AMMAN (AP) ― Jordanian authorities have arrested 11 suspected al-Qaida-linked militants for allegedly planning to attack shopping malls and Western diplomatic missions in the country, the government said Sunday. The plot is the first to be unveiled since a triple hotel bombing in Amman almost seven years ago, which killed 60 people. Al-Qaida claimed responsibility for the attack, citing its rejection of Jordan’s alliance with the United States and its 1994 peace treaty with Israel. Jordanian off

DAMASCUS (AFP) ― Peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi on Sunday met President Bashar al-Assad and later appealed to both sides in Syria’s conflict to cease fire for a Muslim holiday this week, even as a deadly blast rocked the country’s capital.Thousands of people, meanwhile, took part in a demonstration against the Syrian regime at the Beirut funeral of a top Lebanese police intelligence chief killed in a car bombing which Lebanon’s opposition has blamed on Damascus.In Syria’s capital, a bomb exploded o

JERUSALEM (AFP) ― Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that he was unaware of any talks between the United States and Iran over the Islamic republic’s nuclear program.“Israel doesn’t know about these contacts and I can’t confirm that they’ve actually taken place,” Netanyahu said in a statement.“I can say that Iran used the talks and negotiations with the Five Powers to drag its feet and to gain time to advance its nuclear weapons program,” he added.Deputy premier and senior

HAVANA (AFP) ― Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro has reappeared in public, meeting at a Havana hotel with a Venezuelan politician ― quashing swirling rumors that the former leader was on his death bed.Castro ― who led Communist Cuba for almost five decades before illness sidelined him ― “is very well,” Venezuela’s former vice president Elias Jaua said Sunday after meeting the bearded revolutionary icon.The 86-year-old Castro “is very well, very lucid,” Jaua, a loyal supporter of leftist Ve

FREEDOM, Pennsylvania (AP) -- Police say a costumed 9-year-old girl was accidentally shot outside a western Pennsylvania home during a Halloween party by a relative who thought she was a skunk.New Sewickley Township police say the girl was over a hillside and wearing a black costume and a black hat with a white tassel. Chief Ronald Leindecker says a male relative mistook her for a skunk and fired a shotgun, hitting her in the shoulder Saturday night.Leindecker tells the Beaver County Times that

News reports said the Iraq National Youth Orchestra, founded by a British broadcaster in 2008 with Scottish conductor Paul MacAlindin and young Iraqi pianist Zuhal Sultan, recently sought young member musicians through online auditions including on YouTube. Zultan was also one of them. Born and raised in Iraq, she later moved to the U.K. in 2003 due to the Iraq War and had no piano teacher. From then on, she had to learn music by herself.The competition of the audition intensifies every year, ne

Around 100 protesters and 11 policemen were hurt on Sunday as Kuwaiti riot police used tear gas and rubber bullets in clashes with tens of thousands of demonstrators, witnesses and officials said."The number of wounded protesters in hospital has exceeded 100 after riot police attacked them," director of the Kuwait Society for Human Rights Mohammad al-Humaidi said on his Twitter account.The interior ministry said in a statement that 11 policemen were wounded after protesters threw rocks on them,

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's right-leaning party on Sunday retained power in his home region of Galicia despite recession and biting austerity measures, official results showed.The result means Rajoy has avoided a political humiliation in a traditional Popular Party stronghold that would have undermined his standing just as he tries to convince world markets that he can fix Spain's finances and economy.But a second regional election in the Basque Country added to the Spanish leader's c

TRIPOLI (AP) ― On the anniversary of the capture and killing of Moammar Gadhafi, Libya is still grappling with the legacy of his four decades of rule as the interim government and the dictator’s former spokesman engaged in a war of words amid the ongoing chaos. The Libyan government said Saturday that its forces had detained Gadhafi’s high profile spokesman Moussa Ibrahim, but an online recording from a man purporting to be Ibrahim denied that claim and said he wasn’t even in the country. The co

JERUSALEM (AP) ― Israeli troops on Saturday commandeered a Gaza-bound ship that tried to break through Israel’s blockade of the Hamas-ruled seaside strip, the military said. European lawmakers and other pro-Palestinian activists aboard did not resist, and the Finnish-flagged vessel was diverted to an Israeli port.The trip by the ship, Estelle, marked the latest challenge to the air, land and sea embargo of Gaza that Israel imposed after the Islamic militant Hamas group seized the territory in 20

ON BOARD THE USS GEORGE WASHINGTON (AP) ― A U.S. aircraft carrier group cruised through the disputed South China Sea on Saturday in a show of American power in waters that are fast becoming a focal point of Washington’s strategic rivalry with Beijing. Vietnamese security and government officials were flown onto the nuclear-powered USS George Washington ship, underlining the burgeoning military relationship between the former enemies. A small number of journalists were also invited to witness the