CAIRO (AP) - Syria's wealthy, long cultivated by President Bashar Assad as a support for his regime, are seeing their businesses pummeled by the bloody civil war. Factories have been burned down or damaged in fighting. International sanctions restrict their finances. Some warn that their companies are in danger of going under, worsening the country's buckling economy.
NEW YORK (AP) - Dignitaries on Wednesday dedicated a new memorial state park overlooking the United Nations to former President Franklin Roosevelt.
Beautifully decorated tables set with fine china, hot tea, savories and desserts greeted the 180 guests who attended the ninth annual Circle of Hope Afternoon Tea.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - It's difficult to argue with the goals of the World Food Prize Foundation - to recognize people who have helped improve the quality and availability of food to reduce world hunger.
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay (AP) - Uruguay's Senate voted to legalize first-trimester abortions for all women Wednesday in a groundbreaking measure that came with so many strings attached it left neither side in the bitter debate completely satisfied.
NEW YORK (AP) - A Bangladeshi man who came to the United States to wage jihad was arrested in an elaborate FBI sting on Wednesday after attempting to blow up a fake car bomb outside the Federal Reserve building in Manhattan, authorities said.
LARISSA, Greece (AP) - The world's oldest profession is giving a whole new meaning to love of the game.
DENVER (AP) - Denver police don't have any suspects as they investigate the slayings of five people whose bodies were found at a neighborhood bar after a fire broke out early Wednesday. Investigators believe they were killed before the fire and the blaze was set to cover up the slayings.
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Entertainer Flavor Flav is jailed in Las Vegas on felony assault and misdemeanor domestic battery charges after police say he argued with his fiancee and threatened to attack her teenage son with a knife.
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (AP) - A wildfire in the rugged hills overlooking Santa Barbara threatened about 100 homes Wednesday as it chewed through dense chaparral, authorities said.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The number of violent crimes unexpectedly rose by 18 percent in the United States last year, the government said Wednesday, the first time that total has risen in nearly 20 years. Property crimes went up by 11 percent, their first increase in a decade.
JERUSALEM (AP) - The Israeli military meticulously calculated the number of calories Gaza's residents would need to consume to avoid malnutrition during a sweeping blockade imposed on the Palestinian territory between 2007 and mid-2010, according to a document the Defense Ministry released under a court order and that was made public Wednesday.
BRUSSELS (AP) - Winemaker Cherie Spriggs had watched the bad weather over southern England's vineyards all season long. It just wasn't good enough for Nyetimber, her award-winning sparkling wine.
HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. (AP) - Fresh off an intensely combative debate, President Barack Obama, Republican Mitt Romney and their running mates are taking their tuned-up fight to the precious few battleground states where the election is up for grabs with just 20 days to go.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Crews worked into the night trying to secure an Oracle catamaran that capsized in San Francisco Bay Tuesday afternoon and drifted out to sea.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - The criticism of Dr. Drew Pinsky spread on the Internet almost as quickly as news of Mindy McCready's death.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Google's stock price topped $800 for the first time Tuesday amid renewed confidence in the company's ability to reap steadily higher profits from its dominance of Internet search and prominence in the increasingly important mobile device market.
Two major sponsors, Oakley and Nike, distanced themselves from Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius on Monday after the South African sports star was charged with murder in the shooting death of his girlfriend.
Somebody hacked Burger King's Twitter account on Monday, posting obscene messages and changing its profile picture to a McDonald's logo.
Waiting in line for the bus, a Pennsylvania kindergartener tells her pals she's going to shoot them with a Hello Kitty toy that makes soap bubbles. In Maryland, a 6-year-old boy pretends his fingers are a gun during a playground game of cops and robbers. In Massachusetts, a 5-year-old boy attending an after-school program makes a gun out of Legos and points it at other students while "simulating the sound of gunfire," as one school official put it.
PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) - Oscar Pistorius told a packed courtroom Tuesday that he shot his girlfriend to death by mistake, thinking she was a robber. The prosecutor called it premeditated murder.
LOS ANGELES (AP) - The CIA thrillers "Argo" and "Zero Dark Thirty" have won top screenplay honors from the Writers Guild of America.