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A Rovio VP talks about the company's troubled history, its future and what makes "Angry Birds" so wildly popular.

MUSCAT, Oman (AP) -- Oman's state media says nearly 400 workers in the country's oil industry are being reinstated after they were fired for staging strikes seeking better conditions and pay....

MUSCAT, Oman (AP) -- Oman's state media says nearly 400 workers in the country's oil industry are being reinstated after they were fired for staging strikes seeking better conditions and pay....

MUSCAT, Oman (AP) -- Oman's state media says nearly 400 workers in the country's oil industry are being reinstated after they were fired for staging strikes seeking better conditions and pay....

MUSCAT, Oman (AP) -- Oman's state media says nearly 400 workers in the country's oil industry are being reinstated after they were fired for staging strikes seeking better conditions and pay....

Tuomas Erikoinen, the man who drew the hit "Angry Birds" app, doesn't really resent his creation.

CAIRO (AP) -- Osama bin Laden spent all his personal wealth on jihad, considering meat and electricity as luxuries so he could save his money to help fund terror attacks, according to recollections from his deputy and successor posted online late Saturday...

WASHINGTON — The once highly touted Arab Spring has become the Arab Summer — scorching hot, unbearably dry and very brutal and bloody. Last weekend, as Americans prepared to celebrate Memorial Day and commemorated the 50th Anniversary of the Vietnam War, Bashar Assad unleashed tanks, artillery and his Quds force-trained shabiha militia to kill more than 100 Syrian civilians — most of them women and children. Though the atrocities and carnage in Syria continue, little but bluff and bluster is produced by the United Nations and the Obama administration.

In the aftermath of the May 25 massacre, 11 nations — the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, Bulgaria, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and Turkey — expelled Syrian diplomats from their capitals. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon — on a visit to Turkey, Syria’s neighbor and former ally — told the Alliance of Civilizations in Istanbul, “The U.N. did not deploy in Syria just to bear witness to the slaughter of innocents. … We are not there to play the role of passive observer to unspeakable atrocities.”

But that’s exactly what the 300 U.N. “observers” in Syria have become in the six weeks since they were deployed in support of Kofi Annan’s so-called Syrian peace plan. Worse, the vicious Assad regime and its principal backers in Russia and Iran know that this is all hollow rhetoric. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — vying for the title of “The Most Traveled U.S. Secretary of State in History” — ought to know it, too.

In Copenhagen, on “a weeklong diplomatic trip to Europe’s capitals,” she said the Obama administration is “committed to preventing a civil war in Syria” and baldly claimed that she is “pushing” the government in Moscow to help: “I have been telling them their policy is going to help contribute to a civil war.” That kind of talk is unlikely to produce a favorable outcome in Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin, no matter how many times President Barack Obama pushes the “reset button.”

After 15 months of butchery — and 13,000 dead civilians (the U.N. says it’s 10,000) — it ought to be clear to all that the U.N. can’t “prevent” a civil war in Syria; it already has started. Toothless sanctions, such as last week’s decision by the Obama administration to bar the Syria International Islamic Bank from doing business in the U.S., won’t stop the fighting. And no one, particularly the 22.5 million people living in Syria under the sanguinary Assad regime, should expect any help from Russia or Iran.

Moscow will do all in its power short of war to keep its Mediterranean naval installation at Tartus, Syria, in “friendly” hands. Tehran, striving for regional hegemony while it builds nuclear weapons, must have an ally in Damascus to keep open its supply lines for arms and materiel to Hezbollah — Iran’s proxy for what it repeatedly describes as a coming “fire that will destroy the Zionist regime.”

When asked about a U.N. resolution for military action — like the support given rebels in their effort to oust Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi — Clinton said, “Every day that goes by makes the argument for it stronger.” She knows better. The Russians and the Chinese would veto such action in the U.N. Security Council before it could be written.

That doesn’t mean we don’t have options. To succeed, opponents of the regime in Damascus will have to be armed, trained and equipped. The Free Syrian Army — a rebel group composed primarily of Syrian military defectors — is headquartered in Turkey. The FSA could not be there without quiet approval from the government in Ankara. Next door in Baghdad, there is deep concern about the flood of Syrians seeking refuge in northwestern Iraq. It is in the interests of both the Erdogan and al-Maliki governments — and our own — that the outcome in Syria be favorable, be friendly and respect human rights.

Seeing as our human intelligence about what’s happening on the ground inside Syria is so incredibly deficient, we don’t know which rebel groups are the “good guys” and which ones might be radical Islamists. Our friends — and we do have them in Turkey and Iraq — do know, or they could find out.

With the death toll rising daily in Syria, it’s long past time to stop the bluff and bluster about “pushing” the Russians or hoping more toothless U.N. sanctions will somehow work. What we and the long-suffering people of Syria need right now is some quiet diplomacy with our friends — and prayers that whatever we do won’t leak.

Bloody clashes between pro- and anti-Syrian regime fighters raged on early Sunday in Tripoli, Lebanon, a day after the deadliest outburst of violence there in recent weeks indicated Syria's turmoil continues spilling across borders.

Leon Panetta visited a former U.S. Navy base in Cam Rahn Bay, Vietnam, on Sunday, marking the first trip there by an American defense secretary since the war ended.

Police in Glasgow are hunting a car driver who deliberately drove at a man before hitting a partially sighted passer-by.

CAM RANH BAY, VIETNAM (AP) -- From the flight deck of the USNS Richard E. Byrd, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta could look out across Vietnam's Cam Ranh Bay towards the South China Sea....

CAM RANH BAY, VIETNAM (AP) -- From the flight deck of the USNS Richard E. Byrd, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta could look out across Vietnam's Cam Ranh Bay towards the South China Sea....

Hundreds of people began gathering in Cairo's Tahrir Square on Sunday, foreshadowing a second day of protests after the country's deposed president Hosni Mubarak was sentenced to life in prison for ordering the killing of demonstrators in the revolution that toppled him last year.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In 2008, Barack Obama took aim at the "pew gap," the overwhelming Republican edge among voters who regularly attend church....

BEIRUT (AP) -- International envoy Kofi Annan said Monday he was "gravely concerned" about the latest violence in Syria, citing shelling of opposition areas in Homs and reports of mortar, helicopter and tank attacks near the coast....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A program that puts billions of dollars in the pockets of farmers whether or not they plant a crop may disappear with hardly a protest from farm groups and the politicians who look out for their interests....

Spectacular regatta on the Thames

“The best defense is a good offense,” runs an adage attributed to legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi. What’s true in football is even more true in politics.

As the election marches through a long, hot summer, Republicans need to go on the offensive on medical care. Playing defense against the assaults by President Obama and his Democratic allies is the path to defeat. They’re going to use the President’s healthcare plan to attack Republicans, using the socialized medicine scheme as a wedge to pry a large gap between the GOP and seniors, young folks, the working middle class and others.

“We have to keep up the drumbeat with the American public,” Sally Pipes told us. The president of the Pacific Research Institute is a noted expert on the politics and economics of medical care. Her book, “The Pipes Plan: The Top Ten Ways to Dismantle Obama-care,” recently was published by Regnery Publishing, owned by the same company that owns Human Events, Eagle Publishing, Inc.

She added, “Republicans need to explain why the Obamacare legislation is bad for Americans’ health. They need to work for full repeal in 2013 if the GOP takes back the White House and the Senate, and keeps the House. Then, Republicans would replace it with the plan outlined in my book.”

Free market solutions

Among other things, her book discusses the impending bankruptcy of Medicare, the massive taxes needed to fund Obamacare, Medicaid waste in helping the poor, coverage mandates and the virtual enslavement of young people. The appealing solutions: Allow cheaper, high-deductible insurance plans, much as are available for vehicles; expand health-savings accounts; implement block-grant Medicare to states, so they can innovate at the local level; and give Medicare patients choices among plans. In short, give freedom back patients and promote competition.

On the state mandates, Pipes explained in a May 23 article in Investor’s Business Daily, “The Medicaid population in each state is different, so states should have the flexibility to determine their own eligibility requirements, benefit levels, and means of delivering care.” People know their own states are different from others. Texas is different from California, Mississippi from Maine. So freeing the states is a winner.

We believe that just such a proactive strategy could help presumptive nominee Mitt Romney with a major weakness: his passage of the similar Romneycare program when he was governor of Massachusetts a decade ago. His Republican rivals in the GOP primaries roundly criticized him over Romneycare. But as he later said, the many debates sharpened his own candidacy and prepared him to face Barack Obama.

In this context, Republicans should play to their strengths. For example, they should say, “Let’s run medical care like Steve Jobs’ Apple instead of the DMV.” That brings up in voters’ minds the world’s most admired and wealthiest company, contrasting it with people standing in long line and dealing with grumpy government DMV functionaries.

Republicans also should show how they would free young people from the Obamacare burdens. In 2008, candidate Obama appealed to youngsters’ boundless hopes for a better future. It contrasted with—let’s face it—Sen. John McCain’s rather curmudgeonly campaign.

A better model

A better model for the GOP is that of Ronald Reagan. The Gipper’s 1980 and ’84 campaigns promised limitless opportunity for those with ideas who worked hard. He turned hopes into reality as the computer and other fields blossomed under the Reagan Revolution.

Another thing to emphasize is that government bureaucrats, not doctors, will determine what kinds of coverage people get under Obamacare. That was a key factor on Aug. 3, 2010, when a whopping 71 percent of Missouri voters passed Measure C, which blocked Obamacare health-coverage mandates. The Show Me State showed that Americans don’t like being bossed around.

Republicans also should try putting such initiatives on the ballot in other states. Although in only 24 states can initiatives enact legislation, in the remaining states non-binding advisories could be put before voters. If Democratic-controlled legislatures block such efforts, the publicity still would benefit the anti-Obamacare cause. Republicans could respond, “Obamacare is so bad Democrats won’t even let us vote on it.”

To defeat Obamacare, more than just ideas are needed: Hard, hard work. The Democrats aren’t going to let up. Neither should Republicans. As Lombardi said, “The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.”

A suicide bomber kills at least nine other people near a church in the Nigerian city of Bauchi, amid rising violence by Islamic sect Boko Haram.