BEIJING (AP) -- Thousands of people in an eastern Chinese city clashed with police while protesting the proposed expansion of a chemical factory that they say would spew pollution and damage public health, townspeople said Saturday.Pollution has become a major source of unrest in China, as members of the rising middle class become more outspoken against environmentally risky projects in their backyards.The Zhenhai district government in Zhejiang province's Ningbo city said in a statement Saturda

DAMASCUS (AFP) - Hopes for a halt to violence in Syria over a Muslim holiday lay in tatters Saturday as fighting raged, war planes targeted  Aleppo and some 146 people were reported killed on the first day of Eid al-Adha.The ceasefire conditionally agreed by President Bashar al-Assad's regime and the main rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) on Thursday had raised the prospect of the first real halt to the fighting after 19 months of conflict.But the first day Friday  of Eid -- one of the most sacred ho

TOKYO (AFP) -- A Japanese court dismissed a sexual harassment and unfair dismissal suit against fashion house Prada after management told a female worker to lose weight and keep in shape.Rina Bovrisse, 38, who also claimed a Prada human resources manager had branded her "ugly", said she would appeal the case and that the ruling by a female judge at Tokyo District Court was unacceptable.Bovrisse was demanding Prada pay her 58 million yen ($728,000) for emotional distress."This decision by the jud

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republican challenger Mitt Romney used a government report showing tepid economic growth to hammer President Barack Obama less than two weeks before Election Day, but the report also had some good news for the president.With the Commerce Department reporting a modest 2 percent growth rate unlikely to make a big dent in unemployment, Romney said Obama inherited a bad situation when he took office and "made the problem worse." He criticized Obama for failing to reduce borrowing

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (AP) -- Democratic candidate for Congress Michelle Lujan Grisham is part of the next generation of college-educated, middle-class Latino congressional candidates. Unlike many of their early predecessors, the new Latino candidates don't come from labor backgrounds, and some are seeking seats outside of predominantly Hispanic districts.They are the beneficiaries of civil rights gains, demographic changes and new congressional seats created by recent redistricting. They incl

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Obama administration officials defended their response to the September attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, amid new claims that the White House failed to send help quickly enough as militants overran the mission. The U.S. ambassador and three other Americans died in the hourslong battle.Fox News reported that security officers working for the CIA in Benghazi heard the attack on the consulate but were twice told to wait before rushing to the compound. Fox also rep

BEIJING (AP) -- A 23-year-old man has become the fifth Tibetan in a week to set himself on fire and die in a county in far western China to protest against Chinese rule, a rights group said Saturday.Tsewang Kyab set himself on fire Friday evening on the main street of Amuquhu town in Xiahe county, London-based Free Tibet said.Earlier Friday, a 24-year-old Tibetan farmer, Lhamo Tseten, died from self-immolation near a military base and a government office in Amuquhu, the group said. China's offic

SITTWE, Myanmar (AFP) -- Thousands of displaced people have surged towards already overcrowded camps in western Myanmar, the U.N. said Saturday, after vicious new communal violence that has left dozens dead.Seething resentment between Buddhists and Muslims erupted this week in a wave of fresh unrest in Rakhine state, prompting international warnings the unrest imperils the nation's nascent reform process.The official death toll stood at 67. Roughly half the dead were women, according to a state

WASHINGTON (AFP) -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is leaving the door open to continuing to serve under President Barack Obama should he win a second term that would begin in January.One of Obama's most popular cabinet members, Clinton has repeatedly insisted she would leave her office as America's top diplomat at the end of the Obama administration's first term.But she hinted at serving beyond then in an interview with The Wall Street Journal published Thursday."A lot of people have t

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- Hurricane Sandy is swirling off toward the U.S. East Coast, leaving the Caribbean to mourn the storm-related deaths of at least 43 people and clean up wrecked homes, felled power lines and fallen tree branches.While Jamaica, Cuba and the Bahamas took direct hits from the storm, the majority of deaths and most extensive damage was in impoverished Haiti, where it has rained almost non-stop since Tuesday.The death toll in Haiti stood at 29 late Friday, but officials wo

NEW YORK (AP) -- The nightmarish case of a nanny accused of stabbing to death two children in her care stunned the family's well-to-do New York City neighborhood and caused legions of parents to wonder how well they know who is watching their kids.The nanny, Yoselyn Ortega, lay in critical condition Friday with what police said were self-inflicted knife wounds, and investigators were unable to question her, in part because she was still breathing with the help of a tube.Her motive and mental sta

NEW YORK (AP) -- In Internet chats as breezy as they were bizarre, a New York City police officer accused of plotting to kidnap and eat as many as 100 women was once cautioned not to be wasteful when cooking a victim because "there is nearly 75 pounds of food there."But no one was ever actually harmed in Gilberto Valle's alleged plot, let alone eaten. And a defense attorney says the officer was merely engaging in harmless Internet fantasy.Where exactly the line is drawn between bizarre talk and

BEIJING (AP) -- China blocked access to The New York Times website Friday after the paper published a lengthy article claiming the family of Premier Wen Jiabao has amassed assets worth $2.7 billion through a web of investments.The report said most of Wen's family's wealth was accumulated after he rose to high office in 2002.Chinese censors also blocked the Times' Chinese-language site that carried a translated version of the story.Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters at a p

BEIRUT (AP) ― The embattled regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad promised Thursday to observe a U.N.-proposed truce during a four-day Muslim holiday, while rebels claimed major gains in the key battleground of Aleppo. But prospects of the cease-fire taking hold are dim, given Assad’s history of broken promises and the rebel momentum in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, where fighters said they advanced into several regime-held neighborhoods. The truce plan by U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahim