A U.S. citizen was officially charged with treason on Wednesday by a federal grand jury in California, the first person to be charged with treason against the United States since the World War II era, the Justice Department announced.

As U.S. colleges and universities consider whether or not to join Harvard and Princeton in abandoning their early-admissions programs, some institutions were also trying to cut back another popular recruiting tool: merit aid, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

A Sino-British AIDS prevention program has treated at least 4,500 AIDS patients and people with HIV and it has helped prevent nearly 130,000 people from contracting the disease in southwest China.

Touching, feeding and training Beluga whales is helping 16 children suffering from autism in northeast China.

Polish film "Retrieval" has been nominated for the prestigious European Film Award in the Discovery 2006 category, film distributors from Kino Swiat company told PAP Wednesday.

Two people were killed when a small plane slammed into a high-rise apartment building in New York on Wednesday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

The White House said on Wednesday that all indications showed the crash of a small plane into a New York City building was an accident.

New York Yankees baseball pitcher Cory Lidle was the only person on board the plane that crashed into a high-rise building in New York City on Wednesday and died in the accident, U.S. media reported.

A visiting U.S. medical doctor has said cancer is still the number two cause of death in the Commonwealth of Northern Marianas (CNMI), a local newspaper Saipan Tribune reported Wednesday.

An earthquake measuring 5.3 on the Richter scale struck the South China Sea Wednesday morning, Chinese earthquake observatory said.