Myanmar on Tuesday hailed a European Union decision lifting political and economic sanctions against the former pariah state, pledging to continue its reforms and march toward democracy.

President Giorgio Napolitano launches his unprecedented second term with accelerated consultations aimed at forming a new government.

Communities along the Mississippi River and other Midwestern waterways are vigilantly eyeing - and in some cases hastily fortifying - makeshift levees to hold back floodwaters that meteorologists say could worsen or be prolonged by looming storms.

As family members of his victims looked on, Army Sgt. John Russell described on Monday how in 2009 he rampaged at a mental health clinic in Baghdad during the Iraq War, killing four soldiers and a Navy officer.

Jagdish Sharan Verma, the former Indian chief justice who helped lead the charge for tough new laws to protect women in the wake of a gang rape of a woman on a New Delhi bus, has died. He was 80.

More discussion was likely Tuesday of the mental state of the Mississippi man accused of mailing poisoned letters to President Barack Obama, a U.S. senator and a local judge.

Liu Xia, under house arrest in China's capital since her imprisoned husband Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize, made a rare appearance Tuesday at a trial, yelling out a car window: "I'm not free."

NATO foreign ministers met Tuesday in Brussels to discuss the wars in Syria and Afghanistan, and to learn the views of a new member of their club - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

Spain's recession continued in the first three months of the year, with the economy shrinking by 0.5 percent, its seventh quarterly contraction, the Bank of Spain said Tuesday.

India has accused Chinese soldiers of launching an incursion far into Indian territory, in the latest flare-up of tension between the two Asian giants over their de facto boundary in the Himalayas.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov has indicated that the country's president will not consider pardoning imprisoned former premier Yulia Tymoshenko any time soon.

A senior official at a central Chinese city court has died after 11 days in the custody of Communist Party anti-graft investigators.

A senior Israeli military intelligence official said on Tuesday that Syrian President Bashar Assad used chemical weapons last month in his battle against insurgent groups. It was the first time that Israel has accused the embattled Syrian leader of using his stockpile of nonconventional weapons.

Authorities in a Maryland suburb of Washington are searching for the suspect in the slaying of an off-duty D.C. police officer in what they say may have been a "domestic-related homicide."

Clashes erupted in northern Iraq when security forces raided a rally site used by Sunni demonstrators early on Tuesday, killing at least 23 people and wounding dozens in an escalation likely to enrage protesters who have been rallying against the government for months.

Robert Bales, the American soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians during a 2012 rampage, faces another preliminary hearing Tuesday.

Joakim Noah gave a meek smile, looking as if he was hiding either the truth or the pain.

"They were more than murderers. They're terrorists. They terrorized the city. The nation has been terrorized." - Amy McPate, who thinks the death penalty should be used in the case against accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Robert Bales, the American soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians during a 2012 rampage, faces another preliminary hearing Tuesday.

Two men face a bail hearing Tuesday after their arrest on charges of plotting a terrorist attack against a Canadian passenger train with support from al-Qaida elements in Iran, authorities said. The case has raised questions about Shiite-led Iran's murky relationship with the predominantly Sunni Arab terrorist network.