Nation and World

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A Korean-American smuggled inflammatory literature into North Korea and tried to establish a base for anti-Pyongyang activities at a hotel in a border city, the North said late Thursday in its most in-depth account of the accusations against the man who was sentenced to 15 years' hard labor.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The GOP-controlled House voted Thursday to put U.S. bondholders and people on Social Security at the front of the line to be paid if the government hits its borrowing limit.

WASHINGTON – The bipartisan coalition behind a contentious overhaul of immigration laws stuck together on a critical early series of test votes Thursday, turning back challenges from conservative critics as the Senate Judiciary Committee refined legislation to secure the borders and grant eventual citizenship to millions living in the United States illegally.

BOSTON (AP) — Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev has been buried in an undisclosed location outside the city of Worcester, police said Thursday after a frustrating weeklong search for a community willing to take the body.

CLEVELAND – An Ohio prosecutor said Thursday he may seek the death penalty against Ariel Castro as investigators charged that he impregnated one of his captives at least five times and then starved her and punched her in the belly until she miscarried.

ROME (AP) — Secretary of State John Kerry says the transfer of advanced missile defense systems from Russia to Syria would be a "destabilizing" factor for Israel's security.

WASHINGTON (AP) — FBI agents did not tell Boston police they had receiving warnings from Russia's government in 2011 about suspected bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev and had performed a cursory investigation, Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis told Congress Thursday, in the first hearing into last month's terror attack on the Boston Marathon.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The U.S. wants to keep nine bases in Afghanistan after U.S. combat troops withdraw in 2014 which is fine as long as America makes "security and economic guarantees" in exchange, President Hamid Karzai said Thursday in his first public overture in what have been private talks on a future pact between the uneasy allies.

PHOENIX — The jury has rendered its verdict — Jodi Arias is guilty of first-degree murder — but the trial is far from finished.

BOSTON – The dispute over where to bury suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev escalated Wednesday as a Massachusetts police chief urged someone to step forward with a cemetery plot, saying: "We are not barbarians. We bury the dead."

CLEVELAND – A Cleveland man arrested after three women missing for a decade were found alive at his run-down home was charged Wednesday with kidnapping and raping them. Prosecutors brought no charges against his brothers, saying there was no evidence they had any part in the crime.

PHOENIX – Jodi Arias was convicted of first-degree murder Wednesday in the gruesome killing of her one-time boyfriend in Arizona after a four-month trial that captured headlines with lurid tales of sex, lies, religion and a salacious relationship that ended in a blood bath.

BEIRUT – A problem with a fiber optics cable was responsible for an Internet outage that cut off civil war-ravaged Syria from the rest of the world for nearly 20 hours, state media said Wednesday.