A Hong Kong performing arts school will offer a Cantonese opera degree in the latest effort to preserve the traditional art form designated as a key cultural heritage.

The Academy for Performing Arts said its program will combine theory and practice to prepare students for Cantonese opera careers as performers, educators or arts administrators.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn's reputation with women earned him the nickname "the great seducer," and not even an affair with a subordinate could knock the International Monetary Fund leader off a political path pointed in the direction of the French presidency. All that changed with charges that he sexually assaulted a maid in his hotel room, a case that generated shock and revulsion, especially in his home country.

Police said the maid picked Strauss-Kahn out of a lineup. Unless the charges are quickly dropped, they could destroy his chances in a presidential race that is just starting to heat up.

NBC is betting on the Playboy club, Chelsea Handler and a raft of romantic comedies among the dozen new series it has ordered in its latest attempt to come back from a long slump that has made it television's fourth-place broadcast network.

The network outlined its fall plans on Sunday, opening a hectic week in which broadcasters unveil their fall schedules to advertisers in hopes they will make multimillion dollar commitments to buy commercials. It was the first new schedule formulated by NBC Entertainment Chairman Bob Greenblatt, appointed when Comcast took over NBC Universal.

Egypt's ex-first lady Suzanne Mubarak has responded well to treatment for "a panic attack" she suffered after being told she would be detained by the government for further questioning on corruption allegations, a hospital official said Saturday.

The official said the 70-year-old wife of ousted leader Hosni Mubarak was visited Saturday by a cardiologist who found "noticeable improvement in her condition."

A Christian man in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk has been kidnapped and is being held for a $100,000 ransom, police said Saturday.

Kirkuk deputy police chief Maj. Gen. Torhan Abdul-Rahman said the victim is a construction worker who did not come home from work Friday night. When officials called his mobile phone on Saturday, the kidnappers answered and demanded the money.

It started with a Christian woman who wanted a divorce to marry her Muslim lover. With divorce strictly banned by Egypt's Coptic Christian Church, she found no other way but to convert to Islam.

And so began a chain of events that led to an explosion of sectarian violence in Cairo that left 15 people dead, a church in flames and a nation even more uncertain of its path after overthrowing an authoritarian ruler of 30 years.

Hundreds of Syrians, including four wounded people, have crossed into northern Lebanon fleeing violence in the Syrian town of Tall Kalakh, Lebanese security officials said Saturday.

The officials said the wounded who crossed the border into the Wadi Khaled area included a 26-year-old man who suffered a gunshot in his back and two women, also with bullet wounds. The fourth, a 30-year-old man, died of his wounds later at a north Lebanon hospital. The other three were being treated at two hospitals in the area, they said.

There may be a whiff of truth to claims by allergy sufferers who sniffle that this season is, well, a bigger headache than years past.

And now, more bad news: It's also lasting longer, prolonging the misery of the millions of people for whom spring is a punishment, not a pleasure.

One of the four quarters of old Jerusalem belongs to the Armenians, keepers of an ancient monastery and library, heirs to a tragic history and to a stubborn 1,600-year presence that some fear is now in doubt.

Buffeted by Mideast forces more powerful than themselves and drawn by better lives elsewhere, this historic Jerusalem community has seen its numbers quietly drop below 1,000 people. The Armenians, led by an ailing 94-year-old patriarch, find themselves caught between Jews and Muslims in a Middle East emptying of Christians, and between a deep sense of belonging in Jerusalem and a realization that their future might lie elsewhere.

Hate insects? Afraid of germs? Researchers are reporting an alarming combination: bedbugs carrying a staph "superbug." Canadian scientists detected drug-resistant staph bacteria in bedbugs from three hospital patients from a downtrodden Vancouver neighborhood.

Bedbugs have not been known to spread disease, and there's no clear evidence that the five bedbugs found on the patients or their belongings had spread the MRSA germ they were carrying or a second less dangerous drug-resistant bacteria.