Mexican architect Pedro Ramirez Vazquez has died at the age of 94.

Ramirez Vazquez designed some of Mexico's biggest landmark modernist structures, including the new Basilica of Guadalupe, the Anthropology Museum and the Azteca Stadium, all in Mexico City.

Online professional networking service LinkedIn is dressing up its mobile application to impress people who are increasingly scrolling through content on smartphones.

The changes being unveiled Thursday mark LinkedIn Corp.'s first major overhaul of its mobile app in 20 months.

The halls of Parliament echoed with a traditional Maori love song after lawmakers made New Zealand the 13th country in the world and the first in the Asia-Pacific region to legalize same-sex marriage.

Supporters of the bill, including hundreds of gay-rights advocates, stood and cheered after the 77-44 vote was announced late Wednesday. Then as lawmakers tried to get back to business, someone started signing "Pokarekare Ana" in the indigenous Maori language, and soon nearly the whole room joined in.

Groups protesting Bahrain's Formula One race have put up makeshift roadblocks and barricades of burning tires during clashes with security forces in the violence-wracked Gulf nation.

The demonstrations on Thursday were mostly isolated to anti-government hotbed areas, however, and unlikely to disrupt preparations for Sunday's race, which is the premier international event in the kingdom.

Seems Dubai police have a thing for Italian speed: They're making preparations to have a nearly $250,000 Ferrari join an even pricier Lamborghini as the flagship flash of its fleet.

Photos carried Wednesday by the Emirates 24/7 online newspaper show the car getting the green-and-white colors of Dubai's police force. Earlier this week, Dubai's police chief, Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim, said the Ferrari was on the way.

FIFA chief Sepp Blatter on Wednesday condemned the deadly attacks at the Boston marathon, urging authorities to pull out all the stops in preventing such tragedies.

"What happened in Boston is a drama, a tragedy," the head of world football's governing body said in Spanish, speaking to reporters as he wrapped up a two-day visit to Cuba.

President Barack Obama's push for tighter gun controls faced defeat after getting blocked in the Senate, while the president, surrounded by shooting victims and families of victims, said the powerful gun control lobby "willfully lied" to the American people.

"All in all, this was a pretty shameful day for Washington," the president said Wednesday evening. "Who are we here to represent?"

A Mississippi man was arrested Wednesday, accused of sending letters to President Barack Obama and a senator that tested positive for poisonous ricin and set the nation's capital on edge a day after the Boston Marathon bombings.

Paul Kevin Curtis, 45, was arrested at his apartment near the Tennessee state line east of Memphis, said FBI Special Agent in Charge Daniel McMullen. It wasn't immediately known where he was being held.

Rescue workers searched rubble that witnesses compared to a warzone early Thursday for survivors of a fertilizer plant explosion in a small Texas town that killed as many as 15 people and injured more than 160 others. The blast left the factory a smoldering ruin and leveled buildings for blocks in every direction.

The explosion in downtown West, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of Dallas, shook the ground with the strength of a small earthquake and could be heard dozens of miles away. It sent flames shooting into the night sky and rained burning embers, shrapnel and debris down on shocked and frightened residents.

U.S. officials denied a suspect was under arrest Wednesday in the deadly Boston Marathon bombings.

A law enforcement official briefed on the investigation told The Associated Press earlier in the day that a suspect was in custody. But the FBI and the U.S. attorney's office in Boston said no arrests had been made.