LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Daniel Radcliffe admitted he was drunk while filming some scenes for the "Harry Potter" movies during a period in his life where he was drinking "nightly," the young star said in an interview. "I have a very addictive personality. It was a problem. People with problems like that are very adept at hiding it. It was bad. I don't want to go into details, but I drank a lot and it was daily - I mean nightly," Radcliffe said to British celebrity news magazine Heat earlier this week. "I can honestly say I never drank at work on 'Harry Potter. ...

A 49-year-old brigadier general died Friday in Afghanistan of apparent natural causes, becoming the highest-ranking U.S. soldier to die there, the military said Saturday.

A Tucson, Ariz., man was arrested after a foul odor led police to discover he had been living with his mother’s decomposing corpse. “The person was found in a bathtub, I believe, and may have either been bound or was found in some circumstance [for...

A family of three huddled on the edge of an old-growth Oregon forest for six days, lost and cold, unable to signal search helicopters flying low and slow overhead.

The United States is “disgusted” by Russia and China’s decision to veto a U.N. Security Council resolution today that called for an immediate end to the violence in Syria, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice said today. The Security Council vote today came on...

Their kidnappers gave them tea and dried fruit, and talked about religion and tribal rights. The California women were allowed to bring their Egyptian tour guide with them. One even put out his cigarette in the car when a hostage said the smoke was bothering her.

Iran began ground military exercises Saturday and defiantly warned that it could cut off oil exports to "hostile" European nations as tensions rise over suggestions that military strikes are an increasing possibility if sanctions fail to rein in the Islamic Republic's nuclear program.

A family of three huddled on the edge of an old-growth Oregon forest for six days, lost and cold, unable to signal search helicopters flying low and slow overhead.

Eight sailors have been discharged from the Navy after a hazing incident aboard a San Diego-based amphibious assault ship that was captured on video and included the choking of a fellow sailor, a Navy spokesman said Saturday.

Indiana's top elections official could lose his job and his freedom after jurors convicted him of multiple voter fraud-related charges on Saturday, leaving in flux the fate of one of the state's most powerful positions.

Newly single Katy Perry is on the prowl, and she may have set her sights on a certain rookie quarterback.

A powerful winter storm that covered parts of Colorado with up to 6 feet of snow crept east across the Plains Saturday, knocking out electricity to thousands in Nebraska as the blanket of heavy, wet precipitation downed power lines and made travel treacherous.

Ben Gazzara, whose powerful dramatic performances brought an intensity to a variety of roles and made him a memorable presence in films, on television and on Broadway in the original "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," has died at age 81.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Russia and China vetoed on Saturday a U.N. resolution that backed an Arab plan calling on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to quit, stalling global efforts to end his bloody crackdown on unrest after hundreds were reported killed in the city of Homs. The high-level diplomatic setback came after world leaders and Syrian opposition activists accused Assad's forces of a massacre in a sustained shelling of Homs, the bloodiest episode in 11 months of upheaval in the pivotal Arab country. ...

Actor Ben Gazzara, whose long and varied career spanned lead roles in the original 1955 Broadway productions of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and “A Hatful of Rain,” television, and innumerable film roles including the 1959′s “Anatomy of a Murder” and 1998′s “The Big...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Among the slick, million-dollar ads for the likes of Pepsi and Honda during the Super Bowl this Sunday, viewers in Washington will see a far more modest spot. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino will be sitting on a couch touting an issue most politicians avoid like the plague: gun control. The two mayors, whose local teams face off in the big game, are making the pitch for Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG), the organization they co-founded in 2006. ...

Mexican police arrested the reputed head of a Sinaloa drug cartel assassination ring who is accused of plotting a massacre at a drug rehabilitation center.

"Twlight" star Kellan Lutz sympathizes with Gisele Bundchen.

Eastern Europe's unrelenting and deadly cold snap produced another heavy snowfall in the Balkans on Saturday, trapping people in their homes and cars, causing power outages, and closing airports, railway stations and bus services.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's oil minister said the Islamic state would not retreat from its nuclear program even if its crude oil exports grind to a halt, the official IRNA news agency reported on Saturday. But he also called on the European Union, which accounted for a quarter of Iranian crude oil sales in the third quarter of 2011, to review its decision last week to bank Iranian oil imports from July 1. "We will not abandon our just nuclear course, even if we cannot sell one drop of oil," Rostam Qasemi told reporters, according to IRNA. ...

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Euro zone finance ministers told Greece on Saturday it could not go ahead with an agreed deal to restructure privately-held debt until it guaranteed it would implement reforms needed to secure a second financing package from the euro zone and the IMF. Euro zone ministers had hoped to meet on Monday to finalize the second Greek bailout, which has to be in place by mid-March if Athens is to avoid a chaotic default. But the meeting was postponed because of Greek reluctance to commit to reforms. ...

Russia and China veto a draft resolution calling for Syria's president to leave power. The move came as activists said more than 200 people were killed in the city of Homs.

Britain's Prince William takes to the skies Saturday in the Falkland Islands on his first sortie as an RAF search-and-rescue helicopter pilot.

An overloaded boat carrying migrants from the Dominican Republic overturned in the pre-dawn darkness Saturday off the coast of the Caribbean country, killing at least 10 people and leaving dozens missing, officials said.

Fidel Castro spent six hours presenting a two-volume memoir to an audience at a Havana convention center, state media said Saturday. It was a rare appearance for the retired former Cuban leader.

Last year was the deadliest on record for Afghan civilians with 3,021 killed, a rise of 8 percent from the year before as insurgents ratchet up violence , the United Nations said.

A 49-year-old brigadier general died of apparently natural causes in Afghanistan, the Army said Friday, the highest-ranking soldier to die during the war.

Russia and Ukraine take extra precautions to protect homeless people during a brutal cold snap that has killed scores.

Protesters laid siege to Egypt's Interior Ministry on Friday, pushing their protest against the military-led government in a show of anger triggered by the country's worst soccer disaster.

UNITED NATIONS — Russia and China on Saturday vetoed a U.N. resolution condemning Syria’s violent repression of anti-government demonstrators, effectively quashing efforts to isolate President Bashar al-Assad’s government as it intensifies a nearly year-long crackdown.

KABUL — At least five Afghan police officers and two civilians were killed Sunday when a car bomb was detonated outside the main police headquarters in Kandahar, officials said.

Another 19 people, six of them police officers, were wounded in the blast, provincial officials said. Children were also among the victims.

KABUL — In a country where the recent past has unfolded like a war epic, officials think they have found a way to teach Afghan history without widening the fractures between long-quarreling ethnic and political groups: leave out the past four decades. 

KABUL — Last year was the deadliest for civilians in the decade-long U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, according to a U.N. report released Saturday.

The report said 3,021 civilians were killed in 2011, an 8 percent increase from 2010. It was the fifth consecutive year that the number of deaths has increased.

MOSCOW — Tens of thousands of Russians embraced the numbing cold and marched to a frozen riverbank near the Kremlin on Saturday, demonstrating their determination to keep up the pressure on Vladimir Putin for fair elections and honest government.

For the past three decades, Egypt has received an average of $2 billion a year from the United States, making it the biggest recipient of American foreign aid besides Israel.

But with the country now at a critical stage in its transition toward democracy, that aid is in peril — as U.S. lawmakers threaten to block assistance in response to Egypt’s crackdown on pro-democracy groups, several of them well-connected nongovernmental organizations based in Washington.

CAIRO — At least 12 people have been killed in clashes triggered by a deadly melee at a soccer match in Port Said on Wednesday, Egyptian authorities said Saturday.

At least seven protesters were killed in clashes with security forces that began Thursday night near the Interior Ministry in Cairo, and at least five were killed in the seaport city of Suez, according to state media.

NEW DELHI — The Indian government’s recent announcement that it taps nearly 300 new phones every day has sparked a debate about privacy in a country that traditionally views such concerns as an ugly offshoot of Western individualism.

In his first extended public appearance as CIA director, David H. Petraeus this week did more than display his well-known discipline for staying on message. He did his best to bring other government voices back on message as well.

As the FBI and Scotland Yard conducted a conference call last month on their investigation of an international group of hackers, the discussions were being secretly monitored -- by the hackers themselves.

Open intelligence hearings on Capitol Hill are never completely open. Lawmakers and witnesses try to stick to what’s safe to say in public, without disclosing details on espionage operations or what’s happening behind the scenes in Washington.

A retired U.S. Army general with a history of making inflammatory remarks about  Islam has canceled his plans to be the featured guest at an event at the U.S.  Military Academy at West Point, the academy said.

A study released Friday has shaken up much of what we thought we knew about malaria.

The number of people who die annually of the tropical disease is roughly double the current estimate, according to the report, published in the science journal Lancet. Additionally, many of malaria’s victims are now believed to be adults, overturning the previous belief that adults almost never die of the disease.

Anonymous has struck — and struck again.

Early Friday, the FBI said that hackers from the well-known collective had intercepted and released a confidential conference call between the FBI and Scotland Yard.

As Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivered an impassioned anti-Israel speech Friday, a smaller fight played out between the two countries over a tablet commercial.

In the teaser, a bored agent for Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency, is shown watching TV on his Samsung tablet while in Isfahan, south of Tehran. After the agent begins conversing about the features of the tablet with several Iranian “women” (actually men from an Israeli TV show), one of them presses on the tablet and accidentially blows up a nearby uranium enrichment plant.

Following our Friday tradition, we give you this photo. It should not be too hard to guess where it is from.

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Update, 11:51 p.m.: The two American tourists have been released The women were not immediatebly identified, but Egyptian officials said they were age 60 and 65.

Two female tourists and their Egyptian tour guide Friday were intercepted by gunmen and kidnapped in the southern part of the Sinai peninsula, The Post’s Ernesto Londono reports.

Ludwig and I had the kind of relationship where I could ask him anything without fear of reproach. I questioned him about the rebellious rumblings of his youth, his wishes for the future and the state of his bathroom.

Lately it seems that not a day goes by without a Republican presidential candidate portraying Europe as a socialist nightmare. Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum paint a picture of the Old World as unfree, strangulated by bureaucratic and inefficient welfare systems, and unable to reform and modernize. To these Republicans, Europe seems to be the antipode to everything America is meant to be.

On this day in 1994, white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith is convicted in the murder of African-American civil rights leader Medgar Evers, over 30 years after the crime occurred. Evers was gunned down in the driveway of his Jackson, Mississippi, home on June 12, 1963, while his wife, Myrlie, and the couple's three small children were inside.

Medgar Wiley Evers was born July 2, 1925, near Decatur, Mississippi, and served in the U.S. Army during World War II. After fighting for his country, he returned home to experience discrimination in the racially divided South, with its separate public facilities and services for blacks and whites. Evers graduated from Alcorn College in 1952 and began organizing local chapters of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). In 1954, after being rejected for admission to then-segregated University of Mississippi Law School, he became part of an NAACP campaign to desegregate the school. Later that year, Evers was named the NAACP's first field secretary in Mississippi. He moved with his family to Jackson and worked to dismantle segregation, leading peaceful rallies, economic boycotts and voter registration drives around the state. In 1962, he helped James Meredith become the first African American to attend the University of Mississippi, a watershed event in the civil rights movement. As a result of his work, Evers received numerous threats and several attempts were made on his life before he was murdered in 1963 at the age of 37.

Beckwith, a fertilizer salesman and Ku Klux Klan member widely believed to be the killer, was prosecuted for murder in 1964. However, two all-white (and all-male) juries deadlocked and refused to convict him. A second trial held in the same year resulted in a hung jury. The matter was dropped when it appeared that a conviction would be impossible. Myrlie Evers, who later became the first woman to chair the NAACP, refused to give up, pressing authorities to re-open the case. In 1989, documents came to light showing that jurors in the case were illegally screened.

Prosecutor Bobby DeLaughter worked with Myrlie Evers to force another prosecution of Beckwith. After four years of legal maneuvering, they were finally successful. At the third trial they produced a riflescope from the murder weapon with Beckwith's fingerprints, as well as new witnesses who testified that Beckwith had bragged about committing the crime. Justice was finally achieved when Beckwith was convicted and given a life sentence by a racially diverse jury in 1994. He died in prison in 2001 at the age of 80.