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It's 15:00 Universal Time and here is the news from the Voice of America.
From the VOA news center in Washington, I'm Frances Alonzo.

Pope Benedict says he deeply regrets the angry reaction of Muslims provoked by comments he made last week that were deemed offensive to Islam. The Pope said today that his remarks during an academic speech last Tuesday in Germany were quotations from medieval text and do not in anyway express his personal opinion. Saeed Khan is with the Research Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, and explains why regilious leaders throughout the Middle East denounced the Pope's earlier speech and demanded an apology.
"I think they found directly offensive...er...this caricature that the Prophet Mohammed who is certainly held in a very high esteem by Muslims all over the world, 1.4 billion of them, was characterized as only being a violent person, as only being interested in spreading bloodshed without recognizing that there was a lot of passion as well as in the inspiration for / great periods of Islamic and Christian understanding."
Meanwhile, Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood says the Pope's comments today amount to a sufficient apology for its early remark about Islam.

Iraqi police say a suicide bomber has set off a truck bomb in the northern city of Kirkuk, killing at least 18 people and wounding 55 others. The blast was one of a series of deadly bomb blasts in the city today. Iraqi officials say a gunman in the truck fired at civilians before the vehicle exploded outside a police center.

Meanwhile President Bush says opposition from some Senators in his own political party could shut down a terrorist interrogation program that he says is crucial to protecting the nation. VOA White House correspondent Scott Sterns has this story.
President Bush says Congress must act to save a Central Intelligence Agency interrogation program that he says has helped disrupt terrorist plots, including plane strikes inside the United States and on a US Marine Base in East Africa and an American consulate in Pakistan, and Britain's Heathrow Airport. Mr. Bush says the previously secret program is in jeopardy because of a US Supreme Court ruling that military commissions the president wants to use to put suspected terrorists on trial must be authorized by Congress. So the president is pushing legislation to allow classified evidence to be withheld from defendants during their trials. He wants coerced testimony to be allowed as evidence and he wants US interrogators to be protected from prosecution for using methods that might violate the Geneva Conventions. But some senior Republican Senators disagree. They say those rules do not meet constitutional standard outlined by the Supreme Court and could endanger US troops overseas if other countries choose to reinterpret the Gevena Convention in their own way. Scott Sterns VOA news at the White House.

A suicide bomber is blowing himself up next to a vehicle carrying US nationals near the Afghan capital of Kabul, wounding four people including two Americans. Local authorities say the attacker with explosives strapped to his body ran in front of the vehicle before blowing himself up. Hours earlier, in the southern city of Kandahar, another suicide bomber set off his explosives near a convoy of Canadian troops, killing himself and a civilian. The explosion hurt five passers-by and slightly wounded three soldiers with a NATO-led force.

Palestinian officials say President Mahmoud Abbas has frozen talks with the ruling Hamas Party on forming a national unity government. Mr. Abbas's aide said he / suspended the talks because of a recent statement by Hamas leaders in which they refused to accept interim peace deals with Israel. Palestinian Prime Minister and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh says Saturday that a unity government under his leadership would not necessarily recognize Israel's right to exist.

"STS-115. the crew of Atlantis departing/."
The Space Shuttle Atlantis has undocked from the International Space Station, ending a stay in which the crew conducted space walks and did repairs. Pilot Chris Ferguson is now flying the shuttle around the space station, so the crew can photograph its work on the newly expanded space station. The Alantis crew had a light workload on Saturday to allow time to relax and enjoy the view from space. The break came after a 4-day stretch that included three space walks.

You can read these stories and more in our website 24 hours a day at voanews.com.
I'm Frances Alonzo in Washington. You're listening to VOA news.