A U.S. airman is suspected of assaulting a young boy Friday on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa, authorities said. The incident comes just two weeks after a curfew was imposed on all 52,000 U.S. troops in Japan after the arrest of two Navy sailors for allegedly raping a local woman.Authorities on Okinawa said the 24-year-old airman was suspected of entering an apartment and punching the 13-year-old boy before breaking a TV set and trying to escape through a third-floor window. The airman

Six Chinese government ships temporarily cruised in the territorial waters of disputed Tokyo-controlled islands on Friday, Japan's coastguard said.Four maritime surveillance ships entered the 12-nautical-mile zone around one of the East China Sea islands shortly before noon (0300 GMT) but moved out nearly two hours later, the coastguard said.They were sailing near Uotsurijima, the main islet of the disputed chain called the Senkaku Islands in Japan and the Diaoyu Islands in China.Then two fisher

BEIRUT (AP) ― Syrian rebels killed 78 soldiers on Thursday, about half of them in attacks on military checkpoints in the north just hours after a wave of bombings hit the Damascus area, activists said. The unusually high toll for regime forces came after days of intense air bombardment of rebel positions around the country that killed hundreds more. Anti-regime activists say President Bashar Assad’s regime has been making even heavier use than before of airstrikes to try to win back territory re

WASHINGTON (AP) ― Barack Obama scored the endorsement of New York City’s popular mayor, as the president and Republican challenger Mitt Romney opened a final campaign blitz in the last days of their incredibly close race for the White House.Election day is Tuesday, and Obama and Romney were streaking between campaign stops in the all-important swing states after a three-day hiatus for Obama to manage the crisis surrounding Superstorm Sandy. Romney muted criticism of the White House incumbent dur

TRIPOLI (AP) ― Libya’s parliament on Wednesday approved the country’s new cabinet in a vote of confidence, the parliament spokesman said, but armed protesters cut the main road leading to the parliament, vowing not to leave until members of the ousted regime of dictator Moammar Gadhafi are excluded from political life. Omar Humidan said five of the 27 ministers would be reconsidered after concerns were raised over their ties to the deposed regime. That was not good enough for the protesters, who

BEIJING (AFP) ― China’s political elite are expected to oust disgraced figure Bo Xilai and jostle for leadership roles in their last formal meeting which opened Thursday ahead of next week’s landmark power handover.The Communist Party’s Central Committee convened behind closed doors, state media said, with 500 senior members to debate key issues ahead of a congress which will open on Nov. 8 to usher in leaders for the next decade.The congress, which groups around 2,000 party members, is set to n

BEIRUT (AP) ― Syrian warplanes fired missiles at opposition strongholds around Damascus and in the north on Wednesday as Turkey, a key backer of the anti-regime rebels, appeared to distance itself from an earlier call to impose a no-fly zone. The Syrian regime has intensified airstrikes in recent days following the failure of a U.N.-backed holiday truce over a four-day holiday that never took hold. Activists said at least 110 people were killed nationwide in airstrikes, artillery shelling and fi

PARIS (AP) ― Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won pledges Wednesday from France’s president to push harder for new sanctions against Iran to keep it from developing nuclear weapons ― but no sympathy for any possible Israeli military strike against Iran. In a visit to Paris, Netanyahu praised French pressure on Iran and called for “even tougher sanctions” than the ones currently in place. “The sanctions are taking a bite out of Iran’s economy ... unfortunately they have not stopped the I

ZAGREB (AFP) -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held up Croatia as a model of democracy in the Balkans during a visit Wednesday that comes just eight months before it joins the European Union.“Nations around the world today are making the difficult transition to democracy, and they can look to you, they can look to Croatia, as a model,” said Clinton after meeting the country‘s top officials.Clinton, who has come to Croatia on the third day of her five-nation Balkan tour, met first with t

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Barack Obama put politics aside and Republican challenger Mitt Romney tempered his criticism of the president for three days as superstorm Sandy battered the U.S. East Coast, but both will dive back into the presidential campaign with gusto on Thursday, with just five days left until Election Day. 　 Obama and Romney are locked in a race so tight that both campaigns are predicting victory. However, the polls show Obama with a slight edge in nine key “battleground” states that a

A Charlotte, N.C., woman who told police she thought her ex-boyfriend was hiding in the woods near her home was found dead with her new boyfriend soon after. Police searched the area Tuesday for Jacquece Forest but found nothing, The Charlotte Observer reported. At 3 a.m. he told employees at a hospital where he was taken for treatment that he had shot his girlfriend. The bodies of Jennifer Smith and Luc Eric Gonzalez, both 25, were found in her home. The 2-year-old son Smith had with Forest was

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) _ Saudi media reports say a blaze that erupted inside a tent at a wedding in the country's east has killed at least 23 women and children. The media cite civil defense officials as saying that celebratory gunfire, common at weddings, brought down a power line that touched off the fire late Tuesday in the Eastern Province. The official Saudi Press Agency said Wednesday that a special government committee will conduct an investigation into the incident. The probe will be

BEIJING (AFP) ― U.N.-Arab League peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said Wednesday he hoped China would play an active role in helping end the violence in Syria as he met Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi for talks in Beijing.Greeting Yang at the foreign ministry in front of reporters, Brahimi said he hoped “China can play an active role in solving the events in Syria” without elaborating further.China is generally suspicious of intervention in the internal affairs of other nations, with state media