AFP - Rafael Benitez came close to conceding defeat in the Premier League title battle after a shock 2-0 defeat at Middlesbrough left Liverpool struggling to keep leaders Manchester United within sight.
AFP - Japan’s unpopular Prime Minister Taro Aso on Saturday came under stronger pressure to call a snap election as one of his cabinet ministers chided him for his indecision.
AP - President Hugo Chavez on Saturday ordered troops to intervene in Venezuelan rice processing businesses, saying some have balked at producing under regulated prices.
AP - The U.S. military map in Iraq in early 2010: Marines are leaving the western desert, Army units are in the former British zone in the south and the overall mission is coalescing around air and logistics hubs in central and northern Iraq.
AP - Iraq’s parliament pushed back voting Saturday on this year’s budget and could be forced to make further cuts because of falling oil prices.
AP - U.S. deaths in Afghanistan increased threefold during the first two months of 2009 compared with the same period last year, after thousands more troops deployed and commanders ramped up winter operations against an increasingly violent insurgency.
AP - A top Syria-based Hamas leader secretly crossed into Gaza for his first visit in decades, an Egyptian security official on the border said Saturday.
AP - Police recovered millions in stolen cash and interrogated seven suspected robbers Saturday, a day after a gang took a bank employee’s family hostage and forced him to rob his own branch.
AP - Weeks before his re-election bid, Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced Saturday that the government will cancel billions of dollars (euros) worth of debt owed by farmers and livestock raisers, the state-run news agency reported.
AP - When archaeologists on a dig in southern Portugal last year flipped over a heavy chunk of slate and saw writing not used for more than 2,500 years, they were elated.
