Abdullah ibn Abdulaziz al Saud

OAKLAND — It was a quiet evening by this city's standards, and still the police emergency lines were lighting up. As screams rang out behind her, a caller said her neighbor was being beaten. A woman reported that a front door down the street had...

Khaled Hosseini stormed the best-seller lists with his debut novel, “The Kite Runner,” in 2003, following it up with the even more popular “A Thousand Splendid Suns” in 2007. Both set in the author's native country of Afghanistan,...

PASADENA — Perhaps the long bus ride from Barstow to Pasadena, which roughly works out to a 210-mile round trip, helped ratchet up the Barstow High softball team’s anxiousness to play in Tuesday afternoon’s CIF Southern Section...

HEROR, Iraq (AP) — A convoy of gunmen opened fire on a row of liquor stores in eastern Baghdad immediately after sunset on Tuesday, killing 11 people and wounding five others, officials said. Police said the gunmen were in four cars that had...

CAIRO — The retrial of former president Hosni Mubarak was postponed Saturday until June 8 after prosecutors told a Cairo criminal court that they intend to present new evidence of his responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of protesters during...

Would you do a double-take if I said that that words were a recurring theme in this week’s Great Reads? Yes, beautiful language is a mainstay in these stories, but this week, two standouts focused on words. Exhibit A: The words “Los Feliz....

Far from a great game, the British and American involvement in Afghanistan has been more of a case of sustained blowback. If there's one main take-away from J.T. Rogers' "Blood and Gifts," an epic, dramatic account of the allies' Afghan misadventures...

HAMPTON — Two men pleaded guilty Thursday to shooting a man to death during a 2009 attempted robbery. Evan Francis Stephens and Adam Abdullah Brewer pleaded guilty to murder in the March 27, 2009 death of Johnny Lee Purdie, according to the...

HERAT, Afghanistan — They sit in the sun harboring their lost histories, their forgotten dreams, their traces of funerals, graduations and stolen kisses. On dusty windshields, insurance stickers from Travelers and State Farm bear witness to wrecks...

D-Day for Iranian presidential race Tuesday, May 7 -- So many candidates, so few promising real change. More than a dozen Iranian lawmakers, former Cabinet ministers, revolutionary guardsmen and allies of Islamic leaders have thrown in their hats...

In a time when the whetted and arbitrary deficit-reduction knife is cutting bone out of critical U.S. government programs, the image of shopping bags stuffed with CIA cash handed off on a monthly basis to Afghan President Hamid Karzai — who reigns...

WASHINGTON -- The nation demonstrated again last week how resolute it can be when threatened by murderous terrorists -- and how helpless when ordered to heel by smug lobbyists for the gun industry. Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's deadly rampage through...