Pakistani on death row discourages retribution

RICHMOND, Va. -- A day after the government warned that the execution of a Pakistani could result in attacks against Americans, the condemned man said he does not support any retaliation by his fellow Muslims.

"I'm against attacks on civilian Americans. They are not responsible for my execution," Aimal Khan Kasi said in a telephone interview Thursday from death row at a state prison in Waverly. "I'm not encouraging attacks against anybody."

Kasi killed CIA communications worker Frank Darling, 28, and CIA analyst and physician Lansing Bennett, 66, as they sat in their cars at a stoplight outside CIA headquarters in McLean, Va., on Jan. 25, 1993. Three other men were wounded as Kasi walked along the row of stopped cars, shooting into them.

He is to be executed by injection Thursday.

Feds approve HIV test kit that takes 20 minutes

WASHINGTON -- People will soon be able to learn before leaving the doctor's office if they're infected with the AIDS virus.

The government on Thursday approved a 20-minute HIV test that AIDS experts say is so easy to use it will greatly cut the number of people who unknowingly carry and spread the disease

It's not the first rapid HIV test. A competing version has been sold since the mid-1990s, but it is so difficult to use that hardly any clinics offer it. Today's routine HIV tests take up to two weeks to provide results -- and at least 8,000 people a year who test positive at public clinics never return to get the news.

California woman oldest at 113

SAN FRANCISCO -- She's strong-willed and had a taste for Twinkies and KFC dinners well past her 110th birthday. Meet 113-year-old Mary Christian, a California woman now believed to be the oldest American.

Christian received the title last week from the Gerontology Research Group, a nonprofit collection of volunteer demographers who study aging. The group said she became the nation's eldest resident after last week's death of Mary Parr, 113. After Parr's death, John McMorran, also 113, held the title until Christian's age was confirmed.

-- From wire reports