LA Times News

LA Times News

Syria car bombing kills more than 25 in Aleppo

Posted: 10 Sep 2012 12:00 AM PDT

A Syrian official says the attack in Aleppo may have involved two car bombs. The bombing appeared to have taken place in a government-held district.

ANTAKYA, Turkey — More than two dozen people were killed and scores injured late Sunday when at least one car bomb exploded in a residential district of the embattled northern Syrian city of Aleppo, according to state television and other broadcast reports in Syria.

Pakistan weary of hosting millions of Afghan refugees

Posted: 10 Sep 2012 12:00 AM PDT

Afghans who fled the Soviet invasion and, later, Taliban rule will lose their refugee status in Pakistan at year's end, making them vulnerable to deportation.

KHAZANA, Pakistan — Awal Gul knows that home is just a two-hour drive over the jagged ridgeline that separates Pakistan from Afghanistan. But he hasn't been there in more than 30 years, since Soviet tanks rolled into Kabul.

Mexico opposition leader quits leftist parties

Posted: 10 Sep 2012 12:00 AM PDT

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who came in second in the presidential election, says he is launching a campaign of peaceful resistance to the incoming government.

MEXICO CITY — Under a banner declaring "ours is a question of dignity," defeated presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador announced Sunday in this city's massive Zocalo main square that he was withdrawing from the leftist parties he has long dominated while also launching a campaign of peaceful resistance to the newly elected government.

Iran finds ways around sanctions targeting oil sales

Posted: 09 Sep 2012 06:00 PM PDT

Iran barters and insures its own tankers in pricey, sometimes risky deals to work around U.S. sanctions meant to curb its nuclear program. But for how long?

WASHINGTON — To continue selling crude oil to India, Iran is accepting payment in rice, medicine, engineering supplies and steel.

Iraqi vice president sentenced to death as bombs, gunfire kill 92

Posted: 09 Sep 2012 02:13 PM PDT

Tariq Hashemi, a Sunni, has fled to Turkey but his trial has fueled sectarian tensions. Forty-two of the fatalities are in the capital.

BAGHDAD — Iraq's fugitive Sunni vice president was sentenced Sunday to death by hanging on charges that he masterminded death squads against rivals in a terror trial that has fueled sectarian tensions in the country. Underscoring the instability, an onslaught of bombings and shootings across Iraq killed at least 92 people in one of the deadliest days this year.

Civilian 'hacktivists' fight terrorists online

Posted: 08 Sep 2012 09:26 PM PDT

The digital vigilantes, some working barefoot from home, spy on Al Qaeda and its allies, penetrating chat rooms and other sites seeking recruits.

BARRE, Mass. — Working from a beige house at the end of a dirt road, Jeff Bardin switches on a laptop, boots up a program that obscures his location, and pecks in a passkey to an Internet forum run by an Iraqi branch of Al Qaeda.