One of Qatar's first female athletes to compete at the Olympics will be the flag-bearer for the opening ceremony at the London Games.

Qatar's Olympic Committee posted a statement late Wednesday on Twitter saying shooter Bahiya al-Hamad has been chosen to "raise the Qatar flag at London 2012."

South Korea says it may scrap research whaling plans that have been widely criticized.

Fisheries official Kang Joon-suk said Wednesday that Seoul may drop the plans if it finds ways to study whales without killing them.

Seoul's last old-style, one-screen cinema, soon to be knocked down and replaced by a hotel, played its final movie Wednesday — the Italian classic "The Bicycle Thief" — a moment so emotional for the theater operator that she publicly shaved her head in frustration.

The theater, which opened in 1964, had become a place where mostly elderly moviegoers gathered regularly to watch classic Hollywood and South Korean films and indulge in nostalgia for cinematic days gone by.

NBC says "The Voice" is teaming a crooner and a country singer for the show's new season.

The network said Monday that Michael Buble will serve as adviser to coach Blake Shelton's team of contestants when the singing contest returns in September.

It was a provocative finding: strange bacteria in a California lake that thrived on something completely unexpected — arsenic. What it suggested is that life, a very different kind of life, could possibly exist on some other planet.

The research, published by a leading scientific journal in 2010, led to overheated speculation about how life might exist elsewhere — and quickly some dissent about the original finding.

Japanese seeking information on radiation levels in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster are turning to a volunteer group founded in the U.S. that has created a detailed and constantly updated visual database online.

Sean Bonner, a Los Angeles resident, computer expert and one of the founders of the group called Safecast, said nothing could have been more natural than to jump in and fill the need for information after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami caused reactor meltdowns at the Fukushima power plant in northeastern Japan.

A deadly form of a common childhood illness has been linked to the mysterious child deaths in Cambodia that sparked alarm after a cause could not immediately be determined, health officials said Monday.

Lab tests have confirmed that a virulent strain of hand, foot and mouth disease known as EV-71 is to blame for some of the 59 cases reviewed since April, including 52 deaths, according to a joint statement from the World Health Organization and Cambodian Health Ministry. The numbers were lowered from the initial report of 62 cases.

Having trouble getting online? Some may find their smartphones working overtime because their computers couldn't seem to connect to the Internet on Monday morning.

Thousands waited too long or simply didn't believe the warnings of malware that took over computers around the world more than a year ago. At 12:01 a.m. EDT (0401 GMT), the FBI turned off the Internet servers that were functioning as a temporary safety net to keep infected computers online for the past eight months. The court order the agency had gotten to keep the servers running expired, and it was not renewed.

Residents of a London apartment tower are going to court in a bid to stop their rooftop being used as a missile base during the Olympic Games.

The British military plans to deploy surface-to-air missiles at six sites around London as part of security measures for the July 27-Aug. 12 games.

A government-appointed committee has recommended that Israel legalize dozens of unsanctioned West Bank settlement outposts, a member of the panel said Monday, in defiance of international opposition to settling on land the Palestinians want for their future state.

The panel of jurists, headed by former Supreme Court Justice Edmond Levy, also concluded that the West Bank is not occupied territory and therefore Israel has the legal right to settle it, according to Alan Baker, one of the committee members.