Posted: 11:11 AM Israeli leaders have discussed with visiting American envoys how to manage a Syrian government collapse, an Israeli official said Monday.

Posted: 11:09 AM Jordan's king has announced that security along the country's northern frontier has been tightened, but Syrian refugees fleeing violence will still be allowed to enter, officials said Monday.

Updated: 8:19 AM Actor Patrick Stewart, best known as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in "Star Trek: The Next Generation," is set to take a turn on the torch relay Monday.

Posted: 6:47 AM The official mascots of London's Olympic and Paralympic Games have been called strange and frightening, but organizers are hoping to tack on a more positive title: merchandising magic.

Updated: 5:43 AM An onslaught of bombings and shootings killed 82 people across Iraq on Monday, officials said, in the nation's deadliest day so far this year.

Posted: 11:08 AM The Knoxville Police Dept. identified the driver injured in a single-car wreck on I-40 Thursday night as Jamie Cheyenne Swaggerty.

Posted: 10:55 AM Syrian troops and tanks on Friday drove rebels from a Damascus neighborhood where some of the heaviest of this week's fighting in the capital left cars gutted and fighters' bodies in the streets.

Posted: 10:53 AM Russia's ambassador to France said Friday that he believes Syria's president is ready to step down "in a civilized way." But the Syrian government immediately denied it.

Posted: 10:52 AM Israeli and American officials have blamed the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah for the bombing, and authorities in several other countries were trying to confirm the identity of the suicide bomber.

Posted: 10:50 AM An Israeli hospital says a man who set himself on fire a week ago to protest the country's high cost of living has died of his wounds.

Posted: 10:49 AM Finance ministers from the 17 countries that use the euro unanimously approved Friday the terms for a bailout loan for Spanish banks of up to €100 billion ($122.9 billion).

Posted: 10:47 AM Artist Ai Weiwei believes a tax evasion case was meant to intimidate him, but losing his challenge to the $2.4 million fine Friday did not silence his criticism of China's government.

Posted: 10:45 AM On Friday, finance ministers from the 17 countries that use the euro approved the terms of the bailout of Spain's troubled banking sector.

Posted: 10:44 AM Royal Marine Martyn Williams is poised to rappel from a helicopter carrying the Olympic torch on Friday night, dropping down within the stone walls of the Tower of London.

Posted: 10:26 AM The trial of feminist punk rockers who chanted a "punk prayer" against President Vladimir Putin from a pulpit inside Russia's largest cathedral started in Moscow on Friday

Posted: 10:23 AM Almost as soon as North Korea announced this week that its army chief had been dismissed due to "illness," the aggressive South Korean media went into hyperdrive.

Posted: 7:45 AM For years it seemed hopeless. Now the hunt for a cure for AIDS is back on.

Posted: 1:39 PM Valiulla Yakupov, the deputy to the Muslim province's chief mufti, was gunned down Thursday as he left his house in Tatarstan's regional capital of Kazan, Russia's Investigative Committee said.

Posted: 11:11 AM Syrian forces struck back against rebels Thursday with attack helicopters and shelling in Damascus, one day after an audacious rebel attack in the capital killed three leaders of the regime

Posted: 11:09 AM A lanky, long-haired man wearing a baseball cap and plaid shorts with a fake Michigan driver's license carried out a deadly suicide attack on a bus full of Israeli vacationers, Bulgarian officials said Thursday.

Posted: 11:07 AM The long, dusty walks from hungry homes to far-away refugee camps are again claiming lives in Somalia one year after an estimated 100,000 people died in the country's worst famine in generations.

Posted: 11:05 AM A Foreign Ministry statement Thursday says Switzerland firmly opposes the death penalty "in any and all circumstances" anywhere on the planet.

Posted: 11:03 AM Anyone who doubts that accolade for the playwright dead almost 400 years might want to go to the new "Shakespeare: Staging the World" exhibition at the British Museum.

Posted: 11:01 AM China's population of Internet users, already the world's biggest, has risen to 538 million, driven by rapid growth in wireless Web surfing, an industry group said Thursday.

Posted: 11:00 AM Myanmar state television broadcast a memorial ceremony for opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's revered independence hero father for the first time in decades Thursday