PORT HURON, Mich. -- Federal agents in eastern Michigan announced Wednesday they had begun rounding up members of the Devil's Disciples Motorcycle Club. FBI agents were serving arrest warrants in the Port Huron and Clinton Township areas in the latest in a series of operations against Detroit-area biker gangs. The Detroit News said as many as 22 suspects were expected to be picked up Wednesday. The pending charges were not immediately known. The newspaper said the FBI was ... [full story]

LONDON -- U.S. President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao agreed Wednesday to enhance U.S.-China relations and strengthen economic and financial cooperation. Obama accepted Hu's invitation to visit China this year during a meeting of the two world leaders in London, a day before the Group of 20 financial summit begins. "The two sides agreed to work together to build a positive, cooperative and comprehensive U.S.-China relationship for the 21st century and to maintain and strengthen exchanges ... [full story]

BOSTON -- Lawyers declined to discuss their strategy Wednesday as they headed for a Boston federal court hearing on the planned deportation of President Obama's aunt. Attorneys representing Zeituni Onyango met behind closed doors with U.S. Immigration Judge Leonard Shapiro to discuss the case, which the Boston Globe says is being closely watched as a test of the new president's commitment to immigration laws. Onyango is the half-sister of Obama's late Kenyan father. She lost a bid ... [full story]

WARSAW, Poland -- A twin-turboprop plane crashed in northern Poland killing all four Polish naval officers aboard, a navy spokesman said Wednesday. The Bryza aircraft was on a training flight Tuesday afternoon when it crashed while making a landing approach at the Babie Doly military airport near Gdynia, 180 miles north of Warsaw, Polish Radio reported. Polish Defense Minister Bogdan Klich ordered a special commission to investigate the cause of the crash. All similar planes have been ... [full story]

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Army is investigating allegations soldiers medically unfit for duty were deployed to Iraq from Alaska's Fort Wainwright, an army spokeswoman says. The inquiry is the result of complaints that commanders deployed some soldiers before they completed tests for health problems, underwent necessary surgeries or recuperated from operations, USA Today reported Wednesday. One of those soldiers, profiled by USA Today, was deployed despite a doctor's recommendation that he wear a heart monitor because of ... [full story]

WASHINGTON -- The recession may make it easier to gain admission to some private colleges in the United States this year, college officials say. A drop in the number of applications is prompting many private schools to send out more letters of acceptance, create bigger waiting lists and pump more money into financial aid, the Washington Post reported Wednesday. At Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University, applications were down by as much as 35 percent last fall, giving those ... [full story]

WASHINGTON -- The corruption case against former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens has been dropped by the U.S. Justice Department, a statement issued by the department said. The 85-year-old Republican lawmaker was convicted last October on seven counts of lying on federal financial disclosure forms about free services he received, many for the renovation of his Alaska home. Sentencing of Stevens had been delayed amid charges by an FBI agent of prosecutorial misconduct in the case. Throughout the ... [full story]

EVANSTON, Ill. -- Legal decisions made behind closed doors are serving to greatly reduce the number of open-court trials being held in the United States, a scholar says. The number of U.S. legal cases that go to trial has declined at an alarming rate over the last couple of decades, Northwestern University School of Law professor Robert Burns argues in a new book, the university said in a release from Evanston, Ill. Burns argues in "The ... [full story]

PYONGYANG, North Korea -- North Korea warned Wednesday it will shoot down any U.S. spy aircraft in its airspace, ripping aerial surveillance over the area of a planned rocket launch. North Korea's state-run radio said the U.S. and South Korea conducted at least 190 aerial spy missions over its territory, including flyovers of Musudan-ri, the coastal launch site, South Korean news agency Yonhap reported. "Should the U.S. imperialist racketeers dare to perpetrate aerial espionage, interfering with our ... [full story]

LONDON -- Group of 20 summit protesters flooded into London's financial district Wednesday, engaging in a standoff with police at the Bank of England, witnesses said. Eleven arrests were reported outside Britain's central bank, targeted by protesters to illustrate anger over the role bankers played in the global economic crisis, The Times of London reported. Witnesses said phalanxes of baton-wielding police standing on the front steps of the central bank were pelted with fruit and police ... [full story]