A U.S. man and his car are celebrating a million-mile milestone.

Joe LoCicero was given a 2012 Honda Accord at a parade in the city of Saco on Sunday after surpassing the million-mile (1.6 million-kilometer) mark on the odometer of his 1990 Accord. He reached the milestone last Thursday.

Defender Carles Puyol will miss Barcelona’s game at Granada on Tuesday as a precaution due to a problem in his groin area.

Gerard Pique will also be out as the center back continues his recovery from a leg injury.

Javier Hernandez has signed a new contract with Manchester United, tying the Mexico striker to the Premier League side until the end of the 2015-16 season.

United said Monday that the 23-year-old Hernandez, who was initially signed from Chivas in July 2010 only as a long-term prospect, had committed to a five-year deal.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Monday lashed out at North Korea for "reckless and provocative" acts and criticized China for a secretive expansion of its military power.

Panetta, who arrived at this U.S. air base on the second leg of a weeklong Asia tour, spoke out about North Korea and China in an opinion piece published Monday by Japan's Yomiuri newspaper before his arrival.

The U.S. on Monday pulled its ambassador out of Syria what it said were security concerns, prompting a swift response from Damascus which recalled its ambassador to Washington a few hours later for "consultations."

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said that Ambassador Robert Ford returned to Washington this weekend after "credible threats against his personal safety."

Suspected Muslim insurgents have killed seven people and injured 10 more in Thailand's violence-plagued south, police said on Monday.

Police Col. Kwandee Chimplee said assailants opened fire at a security checkpoint on Sunday night in Narathiwat city, then set off homemade bombs near two grocery stores in the same area.

An earthquake of 7.3 magnitude rocked eastern Turkey on Sunday, killing more than 70 people, with a seismological institute saying up to 1,000 people could lie dead under the rubble of dozens of collapsed buildings.

Turkey's strongest earthquake in years struck Van, a large eastern city populated mainly by Kurds.

Libya's interim government will hand the body of slain despot Moammar Gadhafi to his relatives after consulting with them on the location of his burial, a senior government advisor said on Sunday.

"The decision has been taken to hand him over to his extended family, because none of his immediate family are present at this moment," Ahmed Jibril told Agence France Presse.

More than 200 international philosophers braved strikes and protests to come to Greece this month to join a forum and debate matters of the mind.

Topics on the program included "The Limits of Abstraction: Finding Space for Novel Explanation" and "Partial Realism, Anti-realism and Deflationary Realism: Can History Settle the Argument?"

Move over azuki and sweet sticky rice. While Japanese pastry chefs may have started using cocoa a few centuries after the West, this once foreign flavor has captivated Japan's confectionery world.

Japanese chocolate makers and pastry chefs were the star guests at the 17th Salon du Chocolat held in Paris this week. One of them, Susumu Koyana, 47, was even named "Best Foreign Chocolatier" -- winning out over top masters from celebrated chocolate-making nations like Belgium and Switzerland.