DAMASCUS (AFP) ― Syrian President Bashar al-Assad responded Tuesday to U.N.-Arab League proposals for an end to the bloodshed in Syria even as monitors said nearly 50 more people were killed and a pro-regime daily reported the capture of a rebel city.U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, who met with Assad in Damascus over the weekend, said he had made “concrete” proposals to the Syrian leader on ways to halt the attacks and secure humanitarian access to cities where the United Nations says thousan

WASHINGTON (AFP) ― British Prime Minister David Cameron arrived in Washington Tuesday, to back President Barack Obama’s bid to cool “loose talk” over war with Iran and as Afghan war policy faces sharp scrutiny.Cameron became the first foreign leader to join Obama on Air Force One as the two leaders headed off to watch a college basketball game in Ohio, in a gesture meant by the White House to highlight a bond between the two men.The meat of the visit will come Wednesday as Obama welcomes Cameron

WASHINGTON (AP) ― The U.S. warned Tuesday that Sri Lanka risks renewed conflict unless it addresses war crimes allegations, while rights groups said that abuses by security forces continue, three years after fighting against Tamil rebels ended.Sri Lanka has reacted angrily to the growing international pressure to account for thousands of civilians suspected to have died in the final months of the quarter-century-long war, when government forces finally crushed the separatist Tamil Tigers.A new d

Jocko Besne, father of hundreds of thousands of the world's most productive dairy cattle, has died in France of natural causes aged 27, the farming cooperative which raised him said.Jocko was the sire -- literally in at least 161,888 and perhaps as many as 400,000 cases -- of the Prim'Holstein race

Chinese leadership politics delay major reforms .BEIJING (AP) -- As China faces growing calls for major reforms to prevent its slowing economy from derailing and keep its living standards rising, the response from Chinese leaders appears to be: “Not yet.”In speeches, news conferences and meetings in the past 11 days during the annual session of the national legislature, Cabinet ministers have promised only gradual steps to help entrepreneurs and curtail the state companies that crowd out private

A former member of an elite Guatemalan military force extradited from the United States last July was sentenced to 6,060 years in prison Monday for his role in the killings of 201 people in a 1982 massacre.Pedro Pimentel Rios was the fifth former special forces soldier sentenced to 6,060 years or mo

At least seven people died and about 150 people were missing after a ferry sank in Bangladesh in the early hours of Tuesday morning, officials said, adding that 35 survivors had been found.Rescue workers began recovering bodies from the double-decker Shariatpur 1 ferry, which was hit by another vess

An eight-year-old Indonesian boy who smokes two packets of cigarettes a day has highlighted the government's failure to regulate the tobacco industry, the country's Child Protection Commission said Monday.After food, cigarettes account for the second-largest household expenditure in the Southeast As

When Richard Nixon first met his future bride, he was so smitten he pined for her night and day, he schemed of romantic getaways and he put it all down in writing.Decades before he became known to some as ``Tricky Dick,'' Nixon was the one penning nicknames (sweet ones) to his future bride in gushy

BEIRUT (AFP) ― At least 34 people, almost half of the civilians, were killed across Syria on Sunday as peace envoy Kofi Annan held a second round of talks with President Bashar al Assad, a monitoring group said.The casualties comprised 15 civilians, 14 regular army soldiers and five rebel fighters, with most of the casualties occurring in the provinces of Idlib and Damascus and in the city of Hama, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.“Fierce fighting has been raging between deserters an