AZAZ, Syria (AP) ― Residents of this north Syrian border town like to snap photos of their children atop the tank parked downtown, one of more than a dozen captured or destroyed by rebels in the battles last month that “liberated” the area from President Bashar Assad’s army.Across the street in air-conditioned offices once occupied by Assad’s Baath party, a new political order is emerging. Local rebels have formed committees to fix power lines, fire up bakeries and staff the nearby border crossi

WASHINGTON (AP) ― Mitt Romney’s pick of Rep. Paul Ryan for the Republican presidential ticket brings clarity to the stark election-year choice for voters ― the competing Democratic and Republican visions about the size and role of the federal government in Americans’ lives.Ryan is synonymous with his revolutionary budget that slashes spending for safety-net programs for the poor, remakes the Medicare health care program for the elderly, and cuts personal and corporate taxes while pushing the def

A mama bear and her three cubs are suspected of breaking into a cabin in northern Norway and knocking back more than 100 cans of beer, officials said.“They had a hell of a party in there,” cabin owner Even Borthen Nilsen told NRK. “The cabin has the stench of a right old piss up, trash and bears.”The bear family is believed to have ripped a wall off of the cabin to gain entry, The Local.no reported.“The entire cabin was destroyed,” Nilsen told the local Finnmarken.no daily.“The beds and all kitc

Grieving women wailed over the bodies of dead relatives as men armed with shovels dug frantically for missing loved ones Sunday, after twin earthquakes killed at least 250 people in northwestern Iran.AFP journalists in the disaster zone, northeast of the city of Tabriz, saw rescuers working desperately in the rubble of shattered villages where the mud-brick and concrete dwellings had collapsed in

Mitt Romney's choice of U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate was met Saturday with the predictable partisan split. Democrats said the choice of the Wisconsin architect of a failed House budget bill is a sign the Republicans are catering to the far right. Republicans, on the other hand, hailed Ryan as a courageous and fiscally responsible politician.Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and

Even before Wisconsin sent Paul Ryan to Congress, he was meticulously carving a path that seemed to point only upward.As a young staffer in Congress, he impressed Republican lawmakers with his hustle and intellectual curiosity. He blended quickly with an elite crop of conservative thinkers. By his 30s, he was a congressman on his way to becoming a Republican name brand with his bold budget proposa

The Obama administration set new, largely symbolic, sanctions Friday on Syria's state-run oil company and the Hezbollah militant group, moves designed to underscore Iran's key role in propping up the Syrian regime over the span of its civil war.State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said the penalties against energy firm Sytrol come after it delivered $36 million worth of gasoline to Iran in

A new study revealed climate change history for the last 1.5 million years by reconstructing the deep ocean temperatures and changes in ice volume.The study by researchers in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Earth Science shows what happened during the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, called MPT, between 1.25 million and 600,000 years ago. Before the MPT, glacial periods of extreme cold and warmer interglacials happened with intervals of about 41,000 years. However, after MPT, the cycle wa

The Obama administration is readying new sanctions on Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime and its allies as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton heads to Turkey for weekend talks with top Turkish officials and Syrian opposition activists.Senior U.S. officials traveling with Clinton as she wraps up a nine-nation Africa tour in Ghana and Benin before flying to Turkey on Friday said the