MOSCOW — Firefighting helicopters are trying to put out a spectacular blaze atop an under-construction Moscow skyscraper, planned to be Europe’s tallest building. Orange flames were leaping...

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has ruled that jailers may subject people arrested for minor offenses to invasive strip searches, siding with security needs over privacy rights. By a 5-4 vote Monday,...

BUDAPEST, Hungary — Hungarian President Pal Schmitt resigned Monday because of a plagiarism scandal regarding a doctoral dissertation he had written 20 years ago on the Olympics. Schmitt, who was...

MILWAUKEE (AP) — President Barack Obama’s administration launched a multi-pronged assault on Mitt Romney’s values and foreign policy credentials Sunday, while a fresh set of prominent...

MILWAUKEE (AP) — President Barack Obama’s administration launched a multi-pronged assault on Mitt Romney’s values and foreign policy credentials Sunday, while a fresh set of prominent...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Even expert storm chases would have struggled to decipher the difference between the tornado warnings sent last May before severe weather hit Joplin and, a few days later, headed...

LONDON — Every email to your child. Every status update for your friends. Every message to your mistress. The U.K. government is preparing proposals for a nationwide electronic surveillance network...

PORTLAND, Maine — President Barack Obama accused Republicans of clinging to economic policies that preceded the Great Depression and the more recent economic downturn, accusing his rivals of showing...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israel expelled a Palestinian prisoner Sunday to the Gaza Strip as part of a compromise deal that persuaded her to end her 43-day hunger strike. Under the terms of her release,...

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — The leaders of at least four states plan a visit to the only place where a beef product known as “pink slime” is still made to support its embattled manufacturer,...

SANAA, Yemen — A Saudi diplomat was kidnapped on his way to work Wednesday in the southern Yemeni port city of Aden, a Yemeni security official said. It was the first kidnapping of a Saudi diplomat...

LONDON — Dozens of officials in Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime will be blocked from attending the London Olympics, Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron confirmed yesterday as...

LOS ANGELES — Former President George H.W. Bush plans to endorse Mitt Romney at an event Thursday in Houston. Romney spokeswoman Gail Gitcho says the two will appear together and speak to reporters. Formal...

QAA, Lebanon — Syria accepted a cease-fire drawn up by U.N. envoy Kofi Annan on Tuesday, but the diplomatic breakthrough was swiftly overshadowed by intense clashes between government soldiers and...

NORFOLK, Va. — Milky white chemical clouds were briefly visible in much of the night sky along the Eastern seaboard on Tuesday after NASA launched a series of rockets to study the jet stream at the...

WASHINGTON — It boiled down to a debate over broccoli. And bread. And burial plots. If government can tell people to buy health insurance, Supreme Court justices wanted to know, what else could it...

JERUSALEM — Israel cut working relations with the United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday and will bar a U.N. team from entering Israel or the West Bank for a planned investigation of Jewish...

 WASHINGTON — As demonstrations swirled outside, Supreme Court justices signaled on Monday they are ready to confront without delay the keep-or-kill questions at the heart of challenges to President...

CAIRO — Egypt’s powerful Islamists on Monday faced a backlash on two fronts as they try to solidify their hold on the country’s politics, as liberal politicians quit a panel tasked with...

SANFORD, Fla. — Before the charges that police botched the investigation of the shooting of an unarmed black teen, there were complaints that they went easy on an officer’s son who beat a black...

ISTANBUL — A year of sanctions, diplomacy and harsh rhetoric failed to stop Syria’s bloody crackdown and oust President Bashar Assad. With frustration running high, Turkey and other countries...

NEW YORK — A Florida man who trained for a national memory competition by memorizing a randomly shuffled deck of cards as he climbed Mount Everest won the mental bout Saturday and broke a U.S. record. Nelson...

DALLAS — At least five high-ranking executives with the Susan G. Komen for the Cure breast cancer charity have resigned in the aftermath of the organization’s decision to eliminate its funding...

CONCORD, N.H. — New Hampshire lawmakers on Wednesday rejected a bill that would have made their state legislature the first one to repeal a gay marriage law, handing gay-rights supporters a key victory...

TALLINN, Estonia — Estonia’s Parliament passed legislation on Wednesday banning human trafficking and making the Baltic nation the last EU country to enact such laws. The lawmakers voted 91-0...

ATHENS, Greece — Greek state hospital services faced disruptions Wednesday as staff held work stoppages and protests over government austerity measures and pay delays. Doctors and staff at public...

HONOLULU (AP) — It got personal for a judge in Honolulu when he put a man in a chokehold for jumping onto his bench and breaking a flagpole bearing the state flag, authorities said. District Judge...

NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania — A high-ranking government official is denying that Mauritania had agreed to hand over one of Moammar Gadhafi’s ex-intelligence chief for trial in Libya. His comment...

GORENTAS, Turkey (AP) — Syrian rebel commander Ahmad Mihbzt and his ragtag fighters grabbed their aging rifles to fight Syrian troops advancing on their village, but soon fled under a rain of exploding...

SCHAUMBURG, Ill. — Backed by a crushing television ad advantage, Mitt Romney sought a strong Illinois primary victory Tuesday to solidify his lead over Rick Santorum in the battle for the Republican...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The International Space Station may provide the setting for a 500-day pretend trip to Mars in another few years. NASA said Tuesday that consideration is under way to use the...

MEXICO CITY — A strong 7.4-magnitude earthquake hit central and southern Mexico on Tuesday, collapsing at least 60 homes near the epicenter and a pedestrian bridge in the capital where people fled...

OKLAHOMA CITY — Storms shuffled through parts of the south-central United States again Tuesday, bringing more heavy rain and thunder so loud some people in Oklahoma mistook it for an earthquake. Forecasters...

MOSCOW — Russia said Monday that Syria’s government and rebels should halt their fighting once a day to give the Red Cross access to the wounded and that jailed protesters should be allowed...

NEW YORK — It was a decade when tens of millions of people in the U.S. experienced mass unemployment and social upheaval as the nation clawed its way out of the Great Depression and rumblings of...

AUSTIN, Texas — The memorials around the Texas Capitol grounds have long honored heroes and moments of Texas’ storied past, from the Alamo to the Confederacy to fallen soldiers in foreign wars. Joining...

BEIRUT — An explosion struck near a Syrian government security building in the northern city of Aleppo Sunday, while a harsh security crackdown prevented opposition rallies marking one year since...

CAIRO, Egypt — Pope Shenouda III, the patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church who led Egypt’s Christian minority for 40 years during a time of increasing tensions with Muslims, died Saturday....

WASHINGTON — The Senate killed Republican-backed attempts to overturn several of President Barack Obama’s environmental and energy policies Thursday as lawmakers worked against a March 31 deadline...

BEIRUT — Syria’s deputy oil minister appeared tense as he looked at the camera and announced in a video that he has defected from President Bashar Assad’s regime, acknowledging he expects...

This extreme ultraviolet wavelength image provided by NASA shows a solar flare. An impressive solar flare is heading toward Earth and could disrupt power grids, GPS and airplane flights. Forecasters...

LONDON — Britain can no longer ignore that its influence on the world is shrinking amid the rise of developing nations, a panel of senior lawmakers said Thursday in a sharply critical report. The...

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Barack Obama’s former nanny, Evie, is overwhelmed by her jolt from transgender slum-dweller to local celebrity. TV crews troop in and out of her tiny concrete hovel. Estranged...

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s supreme leader has ordered the creation of an Internet oversight agency that includes top military and political figures in the country’s boldest attempt to control...

CHRISTIANSBURG, Va. — A Virginia Tech official defends the delay in alerting students to the shootings of two students to begin the unprecedented 2007 massacre, saying officials did the best they...

RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia’s governor has signed into law a bill requiring women to undergo abdominal ultrasound exams before having abortions, weeks after lawmakers dropped contentious language...

VIENNA — Satellite images of an Iranian military facility appear to show trucks and earth-moving vehicles at the site, indicating an attempted cleanup of radioactive traces possibly left by tests...

SAN DIEGO — Marine Sgt. Gary Stein first started a Facebook page called Armed Forces Tea Party Patriots to encourage service members to exercise their free speech rights. Then he declared that he...

WASHINGTON — Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney split six states and dueled in an almost impossibly close race in Ohio on a Super Tuesday that stretched from one end of the country to the other in the most...

SAO PAULO — Sao Paulo’s 2,000 gas stations are rapidly running out of fuel as a strike by truck drivers who haul gas in South America’s largest city entered a second day Tuesday, according...

NEW YORK — Top members of the computer hacking group LulzSec have been arrested and will face charges in New York, a law enforcement official said Tuesday. Five people with the group were either...

BEIJING — U.S. envoys are finalizing arrangements for the first U.S. government food aid shipment to impoverished North Korea in three years. Special envoy Robert King and senior aid official Jon...

HOUSTON — Texas tycoon R. Allen Stanford spent more than 20 years charming investors, who handed him billions of dollars they had spent their lives accumulating. Stanford promised them safe investments,...

LOS ANGELES — Actors in many of the adult films made in the nation’s porn capital must use condoms under a law that took effect Monday, but the prophylactic police aren’t yet on the beat. How...

MOSCOW — An attempt by Vladimir Putin’s foes to protest his presidential election victory by occupying a Moscow square ended Monday with riot police quickly dispersing and detaining hundreds...

CANTON, Ohio — Mitt Romney’s allies are hoping Super Tuesday’s powerful imprint on the Republican presidential nomination will bring clarity, at long last, to the fractious contest and...

SANAA, Yemen — Sneaking across the desert behind army lines, al-Qaida militants launched a surprise attack against military bases in south Yemen, killing 107 soldiers and capturing heavy weapons...

KABUL, Afghanistan — Negotiations over a long-term U.S. military presence in Afghanistan have bogged down over issues of detainees, night raids and quarrels within the Afghan president’s inner...

LONDON — Iceland's former prime minister faces trial Monday as the first world leader criminally charged over the 2008 financial crisis that left the world teetering on the edge of financial...

SCOTTSBURG, Ind. — Officials in Indiana have lowered the state’s death toll from Friday’s tornado outbreak to 12 people from the previous 14 and are now concentrating on cleanup work. State...

SZCZECHOCINY, Poland — Two trains running on the same track collided head-on in southern Poland in a shower of sparks, killing 16 people and injuring 58 in the country’s worst train disaster...

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Intensifying debate over conservative social values — and Republican icon Rush Limbaugh — overshadowed the nation’s economic concerns Sunday as the Republican presidential...

LA PAZ, Bolivia — Bolivian authorities say at least 30 people have been injured in a fight between two communities over land for growing quinoa, the Andean “supergrain” whose popularity...

BEIRUT — After a punishing, monthlong military siege, Syrian rebels made what they called a “tactical retreat” Thursday from a key district in Homs, saying they were running low on weapons...

BRUSSELS — European Union leaders formally made Serbia a candidate for membership in the bloc, in a remarkable turnaround for a country considered a pariah just over a decade ago. Serbia had been...

BELTSVILLE, Md. — Maryland became the eighth state to legalize gay marriage on Thursday, as opponents were already rallying voters to reverse the change this fall. The push will rely heavily on members...

SEOUL, South Korea — Surprise and skepticism met the announcement that North Korea would freeze most nuclear activities in exchange for food aid from the United States. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary...

BEIRUT — The Syrian regime showed a new determination Wednesday to crush its opponents, vowing to “cleanse” a rebel-held district in the besieged central city of Homs after nearly four...

CHARDON, Ohio (AP) — Authorities say a teen who was hurt but survived a deadly shooting rampage at an Ohio high school has been released from the hospital. The Chardon police chief says authorities...

METHUEN, Mass. — School officials in a Massachusetts town are apologizing for sending home a lunch menu that listed KKK Chicken Tenders as an option. About 6,500 students in four Methuen (muh-THOO’-in)...

BRANSON, Mo. — Authorities say 10 people have been killed in southern Illinois by severe storms that slammed the Midwest. A spokeswoman for the Illinois Emergency Management Agency says the coroner’s...

HOUSTON — The Texas agency that oversees oil and gas drilling in the state has elected a new chairman who will oversee a thorough review ordered by the Legislature. Barry Smitherman was elected...

SAN ANTONIO — Private intelligence firm Stratfor was paid by Coca-Cola to gauge the threat of Olympic protesters, provided Dow Chemical information on environmental activists, and sells what clients...