Elie Saab used Ottoman motifs to give his fall-winter 2012-2013 show an imaginative lift.

The move expanded his strict repertoire of va-va voom column dresses and created a strong offering for this year's couture season.

Roger Federer earned a record 32nd Grand Slam semifinal berth and moved closer to a record-tying seventh Wimbledon title when he beat Mikhail Youzhny 6-1, 6-2, 6-2 Wednesday.

Federer's opponent Friday will be defending champion Novak Djokovic, who beat Florian Mayer 6-4, 6-1, 6-4.

A Spanish judge subpoenaed former IMF managing director Rodrigo Rato on Wednesday over his stewardship of a big Spanish bank that has been nationalized and is due to take a multibillion euro (dollar) bailout.

Rato is one of 33 former members of the board of Bankia SA named in a criminal probe that will be undertaken by Judge Fernando Andreu of the National Court. Anti-corruption prosecutors filed a complaint against Rato accusing him and others of falsifying the bank's accounts when it went public a year ago, among other alleged offenses.

Flash flooding caused by torrential rains has killed eight people, including at least four children in northern Turkey, authorities said Wednesday.

The downpours caused a river to burst its banks late Tuesday, inundating homes and shops and stranding cars in the Black Sea port city of Samsun, the state-run Anadolu agency reported Wednesday.

Olympic shooting gold medalist Russell Mark says the Australian Olympic Committee's decision to ban athletes from using strong sleeping pills in the lead up to the London Games will cost medals.

AOC president John Coates said Tuesday that Australian athletes will be banned from using insomnia treatments in London, after champion swimmer Grant Hackett revealed he became dependent on sleeping pills during his career.

Startled drivers weren't seeing things — it really was a kangaroo hopping down the highway in the U.S. state of Washington.

The meandering marsupial nearly caused a couple of accidents in the weekend and police responded, keeping the kangaroo off the road while its owner tracked it down and caught it with help from friends.

Microsoft is absorbing a $6.2 billion charge to reflect that one of the biggest deals in its 37-year history turned out to be a dud.

The non-cash charge announced Monday could saddle Microsoft Corp. with a loss for its fiscal fourth quarter ended in June. Analysts polled by FactSet had predicted Microsoft would earn about $5.3 billion for the period. The company hasn't suffered a quarterly loss during the past 20 years, according to its website.

Top-seeded Maria Sharapova was knocked out of Wimbledon on Monday, losing 6-4, 6-3 to Sabine Lisicki in the fourth round — just a month after completing a career Grand Slam.

Lisicki, a 15th-ranked German, simply outplayed the 2004 Wimbledon champion in windy, rainy conditions on Court 1 for her first career victory over Sharapova in four matches. She avenged a loss in the semifinals to Sharapova here last year.

The Palestinian self-rule government has detained some 200 people, including security officers, in recent weeks in the biggest crackdown on illegal weapons in the West Bank in five years, a spokesman said Monday.

Officials say the campaign is unusual because it targets include alleged vigilante gunmen linked to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement. Previously, security forces went mainly after armed supporters of rival groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

With all the star power at the BET Awards — Kanye West, Jay-Z, Nicki Minaj, Beyonce and Samuel L. Jackson, to name a few — the most stirring moment came not from a superstar, but from the mother of one.

Whitney Houston's mother Cissy provided the emotional highlight of Sunday's ceremony as she sang "Bridge Over Troubled Water" in tribute to her late daughter, leaving audience members like Beyonce and Soulja Boy in tears.