BEIRUT (AP) ― Syrian government forces attacked rebels with helicopter gunships in the heart of Damascus on Tuesday, escalating a campaign to crush their opponents as clashes spread to new areas, illustrating the rebels’ growing reach. Cracks of gunfire and explosions echoed inside the capital for a third day, including a firefight near the country’s parliament, in an unprecedented challenge to government rule in President Bashar Assad’s seat of power. Neighboring Iraq called on its citizens liv

WASHINGTON (AP) ― An iceberg twice the size of Manhattan tore off one of Greenland’s largest glaciers, illustrating another dramatic change to the warming island.For several years, scientists had been watching a long crack near the tip of the northerly Petermann Glacier. NASA satellites showed it had broken completely, freeing an iceberg measuring 46 square miles.A massive ice sheet covers about four-fifths of Greenland. Petermann Glacier is mostly on land, but a segment sticks out over water li

Dog owners in eight U.S. states are organizing a class-action suit after Chinese-made dog treats allegedly sickened or killed their pets, their complaint says.They are suing in federal court as U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials continue to refuse to release results of inspections of the Chinese factories that manufactured the foods blamed for at least 1,000 incidents of illnesses or deat

Researchers excavating the pre-Columbian city of Tikal in Guatemala say they’ve found the largest ancient dam built by the Maya of Central America.A multi-university archaeology team led by the University of Cincinnati said the dam, constructed from cut stone, rubble and earth, was more than 260 feet long, stood about 33 feet high and held about 20 million gallons of water in a man-made reservoir.It was one of several new landscaping and engineering feats uncovered at Tikal, a paramount urban ce

A felon was arrested in Oklahoma City for possession of a firearm after he told police he shot himself in the genitals, officials said.Tavares Donnell Colbert, 36, shot himself in the genitals Saturday near Interstate 35 while testing a gun he bought on the street in Kansas to see if it functioned properly before selling it, The Oklahoman reported.Colbert drove himself to the hospital and police w

HONG KONG (AFP) ― Boasting tens of millions of views and offering previously unheard of artistic freedoms, China’s “micro film” movement has made it possible for anyone with a smartphone to become a moviemaker.Until last week the Internet-based films ― made by everyone from first timers to established directors ― existed in a grey area in terms of censorship, with content screened by host Internet portals. But with the phenomenon seeing two years of rapid growth, Beijing has tightened scrutiny,

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) ― Considered a pioneer in the self-help genre aimed at helping readers become more productive in their lives, author Stephen R. Covey had an enormous impact on both the corporate world and the personal lives of millions. The well-known motivational speaker and author of the best-selling “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” which sold more than 20 million copies in 38 languages, died Monday at a hospital in Idaho Falls, Idaho, due to complications from a bicycle acci

KHARTOUM (AFP) ― Seven Sudanese military personnel died on Monday when their helicopter crashed in conflict-plagued Darfur because of a malfunction, the military said.The aircraft went down near El Fasher, the North Darfur state capital, “due to a technical fault while it was on an administrative mission,” Sawarmi Khaled Saad, the Sudanese army spokesman, was quoted by state news agency SUNA as saying.Seven military men including officers were “martyred” in the crash, it said, but two people sur

WASHINGTON (AFP) ― NASA’s Curiosity rover is on target to arrive on Mars on Aug. 6 for a two-year mission to find out whether microbial life once existed on the Red Planet, the U.S. space agency said Monday.Landing the car-sized rover is of course no easy task, NASA scientists say.“The Curiosity landing is the hardest NASA mission ever attempted in the history of robotic planetary exploration,” said the associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, John Grunsfeld.

ASO, Japan (AFP) ― Flood-battered southwestern Japan on Tuesday braced for a typhoon amid fears it could heap further misery on an area where at least 32 are dead or missing after record rainfall.Typhoon Khanun was lashing the Amami island chain, south of Kyushu where four days of torrential rain have sparked landslides and flooding, forcing hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.Khanun ― “jack fruit” in Thai ― packing winds of up to 108 kilometers per hour, was moving west-northwest a

A Florida man allegedly drove a vehicle into his girlfriend and her family, killing her mother and injuring her, her father and three siblings, police said.The Palm Beach County Sheriff‘s Office said Diego Francisco Pascual, 26, of Lake Worth had decided he wanted to “scare” and “hurt” his live-in girlfriend and her family after an argument with her, The Palm Beach Post reported.Pascual was being