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NEW YORK (AP) -- Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck welcomed a baby girl into the world Thursday. Representatives for both actors confirmed the birth to The Associated Press. Their publicists, Ken Sunshine and Nicole King, said the child was born at 6:26 p.m. Thursday. "Mother, father and baby are doing great," Sunshine and King confirmed. They would not give any other details. It is the first child for Garner, 33, and Affleck, 33, who were married in June. The confirmation came after several  ...

LONDON (Reuters) - Children at primary schools across England have produced the best ever results in English and Maths the government said on Friday as it published its annual list of school league tables. The results of the Key Stage 2 tests -- taken by 11-year-olds -- showed that 79 percent had achieved the benchmark level 4 in English and 75 percent reached that grade in Maths, both up a percentage point from the previous year. The performance level in science remained the same at 86 percen ...

(CNN) -- Singapore's government hanged an Australian man for drug trafficking early Friday, hours after making an exception to prison policy by letting the condemned man's mother hold her son's hand one last time. Van Nguyen was hanged at 6 a.m. (10 p.m. Thursday GMT) as a dozen friends and supporters, dressed in black, kept an overnight vigil outside the maximum-security prison. His twin brother, Nguyen Khoa, was dressed in white. "The sentence was carried out this morning at Changi Prison,"  ...

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) -- A sailor who was apparently trying to commit suicide Thursday shot and wounded himself and two superiors as they struggled for the gun in an effort to stop him, the base commander said. The sailor's weapon went off as they struggled, grazing both superiors and injuring the sailor, said Capt. John McCormack, the commander at Naval Air Station Fort Worth Joint Reserve Base at Carswell. The gunman was in critical condition with a single gunshot wound to the neck; his sup ...

By Richard Sydenham LAHORE (Reuters) - Times have changed in cricket. Where once cricketers on long overseas tours pushed thoughts of home and family to the back of their minds, now players readily interrupt their overseas trips to fly home when fatherhood beckons. Not everyone approves. England's Andrew Strauss invited criticism when he decided before his team's current seven-week tour of Pakis ...

LONDON (Reuters) - Average pay rises held steady at 3.0 percent in the three months to October, a leading pay consultant said on Friday, in a sign that surging energy costs are so far not driving up wage demands. Industrial Relations Services (IRS) also said it had revised down its pay deal figure for September to 3.0 percent from an originally reported 3.1 percent. Median wage growth has held broadly steady this year at 3.0 percent, except in August, when it was 3.1 percent. The figures shou ...

LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists said on Friday they had found no evidence that prescription painkillers designed to protect against stomach bleeding were safer than older drugs. Julia Hippisley-Cox, of the University of Nottingham, said she had found no proof the painkillers, known as COX-2 inhibitors, were less likely to cause gastrointestinal bleeding than aspirin or other treatments called non-s ...

By Andy Sullivan RALEIGH, North Carolina (Reuters) - Death penalty opponents converged on North Carolina on Thursday as the state prepared to execute the 1,000th prisoner in the United States since capital punishment was reinstated nearly 30 years ago. Protesters planned a candlelight march to Central Prison, where convicted murderer Kenneth Lee Boyd, 57, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 2 a.m. EST (0700 GMT) on Friday for shooting his wife and father-in-law in 1988 in front of two o ...

By Paul Majendie YORK (Reuters) - Britain's first black archbishop, conceding that the Anglican church could face schism over the divisive issue of gay clergy, bluntly urged the warring factions to "cool it, just cool it." Ordained on the day the racist killer of a black teenager was convicted, Ugandan-born John Sentamu also told people to be vigilant so the scourge of racism can be stamped out. Interviewed by Reuters at the mediaeval palace that is his new home, the number two in the Church  ...

By Madeline Thomas LONDON (Reuters) - Four leading credit card companies will share more information about their customers' spending habits in order to stem the tide of bad debts they face, the card providers said on Friday. Barclaycard, the Co-operative Bank, Egg and Abbey have said they will reveal to each other details of customers' current balances, credit limits and who has fallen behind with their payments. They will also disclose the names of customers who only pay off the minimum amou ...