Nation and World News

CHICAGO – U.S. authorities say they’ve foiled a major debt-collecting scam that generated at least 8 million fraudulent calls from India since 2010 and bilked more than 10,000 victims across the nation.

PHOENIX – A surging Rick Santorum is making increasingly harsh remarks about President Barack Obama, questioning not just the president’s competence but his motives and even his Christian values.

CHICAGO – Members of Illinois’ congressional delegation are promoting changes to a U.S. House transportation bill they say would deprive the state of millions in highway funds and jeopardize Chicago’s transit system.

KABUL, Afghanistan – The U.S. apologized Tuesday for the burning of Muslim holy books that had been pulled from the shelves of a detention center library adjoining a major base in eastern Afghanistan because they contained extremist messages or inscriptions.

NEW YORK – It came and went in a flash, but its symbolic power couldn’t be dismissed.

NEW YORK – It came and went in a flash each time, a number on a board for mere seconds, but its symbolic power couldn't be dismissed.

ST. LOUIS – Just days after the 200th anniversary of a series of massive earthquakes in southeast Missouri, residents woke up Tuesday to a rumbling reminder that they live in one of the continent's most active seismic areas.

DETROIT – Car shoppers today are less likely to end up with a lemon.

Oil prices jumped to a nine-month high of more than $105 a barrel Monday after Iran said it halted crude exports to Britain and France in an escalation of a dispute over the Middle Eastern country’s nuclear program.

STEUBENVILLE, Ohio – Philosophical differences between the top two Republican presidential candidates are becoming starker as Rick Santorum drives harder on religious and social issues that Mitt Romney rarely discusses in detail.

BEIRUT – Syrian tanks and troops gathered Monday outside the resistance stronghold of Homs for a possible ground assault that one activist warned could unleash a new round of fierce and bloody urban combat even as the Red Cross tried to broker a cease-fire to allow emergency aid in.

RAMTHA, Jordan – Syrian refugees fleeing to Jordan for their lives described a dramatic escalation in violence and a mounting toll of dead and wounded in the southern city of Daraa and the country’s battered central region.

ATLANTA – Caterpillar said Friday it plans to build a new manufacturing facility in Georgia, a project company officials say will create more than 4,200 U.S. jobs.

OLYMPIA, Wash. – Josh Powell had hundreds of images of disturbing cartoon sex and graphic depictions of incest on his home computer, something Utah authorities investigating his wife’s disappearance kept private for about two years, according to files released Friday.

BRUSSELS – A financial clearinghouse used by virtually every country and major corporation in the world agreed Friday to shut out Iran from its respected network, an unprecedented escalation of global economic pressure to halt Iran’s suspected drive for nuclear weapons.