Chinese health authorities say vaccines did not cause nine children to die shortly after they were inoculated.

The official Xinhua News Agency in a Friday report cited the director of disease control at the national health agency as saying 17 children were reported dead after receiving shots for the liver disease hepatitis B between Dec. 13 and Tuesday.

It's the kind of puzzle that might have amused Sherlock Holmes himself.

Now that copyright protections have expired on nearly all of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's tales about the pipe-puffing detective in the deerstalker hat, are writers free to depict the character in new mysteries without seeking permission or paying license fees?

One of the largest producers of ammunition magazines for guns in the U.S. is leaving Colorado and moving operations to Wyoming and Texas because of new state laws that include restrictions on how many cartridges a magazine can hold.

Erie, Colorado-based Magpul Industries Corp. announced Thursday that it was moving its production, distribution and shipping operations to Cheyenne and its headquarters to Texas, making good on a vow it made to leave Colorado during last year's gun control debate.

Outrageously costumed and painted comic brigades and string bands have marched in Philadelphia in a Mardi Gras-like New Year's Day parade believed to be America's oldest folk festival.

Thousands of people lined the route for the century-old Mummers Parade along Broad Street, the city's main north-south thoroughfare. Colorful participants danced wildly and toted parasols while strutting their stuff.

A newborn had one of her fingertips cut off at a Guam hospital while being treated for a high fever.

Pacific Daily News reported Thursday (http://bit.ly/1drBxe5 ) that the baby's mother, Johanna Borja of Tamuning, says the cut was discovered as nurses were changing bandages securing an intravenous line. But Borja says the nurses didn't give her a clear explanation of what happened.

Italian automaker Fiat SpA announced that it reached an agreement to acquire the remaining shares of Chrysler for $3.65 billion in payments to a union-controlled trust fund.

Fiat already owns 58.5 percent of Chrysler's shares, with the remaining 41.5 percent held by a United Auto Workers union trust fund that pays health care bills for retirees.

A Las Vegas police captain who helped a rock star pull off an elaborate wedding proposal by arranging a flight on a department helicopter has retired rather than face demotion, and the pilot's flying wings have been clipped, the agency confirmed.

Capt. David O'Leary faced demotion to lieutenant for helping arrange the Aug. 7 private flight for Guns N' Roses guitarist Daren Jay "DJ" Ashba and his then-girlfriend, Colombian actress Nathalia Henao, the police department said in a statement issued late Tuesday.

"The Big Bang Theory" star Kaley Cuoco is starting off 2014 as a Mrs.

Cuoco's representative, Melissa Kates, says the actress wed tennis pro Ryan Sweeting in a New Year's Eve ceremony at a ranch in Santa Susana, California.

Police in the U.S. state of Massachusetts are searching for a strong-armed thief who carried a 250-pound safe out of a restaurant.

Kevin Hynes said a man walked out of his Stockholders Restaurant in Weymouth lugging the vault.

Juanita Moore, a groundbreaking actress and an Academy Award nominee for her role as Lana Turner's black friend in the classic weeper "Imitation of Life," has died.

Actor Kirk Kelleykahn, her grandson, said that Moore collapsed and died Wednesday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 99, according to Kelleykahn. Accounts of her age have differed over the years.