With copper trading at high prices, a remote area of Michigan is rediscovering its mining roots, raising hopes that the region will recover from a long slump.

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In Mining, Some Michigan Towns See Hope

A strong earthquake struck early Sunday in northern Italy, killing at least five people and knocking down a church bell in the region, authorities said.

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Earthquake jolts northern Italy; at least 5 dead

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is tightening his grip on the country during the decrease in violence brought on by U.N. demands, experts on the region say.

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Experts: Al-Assad making gains

More than 5 million residents in the Midwest are hunkered down as violent storms rake the region. Forecasters say there is a “high risk” of severe thunderstorms into Sunday in five states.

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Tornadoes, supercells thrash Plains

CARTAGENA, Colombia — Close your eyes, ignore the language difference, and you could be forgiven for thinking that the U.S. presidential campaign had come to this antique walled city on the Caribbean. Or, more accurately, that the U.S. presidential campaign had caught up with an economic debate that has roiled this region for decades — over the merits of national wealth, the role of government in alleviating poverty and the fate of the middle class. Read full article > >

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Obama finds U.S. campaign themes resonate at regional summit in Colombia

The first opportunity for North Korea to launch its controversial rocket passed uneventfully Thursday, keeping the region on tenterhooks for at least another day.

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Neighbors watch for N. Korea launch

Virginia is set to begin enforcing the region’s toughest drunken-driving penalty, one that will require thousands of first-time DUI offenders to install in their cars breathalyzers that can lock the ignition, whether they were highly intoxicated or slightly over the limit. Read full article > >

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Is Va.’s ignition-interlock rule for first-time DUI offenders too tough?

A year into the uprising in Syria, senior U.S. intelligence officials described the nation’s president, Bashar al-Assad, on Friday as firmly in control and increasingly willing to unleash one of the region’s most potent militaries on badly overmatched opposition groups . Read full article > >

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Syria’s Bashar al-Assad firmly in control, U.S. intelligence officials say

The Midwest begins on the western slopes of the Allegheny Mountains, around Rick Santorum’s Pittsburgh, birthplace of the Ohio River, the original highway into the Midwest. Pittsburgh fueled the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, an early eruption of Western resentment of the overbearing East, which taxed the whiskey that Westerners made from their grain. Santorum the Midwesterner, after victories in Iowa , Minnesota and Missouri , is wagering more of his political capital on the region. Read full article > >

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Santorum and Romney are miscast as candidates

EU foreign ministers formally agree to an oil embargo against Iran, as Western powers reinforce their naval presence in the region.

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EU approves Iran oil imports ban

EU foreign ministers formally agree to an oil embargo against Iran, as Western powers reinforce their naval presence in the region.

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EU approves Iran oil imports ban

In late 2010, on the eve of the Arab Spring uprisings, a Tunisian blogger asked Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel Fattah what democratic nations should do to help cyber­activists in the Middle East. Abdel Fattah, who had spent time in jail under Hosni Mubarak’s regime, argued that if Western democracies wanted to support the region’s Internet activists, they should put their own houses in order. He called on the world’s democracies to “fight the troubling trends emerging in your own backyards” that “give our own regimes great excuses for their own actions.” Read full article > >

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Why doesn’t Washington understand the Internet?

TEHRAN — Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Saturday welcomed the U.S. Navy’s rescue of 13 Iranian fishermen held captive by pirates, just days after it had warned all U.S. ships to leave the region. U.S. officials announced Friday that the fishermen had been rescued by a Navy destroyer the day before, more than 40 days after their boat was commandeered by suspected Somali pirates in the northern Arabian Sea. Read full article > >

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Iran welcomes U.S. Navy rescue operation

For the U.S. Navy, it was like hitting the public-relations jackpot: An aircraft carrier strike group that just left the Persian Gulf stumbles across an Iranian fishing vessel in distress, hijacked by pirates. Forces from the U.S.S. John C. Stennis carrier strike group, whose presence in the region had provoked a rhetorical outburst from Tehran that spooked global oil markets , swiftly made the most of the moment. They seized 15 Somali pirates without firing a shot and rescued 13 hungry Iranian fishermen who had been held hostage for several weeks. Read full article > >

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U.S. picks up Iranian hostages, with good timing

2011 not only brought unprecedented social and political changes to the Middle East, it also created a wellspring of creative expression in the region. As censorship fears began to dissolve along with the governments that enforced them, new voices began to emerge in the arts.

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Five Arab Music Artist Worth Watching in 2012