Juror Flirting With John Edwards
Obama's Pot-Smoking Detailed
Dozens of children killed in new Syria attack
BEIRUT (AP) — Gruesome video Saturday showed rows of dead Syrian children lying in a mosque in bloody shorts and T-shirts with gaping head wounds, haunting images of what activists called one of the deadliest regime attacks yet in Syria's 14-month-old uprising. The shelling attack on Houla, a group of villages northwest of the central city of Homs, killed more than 90 people, including at least 32 children under the age of 10, the head of the U.N. observer team in Syria said.
Vatican in chaos after butler arrested for leaks
VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican's inquisition into the source of leaked documents has yielded its first target with the arrest of the pope's butler, but the investigation is continuing into a scandal that has embarrassed the Holy See by revealing evidence of internal power struggles, intrigue and corruption in the highest levels of the Catholic Church governance. The detention of butler Paolo Gabriele, one of the few members of the papal household, capped one of the most convulsive weeks in recent Vatican history and threw the Holy See into chaos as it enters a critical phase in its efforts to show the world it's serious about complying with international norms on financial transparency.
Egypt's top candidates try to broaden support
CAIRO (AP) — The two surviving candidates in Egypt's presidential election appealed Saturday for support from voters who rejected them as polarizing extremists in the first round even as they faced a new challenge from the third runner-up who contested the preliminary results. Hosni Mubarak's last prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, vowed he won't revive the old authoritarian regime as he sought to cast off his image as an anti-revolution figure, while the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate, Mohammed Morsi, reached out to those fearful of hardline Islamic rule and the rise of a religious state.
4 NATO service members killed in Afghanistan
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Four NATO service members were killed in separate roadside bomb attacks in southern Afghanistan, the alliance said Sunday. NATO said in a statement that all four deaths occurred Saturday. It provided no other details on the attacks, including the nationalities of the service members.
Pakistan: US missile attack kills 4 in northwest
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — An American drone fired two missiles at a bakery in northwest Pakistan Saturday, killing four suspected militants, officials said, as the U.S. pushed ahead with its drone campaign despite Pakistani demands to stop. This was the third such strike in the country in less than a week. Drone attacks in Pakistani tribal areas where Afghan and other militants have found refuge are considered a key tactic by U.S. officials in the war against al-Qaida and its Taliban supporters. But many Pakistanis resent the strikes, which they consider an affront to their sovereignty.
Rebel groups merge in Mali, agree on Islamic state
BAMAKO, Mali (AP) — The two rebel groups that seized control of the northern half of Mali announced Saturday that they have agreed to fuse their movements and work together to create an independent Islamic state on the territory they occupy, a signatory to the agreement said. Alghabass Ag Intalla, one of the leaders of Ansar Dine, which is fighting to create an Islamic state, confirmed that his movement was joining with the National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad, a secular rebel group led by Tuareg separatists. They signed the agreement in the northern town of Gao on Saturday evening, and celebratory gunfire rang out in both Gao and Timbuktu, another town under their control, as fighters heard the news.
Iran: Enriched uranium traces a 'technical issue'
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — A top Iranian nuclear official said that traces of enriched uranium discovered at an underground bunker came from a "routine technical issue," the country's official IRNA news agency reported Saturday. Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Tehran's envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency, was responding to a report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog that said it had found radioactive traces at an Iranian nuclear site. The uranium found had been enriched to a level that is slightly closer to the threshold needed for nuclear weapons than Iran's previous highest-known enrichment grade.
Havana sees US invasion at key art festival
HAVANA (AP) — Ruben Alpizar never met the American collector who fell in love with his painting of a plummeting Icarus against a starry background, hanging on the wall of a Spanish colonial-era fortress across the bay from Havana. Nor did he get a name or a hometown, or even learn whether the buyer was a man or a woman. It all happened quickly, starting with a phone call from a broker. "How much for the painting? Look, I think somebody wants it. I'll call you right back." Soon after, the phone rang again: "Sold."
Hunger returns to Africa, stalking 1M children
GOUDOUDE DIOBE, Senegal (AP) — It's 10 a.m., and the 2-year-old is still waiting for breakfast. Aliou Seyni Diallo collapses to his knees in tears and plops his forehead down on the dirt outside his family's hut. Soon he is wailing inconsolably and writhing on his back in the sand. A neighbor spots him, picks him up easily by one arm, and gives him a little uncooked millet in a metal bowl. The toddler shovels it into his mouth with sticky fingers coated in tears and grime. The crying stops, for the moment.
Iraqi president calls for dialogue to solve crisis
BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq's president on Saturday urged the nation's bickering factions to resolve the bitter political dispute that has gripped the government for nearly six months, warning that the crisis threatens to split the country. President Jalal Talabani's statement, posted on his website, is the latest plea for an end to the crisis that has engulfed Iraq since Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government issued an arrest warrant for the country's Sunni vice president in December — just as the last U.S. troops left the country.
