WASHINGTON (AP) — Once deeply vulnerable, President Barack Obama has seen his fortunes take a dramatic turn for the better as the Republican Party splits between its historic business-friendly establishment and the powerful tug of more conservative and social issues voters. Burdened throughout his term by the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s, Obama was expected to be hard pressed to hold on the White House in November. But eight months before Election Day, things... Read more

WASHINGTON (AP) — Once deeply vulnerable, President Barack Obama has seen his fortunes take a dramatic turn for the better as the Republican Party splits between its historic business-friendly establishment and the powerful tug of more conservative and social issues voters. Burdened throughout his term by the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression, Obama was expected to be hard pressed to hold on the White House in November. But eight months before Election Day, things have changed. That’s... Read more

OAK BROOK TERRACE, Ill. (AP) — For the first time in public, Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy promised his department will never conduct blanket surveillance of Muslims like the New York Police Department did in Newark, N.J., when he was chief there. McCarthy addressed hundreds of Muslims on Saturday at the annual banquet of the Council on American-Muslim Relations-Chicago, a civil rights organization. He said police would follow leads in criminal cases, but the department “does not and will not... Read more

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Conservative rivals of Iran’s president claimed control of parliament Sunday with more than two-thirds of the seats decided from elections handing the ruling Islamic establishment near seamless control in the escalating nuclear standoff with the West. The outcome also puts an emphatic stamp on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s political tumble after he dared to challenge Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei over his power to direct key government affairs such as foreign policy and intelligence. Ahmadinejad — once... Read more

BEIJING (AP) — A young mother and a student have become the latest people to set themselves on fire in protest against Chinese rule in Tibetan areas, a U.S. broadcaster said Monday. U.S. government-backed Radio Free Asia said the 32-year-old mother and the female student died after separately immolating in different provinces over the weekend. The student set herself ablaze Saturday at a vegetable market in Gansu province’s Maqu county and died at the scene, the report said, without giving... Read more

WASHINGTON (AP) — Super? Maybe not this time. But it is a Tuesday, one with the biggest payout of the Republican presidential primaries. Super Tuesday, slimmed down to half its 2008 size but still doling out one-third of the delegates needed to win, probably won’t settle much. Sure, it could nudge Newt Gingrich out of the race, or lend Ron Paul more credibility. But it won’t be easy for either Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum to score a decisive advantage,... Read more

LONDON (AP) — The head of the Catholic Church in Scotland has fiercely attacked the British government’s plans to allow gay marriage, calling the proposals “madness.” In an article for the Sunday Telegraph newspaper, Scottish Roman Catholic Cardinal Keith O’Brien accuses the coalition government of trying to “redefine reality.” He says the proposals to allow same-sex unions are “madness,” calling the idea “a grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right.” Prime Minister David Cameron has openly advocated gay marriage.... Read more

DUBLIN (AP) — Somewhere in Ireland, a burglar has the heart of a saint. Officials at Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin said Sunday they’re distraught and perplexed over the theft of the church’s most precious relic: the preserved heart of St. Laurence O’Toole, patron saint of Dublin. O’Toole’s heart had been displayed in the cathedral since the 13th century. It was stored in a heart-shaped wooden box and secured in a small, square iron cage on the wall of a... Read more

TSINYU MOUNTAIN, Myanmar (AP) — The seasoned guerrilla officer surveys the battlefield from his do-or-die mountaintop defenses: to the front, visible through the haze, a town torched and brutalized by Myanmar government troops. To his rear, the stronghold of the country’s most potent insurgency, one of several ethnic rebellions that erupted more than 60 years ago. As a hopeful world cheers surprising democratic moves by the military-backed government and weighs the lifting of economic sanctions, the rebels of Kachin state... Read more

TRENTON, New Jersey (AP) — New Jersey’s attorney general told Muslim leaders Saturday that he was still looking into the extent of New York Police Department surveillance operations in the state, yet stopped short of promising a formal investigation during a meeting that both sides characterized as productive. Leaders from different New Jersey Muslim organizations met with Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa and state and federal law enforcement officials for nearly three hours in Trenton to discuss concerns over the NYPD’s... Read more