(AP) - Far-reaching legislation that grants a chance at citizenship to millions of immigrants living illegally in the United States cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee on a solid bipartisan vote Tuesday night after supporters somberly sidestepped a controversy over the rights of gay spouses.
The Republican National Committee chairman and a leading conservative, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, urged caution Monday for Republican critics calling for President Barack Obama's impeachment, but would not rule out impeachment altogether as new details emerged about the White House's role in the developing scandal at the Internal Revenue Service....
(ABC NEWS) - A mammoth tornado carved a trail of destruction through the Oklahoma City metropolitan area, killing at least 37 people and ripping apart two elementary schools today, local authorities said....
Plans to allow same-sex marriage in Britain survived a Conservative backlash tonight after a fraught debate in the House of Commons....
(Reuters) - Suspected Sunni Muslimmilitants killed four state-backed Sunni fighters in Iraqon Saturday, security sources said, apparently viewing them as collaborators with the Shi'ite-led government of a nation plagued by sectarian hatred.Sunni-Shi'ite tensions in Iraq have been amplified by the conflict between mostly Sunni rebels and President Bashar al-Assad's Alawite-dominated forces in neighboring Syria.The four "Sahwa" militia fighters were killed in an attack on their headquarters on the outskirts of Garma, 9 km (six miles) east of Falluja, a city in the western province of Anbar.Gunmen also ambushed and kidnapped 10 Sunni policemen near Ramadi, the capital of Anbar, a Sunni heartland bordering Syria.There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, but Sunni militant groups have been behind previous violence targeting security forces in a campaign to destabilize the Baghdad government, which they reject as illegitimate.When Sunni-Shi'ite bloodshed was at its height in 2006-07, Anbar was in the grip of al Qaeda's local affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq, which has regained strength in recent months.Sahwa or "Awakening" fighters are Sunni tribesmen who helped U.S. troops subdue al Qaeda in 2006. They are now on the government payroll and are often targeted by Sunni militants.In other violence, tribesmen clashed with security forces and set four of their vehicles ablaze after a woman and three of her young children were killed in an army raid north of Ramadi.A car bomb parked near an entrance to the town of Latifiya, south of Baghdad, killed five people, police said.Minority Sunnis, embittered by Shi'ite dominance since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein by U.S.-led forces in 2003, have been staging street protests against Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki since December. A bloody government raid on a Sunni protest camp in Hawija last month ignited a surge of violence.Monthly death tolls are well below those of 2006-07, when they sometimes topped 3,000, but more than 700 were killed in April by a U.N. count, the highest figure in almost five years.At least 72 people died in attacks on Friday, 43 of them in two bombings outside a Sunni mosque in the city of Baquba.
(AP) — Iran's state radio says authorities have executed two men convicted of spying for Israel's Mossad and the American CIA spy agency....
North Korea has fired three short-range missiles from its east coast, according to the South's defence ministry....
France's constitutional council has rejected a challenge by conservative lawmakers to the country's new gay marriage law, saying the law was constitutional....
The jackpot for the Powerball lottery has soared to a record $600 million and the top prize may swell to nearly $1 billion if no one draws the winning numbers this weekend, a lottery official said on Friday....
(Reuters) - France spelled out on Friday that it would oppose a peace conference for Syria if Bashar al-Assad's regional ally Iran is invited, clouding the prospect for a U.S.-Russian initiative to end the two-year-old war...
