The United States federal government gave the beauty industry a long-sought push-up late on Friday as it lifted a 14-year-old ban on women’s silicone breast implants. In an official announcement, the Food and Drug Administration said it had granted permission to two California companies to resume marketing their silicone-gel breast implants to women aged 22 and older.

United States President George Bush was forced late on Wednesday to settle for a face-saving compromise on a key counterterrorism law that fell far short of his goal to see it expended indefinitely. Republican and Democratic senators agreed to extend the main provisions of the USA Patriot Act for only six months.

In a ruling reflecting the resurgence of religious conservatism, a key United States state has given Charles Darwin and his evolution theory a shove. The Kansas Board of Education on Tuesday adopted new science teaching guidelines, under which evolutionary concepts must be presented to students alongside theories that life could have had divine origins.

In the clearest indication to date that criminal charges against top White House officials may be in the offing, the special prosecutor investigating the CIA leak case has unveiled his own website — one week before his probe was scheduled to wrap up.

A United States soldier convicted of abusing Iraqi prisoners said, in remarks made public late on Sunday, she knew of ”worse things” happening at Abu Ghraib and insisted military commanders were fully aware of what was going on in Iraq’s infamous jail.