BAGHDAD (AP) — The prime minister on Monday announced a military crackdown to tame the country’s staggering armed violence, taking special aim at continuing lawlessness in the southern city of Amarah, where police have fled the streets as Mehdi Army fighters hunt them down in a brutal Shiite-on-Shiite settling of …

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) — UN chief Kofi Annan has full confidence in his embattled special envoy to Sudan, whose status remains unchanged despite an expulsion order against him from Khartoum over his comments on the Darfur crisis, his spokesman said Monday.

SAQQARA — The arrest of tomb robbers led archaeologists to the graves of three royal dentists, protected by a curse and hidden in the desert sands for thousands of years in the shadow of Egypt’s most ancient pyramid, officials announced.