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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BAGHDAD (AP) ― Vice President Joe Biden arrived on a surprise visit to Iraq late Tuesday in a trip designed to chart a new relationship between the two countries after all American forces have left the country in just over a month.After nearly nine years of war, the U.S. now must navigate a future without American troops in Iraq. Iraq’s vast oil resources, the massive U.S. Embassy presence here and Iraq’s strategic location in the Middle East ― next to Iran ― ensure American interest will remain