A contractor said Tuesday that he negotiated with an Australian television network to snatch two Lebanese-Australian children from their father's family in Beirut but the network chose a cheaper option.

Col Chapman, who describes himself as a child recovery specialist, said executives at the Nine Network's "60 Minutes" program told him to "sharpen his pencil" when he quoted them 150,000 Australian dollars ($114,000) late last year to get the children Lahala, 6, and Noah, 4, out of Lebanon.

Paris police say protesters angry over a labor reform damaged stores and restaurants and injured two police officers during a rogue overnight march.

Thousands of people have been gathering for the past 11 nights at the Place de la Republique to express frustration at a bill extending the workweek and making layoffs easier. The fledgling Occupy-style movement has expanded to include a range of grievances and visitors from other cities and countries.

Ernest Hemingway and John F. Kennedy never met, but the author's most extensive personal collection is housed at JFK's presidential library and is now on public display.

The exhibition opening this week in Boston includes original manuscripts of some of his most famous literary works; letters to other major literary figures of his time; photographs and other personal mementos.

To dump or not to dump a little-discussed substance is the question brewing in Japan as it grapples with the aftermath of the nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima five years ago. The substance is tritium.

The radioactive material is technically near-impossible to remove from the huge quantities of water used to cool melted-down reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, which was wrecked by the massive tsunami in northeastern Japan in March 2011.

North Korea has tried warnings of nuclear attack and racist diatribes to criticize U.S. President Barack Obama. Now it's turning to Abraham Lincoln.

North Korea's state media have constructed an imaginary letter from the 16th U.S. president that attacks Obama's "deception" over Pyongyang's pursuit of nuclear weapons. It is the latest response from the North to rising animosity with Washington following Pyongyang's nuclear test and long-range rocket launch earlier this year.

A state prosecutor in Lebanon is expected to file kidnapping charges against an Australian woman, an Australian TV crew, and others for attempting to take the woman's two children away from her Lebanese ex-husband and bring them back to Australia.

Sally Faulkner, along with four Australians, two Britons, and two Lebanese, was brought into police custody last Thursday after a botched attempt was made to snatch Faulkner's five-year-old daughter and three-year-old son from their paternal grandmother as she took them to school in the Hadath area.

When Saada Khalaf, a Syrian refugee in Lebanon, lost her husband to a long illness earlier this year, she could not find a place to bury him in the eastern Lebanese town where the couple had lived since they fled the civil war back home.

The nearest cemetery where she and her relatives were allowed to bury him was in the village of Dalhamiyeh, about 16 kilometers from the town of Bar Elias.

Iran's foreign minister is saying the country's missile program is not up for negotiation with the United States.

The missile program and "defense capabilities of the Islamic Republic of Iran" are not negotiable, said Mohammad Javad Zarif Sunday, after meeting with his Estonian counterpart, Marina Kaljurand. He added that if Washington was "serious about defensive issues" in the Middle East, it would stop supplying arms to Saudi Arabia and Israel.

"Star Wars: The Force Awakens" took the top prize at the 25th annual MTV Movie Awards.

The audience at Warner Bros. Studios waved what looked like red and blue lightsabers as star Daisy Ridley and director J.J. Abrams accepted the final golden popcorn trophy at Saturday night's ceremony.

Iran's official IRNA news agency is reporting that the country's Revolutionary Guards will begin a ground forces drill Tuesday near the Pakistani border in the southeastern part of the country.

The Sunday report quotes the chief of IRGC's ground forces, Mohammad Khakpour, as saying the three-day exercise will be carried out in four provinces and it will use and test the IRGC's latest equipment — including the guards' new helicopter unit.