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• The African soldiers will work alongside French special forces, including a contingent that arrived Saturday in Bamako in order to secure the capital against retaliatory attacks by the al-Qaida-linked rebel groups occupying Mali's northern half. National television broadcast footage of the French troops walking single-file out of the Bamako airport on Saturday, weapons strapped to their bodies. Some carried them like skis, against their shoulder.
• The military operation began Friday, after the fall of the town of Konna on Thursday to the al-Qaida-linked groups. Konna is only 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of the government's line of control, which begins at the town of Mopti, home to the largest concentration of Malian troops in the country.
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Brooklyn resident wins Miss America crown; Miss South Carolina finishes second
• LAS VEGAS (AP) -- A 23-year-old blonde from Brooklyn, N.Y., won the Miss America crown Saturday night after deftly dealing with a question about armed guards in schools and raising the issue of child sexual abuse in her contestant platform.
• En route to her victory in the Las Vegas pageant, Mallory Hagan also tap danced to James Brown's "Get Up Off of That Thing," strutted down the runway in an asymmetrical white gown, and donned a revealing black string bikini.
• She defeated Miss South Carolina Ali Rogers, who took second, and Miss Oklahoma Alicia Clifton, who finished third.
• Hagan wins a $50,000 college scholarship and a year as an instant celebrity and role model to many girls. Her platform, the issue she will promote during her reign, is fighting child sexual abuse.
• She told The Associated Press in an interview after her win that it was her mother who encouraged her to tackle the issue. She said that sexual abuse had "rippled through" her family, touching her mother, aunt, grandmother and cousins. Her mother had trouble at first convincing others of the trauma she had faced.
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Beaches, bombs and gangsters -- Corsica becomes victim of its own success as vacation paradise
• AJACCIO, Corsica (AP) -- The bombs exploded across hundreds of miles (kilometers) of Corsican coastline, gutting two dozen villas nearly simultaneously on some of Europe's most beautiful -- and valuable -- land. Elsewhere on the same (Continued on page 28)
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