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DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syria's state-run news agency says a powerful car bomb explosion has killed 34 civilians and wounded more than 50 others. The blast reportedly happened this morning in a government-controlled village in the countryside near the central city of Hama. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says at least 37 people were killed and scores were wounded.
BEIRUT (AP) — The United Nations refugee agency says that at the end of last year, more than 50 million people have been forced from their homes worldwide. That's the highest figure of displaced since World War II. Syria's civil war alone has forced 9 million people to flee their homes.
MOSCOW (AP) — Officials say seven troops were killed in overnight fighting in the eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian army has been fighting pro-Russian rebels in the east for weeks, and hostilities have continued despite President Petro Poroshenko's promise this week of an upcoming cease-fire. A spokesman for Ukrainian forces in the east said seven soldiers were killed and 30 injured. He also said that 300 rebels were killed, but that could not be immediately verified.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Some 300 U.S. military advisers are heading to Iraq at the order of President Barack Obama. The advisers will help quell a rising insurgency. They'll join up to 275 U.S. forces that Obama had previously announced would be positioned in and around Iraq to provide security and support for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and other American interests.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The public can once again get a close look at scientists working to uncover the bones of saber-toothed cats, mastodons and mammoths in the heart of Los Angeles. Officials at La Brea Tar Pits are reopening a shuttered exhibition hall and reactivating an excavation site. Visitors will be allowed to look on as workers dig for prehistoric fossils from a pool of naturally occurring asphalt called Pit 91.
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