NEW YORK (AP) ― Some of the most vulnerable people ― the elderly, the disabled and the chronically ill ― have been pushed to the brink in the powerless, flood-ravaged neighborhoods struggling to recover from Superstorm Sandy.The storm didn’t just knock out electricity and destroy property when it came ashore in places like the Far Rockaway section of Queens. It disrupted the fragile support networks that allowed the neighborhood’s frailest residents to get by.Here, the catastrophe has closed pha

A 9-year-old Ukrainian boy spent nearly $4,000 on candy in several days, the money coming from his parents' savings hidden in a couch."The disappearance [of the money] was first spotted by his father. He opened the stash and saw it was empty," said Tatyana Kushnerova of the Konotop, Ukraine police department.After an argument, the son admitted taking the money during his autumn school holiday, $3,300 in U.S. cash and about 600 euros ($635), converting it to Ukrainian hryvnas with the help of an

COLOMBO (AFP) -- Sri Lankan troops found 11 bodies of convicts Saturday raising the death toll in an overnight prison riot in the capital to 27, prisons minister said.Minister Chandrasiri Gajadeera told parliament that 27 people were killed in Friday's rioting at Colombo's maximum security Welikada prison where inmates fought gunbattles with elite police commandos who carried out a search."Sixteen bodies are at the hospital and another 11 were found in the prison today," Gajadeera said in a spec

WASHINGTON (AP) -- David Petraeus, the retired four-star general credited for salvaging the U.S. war in Iraq and later taking charge of the military campaign in Afghanistan, abruptly resigned Friday as director of the CIA, admitting to an extramarital affair.  Petraeus' resignation shocked Washington's intelligence and political communities. It was a sudden end to the public career of the best-known general of the post 9/11 wars, a man sometimes mentioned as a potential Republican presidential c

A former congresswoman badly wounded in a shooting rampage two years ago came face to face with her attacker as he was sentenced Thursday to seven consecutive life sentence plus 140 years in prison for killing six people and wounding 13.Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, partially blind, her right arm paralyzed and limp, attended the sentencing, standing beside her husband as he spoke of her struggles to recover from being shot in the head.Jared Lee Loughner, 24, pleaded guilty under an agreement that gua

Interpol on Thursday elected a French police commissioner known for her drive against organized crime in Bordeaux and Corsica as its first female president at its general assembly in Rome."Mireille Ballestrazzi of France becomes first woman to be elected president of Interpol," the world's top association of crime-fighters said on Twitter.Ballestrazzi, 58, became a police commissioner in France in 1975 and was already vice-president for Europe on Interpol's executive committee.She is particularl

The bravado sounded familiar. Like the leaders of other countries swept away by Arab Spring uprisings, Syrian President Bashar Assad vowed to never be forced into exile and to die in his homeland.Assad dug in his heels even as world powers move to boost the opposition in Syria's civil war _ the latest turn in a nearly 20-month-old crisis so overwhelming that even the Red Cross says it can no longer cope.“I am not a puppet, I was not made by the West for me to go to the West or any other country,

An Iranian attack aircraft fired at least twice at an unarmed U.S. drone conducting routine surveillance in international airspace over the Gulf, the Pentagon said Thursday. The aircraft missed and the drone returned to base unharmed.The shooting in the Gulf, which occurred just before 5 a.m. on Nov. 1, was unprecedented, Pentagon press secretary George Little said. The incident was not disclosed sooner because the military does not discuss classified surveillance missions, but agreed to answer