WASHINGTON (AP) — A key House committee chairman on Wednesday sharply criticized a wide-ranging immigration bill just passed by a Senate committee, underscoring the difficulties ahead as the politically volatile measure moves forward in a divided Congress.

CAIRO (AP) — The safe release Wednesday of seven conscripts kidnapped by suspected militants in Sinai brought a victory for Egypt's Islamist president after months of criticism that his government is mismanaging the country.

LONDON (AP) — Two U.K. government officials say a brutal attack that left one man dead near a London military barracks appears to have been motivated by radical Islam.

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — A 33-year-old Polish man received a face transplant just three weeks after being disfigured in a workplace accident, in what his doctors said Wednesday is the fastest time frame to date for such an operation.

LA RUANA, Mexico (AP) — Michoacan is burning. A drug cartel that takes its name from an ancient monastic order has set fire to lumber yards, packing plants and passenger buses in a medieval-like reign of terror.

ROME (AP) — An Italian judge has ordered the captain of the Costa Concordia cruise ship to stand trial for manslaughter in the vessel's shipwreck off the coast of Tuscany, which killed 32 people.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Palestinians believe the U.S. effort to restart peace talks is doomed, and they're preparing instead to resume their campaign of seeking membership in key international organizations as soon as next month, officials told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

DUBLIN (AP) — British prosecutors have charged a 61-year-old Irishman with the 1982 IRA attack on the queen's cavalry in Hyde Park, a nail-bombing at a top London tourist attraction that left four soldiers and seven horses dead.

Main domestic and international issues facing Iran ahead of its June 14 presidential election: ___ NUCLEAR QUESTION: Four rounds of revived talks between Iran and world powers since last year have produced no important headway in the Tehran's impasse with the West.

VIENNA (AP) — The U.N. atomic agency on Wednesday detailed rapid Iranian progress in two programs that the West fears are geared toward making nuclear weapons, saying Tehran has upgraded its uranium enrichment facilities and advanced in building a plutonium-producing reactor.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — By now, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is well-accustomed to enduring blows from Iran's ruling clerics as his reputation fell from favored son to political outcast.

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union is reassessing whether to declare the Lebanese party Hezbollah's military wing a terrorist organization, a move it has long shied from despite pressure from the U.S., officials said Wednesday.

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — After months of ignoring Chinese warnings to give up nuclear weapons, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un sent a high-level confidant to Beijing on Wednesday, in a possible effort to mend strained ties with his country's most important ally and a sign that he may be giving diplomacy a chance.

CANNES, France (AP) — The problem with New York these days is there's just not enough litter. At least, that's French director Guillaume Canet's experience.

CANNES, France (AP) — James Franco's filmography is starting to look like a book shelf — and a very respectable one, at that. The 35-year-old American has already played poets Allen Ginsberg ("Howl") and Hart Crane ("The Broken Tower").

PARIS (AP) — In France, there's a brewing debate over whether to speak anglais in universite. The National Assembly on Wednesday was taking up an education reform bill that would allow public universities to hold some courses — like science or economics classes — in English, a plan that has alarmed language purists and the political far-right alike.

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistani cricket star-turned-politician Imran Khan left a hospital Wednesday, more than two weeks after he suffered serious back injuries in a fall from a forklift at a campaign event, a spokesman said.

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq's prime minister has ordered a shake-up of his military command after a weeklong spike of militant attacks that has killed nearly 300 people, by far the highest toll since the U.S.

VIENNA (AP) — An official for the city of Vienna says the Austrian capital has handed over nearly 6,000 valuable objects looted by the Nazis to their rightful owners or their heirs since it started taking inventory of them 14 years ago.

TOKYO (AP) — Japan's parliament on Wednesday approved joining an international child custody treaty amid foreign pressure for Tokyo to address concerns that Japanese mothers can take children away from foreign fathers without recourse.

BERLIN (AP) — Germany says it supports adding the military wing of the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah to the European Union's list of terrorist groups.

BERLIN (AP) — Germany on Wednesday celebrated the 200th birthday of Richard Wagner, the 19th-century composer whose music has been hailed as sublime art at the height of Western culture even as he remains tainted by his visceral anti-Semitic views, which later found favor with the Nazis.

KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) — An 80-year-old Japanese extreme skier who climbed Mount Everest five years ago, but just missed becoming the oldest man to reach the summit, was back on the mountain Wednesday to make another attempt at the title.

CANNES, France (AP) — Associated Press journalists open their notebooks at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. ___ DAMIAN LEWIS: FROM HOMELAND TO SCOTLAND "Homeland" without Sgt.