Wayne Rooney has been cleared to play in England's final group match at next year's European Championship following a UEFA decision to reduce his three-match ban to two.

UEFA says its appeals panel deferred the final match of the England striker's three-match suspension on condition of good behavior for four years.

With a star-studded squad that captured the European title in dominating fashion, Barcelona star Lionel Messi thinks his team is obliged to win the 2011 Club World Cup.

Barcelona is returning to the tournament two years after Messi led the Spanish giants to the title in the United Arab Emirates, scoring the winning goal in the 2-1 win over Argentina's Estudiantes.

Zany experiments testing scientific theories in real-world settings have earned the TV show "MythBusters" a devoted following, but a stunt gone awry met with an unhappy audience when an errant cannonball went shooting through a California family's bedroom.

Sheriff's deputies are still measuring how, exactly, the cannonball flew from a bomb range in the rolling hills flanking a suburban San Francisco Bay area neighborhood and rocketed into the front door of a home and through its master bedroom before landing in a neighbor's parked minivan.

Alec Baldwin issued an apology Wednesday to fellow passengers on an American Airlines flight that was delayed by his refusal to stop playing a cellphone game — but stopped short of apologizing to the airline or the flight attendant he later mocked on Twitter.

The "30 Rock" actor's note, posted to the Huffington Post (http://huff.to/sENHR2 ), instead lamented the state of modern air travel. Baldwin noted the financial struggles of airlines, saying the result is that air travel has devolved into an inelegant experience, akin to riding a Greyhound bus.

A helicopter taking people on a luxury sunset tour of the Las Vegas Strip and Hoover Dam crashed into a mountainside Wednesday, killing the pilot and the four passengers on board, federal authorities said.

The aircraft operated by Sundance Helicopters collided into the River Mountains surrounding Lake Mead just before 5 p.m., said National Park Service spokesman Andrew Munoz. Numerous witnesses heard the crash and reported seeing smoke about 4 miles west of the lake's edge, Munoz said, and officials determined that all five people on board were killed.

The world's oldest dog according to Guinness World Records has died in Japan at the age of 26 years and eight months.

Owner Yumiko Shinohara told reporters at her home in Sakura, a city outside Tokyo, that Pusuke, a fluffy tan Shiba mix, died Monday after suddenly falling ill and refusing to eat.

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger could head into the busy program of fixtures over Christmas without any recognized full backs after Andre Santos injured his right ankle in the Champions League loss to Olympiakos.

The Brazilian left back, one of the few first-team regulars selected for the 3-1 defeat on Tuesday, was forced off early in the second half.

One of the world's largest Apple stores is opening at the landmark Grand Central Terminal.

The 23,000-square-foot (2,140-square-meter) personal electronics business will start selling to the public on Friday.

The two things that have brought Michael and Roslyn Lieb closer together couldn't be more different: Parkinson's disease and dance, one slowly taking away, the other giving back in ways they never imagined.

After tremors in his right arm and leg 11 years ago led to Michael Lieb's diagnosis with the debilitating brain disease, his wife became his caretaker. But two years ago, she developed a tremor, too. The diagnosis: Parkinson's.

An Iranian daily said Wednesday that Tehran may transfer to Syria and Hizbullah intelligence from a U.S. drone that was allegedly downed by Iranian armed forces.

The report came in the conservative Mellat newspaper as state radio said that the unmanned spy plane was deep inside Iran's airspace, flying over an eastern town famous for Persian carpets and saffron when it was downed.