At least 38 people died in a fire in a psychiatric hospital outside Moscow late Thursday night.

Police said the fire, which broke out at about 2 a.m. local time (6 p.m. Eastern, 2200 GMT) in the one-story hospital in the Ramenskoye settlement, was caused by a short circuit, the RIA Novosti reported on Friday.

Fresh from wrapping up a 20th English league title for Manchester United, Robin Van Persie will make his first return to Arsenal looking to dent his former club's hopes of qualifying for next season's Champions League.

Van Persie quit Arsenal last August in frustration at the team's lack of silverware in his eight years in London, and has scored a league-high 24 goals in helping United reclaim the Premier League title in his first season at Old Trafford.

Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers believes Luis Suarez is being victimized by English football's authorities, saying the striker's 10-match ban for biting an opponent was given "against the man rather than the incident."

In his two years at Anfield, Suarez has also served an eight-match ban from the English Football Association for racially abusing Manchester United defender Patrice Evra.

Health officials in Somalia are rolling out a new five-in-one vaccine for children that they say will save thousands of lives.

Meanwhile, in Abu Dhabi Thursday, global health leaders unveiled a six-year plan to eradicate polio. Close to three-quarters of the plan's projected $5.5 billion cost has already been pledged.

French prosecutors have placed the publisher and photographer of unauthorized topless snaps of Prince William's wife, Kate, under formal criminal investigation, they said Thursday.

Caroline Chassain, spokeswoman for the Nanterre prosecutor, said that Mondadori Magazines France and local photographer Valerie Suau were placed under investigation earlier this month over possible criminal exploitation of the images, which appeared in the French "Closer" magazine last September.

Gay rights groups are pushing to adjust a bipartisan Senate bill to include gay couples, but Democrats are treading carefully, wary of adding another divisive issue that could lose Republican support and jeopardize the entire bill.

Both parties want the bill to succeed. Merely getting to agreement on the basic framework for the immigration overhaul, which would create a long and costly path to citizenship for the estimated 11 million people in the U.S. illegally, was no small feat for senators. And getting it through a divided Congress is still far from a done deal.

Scientists at the world's biggest atom smasher have found further reasons for the apparent lack of antimatter in the universe.

A team working with data from CERN's Large Hadron Collider says it has discovered a particle that decays unevenly into matter and antimatter.

China's state news agency says one person died and 20 others were sickened after a chef mistakenly added pesticide instead of a sauce as he was making lunch.

Xinhua News Agency said in a brief dispatch Thursday that the chef was among those who fell ill after eating the lunch at a construction site in northern China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. The others who were sickened were migrant workers. Two people were in critical condition.

Microsoft is inviting journalists to an Xbox event at its Redmond, Washington, headquarters that will likely shed light on its next video game console.

Microsoft Corp. said Wednesday that the May 21 event will reveal a new generation of games, TV and entertainment. Nineteen days later Microsoft plans to reveal more details about its games at the E3 video game expo in Los Angeles.

For a few surreal minutes, a mere 12 words on Twitter caused the world's mightiest stock market to tremble.

No sooner did hackers send a false Associated Press tweet reporting explosions at the White House on Tuesday than investors started dumping stocks — eventually unloading $134 billion worth.