U.S. President Barack Obama, under pressure over a lack of diversity in top cabinet appointments, on Wednesday picked business executive Sally Jewell to head the vast Interior Department.Obama has been criticized for naming middle-aged white men to top jobs on his second-term team, but he has pledged to promote diversity in his other picks and has now settled on several prominent females.If confirmed by the Senate, Jewell -- who heads Recreational Equipment Inc., an outdoors retail chain -- will

A love triangle led to a death threat that prompted a lockdown at a Canadian high school followed by the arrest of two teens, authorities said Wednesday.A 15-year-old boy and 17-year-old boy were arrested Tuesday night, several hours after the lockdown ended at Hormisdas-Gamelin High School in Gatineau, Quebec, QMI Agency reported.The arrests came after police learned one suspect, possibly armed with a handgun, was headed to the school to confront another teen about the girl they both have feeli

TIMBUKTU, Mali (AP) ― French troops may start pulling out of their anti-extremist operation in Mali as early as next month, handing over to a still-developing African force. The potential pending withdrawal, floated by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius in a newspaper interview published Tuesday night, came as forces from France and Chad secured a key bastion in northern Mali, the city of Kidal. French aircraft and troops also are targeting suspected hideouts of Islamist fighters in the spar

SOFIA (AP) ― Hezbollah was behind a bus attack that killed five Israeli tourists in Bulgaria last year, investigators said Tuesday, describing a sophisticated bombing carried out by a terrorist cell that included Canadian and Australian citizens. The announcement brought renewed pressure on the European Union from the U.S., Israel and Canada to designate the group a terrorist organization and to crack down on its fundraising operations across Europe. The EU, which regards Hezbollah as a legitima

HONIARA (AFP) ― A major 8.0 magnitude earthquake jolted the Solomon Islands Wednesday with small tsunami waves buffeting Pacific coastlines, leaving at least five people dead and dozens of homes damaged or destroyed.A quake-generated wave of just under one meter reached parts of the Solomons, and Vanuatu and New Caledonia also reported rising sea levels, before a region-wide tsunami alert was lifted.Sirens were heard in Fiji, locals said. “Chaos in the streets of Suva as everyone tries to avoid

WASHINGTON (AP) ― President Barack Obama will go to Israel in the spring, the White House said Tuesday, marking his first visit to the staunch U.S. ally since becoming president. While in the region, Obama will make stops in the West Bank and Jordan. Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed the visit to Israel in late January, when Obama congratulated Netanyahu on his success in Israel’s recent election. The White House has not released the date of Obama’s trip or details ab

LONDON (AFP) ― A gay Saudi prince jailed for life in Britain for murdering his servant is to serve the rest of his sentence in his home country, a British government source said on Tuesday.Prince Saud bin Abdulaziz Bin Nasir, a grandson of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah II, was jailed in 2010 for killing Bandar Abdullah Abdulaziz in a London hotel after subjecting him to a “sadistic” campaign of violence and sexual abuse.The source confirmed that British Justice Secretary Chris Grayling has approv

A Somali court on Tuesday jailed a woman, who claimed she was raped by security forces, for insulting state institutions in a case that has alarmed the United Nations and rights groups.The woman and a journalist who interviewed her but did not publish any material on the case were each jailed for one year.Judge Ahmed Adan said the woman was guilty of "offending state institutions by claiming she was raped. Her ordered her to start the jail term after she has finished breastfeeding her infant.Jou

President Barack Obama asked Congress Tuesday to construct a package of short-term spending cuts and tax revenue to put off the automatic across-the-board cuts now scheduled to kick in March 1, in a bid to dodge a potentially disastrous hit on the still weak U.S. economy.Fearing that hard-core Republican budget-cutters in Congress are prepared to let the automatic cuts take effect, a move that some economists worry would send the country back into recession, Obama asked lawmakers to produce an i