FIFA Secretary General Jerome Valcke has again raised concerns over Brazil's World Cup preparations, saying "we are not ready" and that the stadium for the opening game is one of two venues that worry him most.

Just two months before the showpiece tournament starts, Valcke told The Associated Press at a joint FIFA-Confederation of African Football conference in South Africa on Wednesday that the stadiums in Sao Paulo, where the opening game will be played June 12, and Porto Alegre in the south were "where we have more work to do than in the other 10."

Gunmen cheerfully shared coffee and cigarettes with men they have tried to kill with assault rifles, grenades and mortars. Women on balconies hurled rice to celebrate. Men chanted giddily to welcome soldiers deploying to the streets of the northern city of Tripoli.

In a day as joyful as it was unlikely, weary residents of two Tripoli neighborhoods on Wednesday celebrated as hundreds of Lebanese soldiers deployed in the most determined plan yet by the government to stabilize an area that for the past year has been increasingly drawn into the civil war in neighboring Syria.

A tree trimmer is recovering after he was rushed to a Pittsburgh hospital with a chain saw blade embedded in his neck.

James Valentine was in a tree in Ross Township on Monday afternoon when he was struck in the neck by the saw. Another worker helped him down, and his co-workers left the saw in place to try to limit the bleeding.

Kanye West has postponed his May tour of Australia so he can concentrate on new music.

West announced Tuesday that he'll postpone seven dates in five cities scheduled for May 2 to 11 until Sept. 5 to 15 because of "unexpected timing requirements" to finish his new album, expected to be released later this year.

Chris Brown's attorney has asked a judge to block an order that would transfer the jailed R&B singer to Washington, D.C., for his upcoming misdemeanor assault trial.

Brown is being held without bail and is due to go on trial on April 17 in Washington on the assault charge.

Grimacing, Mustafa Ahmad slid the scarred stump just below his right knee into his new prosthetic leg. Extending his arms for balance, he slowly rose and hobbled across the packed dirt floor toward the door of his ramshackle tent.

Wild-haired children peered through a gap in the plastic sheet that serves as the wall of his tent, trying to catch a glimpse of the procedure that finally fitted Ahmad with a prosthesis, more than two years after losing his leg during a bombing raid on his hometown in northern Syria.

Samsung fired back at Apple's accusations of patent theft Tuesday, saying the South Korean tech giant didn't write any of the Android software on its smartphones and tablets, Google did.

"Not one of the accused features on this phone was designed, much less copied, by anyone at Samsung," Samsung attorney Peter Quinn said. "The accused features on this phone were developed independently by some of the software engineers at Google, up the road in Mountain View."

Doug Appleton's grandparents couldn't travel to his New York City wedding last October, but the tech-savvy Floridians were as present on the Big Day as anyone could be from 1,000-plus miles (1,600-plus kilometers) away.

Thanks to FaceTime, the two-way Apple video-calling app, Gerald and Jacqueline Sherman watched by video stream as Appleton, 27, and Lauren Becker, 26, tied the knot. The newlyweds even have a picture of the ceremony that captures the Shermans' faces on the iPhone that was used to connect them.

The finding that a lead researcher falsified data in a widely heralded stem-cell research paper is a setback for Japan's efforts to promote its advanced research, but also a symptom of the pressure for breakthroughs in the field, experts say.

The government-funded Riken Center for Development Biology in Kobe, western Japan said Tuesday it had found malpractice by scientist Haruko Obokata in the work on using a simple lab procedure to grow tissue for treating illnesses such as diabetes and Parkinson's disease.

Kim Kardashian has waded into Syria's conflict, calling on fans through Twitter to save the ancient Armenian Christian village of Kassab, whose residents fled as rebels seized control of the hamlet in late March.

She appeared to have bolstered false claims by loyalists of Syrian President Bashar Assad, who said Syrian rebels desecrated the village's churches and slaughtered residents. She used the #SaveKessab hashtag that was used to spread the false claims, causing its popularity to explode.