RAMALLAH, West Bank – The Palestinian parliament passed a compromise election law Saturday afternoon removing a major hurdle to new legislative elections that were originally scheduled for next month but were postponed indefinitely. The new law would create a mixed electoral system, with half the lawmakers chosen by districts and …

FORT RILEY, Kan. – An Army sergeant charged with killing two fellow soldiers pleaded guilty to lesser charges Monday at the start of his court-martial on two counts of premeditated murder. The murder case against Sgt. Aaron Stanley (search), 23, of Bismarck, N.D., was to proceed after a recess. Stanley …

DAMASCUS, Syria – Syria’s 73-year-old vice president will resign to make way for a younger generation to take power, a Baath Party (search) official said Tuesday, echoing a theme of a four-day congress of the ruling party. Vice President Abdul-Halim Khaddam (search) indicated his intentions Monday on the first day …

CHICAGO – Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) on Tuesday maintained its September sales forecast but repeated that the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina could hurt the final number and said 17 of its locations remained closed. The world’s largest retailer said that sales last week showed greater gains in food than in …

The Indiana Daily Student noticed recently that ginger-flavored cookies for sale at Indiana University in Bloomington are called “ginger persons” instead of the more traditional “gingerbread men.” The cookies are reported to have been stripped of their gender in order to appease the gods of sensitivity. Mary Frohliger, an IMU …

As Hurricane Rita bears down on Texas, the horrific images and stories from Hurricane Katrina are still fresh in our minds: desperate people unable to evacuate, pets left for dead, families split up and dispersed all over the country, jobs gone, homes destroyed. And it didn’t help that initial relief …

JAKARTA, Indonesia – Indonesia (search) announced plans Wednesday for a mass chicken slaughter amid fears of a bird flu epidemic after two more children suspected of having the disease died in the capital. The government scrambled to calm public fears after the deaths of the two girls, ages 2 and …

PHILADELPHIA – The last time I was camping with thousands of people while a band played on a distant stage was in 1994, at the Woodstock 25th anniversary weekend in Saugerties, N.Y. My two sisters and I slept the first night on a hillside under the stars without a tent. …

BURBANK – The sunlight was bright as Shaun Cassidy (search) drove a golf cart across the Warner Bros (search). studio lot. “For a long time I’ve wanted to do a suspense thriller in the bright sunlight,” said Cassidy, creator and executive producer of ABC’s new drama “Invasion.” (search) “‘The X-Files’ …

DETROIT – U.S. sales of cars and trucks from Detroit’s traditional Big Three U.S. automakers likely dropped in September as big employee pricing discount programs lost their allure with consumers and gas prices soared in the aftermath of hurricanes on the Gulf Coast, analysts said. While U.S. automakers General Motors …