CAIRO (AP) — With near impunity and the backing of the Islamist president, Egyptian police have been accused of firing wildly at protesters, beating them and lashing out with deadly force in clashes across much of the country the past week, regaining their Hosni Mubarak-era notoriety as a tool of repression.

In the process, nearly 60 people have been killed and hundreds injured, and the security forces have re-emerged as a significant political player after spending …

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Last week, soldiers in one of Africa’s most closed and repressive nations — Eritrea — occupied the country’s Ministry of Information and issued demands. The pattern was a familiar one. News spread quickly that a coup was underway.

But feisty little Eritrea, which got its independence from Ethiopia in 1991 after defeating successive US- and Soviet-backed armies in a 30-year war, has never fit the mold of postcolonial African states, and it was not doing so …

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Both sides claimed victory this afternoon after the National Labor Relations Board announced an agreement to resolve allegations by Walmart that the recent union-backed pickets outside its retail stores broke the law.

As The Nation has reported, in a charge filed one week before November’s Black Friday strike, Walmart had accused the United Food & Commercial Workers union of organizing illegal pickets for the purpose of winning union recognition (the protests were spearheaded by the UFCW-backed …

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LOS ANGELES — Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, who retired less than two years ago as the leader of the nation’s largest Roman Catholic archdiocese, was removed from all public duties by his successor, Archbishop José H. Gomez, as the church complied with a court order to release thousands of pages of internal documents that show how the cardinal shielded priests who sexually abused children.

The documents, released as part of a record $660 million settlement …

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WASHINGTON — Lawmakers were stunned Wednesday to learn that the U.S. economy officially dove toward a double-dip recession at the end of 2012, contracting for the first time in three and a half years amid steep declines in government spending and sluggish exports.

Policymakers were similarly stunned in Europe when reductions in government spending led to continued economic malaise, leading top economists there to question the logic behind austerity recommendations. European austerity programs are a major …

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Revelations that China apparently targeted the New York Times in a campaign of cyber-espionage have cast a rare spotlight on attempts by Beijing to crack down on any criticism of its ruling elite.

The move, which was detected and then monitored by the Times’s digital staff, is believed to have been linked to the newspaper’s hard-hitting October exposé on the vast wealth accumulated by the family of leading communist and outgoing premier Wen Jiabao.

Government officials in …

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WESTWOOD (CBSLA.com) — Thousands of University of California employees and students were expected to take part in protests at campuses statewide on Thursday over what one workers’ union alleges to be skyrocketing executive compensation.

Roughly 22,000 workers at all 10 UC campuses and five medical centers planned to rally against the compensation package for outgoing UC president Mark Yudof, who union officials said will earn a $230,000 annual pension after five years of service with an …

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Three weeks after Gov. Jerry Brown declared the state’s prison overcrowding crisis over, a court of three federal judges said Tuesday that state officials can have six more months to reduce the inmate population to the previously ordered level.

The judges noted that California officials have said they cannot meet the court’s June 30 deadline for reducing its population to 137.5 percent of design capacity, but the officials believe they can hit that mark by …

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Gen Rios Montt will face charges of crimes against humanity in connection with the killing of 1,771 indigenous Mayans during his rule in 1982-1983.

Prosecutors said he wanted to wipe out the indigenous group, which he suspected of supporting rebel fighters.

Gen Rios Montt, 86, is the first ex-president to be charged with genocide by a Latin American court.

The ruling clears the way for a three-judge to try the former president and another former military man, Jose …

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Russia is scrapping a decade-long agreement with the U.S. on cooperation in law enforcement and drug control, the second move within a week reflecting worsening ties between the former Cold War foes.

The accord “doesn’t correspond to present-day realities and has exhausted its potential,” according to an order published on the government’s website today and signed by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

Relations have worsened since Vladimir Putin returned to the presidency last year with disputes over U.S. …

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