HUNTINGTON, Utah — Ghostly video images from deep underground showed shards of broken rock, a twisted conveyor belt and dripping water but no signs of life as the arduous search for six missing miners stretched Monday into a second week.

Even as the grainy footage played for reporters, the mine's co-owner insisted there was reason to believe the miners could be alive — the mine's roof was intact, there was abundant open space and plenty of drinkable water.

"There are many reason to have hope still," said Bob Murray, head of Murray Energy Corp. and co-owner of the mine.

But he acknowledged the search, which has been interrupted by additional cave-ins and two 1,800-foot holes that came up empty and prolonged silence from underground, has not gone as smoothly as planned.

"Progress is slow — way too slow."

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IRAQI PREMIER CALLS FOR POLITICAL SUMMIT

BAGHDAD — Iraq's prime minister appeared to clear the way Monday — with a last-minute push from the U.S. ambassador — for a crisis council that seeks to save his crumbling government.

The U.S. military, meanwhile, announced a third major operation since additional U.S. troops arrived and said it would target al-Qaida in Iraq and Iranian-allied Shiite militia fighters nationwide. The military gave few other details.

But the sinking fortunes of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his Shiite-led administration have become something of a second front for Washington.

Al-Maliki's government — a shaky coalition of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds — has been gutted by boycotts and defections. A full-scale disintegration could touch off power grabs on all sides and seriously complicate U.S.-led efforts to stabilize Iraq.

Al-Maliki has struggled over the past days to pull together a summit of Iraq's main religious and ethnic groups. The meeting finally appeared likely after U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker called on Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, the lone Sunni Arab invited to the talks that are scheduled for Tuesday. Al-Hashemi's attendance had been in question.

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MITT ROMNEY WORTH AS MUCH AS $250 MILLION

WASHINGTON — Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the wealthiest White House contender from either party, is worth as much as $250 million, according to information released by his campaign Monday.

The former venture capitalist's wealth — reported in a range of $190 million to $250 million — is spread throughout a dizzying array of investments, that include banks, large investment management firms, foreign export credit corporations and real estate.

Romney reported details of his wealth in a personal financial disclosure report filed Monday with the Federal Election Commission and the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. Presidential candidates had been required to file such disclosures by May 15, but Romney asked for two 45-day extensions to obtain detailed values of his and his wife's blind trusts.

The report offers the most detailed public look yet at the finances of the former Massachusetts governor, who has refused to release his income tax returns, and who previously filed only state financial disclosure forms that described his holdings in the most general terms. His most recent Massachusetts report, filed in May for calendar 2006, was only 10 pages long, compared with the 47-page federal report.

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MISSOURI GUNMAN CHARGED WITH MURDER

NEOSHO, Mo. — Prosecutors filed three murder charges Monday against a Micronesian man accused of opening fire in a church, killing three people and wounding five others during a service for a mostly Micronesian congregation.

Prosecutors also charged the man, Eiken Elam Saimon, 52, with assault, felonious restraint for holding the congregation hostage, and armed criminal action. Another assault charge was pending, Newton County Prosecutor Scott Watson said.

At a news conference, police and prosecutors declined the discuss the motive. But Watson told The Associated Press earlier Monday that the alleged gunman had targeted congregation leaders.

"I think that you'll find that the victims were what some would term elders or leaders (of the Micronesian congregation)," Watson told The Associated Press earlier in the day. "As information continues to come forward, it appears that the shots that were fired were not random."

The victims were not friends or relatives of the gunman, Watson said.

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LASER SCANS REVEAL LINCOLN HAD FACIAL DEFECT

CHICAGO — Artists, sculptors and photographers knew Abraham Lincoln's face had a good side. Now it's confirmed by science. Laser scans of two life masks, made from plaster casts of Lincoln's face, reveal the 16th president's unusual degree of facial asymmetry, according to a new study.

The left side of Lincoln's face was much smaller than the right, an aberration called cranial facial microsomia. The defect joins a long list of ailments — including smallpox, heart illness and depression — that modern doctors have diagnosed in Lincoln.

Lincoln's contemporaries noted his left eye at times drifted upward independently of his right eye, a condition now termed strabismus. Lincoln's smaller left eye socket may have displaced a muscle controlling vertical movement, said Dr. Ronald Fishman, who led the study published in the August issue of the Archives of Ophthalmology.

Severe strabismus leads to double vision and can be treated today by surgery.

"Lincoln noticed double vision only occasionally and it did not bother him a great deal," said Fishman, a retired ophthalmologist and history buff.

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FOLDABLE BATTERY MADE FROM PAPER CREATED

WASHINGTON — It's a battery that looks like a piece of paper and can be bent or twisted, trimmed with scissors or molded into any shape needed. While the battery is only a prototype a few inches square right now, the researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute who developed it have high hopes for it in electronics and other fields that need smaller, lighter power sources.

"We would like to scale this up to the point where you can imagine printing batteries like a newspaper. That would be the ultimate," Robert Linhardt a professor at the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies at RPI said in a telephone interview.

The development is reported in this week's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Unlike other batteries, Linhardt explained, it is an integrated device, not a combination of pieces.

The battery uses paper infused with an electrolyte and carbon nanotubes that are embedded in the paper. The carbon nanotubes form the electrodes, the paper is the separator and the electrolyte allows the current to flow.

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NEW YORK SOCIALITE BROOKE ASTOR DIES

NEW YORK — Brooke Astor, the civic leader, philanthropist and high society fixture who gave away nearly $200 million to support New York City's great cultural institutions and a host of humbler projects, died Monday. She was 105.

Astor, who recently was the center of a highly publicized legal dispute over her care, died of pneumonia at Holly Hill, her Westchester County estate in Briarcliff Manor, family lawyer Kenneth Warner said.

"Brooke was truly a remarkable woman," longtime family friend David Rockefeller said. "She was the leading lady of New York in every sense of the word."

Although a legendary figure in New York City and feted with a famous gala on her 100th birthday in March 2002, Astor was mostly interested in putting the fortune that husband Vincent Astor left to use helping others.