NEW YORK — Stem cell injections worked remarkably well at easing symptoms of muscular dystrophy in a group of golden retrievers, a result that experts call a significant step toward treating people.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Louis James DeFusco was found floating in Narragansett Bay in 1964, a ship’s anchor tied around his legs and a bullet in his mouth. Authorities called it a suicide. But relatives had their doubts.

SAN FRANCISCO — Lee “Shorty” Gordon, the first American prisoner of war to escape from a German camp during World War II, has died. He was 84.

NAIROBI, Kenya — A warmer world already seems to be producing a sicker world, health experts reported Tuesday, citing surges in Kenya, China and Europe of such diseases as malaria, heart ailments and dengue fever.

NEW YORK — O.J. Simpson created an uproar Wednesday with plans for a TV interview and book titled “If I Did It” — an account the publisher pronounced as “his confession” and media executives condemned as revolting and exploitive.

CHICAGO — Scientists for the first time have grown human heart valves using stem cells from the fluid that cushions babies in the womb — offering a revolutionary approach that may be used to repair defective hearts in the future.

LOS ANGELES — University of California administrators faced tough questions about their spending priorities Wednesday as the system’s leaders took up next year’s budget.

NEW YORK — Evangelical leader Ted Haggard, in apologizing for contacts with a gay prostitute, said he had sought help to combat a “repulsive and dark” side of his life — but no approach had proven effective.

CAMP PENDLETON — A Marine private who confessed to participating in his squad’s killing of an unarmed civilian in Iraq apologized Wednesday in a military court to the victim’s family, his own family and to “my Marine Corps whose highest ideals I have failed to uphold.”

SALT LAKE CITY — A police officer from a polygamist town on Utah’s southern border has voluntarily surrendered his certification, ending a state investigation into his refusal to testify before an Arizona grand jury.

SAN FRANCISCO — California Attorney General Bill Lockyer moved late Wednesday to dismiss a federal lawsuit that challenges a voter-approved measure prohibiting registered sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park.

HONOLULU — Dogs killed hundreds of wedge-tailed shearwater chicks at the Kaena Point nature reserve over the weekend.