BEIRUT (AP) ― Violence sweeping across Syria killed 25 people on Saturday, most of them in a battle between troops and a growing force of army defectors who have joined the movement to oust the autocratic president, activists said. The Arab League, meanwhile, agreed on the details of economic and diplomatic sanctions against the regime.The revolt against Bashar Assad’s rule began with peaceful protests in mid-March, triggering a brutal crackdown. The unrest has steadily become bloodier as defect

Dec. 4, 2011

MOSCOW (AFP) ― Russians went to the polls Sunday in key parliamentary elections expected to hand victory to Vladimir Putin’s party amid claims of campaign fraud and unprecedented intimidation of observers.The elections to the lower house of parliament, the 450-deputy State Duma, are seen as a key test of Putin’s ability to hold on to power as he prepares to reclaim his old Kremlin job in a March presidential vote amid growing disillusionment over his 11-year rule.The world’s largest country is s

Dec. 4, 2011

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) -- A report given to a high-level advisory group in Saudi Arabia claims that allowing women in the kingdom to drive could encourage premarital sex, a rights activist said Saturday.The ultraconservative stance suggests increasing pressure on King Abdullah to retain the kingd

Dec. 4, 2011

BEIRUT (AP) ― Syria has entered a state of civil war with more than 4,000 people dead and an increasing number of soldiers defecting from the army to fight President Bashar Assad’s regime, the U.N.’s top human rights official said Thursday.Civil war has been the worst-case scenario in Syria since the revolt against Assad began eight months ago. Damascus has a web of allegiances that extends to Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah movement and Iran’s Shiite theocracy, raising fears of a regional conflagr

Dec. 2, 2011

YANGON (AP) -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, two of the world’s most recognizable female leaders, pledged Friday to work together to bring democracy to Suu Kyi’s long isolated and repressive nation.Wrapping up a historic three-day visit to Myanmar, Clinton held hands with Suu Kyi on the porch of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate’s lakeside home where she spent much of the past two decades under house arrest and thanked her for her “st

Dec. 2, 2011

BRUSSELS (AP) ― EU foreign ministers failed Thursday to reach an agreement to impose an oil embargo against Iran ― a measure that some argued would have choked off funding for Iran’s alleged program to develop nuclear weapons.But the ministers, incensed by the attack Tuesday by an angry mob on the British Embassy in Tehran, did impose a new round of sanctions targeting dozens of people, groups and businesses in the country.The ministers also imposed new sanctions on Syrian individuals and busine

Dec. 2, 2011

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) _ Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday pardoned an Afghan woman serving a 12-year prison sentence for having sex out of wedlock after she was raped by a relative.Karzai's office said in a statement that the woman and her attacker have agreed to marry. That would reverse

Dec. 2, 2011

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) ― Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ government narrowly dodged a full-blown cash crisis after Israel agreed Wednesday ― under intense international pressure ― to resume the transfer of $100 million a month in frozen tax funds.The episode illustrated the fragile financial foundations of Abbas’ West Bank-based Palestinian Authority and the broad international consensus that it needs to keep functioning to ensure some stability, especially at a time of diplomatic deadloc

Dec. 1, 2011

TOKYO (AP) ― Radioactive debris from melted fuel rods may have seeped deeper into the floor of a Japan’s tsunami-hit nuclear reactor than previously thought, to within a foot from breaching the crucial steel barrier, a new simulation showed Wednesday.The findings will not change the ongoing efforts to stabilize the reactors more than eight months after the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant was disabled, but they harshly depict the meltdowns that occurred and conditions within the reactors, which will be

Dec. 1, 2011

BERLIN (AP) ― Widespread corruption ignited protests this year across the Middle East and in those nations badly shaken by Europe’s debt crisis as citizens demanded accountability from their governments, an international watchdog said Thursday.A movement for greater transparency took on greater momentum in 2011 forcing leaders and bureaucracies to “heed the demands for better government,” Transparency International said in its annual corruption perceptions index that scored 183 countries based o

Dec. 1, 2011

MOSCOW (AP) ― Alexei Balitsky, a student at Russia’s top engineering school, is among hundreds of people across the country who have complained of pressure to vote for the Kremlin’s party in this weekend’s parliamentary elections.The independent election watchdog group Golos said Wednesday that about a third of the 4,000 complaints of violations it has received so far come from voters who say they are being pressured ― mostly by bosses at work or professors at universities ― to vote for United R

Dec. 1, 2011

BRUSSELS (AFP) ― Political parties in Belgium, which has been without a government for 535 days, agreed Wednesday on the blueprint of a ruling coalition to be headed by French-speaking Socialist Elio Di Rupo.“There is a global agreement, on the reform of the state, socio-economic questions and a government platform,” a source close to the negotiations told AFP.Di Rupo emerged from the talks with a smile, but refused comment after days of trying to hammer out a deal between six parties split by p

Dec. 1, 2011

Major demonstrations nearing end as police dismantle Philadelphia, L.A. sitesNEW YORK (AP) ― The overnight police raids in Philadelphia and Los Angeles that dismantled two of the nation’s biggest Occupy Wall Street encampments leave just a few major “occupations” still going on around the U.S. But activists are already changing tactics and warning of a winter of discontent, with rallies and marches every week.The camps may bloom again in the spring, organizers said, and next summer could bring h

Dec. 1, 2011

BEIJING (AP) -- China will have about 780,000 people infected with the AIDS virus by the end of this year, state media reported Wednesday, with most having contracted it through heterosexual sex.The official Xinhua News Agency said a report from the Ministry of Health and the United Nations estimate

Nov. 30, 2011