NEW YORK (AP) — Pulitzer Prize-winning conservative columnist William Safire has died. He was 79. An assistant says the former Nixon White House speechwriter had been diagnosed with cancer and died in a hospice in Maryland. He spent more than 30 years writing for the Op-Ed page of The New York Times.

TEHRAN (AP) — One Mideast expert says Iran's missile launches today are meant to "show some muscle." Tehran set off the rockets and promised to crush any military threat from another country just days after the revelation that it's building a uranium enrichment site. Alex Vatanka notes that Iran will be meeting with world powers this week and says the tests serve as a way to bolster their position going into the meeting.

ZURICH (AP) — The U.S. Marshals Service says investigators learned of Roman Polanski's trip to Switzerland days ago, allowing them to set the groundwork for his arrest yesterday. The director was apprehended by Swiss police as he flew in for the Zurich Film Festival and faces possible extradition to the U.S. for having sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977.

BERLIN (AP) — Chancellor Angela Merkel is promising to be a "to be the chancellor of all Germans," after voters handed her a second term. The national election win allows her to dismantle her "grand coalition" with center-left politicians and assemble one with a center-right group.

BRNO, Czech Republic (AP) — Pope Benedict says all of Europe must acknowledge its Christian heritage as it deals with rising immigration from other cultures and religions. The pope is in the Czech Republic, where he delivered an open-air Mass urging the secular nation to return to its Christian roots.