A black bear stole candy from a store in the Colorado resort town of Estes Park in the U.S., according to news reports.The bear reportedly entered the front door, grabbed some candy, took it outside and ate it. It later returned for more.It visited the shop multiple times within 15 minutes on a day in July, and finally went away when alarmed by a passing car.Store owner Jo Adams said the bear didn‘t break anything but left some dirt on the counter.She said that the bear managed to pop open the d

The Syrian army launched an all-out assault on Aleppo's southwestern district of Salaheddin on Wednesday, and fierce fighting also broke out elsewhere in the northern city.At least 37 people -- 17 civilians, 10 rebels and 10 soldiers -- were killed in the northern city, out of a total of at least 162 people killed across the country, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.Observatory directo

NEW YORK (AP) ― Marvin Hamlisch was blessed with perfect pitch and an infallible ear. “I heard sounds that other children didn’t hear,” he wrote in his autobiography.He turned that skill into writing and arranging compulsively memorable songs that the world was unable to stop humming ― from the mournful “The Way We Were” to the jaunty theme from “The Sting.”Prolific and seeming without boundaries, Hamlisch, who died at 68 after a short illness, composed music for film heroes from James Bond and

PRETORIA (AFP) ― U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday called on South Africa, the continent’s leading democracy, to play a more influential role in African and global issues.“We are looking for ways to enhance and deepen our partnership. South Africa has so much to offer to the rest of the world,” Clinton said as she met with Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane.“As crises and opportunities arise, there are tough issues we have to tackle together, from nuclear proliferation to c

LAGOS (AFP) ― Gunmen stormed an evangelical church in central Nigeria, cut the electricity and opened fire once the building was plunged into darkness, killing 19 people including the pastor, officials said Tuesday. Also in a fresh attack in the city of Okene, two soldiers were shot dead Tuesday by gunmen who fired on their patrol van, Kogi state police spokesman told AFP.“Two soldiers were shot dead today in an attack on their patrol van. We suspect that it was the handiwork of the hoodlums who

MANILA (AFP) ― More than 800,000 people in and around the Philippine capital battled deadly floods Wednesday as more rain fell, with some slum dwellers stuck on shanty roofs and others wading through waist-deep water.Monsoon rains that have pounded Manila for more than a week eased slightly overnight, but meteorologists reported that 80 percent of the megacity was under water and the bad weather would likely persist throughout the day. “We can’t say the worst is over yet,” Gine Nievares, a hydro

Syria's prime minister completed his defection by crossing into Jordan at dawn Wednesday after two days of hiding inside his homeland, according to Jordanian officials and a spokesman for the rebel Free Syrian Army.They described an operation that involved deceiving the news media into reporting that Prime Minister Riad Hijab had already made it to Jordan so that the Syrians would stop looking for

Police found charred human remains in a supermarket parking lot on Tuesday in the U.K., according to news reports. The remains reportedly belonged to a homeless person who slept in the car park. Sources said a CCTV caught three gangsters pouring petrol onto the sleeping person and set him or her alight. The charred remains were so badly burnt that authorities are finding it difficult to find out the sex or age, the police said. Many internet users said they were shocked by the news. “How terribl

Syrian President Bashar Assad made his first appearance on state TV in nearly three weeks Tuesday in a show of solidarity with a senior Iranian envoy, even as the U.S. urged stepped up international planning for the regime's collapse.The visit to Damascus by the highest-ranking Iranian official since the uprising began coincided with a warning by an increasingly agitated Tehran that it holds the U

DAMASCUS (AFP) ― Syria’s prime minister joined the rebels and accused President Bashar al-Assad of carrying out “genocide” against his own people, prompting Washington to say the regime was “crumbling.”The defection came as government forces were poised to launch an assault on rebels in Aleppo, the commercial capital, and as a monitoring group said at least 137 people were killed in violence across the country.Riad Hijab, a leading Sunni Muslim in Assad’s minority Alawite-dominated regime, becam