World/Nation
• Immune therapy shows success on cervical cancer
CHICAGO - Two years ago, Arrica Wallace was riddled with tumors from widely spread cervical cancer that the strongest chemotherapy and radiation could not beat back. Today, the Kansas mother shows no signs of the disease, and it was her own immune system that made it go away.
The experimental approach that helped her is one of the newest frontiers in the rapidly advancing field of cancer immunotherapy, which boosts the body's natural ways of attacking tumors.
At a conference in Chicago on Monday, doctors also reported extending gains recently made with immune therapies against leukemia and the skin cancer melanoma to bladder, lung and other tumor types.
The cervical cancer experiment was the first time an immune therapy has worked so well against a cancer caused by a virus - HPV. In a pilot study by the National Cancer Institute, the tumors of two out of nine women completely disappeared and those women remain cancer-free more than a year later. That's far better than any other treatment has achieved in such cases.
Doctors are trying it now against throat, anal and other cancers caused by HPV, the human papillomavirus, and think it holds promise for cancers caused by other viruses, too.
• Palestinians form new government; Israel grumbles
RAMALLAH, West Bank - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas swore in a national unity government Monday, formally ending a crippling seven-year split with his Islamic militant Hamas rivals but drawing Israeli threats of retaliation.
The formation of the unity government and Israel's tough response are part of a wider competition between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for international support since the collapse of U.S.-led peace talks between them in April.
Abbas praised the 17-member unity government, made up of technocrats backed by Hamas and his Fatah movement, as a milestone.
"This black page in our history has been turned forever and will never come back," he said, referring to the Palestinian split that broke open with the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007. For seven years, the rivals ran separate governments, with Hamas in Gaza and Abbas ruling autonomous areas of the West Bank.
Netanyahu said the new government should be shunned because it leans on support from Hamas, a group labeled as terrorist by the West. Abbas "said yes to terrorism and no to peace," Netanyahu said after a meeting with his Security Cabinet.
• Hundreds of armed pro-Russia rebels attack
LUHANSK, Ukraine - Hundreds of pro-Russia rebels armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades mounted a daylong assault Monday on a key government base used to coordinate the defense of the country's border with Russia, prompting the deployment of air support by government forces.
Border guards killed at least five rebels in repelling the attack on their base, a spokesman for the border guard service said.
In the center of Luhansk, some six miles away, a blast at an administrative building held by the insurgents claimed more lives. A health official for the Luhansk region told Interfax news agency that at least seven people had been confirmed dead in what rebels described as a government airstrike.
The government denied carrying out an airstrike and said the blast was caused by misdirected rebel fire from a portable surface-to-air missile launcher.
Russia's Foreign Ministry swiftly condemned what it said was a government attack on the rebel-held building and urged U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense Derek Chollet, who was visiting Kiev on Monday, to help calm unrest in Ukraine.
- The Associated Press