Israel says Iran 'drifting' toward nuke goal line

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Friday the world must quickly stop Iran from reaching the point where even a "surgical" military strike could not block it from obtaining nuclear weapons. Amid fears that Israel is nearing a decision to attack Iran's nuclear program, Barak said tougher international sanctions are needed against Tehran's oil and banks so that "we all will know early enough whether the Iranians are ready to give up their nuclear weapons program." Iran insists its atomic program is aimed only at producing energy and research, but it has refused to consider giving up its ability to enrich uranium. The United Nations has...

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Suicide bomber kills 31 in Baghdad attack

A suicide bomber detonated his explosive-filled taxi near a Shi'ite funeral procession in Baghdad on Friday, killing 31 people and bringing the death toll from violence since an Iraqi political crisis erupted in December to more than 400. The bomber exploded his vehicle near the group of mourners passing by a small market street in the mainly Shi'ite Zaafaraniya neighborhood in the south of the Iraqi capital, police officials and hospitals said. The Shi'ite-led government often blames Sunni Islamist insurgents for attacks targeting Shi'ites, saying they are trying to stoke the kind of sectarian slaughter which killed tens of thousands of Iraqis...

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Utah girl credited with outing school bombing plot

A 16-year-old Utah student who shared a suspicious text message with a school administrator foiled plans by two schoolmates who apparently were plotting to set off a bomb during a school assembly and run away in a stolen airplane, police said. Roy High School sophomore Bailey Gerhardt told The Salt Lake Tribune (http://bit.ly/wNs3xE ) she received the text from a friend, one of the suspects, and told one of the administrators, which led to the arrest of the two teens. Roy is about 30 miles north of Salt Lake City. Gerhardt said Thursday the text from the 16-year-old boy asked: "If I told you to stay home on a certain day, would you?" That...

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Auschwitz survivor dies in same town on anniversay

Kazimierz Smolen, a 91-year-old Auschwitz survivor who after World War II directed the memorial site, has died in the same town on the 67th anniversary of the camp's liberation. A spokesman for Auschwitz, Pawel Sawicki, said Smolen died Friday in a hospital in Oswiecim, the southern Polish town where Nazi Germany operated Auschwitz-Birkenau. Sawicki said that Smolen's death was announced to Holocaust survivors who were gathering at the site to mark the anniversary of the camp's liberation. They fell silent for a minute in his honor. Smolen was imprisoned in Auschwitz in April 1941. He attributed his survival to good health and extreme luck. From...

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Obama to target rising college tuition costs

President Barack Obama will announce a plan to shift some federal dollars away from colleges and universities that don't control tuition costs and new competitions in higher education to encourage efficiency as part of an effort to contain soaring college costs. Obama will spell out his plans Friday at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The speech will cap a three-day post-State of the Union trip by the president to promote different components of his economic agenda in politically important states. On Tuesday night during his State of the Union address, Obama put colleges and universities on notice to control tuition costs or face losing...

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Women, children killed in violence-torn Syria city

Fresh violence erupted Friday in the besieged Syrian city of Homs, a day after armed forces loyal to President Bashar Assad barraged residential buildings with mortars and machine-gun fire, killing at least 30 people including a family of women and children, activists said Friday. The violence began Thursday, but important details were only emerging a day later. Video posted online by activists showed the bodies of five small children, five women of varying ages and a man, all bloodied and piled on beds in what appeared to be an apartment after a building was hit in the Karm el-Zaytoun neighborhood of the city. A narrator said an entire family...

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Jennifer Lopez & Marc Anthony Talk Failed Marriage in New Reality Show

J ennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony are going to let cameras capture their candid conversations about their marriage falling apart during the first episode of their new show, "¡Q'Viva The Chosen!" airing on Jan. 28 on Univision and later on an English-language version of the program on Fox. During a preview of the first episode at the Soho House in West Hollywood, Lopez, Anthony and show director Jaime King are seen traveling to countries such as Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and Puerto Rico in search of talent for their new reality show. In some of the segments, the former power couple openly discuss their relationship. Anthony says that they're...

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Celebrity Rumor Mill

Jennifer Lopez & Marc Anthony Talk Failed Marriage in New Reality Show Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony are going to let cameras capture their candid conversations about their marriage falling apart during the first episode of their new show, "¡Q'Viva The Chosen!" airing on Jan. 28 on Univision and later on an English-language version of the program on Fox. www.billboard.com/news/jennifer-lopez-marc-anthony-talk-failed-1005946352.story Jennifer Lopez And Marc Anthony: The New Sonny And Cher? Though things were initially tense just after Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony announced their divorce, their new reality television show that scouts talent...

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Report: Heidi Klum to Divorce Seal

Is it over between Heidi Klum and Seal? The supermodel and Project Runway host is set to file for divorce from her husband of six and a half years next week, TMZ reports. According to the site, Klum will cite "irreconcilable differences." The couple, who are known for their vow renewal ceremonies every year, have four children: sons Henry, 6, and Johan, 5, and daughters Leni, 7, and Lou, 2. Leni, whom Seal adopted in 2009, is Klum's daughter with Flavio Briatore. Klum, 38, and Seal, 48, met in 2003 while she was pregnant with Leni. The Grammy winner proposed on a glacier in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada, in December 2004, and they wed...

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Kenya awaits ICC decision on prosecutions for 6

Kenyans nervously await the decision by the International Criminal Court on whether the court will prosecute six influential Kenyans accused of helping to orchestrate violence following disputed elections in 2007. The upcoming decision dominated the front pages of Kenya's Sunday papers. Some say the case could set a precedent for how the international community deals with electoral violence in countries whose judicial systems are unable to cope. The court is due to announce its decision on whether to prosecute the six on Monday. The suspects include some who want to run for the presidency. Government officials have issued conflicting statements on whether the men will remain eligible to run if prosecuted. More than 1,000 people were killed in postelection violence after President Mwai...

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Chad holds first local elections

Voters in Chad went to the polls on Sunday for the first local elections in the central African country's history, after the ballot had been rescheduled several times. Mayors were previously appointed directly by the central government. Around one million people were eligible to cast their ballots, and voting appeared to be calm after polling booths opened at 7:30 am (0830 GMT). President Idriss Deby Itno voted in district No. 1 Djamabal Ngat, where some 50 voters were awaiting their turn. "I would like to express my satisfaction at seeing the first local elections held in our country," he said, urging citizens to "come out massively now...

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Palestinians urge Israel to free jailed lawmakers

The Palestinians urged Israel to free dozens of Palestinian lawmakers during a new round of exploratory talks held in Amman, a Palestinian official said on Sunday. Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met on Saturday for a fourth round of discussions sponsored by Jordan and the peacemaking Quartet, which are intended to find a way to bring both sides back to direct negotiations. But the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the meeting produced nothing new. He said the Palestinians used it to demand the release of imprisoned Palestinian officials, including Palestinian parliamentary speaker Aziz Dweik, a Hamas member who was arrested...

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Official: possibility of unregistered passengers

Unregistered passengers might have been aboard the stricken cruise liner that capsized off this Tuscan island, a top rescue official said Sunday, raising the possibility that the number of missing might be higher than the 20 previously announced. Rescuers, meanwhile, resumed searching the above-water section of the Costa Concordia but choppy seas kept divers from exploring the submerged part, where officials have said there could be bodies. "There could have been X persons who we don't know about who were inside, who were clandestine" passengers aboard the ship, Franco Gabrielli, the national civil protection official in charge of the rescue...

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Official: possibility of unregistered passengers

Unregistered passengers might have been aboard the stricken cruise liner that capsized off this Tuscan island, a top rescue official said Sunday, raising the possibility that the number of missing might be higher than the 20 previously announced. Rescuers, meanwhile, resumed searching the above-water section of the Costa Concordia but choppy seas kept divers from exploring the submerged part, where officials have said there could be bodies. "There could have been X persons who we don't know about who were inside, who were clandestine" passengers aboard the ship, Franco Gabrielli, the national civil protection official in charge of the rescue...

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In bin Laden town, father mourns another militant

Khushal Khan's wife got a call on her cell phone. "Your son has been martyred," the voice said at the other end of the line. The man then hung up. The end for Khan's youngest son, Aslam Awan, came when a drone piloted remotely from the United States fired a missile at a house along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. Awan was among four people killed, U.S. officials said this week, describing Awan as an "external operations planner" for al-Qaida. British authorities say he was a member of a militant cell in northern England who had fought in Afghanistan. The Jan. 10 strike in the militant stronghold of North Waziristan that killed Awan was...

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U.S. has made no decision on Taliban prisoner transfer

The United States has not decided whether or not to satisfy a request from the Taliban to release five prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan said on Sunday. "We haven't made any decisions... We have to meet the requirements of our law," Marc Grossman told reporters on a visit to Kabul, after two days of talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and senior advisors. The Taliban this month announced that they would open a political office in Qatar as a prelude to holding peace talks with the United States and its alli...

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Arab committee wants extended Syria mission: source

An Arab League committee on Syria will ask Arab foreign ministers on Sunday to extend a peace mission in the country by one month, an Arab government source said. Hundreds of Syrians have been killed since the monitoring mission began its work in late December and political opponents of President Bashar al-Assad are demanding the League refer Syria to the United Nations Security Council. "The committee will recommend an expansion of the monitoring mission for an extra month," said the source, who was attending the committee's meeting in Cairo and asked not to be named. The foreign ministers are due to meet later on Sunday to debate the findings...

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Islamist insurgents kill over 178 in Nigeria's Kano

Gun and bomb attacks by Islamist insurgents in the northern Nigerian city of Kano last week killed at least 178 people, a hospital doctor said on Sunday, underscoring the daunting challenge President Goodluck Jonathan now faces to prevent his country sliding further into chaos. A coordinated series of bomb blasts and shooting sprees mostly targeting police stations on Friday sent panicked residents of Nigeria's second biggest city of more than 10 million people running for cover. The scale of the carnage makes this by far the deadliest strike claimed by Boko Haram, a shadowy Islamist sect that started out as a clerical movement opposed to western...

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Spokesman: Paterno in serious condition

Joe Paterno's doctors said that the former Penn State coach's condition had become "serious," following complications from lung cancer in recent days. The winningest major college football coach, Paterno was diagnosed shortly after Penn State's Board of Trustees ousted him Nov. 9 in the aftermath of the child sex abuse charges against former assistant Jerry Sandusky. While undergoing treatment, his health problems worsened when he broke his pelvis — the same injury he sustained during preseason practice last year. "Over the last few days Joe Paterno has experienced further health complications," family spokesman Dan McGinn said in a brief statement...

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Libya could fall into "bottomless pit": NTC chief

Mustafa Abdel Jalil, the head of Libya's ruling National Transitional Council (NTC), warned on Sunday the country could be heading towards a "bottomless pit" after protesters stormed a government office in Benghazi when he was inside. A crowd demanding the resignation of the Libyan government smashed windows and forced their way into the NTC's local headquarters late on Saturday, in the most serious show of anger at the new authorities since Muammar Gaddafi was ousted. The NTC has the support of the Western powers who helped force out Gaddafi in a nine-month conflict, but it is unelected, has been slow to restore basic public services, and...

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Nigerian sect kills over 100 in deadliest strike yet

More than 100 people were killed in bomb attacks and gunbattles in the Nigerian city Kano late on Friday, a local government security source said, in the deadliest strike claimed by Islamist sect Boko Haram to date. "Definitely more than 100 have been killed," the senior source, who could not be named, told Reuters. "There were bombs and then gunmen were attacking police and police came back with attacks." Hospital staff said there were still bodies arriving at morgues in Kano. Boko Haram claimed responsibility on Saturday for the wave of strikes. The sect has killed hundreds in the north of Africa's most populous nation in the last year. The...

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Obama's State of the Union: Jobs, re-election time

Vilified by the Republicans who want his job, President Barack Obama will stand before the nation Tuesday night determined to frame the election-year debate on his terms, promising his State of the Union address will outline a lasting economic recovery that will "work for everyone, not just a wealthy few." As his most powerful chance to make a case for a second term, the prime-time speech carries enormous political stakes for the Democratic incumbent who presides over a country divided about his performance and pessimistic about the nation's direction. He will try to offer a stark contrast with his opponents by offering a vision of fairness...

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Primary day at hand, SC voters have their say

Primary day at hand, fast-climbing Newt Gingrich told South Carolinians on Saturday that he was "the only practical conservative vote" able to stop front-runner Mitt Romney in the GOP presidential race. Romney acknowledged the first-in-the-South contest "could be real close" and prepared for an extended fight by agreeing to two more debates in Florida, next on the election calendar. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum braced for a setback and looked ahead to the Jan. 31 contest after getting the most votes in Iowa and besting Gingrich in New Hampshire. Texas Rep. Ron Paul made plans to focus on states where his libertarian, Internet-driven...

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Romney, Gingrich battle in South Carolina race

Presidential rivals Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich battled to win last-minute supporters on Saturday in a South Carolina primary that could reshape the Republican nominating contest. Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, must win the conservative southern state to secure his front-runner status in the nominating race to challenge Democratic President Barack Obama in November. Gingrich's recent rise in popularity threatens Romney's momentum. A victory by the former speaker of the House of Representatives could prolong the state-by-state Republican battle and give Obama's re-election campaign a boost as his Republican would-be opponents...

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