

The city council in North Pole, Alaska, rejected a measure Monday that would have banned marijuana dispensaries. Marijuana became legal in Alaska in February, and sales begin next year.

Chemistry books say there are three fossil fuels: coal, oil and natural gas.

Lately you could get the impression that coal is the only one.

A bird flu vaccine doesn't work well enough to approve it for emergency use against the outbreak that's shaken the American poultry industry, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Wednesday.

The USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service said in a statement Wednesday that the current vaccine is not well matched against the highly pathogenic H5N2 virus and doesn't provide enough protection.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin says he sees little reason to release the accident reports involving the Internet company's self-driving cars because he believes there's nothing new in documents withheld to protect the privacy of other motorists.

Brin, who oversees Google's fleet of self-driving cars, outlined his rationale Wednesday during a sometimes-testy exchange with a long-time critic at the company's annual shareholders meeting in Mountain View, California.

There's a chaotic dance going on at the far end of the solar system, involving Pluto and five of its closest friends, a new study finds.

Hubble Space Telescope images of Pluto, its largest moon Charon, and tinier moons Styx, Nix, Hydra and Kerberos show the odd rhythmic gyrations of the six distant objects in a dance unlike anything in the system.

Clutching a tiny Bible, Gilda Velasquez leans over her son as he falls asleep with the help of a powerful sedative and a catchy cartoon jingle playing on a hand-held TV.

"Remember, you're a Christian, you're a Christian," she repeats amid her tears to Yin Carlos as orderlies wheel the 6-year-old into the operating room where he will get a new liver.