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CAIRO, Egypt – Um Sami and her family left their home in one of Baghdad‘s Sunni neighborhoods after her children and husband were harassed. The Shiite family went first to a more mixed Baghdad neighborhood, then to Jordan, and finally a week later to Cairo. The veiled woman said her …

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration said Monday that China must do more to address long-standing trade frictions as a way of dealing with a U.S. trade deficit that has hit an all-time high of $202 billion with the Asian giant. Administration officials said a meeting of top economic policy-makers from …

BILOXI, Miss. – A lawyer for U.S. Sen. Trent Lott said Monday that State Farm Insurance Co. is destroying documents that could show the insurer has fraudulently denied thousands of claims by Lott and other policyholders whose homes were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Zach Scruggs, one of Lott’s attorneys, says …

BEIJING – Google Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt on Wednesday defended the search engine’s cooperation with Chinese censorship as he announced the creation of a Beijing research center and unveiled a Chinese-language brand name. Google is trying to raise its profile in China after waiting until January to launch its Chinese-language …

NEW YORK – “Entertaining Mr. Sloane” could be retitled “Exiting Jan Maxwell.” The actress left the Roundabout Theatre Company’s revival of the Joe Orton comedy last Sunday after complaining about the behavior of her co-star, Alec Baldwin. She will be replaced by her understudy, Barbara Sims, for the remainder of …

NEW YORK – Skyrocketing energy prices propelled Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) to the top of the 2006 Fortune 500 list, and consigned Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) to the No. 2 spot on the magazine’s annual ranking of the nation’s largest publicly traded companies. Fortune compiled its list based on companies’ …

WASHINGTON – States are helping public schools escape potential penalties by skirting the No Child Left Behind law’s requirement that students of all races must show annual academic progress. With the federal government’s permission, schools aren’t counting the test scores of nearly 2 million students when they report progress by …

LIMA, Peru – Voters in Peru’s presidential elections will choose Sunday between pro-business promises of stability and populist pledges to redistribute wealth and bring justice to the underdog. Ollanta Humala, a former army officer who has pledged to divert money from foreign companies to the poor, faces tough competition in …

HARLINGEN, Texas – Leonel Garza was 71 when he died of a heart attack, 23 years after being diagnosed with heart disease and decades after a heart attack and a quadruple bypass. But his lawyers who are suing Merck & Co. (MRK) say it was the Vioxx that he took …

TEL AVIV, Israel – Springtime for Hitler — in Tel Aviv? Bringing “The Producers” to Israel might seem like just another plot twist to Mel Brooks Broadway musical about getting rich off a surefire theatrical flop. But its for real, in Hebrew, and playing to packed houses. And in a …