The United States acknowledged Thursday that Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng and his family wanted to leave the country and said it was in talks with him on his options.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that Chen and his wife, in conversations with U.S. officials, said that they no longer wanted to stay in China under a deal reached Wednesday in which he left U.S. embassy protection.

Chinese President Hu Jintao on Thursday called for the United States and China to respect each other's concerns, amid a row over a dissident who fled to the U.S. embassy.

Speaking at the start of two-day talks in Beijing, Hu called for cooperation between the world's two largest economies and warned that any worsening of relations posed "grave" risks for the world.

Federal authorities charged 107 doctors, nurses and social workers in seven cities with Medicare fraud Wednesday in a nationwide crackdown on unrelated scams that allegedly billed the taxpayer-funded program of $452 million — the highest dollar amount in a single Medicare bust in U.S. history.

It was the latest in a string of major arrests in the past two years as authorities have targeted fraud that's believed to cost the government between $60 billion and $90 billion each year. Stopping Medicare's budget from hemorrhaging that money will be key to paying for President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.

An elephant named Shanthi at the U.S. national zoo plays a harmonica with her trunk and appears to love doing it.

Video released Wednesday by the zoo in Washington shows the 36-year-old Asian elephant has a harmonica attached to her stall and plays tunes even when no humans are within view.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner Thursday urged China to allow its currency to strengthen further and push forward economic reforms, which he said were crucial to the global recovery.

But his comments at the start of two-day talks between the world's two biggest economies were overshadowed by a human rights row that has threatened already strained relations.

A New Jersey mother faces criminal charges for tucking her five-year-old child into bed -- a tanning bed.

Patricia Krentcil, 44, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to taking her daughter, now six, into the tanning booth at a salon where she regularly soaks up the rays, Essex County prosecutor's Office spokeswoman Katherine Carter told Agence France Presse.

An American who U.S. officials said was an al-Qaida operative was convicted Tuesday on terrorism charges for plotting with two accomplices to launch suicide bomb attacks in the New York subway system.

Adis Medunjanin, a resident of Queens, New York, faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison after being convicted of conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction and providing material support to al-Qaida, among other charges.

The Taliban militia announced their "spring offensive" would begin across Afghanistan on Thursday.

Code-named al-Farouq, the primary targets of the offensive would be "foreign invaders, their advisors, their contractors, all those who help them militarily and in intelligence", the militants said on their website.

North Korea has apparently finished preparations for a third nuclear test and is awaiting a political decision to go ahead with it, a nuclear expert with South Korea's government said Wednesday.

The expert also said the communist state is likely to use highly enriched uranium (HEU) for any test, and may have produced enough HEU to make between three and six bombs in addition to its plutonium stockpile.

Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng has left the U.S. embassy to seek medical care and join his family, officials said Wednesday, in a dramatic turn in a standoff between the Pacific powers on the eve of key talks.

Hours after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in China for long-planned meetings, the U.S. broke nearly a week of silence over Chen's case and said that the dissident has been taken for treatment in Beijing.