A suicide bomber driving a car packed with explosives detonated the vehicle near an Iraqi military base as soldiers changed shifts north of Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least 33 people and wounding 56, according to authorities. The blast struck around midday as troops were leaving the base in Taji, 20 kilometers north of the capital, police said. Twenty-two soldiers were among the dead, and several vehicles were damaged, they said. The casualty toll was high because the attacker blew up the ca

BEIRUT (AP) ― Palestinian supporters and opponents of Syria’s regime got swept up in intense fighting in Damascus on Monday while rival rebel groups clashed over control of a border crossing with Turkey, activists said. The rare infighting among the two groups added a new dimension of chaos to the civil war and heightened fears that if President Bashar Assad falls, the disparate factions battling the regime will turn against each other. In the capital, a car bomb ripped through the main square o

Revote urged in 5 election districts in UkraineKIEV (AP) -- Ukraine sank deeper into political turmoil Monday following a disputed parliamentary election, with the opposition dismissing a government offer for a revote in a handful of districts and pressing instead for ballots to be re-tallied in more than a dozen precincts across the country.　 Western observers deemed the Oct. 28 parliamentary election unfair, saying the imprisonment of President Viktor Yanukovych’s arch-foe, Yulia Tymoshenko, a

U.S. soldier faces hearing in Afghanistan massacreJOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Washington (AP) -- The U.S. soldier accused of carrying out one of the worst atrocities of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars appeared in a military courtroom Monday, where prosecutors were laying out their case that he killed 16 people, including children, during a predawn raid on two villages in the Taliban’s heartland.　 Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, a married father of two, is accused of slipping away from a remote outpost in s

U.N. orders sanctions on Haqqani networkUNITED NATIONS (AFP) -- The U.N. Security Council on Monday ordered global sanctions against the Haqqani militant group in Afghanistan and its suicide attack mastermind.The network, which has been widely linked to Pakistan, is accused of carrying out a string of murderous attacks in Afghanistan including against the U.S. Embassy and a major hotel in Kabul.Haqqani and its chief suicide attack organizer, Qari Zakir, were added to the U.N.’s Afghanistan-Talib

The U.N. Security Council on Monday ordered global sanctions against the Haqqani militant group in Afghanistan and its suicide attack mastermind.The network, which has been widely linked to Pakistan, is accused of carrying out a string of murderous attacks in Afghanistan including against the U.S. embassy and a major hotel in Kabul.Haqqani and its chief suicide attack organizer, Qari Zakir, were added to the U.N.'s Afghanistan-Taliban sanctions list. This means nations must apply an assets freez

BEIJING (AP) ― China’s ruling Communist elite have endorsed the expulsion of former high-flying politician Bo Xilai and approved final preparations for the party’s upcoming congress. The closed-door meeting of the Central Committee that ended Sunday was the last before Communist Party leader Hu Jintao and other government officials begin to cede power to Vice President Xi Jinping and others at the congress, which opens Thursday. The Central Committee said in a statement carried by the official X

BEIRUT (AP) ― Syrian rebels firing mortars and rocket-propelled grenades captured an oilfield in the country’s east on Sunday after three days of fierce fighting with government troops protecting the facility, activists said. The head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdul-Rahman, said rebels overran the Al-Ward oilfield in the province of Deir el-Zour near the border with Iraq early Sunday. About 40 soldiers were guarding the facility that the rebels had been pound